Civil Society in Pakistan: Complexities and limitations

Dawn, august 18, 2006
Defining civil society
By S. Akbar Zaidi

Excerpts:
For civil society in Pakistan, whether of the westernising, modernising kind, or of the more fundamentalist Islamic kind, the question has not been one of democracy versus non-democratic norms, but of liberalism against perceived and variously interpreted Islamic symbols and values. Unlike the traditional notion of civil society, the pursuit of democratic ideals is not a necessary and defining condition. Not only is this a fundamental difference, but so too is the necessary distinction of autonomy from the state, so integral to the meaning of civil society.

If sections of civil society are expected to challenge the state, in Pakistan, there are many who are the state’s partners. For instance, development groups which have emerged as a result of government failure in Pakistan and have become contractors in the form of NGOs in their own right, are often coopted by institutions of the state to become the latter’s ‘advisers,’ winning lucrative contracts and getting the publicity they need to further their credentials.

Human rights activists and advocacy groups, too, become partners with other stakeholders, particularly government, and try to redress problems created by the very institutions of the state that they are now partnering. The essence of Pakistan’s politics — very broadly defined — is one of compromise not confrontation, and of cooptation. Civil society in Pakistan is very much part of that political tradition.

The greatest opposition to the foreign presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to Israel has come from the political and non-political sections of the ‘Islamic’ civil society. Unlike their westernised Pakistani cousins, this is an anti-imperialist political grouping, which is also against the agenda of the World Bank, the IMF, and economic liberalism, something that westernised civil society supports very enthusiastically. For both, however, democracy is less important.

In the context of Pakistan, one is likely to find that civil society (its western wing), aspires to only a few of the necessary requisites. For it, a westernised, socially and culturally liberal agenda, is far more important and preferable than the messy indigenous politics essential for democracy. In fact, one of the main consequences of this ideology has been the depoliticisation of public life in Pakistan. Under such circumstances, where the main representatives of the uncivil society are perceived to be westernised and socially and culturally liberal, where civil society actors work for the emancipation of women and for human rights, and military generals support the same agenda, both civil society and “uncivil society” make consenting bedfellows.

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