THE GLOBAL VILLAGE AND CULTURAL CONFUSION
Umair I. Khan
If Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer, ever met our generation of Pakistanis, we would all be dead! For those who don’t know why Mr. Chapman murdered one of the greatest musicians the world has seen, it was because he thought Lennon’s enamor for the eastern culture was “phony”. See where I am going with this? Just to make my stand clear, I have nothing against trying to learn the practices of different cultures. In fact, I am not only a huge advocate of the global village, but being a telecom engineer, also responsible for the expansion of our social spheres in my own small way. No, my main concern is that while the world is shrinking, our values for our own cultural heritage are attenuating much more rapidly. Add this to the dogma that comes as naturally to us as breathing, and you have a society where young people who are trying to keep this heritage alive are either made of fun of by their peers or are social outcasts for not being “cool enough”. This kind of puts the whole “Police maaregi toa hum inqilab kaisay layengay” episode in perspective. The person in question here, Zohair Toru, has been the object of ridicule by almost the whole nation for almost a week now and all because he is considered “too burger” or “wannabe” by the rest of the incessantly dogmatic population of our country. Even though I was forced to include this incident as part of this article, I have to admit the poor guy deserves a break after having tried to make his stand clear countless times on TV and the Facebook page dedicated to him (yes join it if you haven’t already, gives some good incite to what was going on in his mind when he said those things).
It comes as no surprise though, that this wave of cultural confusion is in no way gradual. Its rise has been directly proportional to that of the telecommunication and the cable TV industries. In fact, not long ago, the people who wanted to stick to their roots slightly outnumbered the ones who thought that being educated meant speaking English with an accent (no matter how hilariously horrendous it sounded). And then there was the third very small group of young men and women, who were just clueless about which way to go. I confess to have been one of these people as an adolescent.
Having been brought up in an upper middle-class household in Karachi, I was always blessed with the best of both worlds. Along with being taught about the wonders of praying five times a day, I was also taught to appreciate the melodious effects of the pentatonic minor scale. Being the youngest of four siblings in a family that literally did everything together, I had the advantage of being influenced with a very diverse taste in all forms of entertainment. As a result, to date, my taste in music varies from Madam Noor Jehan to Led Zeppelin, and everything in between. Hence, needless to say that as an adolescent, I suffered from an extreme case of identity crisis. On one hand, I did not want to be clichéd a “burger” or a “wannabe” and on the other hand, I did not want to be labeled an “Urdu medium”. Going to a local engineering school after taking my a-level exams didn’t initially help matters either, but eventually it was the four years spent at this place that really helped me grow up and find my true self. It was during this phase of my life that I realized that it is okay to be confused and to act as a bridge between the two extremes. It has now been two and half years since I graduated from engineering college and two years since I came to the US for graduate school. I look around at the younger Pakistanis here in their college days and I see that they try to fit in so hard that the line between adopting the good or bad in a culture becomes hazy to the point of vanishing all together. This makes me thankful that I decided to stay the way I was when I was their age.
Coming back to the present dilemma of our generation of Pakistanis, I should add that by cultural confusion, I do not just mean the Westernization of our society. There is another very prominent wing of young and not so young alike who think that acting like they have come straight out of a Bollywood flick will make them the embodiment of awesomeness. According to me, the reason for this widespread confusion is the urge to be accepted by the rest of the world. What we do not realize is that this behavioral pattern is making us lose our identity. Does this mean that we are becoming so ashamed of ourselves, as a nation, that we feel the need to change who we are? It is time we realize that it is not our culture that makes us unpopular, but our intolerance. Moderation does not mean that we leave the right extreme and jump to the left extreme. It means that we can incorporate the best of all theologies in our thought process, instead of keeping one and rejecting the others all together.
Having said that, I believe all hope is not yet lost. Our music and fashion industries, for example, are keeping our culture alive. Establishments like Coke Studio are responsible for bringing our legendary musical genres of ghazals and qawwalis back into the limelight. Cricket is another passion that keeps us all united; even though there are those who have become “too cool for cricket”, but they are an insignificant minority and can easily be ignored by the masses. Although, it’s funny how, for about a month now, the Facebook statuses of these same people negate their constant bickering about everyone but themselves suffering from the Cricket Fever. In the end, all I wish is that the true Pakistani culture remains part of the global village for centuries to come. It is a dream of mine, and undoubtedly, of countless others that our country will rise up from the ashes of the political and natural turmoil it is now facing and make its own place in the enormous family unit this world is becoming. Let us all, then, get over our differences and do our own little part in representing our nation in a positive way to the rest of the world.
