Pluralism and Future Leaders

“The democracy has ruined us all”, he said. “Our last five years have gone down the drain and we cannot throw our next five years to the dogs”, the other shouted. “We must have Islamic Political system in the country”, a young but fire brand delegate cried. I was sitting as an Expert Panelist in Pakistan Future Leaders Conference (PFLC) 2013, St. Peter’s college Oxford University. The conference room was full to the brim. The organisers had to borrow chairs from other rooms to squeeze in the increasing number of participants.

We were talking about the contemporary political situation and its various tentacles cutting across our social and political debate. Being the lead Panelist, I set the tone by giving the brief background of the current political system: its contours, dynamics, undercurrents, flaws and the growing discontent among the masses about the the system. In my view, the parliamentary system has some of its inherent flaws but the current governments’ failure to include its basic constituent elements (e.g local governments) has only partially allowed the system to work. Rampant corruption coupled with square incompetence at invariably all levels and lack of planning has only added to the problems. Since we have had numerous system somersaults already in our history, we can ill afford to start afresh. However, I emphasised that we must keep on working and adapting the current model in accordance with our peculiar needs and deeds.

“No, we must uproot this system and bring Khilafa in the country”, one delegate retorted. Now, this was the time when other delegates who disagreed with him jumped into the discussion. They said that the analogy was incorrect due to time and space differences between the two systems. A young girl was vociferous in her defiance to the very thought of derailing the current political arrangement. I was feeling as if I was sitting in a boiling pot. It was evident from the proceedings that the ‘Islamists’ were trying to focus the discussion on the replacing the current system with the Khilafa while the others, while accepting the flaws, were geared up to give some more time to the Westminster democracy and let it evolve over a period of time. As the time went by, it became clearer that the ‘Islamists’, though very vocal, were outnumbered and outweighed by the others.

While punctuating the discussion intermittently, I was also thinking of our future educated lot. I had no doubt that they were passionate, fiery and itching to turn the tide. Also, I was impressed by their desire to change the destiny of the people of Pakistan and quickly, too. At the same time, I was worried about their intolerance, outright dismissal of the others’ point of view and lack of mannerism at many times. And I am talking about the so called ‘cream of the nation’ who were studying in the ‘best British universities’. Mostly, they came with pre-conceived ideas which they did not want to budge a shade from. I must confess here that their apparent attitude of the dismissal of others may be attributed to their youthful exuberance. Most of them were good listeners with polite manners when we had informal chats during the breaks.

But my real cause of concern was something else. It was the lack of creative and critical thinking. The ancient Greek adage “I know that I know nothing” that makes you a humble learner, was missing, too. For me, the ‘all knowing’ attitude was particularly disturbing. For example, they were extremely eager to demand from India that It should accede to the aspirations of the Kashmiris. They argued that the modern states are based on social contracts and force only cannot compel a people to live within a state for long. I agreed to them by citing the swelling number of the member states of the United Nations from a few in the forties to more than two hundred now. But, to my horror, they were not ready to apply the principle of ‘social contract’ in Pakistan in any way, even for the sake of debate. They lacked creative ideas to solve a problem by trying to approach it from various different perspectives.

I think that we need a serious rethink of the dynamics of our cultural creative processes in Pakistan. That includes education, family, society, literary and professional circles and the media. The current style of debate in our media has a lot to do with this. I do not mind pluralism and diversity of thoughts. However, it demands tolerance and mannerism.