Decline of Civility

Dawn, July 14, 2006
Decline of civility
By Tahir Mirza


THE passing away of Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi signifies not just the death of a litterateur who had spanned almost an age but hastens the end of a tradition of scholarship and a way of life that was woven into the subcontinent’s cultural heritage.

Perhaps the tradition lives on in bits and pieces in other parts of the region, but in Pakistan certainly it is in sad decline. A certain mediocrity has settled like a blight on our political, social, cultural and academic life. The deterioration in academic standards and the disappearance of respect for learning are particularly appalling facets of this decline.

The world has changed; it has become far more competitive than it was 60 or 70 years ago, when Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi must have embarked on a serious pursuit of literary writing. We have time only to study what we must to get a job and get on with our careers. We have no time to learn the languages or read beyond what is prescribed. Perhaps this is a practical attitude. What good will a knowledge of Persian do if we want to become a rocket scientist? But the old emphasis on literature and languages and the learned arts made people part of a well rounded culture.

It leant a civilised dimension to living, and with it came a mildness of manner, a tolerance of the opinion of others, a readiness to accept that others may be different in their religion, their customs and their habits but nevertheless deserve our respect. This is what a secular outlook meant, and it was part of that great synthesis that Amir Khusrau so nobly and so eloquently personified.

The link may appear far-fetched. But surely it is the way we are reared, the atmosphere in which we grow up, the way we are taught that make us what we become as members of a society. If middle-class Muslims learnt Saadi and Hafiz from their elders, irrespective of what they were later to become — scientists or engineers or journalists or doctors — that made them better and more civilised human beings. One has heard of a young man in the Old City of Lahore in the early 1920s who worked as a low-paid clerk in a government office during the day and in the evening sat among neighbours and friends and recited Heer. Perhaps he was a more efficient clerk for that.

Most urban Muslim households had an educated feel to them even if not all members of a household were educated in the accepted sense of the word. Most women did not have the benefit of formal schooling, but the folk lore they knew, the ‘daastans’ they intoned, the proverbs they would drop at every step in ordinary conversation, and the tales they would tell to the children comprised an education that is hard to get nowadays. The women of the taluqdars, feudal lords, of Oudh had no schooling; they spoke among themselves and to the women in their employ in the Poorbi dialect of the countryside, but would switch to the most sophisticated Urdu when in the company of strangers or at social gatherings.

When unexpected house guests in large numbers would turn up without notice, there was sure to be some old lady who would cackle: “Chimgadron key ghar aye mehman, hum bhi latkein, tum bhi latko (guests have come to the house of bats, we hang from the rafters, you do the same, or you will have to make do like us).” The learning process, or the unconscious imbibing of a respect for learning, was part of growing up, and that sadly is no more the case.

The decline of universities is the saddest part of this story, although universities have proliferated in Pakistan and old degree awarding colleges whose names were inscribed in history have been upgraded and called by strange nomenclatures, such as the Government College University in Lahore. The vice-chancellor of the university in North India where one studied in the mid-1950s was a reputed economist. He was one of the few on the academic staff who had a motor car.

His was a wheezy old Austin whose engine would mostly refuse to be cranked into action and which had to be pushed by students and peons when it was time for the VC Sahib to go home. Many dons came on bicycles, their trouser cuffs pinched with a clip to prevent being stained by grease from the cycle chain. They didn’t consider this to diminish them in anyway, and indeed they enjoyed as much respect from their students as better off professors.

In Pakistan at one time vice-chancellors were even given flags of their own that flew from their limousines. This elevation in material standards, welcome otherwise, has not been accompanied by higher standards of teaching or administration. Far from making sure that we have eminent educationists as vice-chancellors, we have imposed military men on some universities. This is one indication of how much we value learning.

Wherever we look, the scene is much the same. The stature of politicians and the level of debate in parliament bear no comparison, with a few notable exceptions, to the parliamentarians and parliament of 1970 or the parliament suspended by Iskander Mirza/Ayub Khan in 1958. Today’s parliamentarians are all supposed to be graduates or hold degrees equivalent to graduation. But the speeches made in the National Assembly or even the upper house often fail to reflect a clear understanding of issues or involvement in the subject under discussion. Few legislators do any home work before taking part in a debate. You have instances of almost juvenile behaviour, such as the recent incident of a silly note being scribbled and sent to a woman legislator. Attendance in legislative sessions is thin, with ministers and members of the sarkari party all but indicating that the assemblies are a nuisance to be barely tolerated. The feudal attitudes that colour Pakistani politics have never been seriously recognised or tackled.

Perhaps nostalgia for the past, when everything seemed rosier, is common to every age. The world after all has made tremendous progress. Forms of political, literary and social expression have changed, but they have in many cases been more vigorous than before. The present generation of Pakistanis is much more wide awake than their elders. It is simply that their interests lie elsewhere. It doesn’t really matter, does it, if a young person enjoys rock music more than a ghazal? Both reflect the presence of a finer sensibility.

But whether on the whole we have become more civilised and cultured individuals for all the progress we have made is another matter. For instance, in terms of matters concerning religion, are we today more tolerant than our elders were? There is a harshness in today’s discourse that makes you wonder whether it is due to the absence of the kind of atmosphere we have talked about earlier. Military and autocratic rule has blocked and distorted the democratic and political process, and this too has had its own debilitating and stultifying effect in brutalising society or at least in making it more impertinent. The military is especially contemptuous of intellectual inquiry, considering it to be a luxury best dispensed with.

The civil and foreign services till not so long ago had men and women in their ranks who respected learning. Now a writer in India can be shabbily denied a visa on the advice of some spook sitting in Islamabad. (It is strange that the Ishrat Hussain commission on governance does not appear to be overly concerned with why the civil services structure and the federal public service commissions have been decimated, and with what effect, by the installation of a new system of governance at the district level.)

So, progress in terms of material advancement is not necessarily accompanied by an improvement in the human condition or a higher level of sensibility. Look at the world’s most materially powerful nation: it has never had such a boorish president as its head as now. It is the demise of civility that we should mourn. We need democracy to have a free and inclusive society, and with freedom and inclusion will come a more cultured society. It is the way of life and the values that people like Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi represented that need to be cherished and, if possible, revived. That is one way in which the surge of philistinism, whether of the political kind coming from the military or the religious kind coming from the political right, can be kept at bay.