THE month of Ramazan was, for the citizens of Karachi, not just a test of endurance but something of a trauma. Over 1,200 lives were lost as a result of the heatwave. We are being told that the victims have earned ‘paradise’. However, that thought, on its own, is bleak. Nothing was done over Eid, for example, to remember them.

It seems that we, as a people, are quick to forget such happenings. Human life is of limited value here. Granted that this is no welfare state, yet our indifference must surely be counted as a sign of little humanity.

It is a separate argument as to whether what happened was due to poor living conditions or overall infrastructural dysfunction. However, the deaths can equally be attributed to unconcern in officialdom. This was no isolated phenomenon. It is true of the country as a whole. Pakistan is bedevilled by a cavalier attitude in government and a host of multiple issues — from problems related to water and power to issues of security. Our media focus unrelentingly on such matters but mostly to no avail.

It might help to view the matter less topically. Nearsightedness tends to breed short-term solutions and prevents us from looking at the bigger picture. It is not enough to dwell on, and try to cure, what are merely symptoms of a deeper dysfunction and a national malaise.

It is not enough to try to cure what are merely symptoms of a deeper dysfunction and a national malaise.

Corruption may be taken as one of these symptoms but no more than that. It plainly needs to be addressed and indeed there are calls for redress. However, holding a handful of politicians accountable to the exclusion of members of other segments of society would scarcely achieve lasting results. The taint is rampant and linked to a degeneration of national values.

That, in turn, is connected to a deep-seated national cynicism, compounded by apathy, despair and a loss of faith in federalism and — in a world supposedly coming of age — even the idea of the nation-state. This is something we must obviously reckon with.

In Pakistan, at any rate, it would seem that, amendments to the law and Constitution notwithstanding, a more thoughtfully articulated social contract, which takes account of prevailing social and political realities, is called for if we are to make headway.

Democracy is crucial to civil society and its survival but, at the same time, it is imperative that it clean its own house through a parliamentary consensus and resolve its own contradictions. Needless to say, we owe it to ourselves to go along with the democratic process irrespective of whether or not it delivers at a given point in time.

However, rather than exercise the option of intervention in any shape or form — even via an anti-corruption drive — it would make sense to address our underlying malaise. This is evident, for instance, in the issue of our identity. More ethnically coloured today than anything else, it lacks coherence.

Also, the common man sadly lacks a bona fide education and consequently a truly human consciousness. At best, there is a very thin veneer of humanity. At worst — given the phenomenon of terrorism — we see man, close up, as primate.

So we need to examine the possibility of overhauling our educational system so as to make room for humanisation (rather than human development) through a greater focus, even at the lowest of levels, on the humanities: literature, philosophy and the fine arts.

We must realise that we have lost out as a nation precisely because of not being in touch, beyond our consumerism, with who we are. The idea of our humanity matters, so while looking at the present, we should also be pre-empting the future. The loss, in human terms, will be huge if we do not.

Like the West, we too must carry our philosophical and cultural legacy with us. Allama Iqbal was, for one, an advocate of enlightened humanity and concerned with somehow enlarging the scope of the self. Like him, our leaders should be speaking a more meaningful language and one of deeper concern. They would also do well to mull over what President Hollande had to say about the need for striking a balance between “responsibility” and “solidarity” at a recent press conference in Paris in connection with the Greek debt crisis.

That may have been a political statement. But it was also part of the conscionable language of the Left in France. There was a sense of a great philosophical tradition — of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Comte — and, at the same time, a profound human awareness.

Since we seem, once again, to be standing at a crossroads, we need to think analogously in the larger interest — and reshape and renew rather than mindlessly improvise — for the sake of our collective destiny.

The writer is the founder chairman of Dialogue: Pakistan, a local think tank.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2015

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