Probably not at this point, given the post 1971 decade long effort to erase ethnic identities in favor of the Islamic centrist identity to unify the nation and prevent further ethnic based secessionist movements.
But I get the appeal, especially to our friends across the border, which is why there are thousand up-vote plus answers here that are wistfully wishing for how all our problems could be solved if only we were secular!
(Also, is it just me or are there suddenly a lot of Caucasian people here on Quora that seem to have discovered a market for prescribing Indian approved solutions for Pakistan in order to achieve overnight fame?)
This answer isn’t designed to be popular and gain up votes so I have some freedom in speaking the truth here: Advice from people how Pakistan can solve it’s problems by just turning Secular is pretty much nonsensical.
If anything, the Maoist origin communists in China or the Baathist fascists in the middle east have some education for us in that regard, and if the extreme measures undertaken by them to ensure secular compliance are a bit too much for us to stomach, maybe we should reconsider exactly what it is we want as a nation before we brainlessly rush into some golden ticket solution.
The slaughter of East Pakistan was carried out by alcohol swilling, singer screwing proud secularists from wealthy, aristocratic and feudal backgrounds. The blood of thousands of Bengalis, raped to death in their universities or lined up outside of their homes by firing squads, is the proud product of secular Pakistan.
Similarly, it was secular Pakistan that launched the 65 conflict and made our soft border with India into a hard one and it was secular Musharraf who launched the Kargil debacle.
Stop viewing Pakistan from the lens of Indian nationalism which increasingly cannot escape the binary of Islam vs Hinduism and has chosen to rewrite its entire history based on Islam vs Hinduism.
Post 9–11, the West joined up in this narrative about how Muslim countries need to be more secular, while states like Georgia are now jailing women for miscarriages or for having abortions in other states and measles is making a comeback thanks to anti-vaccine movements. As if Pakistan’s problems began on 9–11. They didn’t. And 9–11 themed narratives around our state and its terrible mistakes and history and problems are about as relevant as astrology.
If we want to solve our problems, we have to understand our history ourselves rather than importing solutions from folks who don’t even bother to understand our politics, have never stepped foot here and have no genuine care nor concern for Pakistanis.
Religious sentiments in the populace are not a problem if they manifest themselves in moderate forms and every nation has its own ideals and identities that they chose to mold their lives and values around. No harm in it. Infidels like me can have our alcohol behind closed doors and eat in private during Ramazan if that’s how it is. We can draw the line on beating sick people who choose to eat in public during iftaar and forced marriages of Hindu women.
The religious parties in Pakistan ironically are some of the front line parties in recruiting Hindu, Sikh and Christian members to form joint religious-conservative platforms to contest elections on and to gain electoral footholds in parliament based on reserved seats.
The blasphemy laws in Pakistan have also long been used to protect the religious items and beliefs of minorities from the majority.
Blasphemy case against six for ‘desecrating’ Sikh youth’s turban
There are valid reasons for discarding the blasphemy laws. A blind pursuit of secularism for the sake of secularism isn’t it.
I have often seen deeply conservative and religious Muslims display more care and respect for Hindu religious figures than quite a lot of secular to be honest. This one page run by some edge lord in Pakistan poked fun at the Hindu religion and most of the Pakistanis who would be written off as “religious” types were the first to call out the mockery and shame the admin. All the people in the below screenshot are Pakistani Muslims:
This isn’t a defense of theocracy or a defense of secularism.
I’m saying the problems of Pakistan are too intersectional, complex and intermingled with different factionalism beliefs to be solved by a magic wand word like secularism.
We could have a secular government the next day and it could be the most fascist, militaristic thing we have ever seen in our history, abducting and torturing anti-state individuals on a whim.
Quite a few secular men define their secularism around the ability of women to wear bikinis on the beaches and I have to ask what kind of political system they are advocating that seems to be centered around satisfying their lustful male gaze. If secularism isn’t meant to be geared towards equality for women and improving their status, then we end up nowhere better.
Similarly, a theocracy isn’t much to go on either. If we’re suppressing half of our population and preventing them from reaching their full potential, failing to formulate a rational society and taking ourselves back into the dark ages, we won’t be a country much longer.
I think the point of this answer is more to communicate two core points:
- The answer isn’t in the dichotomy between secularism and theocracy. Pakistan’s problems aren’t rooted in those problems, at least not entirely. There are problems that are endemic to the architecture of the state and the way Pakistan was designed and secularism-theocracy have little to do with it.
- We aren’t living in a fairy tale land where wishes exist and we can just wish anything into reality. It would take a massive re-imagining of the idea of Pakistan to imagine it as a secular state. And the unraveling of Pakistan as a state has no positive aspect to it for the people in it’s territories, regardless of what even critics of the government like me think. The USSR’s dissolution being a case in point. Or even the ethnic blood spilling of the 71 dissolution being a closer point.
Our prosperity and peace isn’t necessarily tied to being secular or theocratic. But in developing institutions that deliver prosperity and peace, whether they are religious or secular is irrelevant.
You could have extremely cruel and rapacious institutions in a secular state. Gaze upon the ex-USSR states in eastern Europe which became center pieces of human trafficking, the communist east Asian states that have driven entire tiger populations to extinction so they can eat tiger meat as an aphrodisiac to fuck their bored mistresses or the Latin American banana states where women are free to wear what they want and even more free to die from drug related gang violence. Hell, why look so far, just look at the ethnic secular feudal lords and how they torture people in the villages across Pakistan.
And we can have theocratic states like Saudi and the less said about them the better. By all means, drop “Islamic” from the state name, tear up the blasphemy laws and all that. But all of this should be part of a strategic solution to a specific problem, not some blind pursuit of an ideal just because it was dictated to us from the top. It’s better to drop the blasphemy law or alter it to prevent misuse than to just drop it without understanding exactly why it’s being dropped. Modernization for the sake of modernization is a peril of its own, as the Shah of Iran can attest.
The Marxists had a more rapidly implementable and shortcut road to secularism because they combined secularism with massive economic redistribution and nationwide implementation of social services like education and healthcare. This allowed them to jump start secularism because they could combine it with revolutionary redefinition of the state, elevation of lower classes and so on.
The question in Pakistan is: What exactly do we combine our secularism with? The ethnic feudal politics? The tribalism? A democracy that is prey to both of the former? We haven’t figured it out. Until we do, secular Pakistan offers a choice between an ethnic fascism centered around militarism or feudal-tribal oppression at the hands of local chieftains and sardars.
Our first steps must be to question the questions: Is secularism and theocracy really what we need to be talking about? Pakistan is currently going bankrupt from bad governance structure and profit sharing between the provinces and the center, we are running out of water and economic growth is slowing down while the youth bulge is entering the job market. Unelected, powerful institutions are increasing their grip on power, major issues are being left un-tackled while powerful lobbies play politics at the top.
Let’s not let outsiders frame our debates: Let’s choose what we debate ourselves.
Our goal should be to develop political institutions that foster consensus among all citizens, provide peace and dignity to them and ensures a level of prosperity in the state. This is something that’s not tied intimately with either secularism or religious values. Our job should be to achieve a balance between the two and ensure that balance is geared towards the well beings of Pakistani citizens. And to check the worst impulses on either side.
Secular Games, Richard Howard
Plenty of people will declare themselves experts on our problems and everyone’s gonna have an opinion. But for some reason, their solutions always seem to be framed from what benefits them more than what benefits us. Which is why it’s our responsibility to understand our problems and come up with our solutions ourselves.
Quite a few of the developed nations have achieved the balance between political institutions being both guided by the values of the majority religion while ensuring that political institutions themselves don’t become enforcers of the holy letter and remain secular in the sense of being impartial to citizens of all faiths.
To solve our problems, we need to solve our problems. Not launch into some kind of soul searching for a magic wand that offers a permanent and final solution to all our woes. Secularism won’t stop our imminent bankruptcy, broken political process or ecological crises. Neither will religion.
And be wary of the advice you receive so freely from others: Advice is freely given and so rarely implemented by the advisers themselves.
The solution to the problem is what we need to look for rather than indulge in hair spinning about the nature of the state. Our goal should be focused on the well being of citizens, and if history is any teacher, that well being is not at all tied to either secularism or religiosity. And our solution needs to be based on ground realities. The reality of Pakistan currently is one that cannot be overnight turned into a secular “utopia” given our history and baggage.
Otherwise we will be the equivalent of the scholars in Baghdad who wandered which beak on a bird made it Halal and which made it Haram while the Mongols were at the gates.
There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn’t now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone’s been run over.
The century grinds on.
- In the secular night, Margaret Atwood
I suspect this post will release some ire, and I recall how whenever I harshly criticized the government of Pakistan I was hailed as “brave” and “wise” but now that I’m pinpointing the problem with foreign solutions for Pakistan, suddenly I’m a Toronto based maulvi. Which is an important lesson in how it’s important to speak your point, learn where possible and ignore the reactionaries.
I have written harshly about theocratic elements about Pakistan in past answers, called for the discarding of the blasphemy laws and called for secularism on my own as I personally believe in these ideals. However, this answer points out that these actions will have no success if carried out in a vacuum.
If we turn secular overnight, but leave the problem of an over dominant military, water crises, poor economy as is, there will be no improvement in the lot of the people living here. We’ll just turn into a secular military themed dictatorship with ethnic fascism instead.
In any case, I said my piece. I’m all for secularism if it was up to me, but secularism alone aint solving anyones problems here, no matter what we wish.
