EXCERPTS: What they eat, what they read
By Maneesha Tikekar
Maneesha Tikekar, an Indian academic, writes about her impressions of Pakistan.
One of the attractions of Lahore is the Food Street at Gowalmandi. A street that appears ordinary and drowsy during the daytime undergoes a metamorphosis at dusk. Suddenly the floodlights that come from nowhere and the coloured lights from the residential buildings along the two sides enliven the street. There is constant commotion in the food stalls and carts selling non-vegetarian food mostly and also fruit chat and salads. The road is closed for traffic, as tables are unfolded and laid on the street. Lahoris, I think, remain unmatched when it comes to eating. The road was full of young and old, and families with children enjoying the savouries.
I found the eatables a little too oily. Normally Pakistani food is oily. I was not particularly hungry, so after munching something light I turned towards a milk shop. I had heard the fame of pedewali lassi of Lahore. Pedas are churned with milk and served in a huge steel container. I think only a Punjabi can consume such a huge glass of lassi. But as a challenge I gulped down all the lassi, which is more than a meal. It can put a person to sleep instantly.
Lahoris are never tired of narrating stories about this lassi. Once, a story goes, Lenin visited Lahore with a view to bringing about a communist revolution. Before the plan came up for discussion some Lahoris suggested that they would discuss revolution over a glass of lassi. But after emptying his huge glass of lassi Lenin suggested that revolution could wait, he would first have a nap!
Lahoris are voracious eaters. You visit any garden in Lahore including the Shalimar and you will be accosted by several boys asking your preference in snacks and drinks, and serve you right there.
Talking about food, I must say I found Pakistanis overwhelmingly carnivorous. But Pakistanis told me that it was essentially an urban trait. Till very recently Pakistanis in the countryside were primarily vegetarians as vegetarianism was more affordable. Rural Punjabis mostly consumed dal-roti, dal-chawal and got nicknamed as dal khor. Growing urbanization has made non-vegetarianism popular.
In my five months stay in Pakistan, I was bombarded with chicken. Since vegetarian culture is virtually non-existent, anywhere I was invited for meals, I often found vegetables missing. By chance if they were made, it would be in combination with meat. Once, a host asked my preference in vegetable. I promptly said spinach. When I went for the dinner I found spinach cooked with mutton or rather the other way round. I wondered why the Punjabis living in the most fertile part of Pakistan do not consume vegetables.
For Pakistanis an Indian Hindu has to be invariably vegetarian. Therefore whenever I said I eat chicken, meat or fish, I could literally hear the hostess heaving a sigh of relief. But if I were a vegetarian I would have returned to India in three or four weeks.
I was under the impression that Pakistani food would be hot and spicy. My opinion was conditioned by the experience of the spicy Indian Punjabi food. But I found it to the contrary. Pakistani meat or chicken curries are watery, the idea is to cook them in their own juices without adding too many spices.
Pakistanis rarely use paneer (cottage cheese). In their opinion Indians use paneer largely as a substitute for meat. Nihari and halim are mutton delicacies. Nihari, as the word suggests, is meant for breakfast. It is a watery mutton curry cooked on low fire overnight. Dal and mutton are cooked and stirred together to form a thick consistency in halim. Both nihari and halim were taken to Pakistan by mohajirs. As in northern India the use of arhar dal in Pakistan is limited. Gram and urad (mash) dal are common. Dal is neither cooked nor mashed fully and is seasoned without adding water to it. Initially I found it difficult to gulp down such dry dal but soon got used to it.
As a college teacher of political science I was interested more in learning about the state of higher education and research particularly in social sciences and the intellectual activity in general in Pakistan. I read a number of articles on these issues during my five months stay in Pakistan, which gave vent to two major grievances in higher education. The first was about the dismal state of research in Pakistan. The dimension and quality of research appeared to be the major cause of concern of the writers of these articles.
Very often the writers indulged in comparison with India. Pakistanis generally believe that the system of higher education and quality of research in India is superior. There is an appreciation of the fact that thousands of Indians earn doctoral degrees in different disciplines of study annually. Sometimes the authors of articles asked why Pakistan did not start institutions like IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) and IIM (Indian Institute of Management). Many of the senior university teachers in Pakistan have their doctoral degrees from foreign, mostly American and British, universities.
Things are changing now and many of the younger teachers have doctoral degrees from Pakistani universities. Musharraf’s regime has undertaken major programmes with a view to removing this lacuna. While I was in Pakistan I had read the news report stating that the government of Pakistan had planned to send a hundred teachers and researchers from Pakistan to universities abroad for research at the cost of more than Rs800 million.
It had also decided to disburse grants of over Rs600 million to the QAU to encourage research leading to the doctoral degree. Science teachers with PhDs were to become eligible for extra allowances. I read about the Punjab University at Lahore deciding to get 100 theses evaluated from foreign universities. The other scheme announced by this university would make Indian researchers and research guides envious of their counterparts in Punjab University. Every candidate obtaining a PhD from the university would get an award of Rs50,000 and his guide Rs100,000. On reading this, how much I wished that I got at least two candidates from Punjab University working with me for PhD before returning to India!
The second grievance was about the state of social sciences and the treatment meted out to social scientists in Pakistan. Most Pakistani universities neglect the social sciences. Though this is a part of the global trend, Pakistan’s social and political systems are responsible for this maltreatment of social sciences. There are certain conditions for the development of knowledge in any society; the intellectual and ideological ethos of the society, the extant value system, the class divisions and the pattern of power distribution.
In the process of Islamization of Pakistan even social sciences have been Islamized. ‘Islam pasand’ groups have cultivated traditional and puritanical values in society and have discouraged and rejected scientific rationalism. Social sciences and humanities deal with ideas. They have a potential to encourage individual thinking, to formulate and express opinions irrespective of the prevalent opinion in society. They encourage people to defy authority, if necessary, be it political or religious and lay the foundations of open society.
Any political regime founded on exclusive ideology tends to suppress the expression of independent opinion, and critical assessment of ideas. Moreover long praetorian interventions are not conducive for free promotion and expression of ideas, which is the basic function of social sciences and humanities. Therefore social sciences in Pakistan have been forced to rediscover their ‘relevance through Islam’.
Pakistani intellectuals are aware of the ‘dismal state of social sciences’ in their country. I recall reading a newspaper article by a Pakistani writer, a few years ago, which said Pakistan had become an ‘intellectual wasteland’. Akbar Zaidi’s analytical article on the subject of the “State of Social Sciences in Pakistan”, published in the Economic and Political Weekly, comprehensively deals with all issues regarding the subject from the number of ‘active’ social scientists, publications, institutions of research, to finances and accountability.
Zaidi’s lament is that no Pakistani social scientist in the last three decades, ‘has developed, reconstructed, reformulated, expanded upon, disputed or rejected, any theory or theoretical formulation, qua theory, in the specific context of Pakistan’. This is corroborated by Inayatullah who wrote that most socio-scientific literature in Pakistan was not oriented to the growth of knowledge and that generally it lacked theoretical orientation and theoretical research in a volume titled The State of Social Sciences in Pakistan.
Maneesha Tikekar is a reader in politics in SIES College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Mumbai.
This book is an Indian university teacher’s account of her five-month stay in Pakistan. It captures her perception of our society and culture.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/books1.htm
Excerpted with permission from Across the Wagah: An Indian’s Sojourn in Pakistan
By Maneesha Tikekar
Promilla & Co Publishers in association with Bibliophile South Asia,
C-127 Sarvodaya Enclave, New Delhi-110 017, India
Website: www.biblioasia.com
ISBN 81-85002-34-7
360pp. Indian Rs750