Children
of Dictatorship
By Afiya Shehrbano
As part of a
generation that grew up in General Zia-ul-Haq’s
dictatorial 1980s, I have always referred to my
contemporaries as Zia’s children. During these formative
years, we became apoliticised, deprived of any democratic
education, gender-segregated and subject to vigilance
by a self-appointed culture police.
We also witnessed the growth of a fascistic state,
which institutionalized religion and women’s sexuality
as part of public discourse and codified it under
the Hudood Ordinances. We were socialized in a culture
of sectarian and communal hate, drugs, guns, Pajeros,
and with a false consciousness based only on abstinence.
Not much has changed in this generation of military
dictatorship. Except that our generation also learnt
dissent. For 11 years, I grew up in a house where
watching censored TV and religio-military spin was
banned. Many of us joined the women’s movement and
the MRD.
Here we learned the real meaning of people power,
street politics and how subversive theatre, poetry
and dance actually is, by way of Ajoka plays, Iqbal
Bano’s rendition of Faiz’s poetry and Habib Jalib’s
insubordinate humor. A large part of the people’s
movement had no address, no "leader" and no funding.
Our peers in Karachi saw upfront the violent side
of that regime, and it played on their psyches for
years afterwards. Compare this with the definitive
shift in the perspective and experience of youth
culture today. Young people opened their eyes to
cable TV, McDonald’s "golden arches" and an "indigenous"
music culture sponsored by foreign multinationals.
The "alternative" bad boys of music groups are immediately
appropriated by Pepsi and Walls. In our days, we
had a single pop group of four pretty boys — one
of whom has, significantly, become a music-denouncing
tableeghi himself. For this was the choice for us
ideological floats, who fell between the stools
of the institutionalized right and the card-holding
fledgling left. But consider the even harder choices
that today’s youth have to make. The current dictatorship
has conveniently blurred the lines between freedom
and free will. We have the right to elections but
not to legislate; the right to disagree but not
dissent; the right to condemn terrorism within our
borders but not internationally. This generation
is growing up not only on the cusp of a military-political
rule but additionally the corporate-military nexus.
Bombarded ever
since they were in their cradles with consumerist
messages, slick advertising, the Internet and all
the force of globalization, they study the success
of Microsoft and read The Economist, while we learned
about the disasters of Union Carbide and Enron and
read the Herald and EPW. For all their song, dance
and drink, freedom of expression and buying power,
this generation is simultaneously trapped between
international Islamophobia and the hijab on the
one hand, and a globalized consumerist culture that
enslaves them to The Market and its determinants
such as the World Bank and the IMF, on the other.
Not that much has changed. In this context, the
resurgence of a new wave of dissent as expressed
in the rounds of the World Social Forums could be
timely for this generation. Students today should
be taught the recommendations of alternative forums
and perspectives.
They should
be able to debate such issues as the idea of canceling
public debts of poor countries, taxation on weapons
sales, concepts behind food sovereignty and small-scale
agriculture, and this should be a mandatory part
of their economic syllabus. Human rights, women’s
studies, regional languages and the environment
should be part of children’s consciousness from
kindergarten, rather than the requirements of global
corporations, which include computer skills, media
literacy and the English language. Where we failed
was in our inability to provide an alternative path
for future Pakistani youth during our own identity-crises
years. Instead, we rode on the wave of a previous
generation, which admittedly made temporary political
space for us, but then we got lost in the New World
Order.
Those with stronger
consciences have stuck it out and plug away in their
efforts, many of them within the NGO culture that
has replaced activism with research, advocacy and
good governance, but at least they have retained
their commitment and cause. There are also those
amongst us who are mothers who suffer anguish over
how to gender-train their sons and keep them from
becoming the aggressive, competitive Patriarchs
they theorized against for years; bankers who increasingly
feel more like safe-keepers locked in big vaults,
and lawyers who would rather write novels than have
the book thrown at them. I hear journalists who
are still haunted by Rwanda, Afghanistan and Karachi
in the ‘80s and can’t, for the life of them, become
DJs reminiscing afternoons of Pims and croquet on
the lawns of youthful Cambridge. For the challenge
that faces today’s youth lies not in finding alternatives
but in defining them. Access to the media is not
revolutionary - the content is.
Thus, the liberalization
of TV and radio may be an important step, but not
if it is diluted by the agenda of the elite. Privatizing
religion and economic resources will not guarantee
peace and prosperity — giving people their essential
human rights, including equal health, housing and
education will. Simply removing a uniformed leader
will not ensure democratic rights for our people,
but challenging the current corporate/capitalist/Citibank
agenda of the economic policies will.
Far too often,
political discourse has convinced us that democracy
guarantees freedom — yes, a freedom for markets
and to consume standardized products that everyone
wants but only the rich are free to buy. The youth
today have to decide if they are ready to seize
history and manufacture their own democracies. But
first they must define their own subculture and
form identities that do not sell out to global markets
but are based on human development - free, fair
and equal for all. (The writer is a sociologist
based in Karachi. She has a background in Women’s
Studies and has authored and edited several books
on women’s issues.)
