HINDU, NOT NON-MUSLIM

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/03/28/hindu-not-non-muslim/

We attempt to protect society and particularly children from witnessing wrong actions and ideas. We make sure they have suitable friends, watch the right shows, and read the best books, with stories and ideas that inspire them towards better values.

Dr Seuss died in 1991. His books are a great favourite among English-speaking children. He wrote more than 60 books for kids, and they contain some fabulous lines such as ‘You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose,’ ‘Don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened,’ and ‘Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.’

It would be hard to find more dynamic, stirring messages than these. And yet apparently six of Dr. Seuss’ books are being pulled from publication because of certain lines within them that are considered racist. One of them is the book called ‘And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street,’ in which a character described as Chinese has ‘two lines for eyes’. Perhaps the fear is that children will see this description as a taunt, and likewise taunt people with small eyes. Or some such thing. We are trying to be more and more politically correct in this generation. Sometimes this correctness makes sense, sometimes it does not. It’s difficult to work out how far political correctness should go. 

There are millions of books with racist or other discriminatory references, some more some less.

Things were different once, in some good ways and in some bad. People spoke differently and treated each other differently. Books written in such times by people who lived then took those values in their stride, or even if they did not, they missed a bit here and there.

So although once it was acceptable to say ‘handicapped’ for anyone with a disability it is now not so. It is considered correct to say disabled, or even better to say ‘differently abled’. There was also a time when one used the ‘n’ word which has now morphed into ‘black’ or ‘coloured’. Can and should all books using the old words be dumped?

‘Bad’ values are nothing but bad values unless people learn a lesson from them. That is when they cease to be ‘bad values’ and become a feature of the evolution of mankind. Naturally this applies to relatively minor examples, not to outright manic rants or Alt-right groups such as the Proud Boys, or the Lashkars, where people are incited to kill and torture. If all writing containing ‘bad value words’ are deleted the process is likely to start all over again. And also, the fact of something being deleted makes it unbelievingly enticing for people. That is human nature.

Political correctness has not made its way to Pakistan as yet, and we make many mistakes. We still speak of each other in ways that make a decent person’s face burn, we still condemn and hurt people because of their religious beliefs, we scorn others because of the colour of their skin and because of their financial status. In the Punjab the caste system is alive and well and people actually marry or do not marry on the basis of being, Rajput, Syed… whatever, or because of not being one of those things.

The same is true of many other countries, including as we are now witnessing the USA, where such bigotry is just as alive as in Pakistan, and almost as present as before in some segments of society.

If all books with insensitive references to race, religion, caste, or social status are removed from the shelves will we stop being racist, and bigoted? Will Fair and Lovely (now called something else) go out of business? Will Rajputs marry Arains, and Gujjars marry Bhattis?

If this were so people would look upon Trump as an anomaly, upon Amir Liaqat as a nice guy, upon our PM as a very intelligent man. But half of the USA voted for Trump, and Amir Liaqat, a popular television personality and the holder of several fake degrees, has been accepted into the PTI. What did we miss?

Books are important. Yes they are very important, but there are other things too that make a difference such as what we witness around us and what we hear being said. Our families, society and leaders. Those are the most important role models.

If a child reads ‘Tummak tala Tummak tala, Billi ka mun ho gaya kala’, will he or she become racist because the rhyme refers to a cat’s face being black? Hardly. But he or she is very likely to notice and take it on board when mum and dad find Amir Liaqat’s Hindu deity reference amusing with regards to Mariam Nawaz.

When a child is told to wear his mask and stay away from people who are infected with covid-19, he or she will question why the PM had a meeting and sat with people in the same room when “Aboo said he tested positive.”

People need to teach their children to speak politely to everyone, regardless who they are. They need to see the human and not the label, to be taught this from the time they are able to speak.

In this context there is an extremely thought provoking tweet by a lady called Priyanka which said: I am a Hindu, not non-Muslim.

A Hindu lives, breathes and has needs like all of us. A non-Muslim implies everything that is not, like a great black hole. Terminology matters, but its use must be taught intelligently, not by snatching away words from under someone’s nose. When adults show respect children will learn. Children forget Humpty Dumpty or Tot Batot, but a child does not forget the sight of a dead man, of someone taunting a woman’s appearance, of the ill-treatment of that woman or another child, or the simple sight of someone doing the very thing he has been asked not to do. Children are intelligent.

U in a Q

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/03/20/u-in-a-q/

After what seemed like a very long wait but was really a short time in the production of a new drug, there are now several Covid vaccines in existence and people are being vaccinated around the world. In Pakistan too the process is underway using Sinopharm, the vaccine made in China and donated by it to Pakistan. This week a further 5,00,000 doses were donated. The country now possesses a million doses, sufficient to vaccinate only a fraction of the country’s massive population. Out of these doses, according to this newspaper, more than 72,000 have already been administered at centres all over the country. In addition the Russian vaccine Sputnik is to be commercially available soon.

According to this newspaper, in Pakistan there is an ‘alarming increase in the covid 19 cases as transmission rages out of control.’ Punjab in particular is of concern.

With a fraction of the population being vaccinated, the outcome is iffy and anyone’s guess. Now yet again you wonder when anything will be done to stem the growth of the country’s population, a population that stymies every attempt at improvement in every field, health, education, housing, sanitation…. whenever, if ever, such attempts are made. For now the government and the opposition seem all too occupied with a never ending power struggle and little else, but then that’s nothing new. Of course if the outlay on the 23rd of March festivities were to be used for vaccinations instead that would save many hundreds of thousands of more lives, but then we seem to need constant reminders as to who wields the stick and owns the cow, so to speak.

Still, whoever is organising the vaccinations is not doing too bad a job. Oh, people will always get what they want out of turn, and the rich and powerful will always be catered to above and beyond anyone else, but then this is Pakistan.

Lahore’s Expo Centre is a large venue, well suited to vaccinating a crowd. There is ample parking and the building is at an easy distance. There is provision for wheelchairs and transport for those unable to handle the walk. The people at the entrance were speedily let into a hall where seating was provided, well spaced as required. Officials along the walls were processing forms, checking NICOP IDs and the codes provided after registering for the vaccine. Well organised and commendable.

It was as the forms were processed and people came up to the doors to go in for vaccination that the problem started.

Remember once again that in this country a queue is understood as nothing beyond a letter of the alphabet, if a person’s experience extends to that, and it often does not.

Even in the alphabet, a Q needs U behind it to make it work, and the problem in Pakistan is that everybody is doing their utmost to get ahead of the Q and not stay in their place. And that is what happened at the Expo Centre.

Many people have been trying as far as possible to adhere to the prescribed SOPs, which means keeping a distance between themselves and the next person. In this case however the scrum at those doors threw any social distancing out the door. Yes those in charge tried to get people to form a line, to take their turn and to act rationally but it didn’t work. The reason was that those in charge were almost all young men from non-affluent backgrounds. The affluent crowd that formed the bulk of those at the Expo Centre was going to take no directions from them.

So add this to the problems pointed out above: an unwieldy population, and an inability to await one’s turn. And the third problem of a certain small set of persons considering themselves above the much more numerous rest.

No country will find itself making any progress until such problems are given the importance that is their due, and until such problems are resolved. The inability to form a queue may seem laughably trivial in the larger scheme of things, when people are dying in a pandemic and all the other problems that beset a country such as Pakistan, but it is not a trivial matter.

Awaiting one’s turn means recognizing someone else’s right and allowing them precedence where required, and placing oneself in the correct place to receive one’s own. It means a sense of fairness and the ability to rise above the gulf that exists in societies such as ours. Without this sense of fairness the poor will remain poor and will always suffer, while the rich will gain only the short term fruit of their aggressiveness and will remain what they are at present… the spoilt entitled scions of a corrupt few belonging to a poor, failed state.

AN INEVITABLE FUTURE

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/03/07/an-inevitable-future/

The recent elections in the United States were followed manically by many Pakistanis. Most of them hoped to see the incumbent turfed out of office as fervently as if he had been their President and not a person halfway across the world strangling his country with his narcissistic web. The reason for keeping up with what apparently did not concern people here was precisely that it does concern them. This global impact of what happens in one part of the world, on such a scale, is peculiar to this day and age.

Humanity has gone from a system of tribes to city states, then on to nations and further to organisations such as the United Nations and blocs such as the European Union. This must be seen for what it is, a tentative groping towards something beyond a national identity, a search for a viable single platform for humanity’s common goals.

At present we are not far as one may expect from becoming a global nation. Mentally we may not wish for such a thing but we are more attuned to this prospect than we imagine thanks to several factors, including social media.

Those several factors include changes brought about by shorter travel times, and the fact that very many of us have a foot in several countries around the world other than our own. Businesses and corporations have an international presence; think Facebook, Amazon, Coca Cola. Now too countless individuals possess dual nationalities, which means human beings increasingly have an interest in more than one country.

Our families are scattered around the world which also ensures that we care about the welfare of those countries as much as we care about our own. Covid-19 rates in Canada, the US, Britain and the Middle East concern us mainly for that reason, and it is important to us how all these countries deal with the crisis, much more important than it would have been 70 years ago.

Even if some countries mount military campaigns against other countries, there is now according to historians much more peace in the world than there was in years gone by. It is worth struggling to maintain this, and to further it and today we can in ways that was not possible before.  It is for all these reasons that it makes sense now to prepare for this potential singularity, at the risk of sounding like something out of Star Trek. And we can start this preparation by cultivating better relationships with others in our region, particularly our neighbours, dispensing with all incitement to the contrary. War and disagreements are never productive of anything good. They only exist to further the interests of the few.

As soon as one enters Defence Housing Authority in Lahore, one gets to see scores of banners lining the roads criticizing India’s treatment of its minorities. It is hard to understand how anyone has had the gall to do this given Pakistan’s own less than commendable record of dealings with its minorities. It is also hard to understand what it is hoped to achieve by posting such banners on the roads, without corresponding posters urging a better treatment for minorities at home. We may have a tragic recent history with India, but for centuries before that our people lived quite happily together as a single nation. India may have at its head these days a leadership with certain unfortunate ideas, but which country is free from that today?

A powerful bloc consisting of the subcontinent, and its neighbours on either side would be a force to reckon with, and would be in a much better position to bargain on issues.

Finally, if there is anyone who imagines the world cannot and will not come together in future they reckon without that single largest force today, social media.

What happens in one part of the world is conveyed in the blink of an eye to the other; not just news but sentiments, images and reactions. We know of China’s warnings against any meddling in its relations with Hong Kong, of each shutdown of a city Down Under when a case of covid-19 is discovered. We knew when the US carried out an airstrike against installations in Syria and called it a warning to Iran, and we even followed as it happened Perseverance Rover’s landing on the planet Mars.

Real estate magnates, billionaires or people with jingoistic attitudes… These are all leaders of the past. What we need now is people with vision to lead the world, people who fit in with the technology that leads us and that means considerably more than Twitter and the ability to pose for photographs. It means those who think in terms of liberalism, social welfare and education and can work to further these ends.

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