Smokers Cornered

A few days ago i posted a blog on dawn, which was ostensibly aimed at NFP, but not really. it appears that people are having trouble posting their comments on the page. So, feel free to speak your mind here.


Smokers Cornered

One of Pakistan's most famous columnists recently wondered aloud on these pages, as he so often does, 'how its no surprise Pakistan's current generation is so"conservative and intransigent."' The former student activist and veteran 'surkha' delved in subversive, philosophical and political contexts, and traced the problem back to his favourite hunting ground - the Islamization policies of General Zia-ul-Haq.

I'm talking, of course, about NFP.

Now, before I begin, I am at pains to stress that I don't wish to ignite a flame war here. I apologise in advance if it feels like I am resorting to petty and personal attacks, because I have no intention of doing so.


Disclaimers done, let's move on to this hit-mongering argument.



NFP, if I am correct, seems to be upset about the political leanings of the most young people of today, or rather their blatant lack of political concern amongst the rest. The current situation strikes a discordant note with his own past, those heady days when young people chose (and choose they did) the Left or the right with great fervor. 


Now it seems, the youth has no interest left in politics.



At the face of it, this claim sounds preposterous. Young Pakistanis of all stripes are obsessed with politics, and the youth with their politics-based blogs, the politics-obsessed tweets and facebook statuses seem to be no different.



But this is confusing the reality. 



If there is any sort of politics being professed by today's youth, it is the politics of individualism.

immediately, this sounds like a dirty word. individualism means selfishness and greed, it means consumerism and strait-jacket capitalism. 

thats all probably true. 

but lets try and understand why this came about.

for starters, our generation grew up during a time of the collapse of collectivism. 

in a strictly political sense, this was a time when both the Left and the Right collapsed upon each other.

ideologues on the left were reduced to hacking each other into factions. witness the fact that the pakistani left split into possibly as many factions as the PML.

but in a social sense, the right was equally undermined.

a lot of this had to do with technology. our generation saw television channels morph from the ubiquitous PTV to a cacophony of hyperbolic hosts, vengeful saas-bahus, and 24/7 hungama.

we saw the esteemed familial tradition of the telephone landline, so often an extension of patriarchal authority, become fractured into individual mobile lines for everyone, including the woebegone "common man."

we saw the already defunct system of household postal services replaced by the ravenous onslaught of the internet with individual mail addresses, and individual profiles and statuses galore.

we saw the VCR give way to the personal computer and youtube. the one dayers give way to t20s. the cassette to mp3. radio pakistan to FM 100.
 

the one common thread to all these changes was that they were all about being catered to our own individual needs. which is why men like zaid hamid and imran khan, so frequently the source of NFP sahab's ire, are so popular amongst people of our generation. 

because unlike ideologues of that past, with their rigorous demands for unflinching devotion (anyone from thatcher to mullah omer, from mao to imran khan the cricket captain) these guys offer their followers choice. the choice to wear jeans and jackets, but still spout anti-western rhetoric. the choice to speak in english and yet denounce the english speaking world. 

and that is also why their popularity can never translate into actual feet on the ground. because when they switch from offering choices to making demands, their very appeal gets eroded. 

witness the damp squib that was mr. hamid's takmeel-e-pakistan rally, or the number of seats won by the PTI. because even while our generation of individuals enjoys echoing the thoughts of these men, they don't allow them to subsume their own individual self. whenever the call goes out to follow an individual, the generation of individuals decides to choose its own path instead.


and its within this individualistic ethos that our generation finds its redemption as well.



it is why while the older generations respond to natural disasters by bringing out the begging bowl and fretting about pakistan's 'image' abroad, our generation focuses on doing what we can on our own, setting up camps and relief teams.


it is why while our elders cry themselves hoarse over whether our president is the dajjal or misunderstood, whether our cricket team cheats because of structural reasons or a few bad apples, our generation finds the roots of both evils within ourselves.


it is why while you criticize us for being politically apathetic, we continue to populate the internet with some of the most incisive political debates in recent pakistani history. 


and it is why, Sir NFP, i take umbrage to your thesis: because it robs us of our context, and reduces it to your own.