“...if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal, then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing.”
– Michel Foucault
A relative of this commentator, a career banker who has worked in several countries, could not understand why “you liberals” are unwilling to consider the Taliban demand of adopting the Shari’a as the legal code of Pakistan.
“After all,” he said, “Islam is the basis for Pakistan in the first place. Moreover, it’s not inimical to economic development or social stability. Look at Saudi Arabia. I lived there three years and I can confirm that life within one’s home there is perfectly tolerable and a good deal more secure than it is here.”
Now, it is not the purpose of this piece to either contradict or confirm such views. I mention this conversation as an example of commonly held assumptions. This is one set of perceptions to which the ‘official’ narrative of Pakistan has brought us. The logic of that narrative takes us even further. A certain exceedingly pious gentleman of my acquaintance, who is otherwise a gentle soul, responded to a conversational remark that the most basic virtue lies in simple kindness towards others. Not so, he contended, kindness was certainly a virtue but it was meant to be shown only to “pious, practicing Muslims”. As for others, they should first be given a chance to mend their ways (and presumably convert to Islam), after which, if they did not, “they would be Wajibul Qatal.” After all, he contended, Pakistan is meant for true Muslims”.
Step still a little further along this logical path and we are among those who violently hate non-Muslim minorities and even unorthodox Muslim sects. This is the Takfiri territory of the mind. And, since the normal human psyche is life-affirming, this kind of death-affirming outlook can only be seen as aberration.
[quote]The delusions born from our fantasies and unfulfilled desires are colossal[/quote]
The touchstone of this aberration is the public attitude towards the TTP. I refer to neither the much-sought-after Dialogue nor the much-postponed Operation. It is the nature of people’s reactions that are informative: the Interior Minister absolving the terrorists of blame for the murderous attack on the courts in Islamabad...the same worthy bizarrely proposing a cricket match with the miscreants when he must be aware of the gruesome kind of football they play...the general atmosphere of what, at best, is a resigned silence in the face of 55,000 citizens killed. Do these not represent seriously distorted attitudes?
But these distorted views, you will say, are largely an elite, or at worst middle-class set of attitudes. Extremism is not an overwhelming feature of the psyche of the Common Persons, the Awam. Well, who is to say? Silent acceptance of extremism certainly is. One does not know of any significant demonstrations of public outrage, at any level, against the continuing slaughter of Pakistani citizens. In fact, an indicator of spontaneous public attitudes are the portraits of Osama Bin Laden, Rashid Ghazi and Hakimullah Mahsud – set about with stylized rivers, flowers, butterflies and mountains – painted onto the backs of trucks. What does it signify when men such as these are clearly counted among our folk icons in a land so notably devoid of heroes?
Now, the fact that persons so deeply associated with terrorist violence can be depicted as folk heroes (alongside Ayub, Benazir, Isakhelvi and Shahid Afridi) speaks of a very dark strand in the collective consciousness – a strand that puts the lie to the liberal delusion that the common People (with a capital P) are ‘basically decent’ but have been ‘misled’ by the Mullahs, the Army, or the ISI.
On another occasion, we will discuss the anti-elite context of this public idolisation of those who might otherwise be regarded as villains. For today’s purpose, let us appreciate how easy it is to mentally stumble into the formulations of extremism, given the first ideational steps. At the centre of these formulations is the delusionary core belief that there is some kind of world-wide Conspiracy – against Islam, in general, and Pakistan (as the nuclear sword arm of Islam), in particular. That those, such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban warriors, who fight the good Jehad against this conspiracy of the West-plus-Israel-plus-India-plus-Whoever, are heroes for the people of Pakistan, both the elite and the Awam, is the further delusion that logically follows.
As any psychiatrist will tell you, delusions and the delusionary behaviour patterns they engender are precisely what we mean when we talk about pathological psychosis.
An image from twelve years ago, which I have previously described elsewhere, comes to mind. This is of an aging Mohajir father beside the body of his son, killed in Afghanistan and returned dead to Karachi. The face of the old man could have been expected to be a face of rage, or of grief, or even of sad resignation. But, no, his face was expressionless, his eyes tearless. His son is a Shaheed, he says, and should not be mourned. He will now send his remaining sons, one after the other, to their respective trysts with martyrdom. Consider. It is conceivable that this father could believe sufficiently in a cause to be consoled for his son’s death. But it is hard to accept that he could eagerly will a similar destiny on his other sons. More, that this bereaved father is unmoved to any word, sign or expression of grief, is beyond understanding. Grief for the dead is normal. Even animals show it. In psychiatric terms, this Karachi father’s lack of sorrow, his ‘absence of affective response’, is pathological.
In Buddhist mythology, Gautama Buddha was assailed by the demon Mara when meditating under the sacred Bo tree. Mara appeared in the form of a gigantic rider, mounted on an elephant 150 leagues high. The demon sprouted 1,000 arms, each of which brandished a deadly weapon. The point of the story is that this immense demon Mara was in fact Gautama’s own shadow self, an emanation of his mind, whose name meant ‘Delusion’. And it was necessary for Gautama to confront the immensity of his own delusions before he could see through them to the truth and become the Buddha. Truly, the delusions born from our fantasies and unfulfilled desires are colossal, bigger than ourselves, and capable of consuming us entirely.
Such a set of deadly delusions exists in the Pakistani political psyche. In psychiatric terms, these are known as Paranoid Delusions. Now, an individual paranoiac, the circuits of whose mind have been wrongly wired so that they generate delusions about great Conspiracies against himself, often exhibits behaviour that creates hostility among the people around him, who may then plan or act in concert against him. Thereby, he ironically actually turns his delusions of persecution into reality. Thus, a paranoiac individual is a danger, both to himself and those nearest to him...what to say of a whole nation that’s turning paranoid?