Among all the circuitous routes for ideas to travel from the United States to Pakistan, there is one that is particularly fascinating. To be sure, this is a niche route for a niche audience in Pakistan: that of progressives and left-minded young people. But it is a fascinating niche, because it involves some of the finest minds in today’s urban Pakistan. There exists a certain conduit, in the form of academics and journalists, for the preoccupations and conversations of the American left to reach an urban Pakistani audience.
Most certainly, some of these conversations from afar are very relevant and crucial in Pakistan. But then, sometimes, with a terrifying crash, the conversation hits rock bottom.
So it is with the debate around ‘cultural appropriation’.
Nothing was more indicative of the bewildering turns taken by this conversation than a recent blog post doing the rounds on social media. It was about a Western clothing chain taking up the Sindhi ajrak as a design for Western-style dresses and bikinis. Now our blog commentator was outraged. For this commentator, the Western clothing chain was making a mockery of Sindh’s cultural traditions, where the ajrak is a mark of honour, pride and heritage and not something to cover one’s bottom in a bikini (the thought comes from the author, not myself). The commentator had a very clear message for the Western chain in question: “Sindhi ajrak is not yours to steal!”
Biryani - an instance of cultural appropriation by Pakistanis?
Such policing of cultural exchange is presented as a way of protecting the oppressed ethnic and cultural groups
Examples of such discourse abound in the Pakistani and broader South Asian social media spaces recently. Take for instance the outrage over Beyonce adopting Indian motifs in a music video. Or consider the outrage in certain quarters that the wonderful Peshawari chapal was taken up by a Western brand and sold as if it were the cutting edge in footwear to a Western consumer base.
Granted, the chapal episode, at least, seemed like a rather dodgy thing to do. Few among us can applaud the idea of taking an item commonly sold to a mass market in one part of the world, re-branding it as your own creation and selling it for an outrageous price in another part of the world.
But it seems some commentators on social media and elsewhere have this notion of an ethnic/cultural copyright system. To say the least, such a notion is obviously self-serving, since it privileges the person making such claims in any debate.
But even more alarmingly, it sets the stage for all sorts of people to define what ‘our culture’ is and how it ought to be depicted and what aspects of it are beyond criticism. The pitfalls of such a situation are obvious, in a world where many kinds of violence are seen as a part of ‘our culture’.
I am fascinated by this sort of sentiment, especially when expressed by someone from Pakistan. Our cuisine, architecture and languages are brimming with words, tastes and motifs taken from other cultures. Anyone familiar with the origins of our everyday foods would realize that, for instance, your plate of biryani at dinner would be impossible if our ancestors had not “appropriated” ingredients and techniques from Central Asia to Eastern India.
Where, then, do you begin to draw the line for cultural appropriation? More importantly, who can draw this line? Let us dwell for a moment on the last question.
Peshawari chapal turned into designer footwear by a Western outlet
Who can draw this line which, if you cross, you are now ‘stealing’ someone’s culture and not harmlessly adopting aspects of it? Should it be English-speaking, urban people with access to global conversations? Well, that would be a great idea, if it weren’t for the tenuous links of this urban segment to the pristine, noble, original (presumably rural?) culture that they are guarding so fiercely. Moreover, does the right to guard a particular culture from ‘stealing’ arise from one’s own ethnic roots? If so, we will need to define a medieval dynastic-style pecking order to decide who gets to be the cultural dog-in-the-manger for each culture.
Even more tragic is the fact that such policing of cultural exchange (let us call it what it is, please) is presented as a way of protecting the oppressed ethnic and cultural groups of the world. I would be the first to concede that there is something quite disturbing about food items such as hummus being marketed as an ‘Israeli’ item in an effort to make Zionist occupation policy more palatable to the rest of the world.
But pray consider the following situation and you can send me to the safe-space gulag if it doesn’t seem ridiculous to you.
Urban Outfitters now offer ajrak-inspired designs for various items of clothing
A Pakistani friend was recently telling me that he recently used the word “teepee” in connection with his home on Facebook. Before he knew it, some quarters had accused him of cultural appropriation from the American Indian peoples. Now, horrendous as the treatment of Amerindian people at the hands of European settlers was, surely we can all agree that a 21st-century Pakistani writer has nothing to do with it?
The problem with such watertight notions of “culture” is this: at the end of the day, there is no real rational or scientific basis for drawing cultural borders. Every time we demarcate one culture from another, it is ultimately based on arbitrary or historically specific, socially specific criteria. In other words, there is no definitive way to define a culture, much as the concept of ‘race’ has no actual medical/biological existence. Inequalities can exist along racial and cultural lines, but only because enough humans attach enough importance to such markers of identity and classification.
So this begs the question: what happens if you, as a person, wish to challenge these inequalities rather than strengthen them?
For a start, perhaps, could we stop this effort to create cultural Bantustans? Perhaps, even, we could leave such arguments to conservatives, whose rightful domain they are?
In response to the ricocheting accusations of cultural appropriation flying around nowadays, might I suggest that we stop trying to appropriate the cultural politics of the Right?
