Thoughts on Fundamentalisms

Finished reading Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentalisms last week (thanks to Marius for loaning it to me). Been mulling it over since. I have to admit, there's nothing groundbreaking in it - a standard anti-colonial reading of history with the well-known mantras of western imperial domination over other cultures, the reactions to it and the consequences now playing out in the 21st-century. Not that I'm unsympathetic to that point of view; I'm just not enamoured with it. I believe history is much more complex, with individual self-interests often trumping the notion of a grand narrative, a narrative Ali might describe as the overarching nemesis of world peace. Frankly, I don't believe in world peace anymore. I believe in world stability, a world held together by a system of checks and balances that neither favours any one ideology nor condemns any other. I don't think capitalism, for example, is the Great Evil in the world. Capitalism is as old as human civilization. Its absolute primacy these days is the problem. Neither is socialism the saviour. It tends to reduce human destinies to a homogeneous whole, negating the power of the individual to change the course of history. Ali's obsession with colonialism hurts his argument; it reduces it to mere belligerence.

Nonetheless, he makes some interesting points, especially on his reading of the current situation in Pakistan (naturally - Pakistan is his homeland, the place he knows best). The idea of Pakistan, as Ali points out, was based on secular democracy (with strong leanings toward a capitalist free market). That dream has turned into the current nightmare not because of a failure of capitalism or democracy in Pakistan but because the original founders of the nation - Jinnah included - never really believed in them. Pakistan was never really meant to be (Ali makes this point quite clearly: up until a year before Partition, Jinnah was still hoping for a solution that would keep India whole). Partition was a bargaining tool that inadvertently became a reality. The fact that it was the elites who were pushing for a separate nation in itself speaks volumes. This was individual self-interest, self-preservation. Muslim elites felt they would lose their standing in a Hindu-dominated India (they had been favoured under the British Raj). So when Pakistan was created, it was these elites who quickly took over the country, running it like their own personal fiefdom. The situation persists to this day. The sardars and chaudhurys run the country at the expense of everyone else. Foreign intervention is only a sidebar to this fundamental reality.

How do we get rid of these elites? That is the question Pakistanis need to be asking themselves. A future without the feudals is the only future for Pakistan.