Pakistan's lost History

Arts & Culture Culture, Arts, Literature & Linguistics
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Watching the “I love the 80s” show on VH1 made me think. The US promotes its popular culture a lot. Why is that? I mean, isnt popular culture a totally useless thing? Who cares?

In Pakistan, we think that “Pop Culture” refers to Western Music. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Popular culture of a period refers to anything that becomes popular at more or less a national level. This can be anything from music, movies, events, personalities, sayings, advertising campaigns, tv programs or fashion. The reason why we think of “Pop Culture” as being synonymous with Western Music is because we never really promote our own “Pakistani Pop Culture”; we never really know or believe that there is something of Pakistani origin, which became so popular that it became the nation’s popular culture.

However, Pakistan has always had a popular culture. Surprisingly, some major political events are also part of Pakistan’s popular culture because even the six year old kid in the street is theorizing about them. Now here is where the distinction comes. Only the major political events become a national phenomena, not all. The history books tell us about the political developments in Pakistan 1947-1950, half of them had little consequence, and majority of them were not even known by the common people who lived in those times. It is very easy to figure out Pakistan’s political history through these books; but what about popular culture? What about the people, what they watched, what they thought, what they talked about, what they dressed like, what they cherished? How will we find out about that important part of our history?

Why is it important? It is important because one gets to know the real events of significance. Popular Culture is almost always a reflection of changing times, changing perceptions, changing needs and values. It is always a reflection of what values a population holds at a given point in time. It is always a reflection of the people.

Where is our popular culture history? Where is the “I love the 80s in Pakistan”? Will the generation of the 80s and 90s ever know what the popular culture of the 50s, 60s and 70s was? Or are they destined to only read about the political histories and assume what life was like back in those days? Is it already too late to centralize the information, or is there still time?

The items which eventually make it to Pakistan’s popular culture, like ‘Dil Dil Pakistan…’ in 1989, in my opinion are much bigger achievements than their western counterparts. The western countries have a similar lifestyles for majority of their population. They all have televisions, radios, read the papers, go on the internet and all get education of a comparable standard. In Pakistan, only 10% of the population has access to a tv. Those who read English dailies think of Urdu dailies as useless and vice versa. Those who watch English films think of Indian films as useless, those who watch Indian films think of Pakistani films as useless. Those who have access to television rarely listen to the radio everyday. And, most importantly, there are the highly educated, well educated, educated, reasonably educated, somewhat educated, illetrates, totally illetrates… .Getting something to be popular in a society like this is not easy, it really has to be something great and significant.

Regards,
Nasir M. Khan

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Nasir, a very good post. Cultural history is even more important to know than political history. What we call our "roots" is in cultural history not in political history. Political history is of people only..princes and princesses. May be that is why in this Cultural forum everyone claims to be descent of some king or other and with som much surity. No one admits their forefathers were a naiyee or a farm workers who grew vegetables to sell but ate their own chapaatis with achaar only.

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Interesting points.

The reason why we think of "Pop Culture" as being synonymous with Western Music is because we never really promote our own "Pakistani Pop Culture"; we never really know or believe that there is something of Pakistani origin, which became so popular that it became the nation's popular culture.

Actually, that is not true. While there are significant western influences in Pakistani culture (and I'd come back to what culture is in the terms of what you wrote later), there have been significant efforts to promote the indigenous culture in Pakistan as well. If you go to some of the very high-end and classy restuarants in Lahore, you'd notice certain themes in their decorum and food, ranging from clay colored walls to the head waiter wearing dhoti and pag, and foods of all kind of origins. Salt 'n Pepper village in Lahore is prime example of that. Similarly, there have been many renovations of old buildings that highlight mughal era architect in Lahore. That include two food streets, Cuckoo's in Heera mandi (very trendy restuarant), and other renovation in the area.

When Baynazeer came to power back in early 90's, white doppatta with green shalwar kameez became very popular among women as you'd see her wearing it all the times. Zia introduced shalwar kameez with vest, which was widely popular even in Nawaz Sharif regime.

Music side has not been that significant in that regards, besides few popular hits like Mohmmad Shahki and Allan Dittas "Allah Allah kar bandiya", which was a mix of western and estern tunes, Janoon's Sayonee, and few others.

Now going back to your "western culture" influence. I don't see anything wrong with it. Western pop culture is going to be as much part of over overall culture as, say, customs propagated by Moghals. Afterall, Moghals were outsiders, same as other Arab invaders who introduced so many cultural practices to the indigenous culture at that time. I don't see no difference. Today Moghal architect, history, poetry etc is big part of our culture. We'd accept and get used to Western culture similarly.

Now, I agree that there is not much history told, or written, in terms of lives of the people before partition. Well, some of us (FOBs) actually have better exposure to it than their ABCD couterparts. I've personally watched many Indian movies on the subject. They may not be the true depiction of actual events or lifestyles but still give you pretty good idea.

PS-
Chann ji, chooth na bolo. I've always told you that my forefathers were Indian Hindus harvesting onions for centuries. I even heard that males in our family have always had a thing for their neighboring Sikhnis. I hope you now understand my genetic impulses and hook me up with a cute Sikhni.

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Rom, that's a bunch of bull. High-end restaurants to see our culture? Man, have you ever seen anyone wear in the streets what the waiters do in Salt and Pepper? The Bera dress code is a left over colonial hangup, handed down to us by the English, and the only thing that has changed now is that starched white Kulla and White Knee-length Coat has been replaced by a Punjabi Groom Wedding dress. It is so downgrading to say the least.

If you want to see Punjabi culture, go to my village, the culture is coming out of people's asses. Metropolitan areas are not the place to experience indigenous culture. Lahori culture is people swimming in the canal (which is banned now) kite flying (which is also banned) roadside restaurants, and just general hulla gulla. Only a very small minority goes to "high-end" restaurants, and they have no clue about how stupid they are, paying 50 times more for a third grade meal. Gimme a break.

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Ahmadi, you're missing the point. I'm not saying that high-end places are to experience the culture. What I'm saying is that there are practices to bind the indigenous culture to pop culture wave at some level. Even if businesses like Salt 'n Pepper may not be interested in the culture per se, they have at least been imaginative to keep the indigenous culture on the visibility scene to make profits as it attracts certain audience.

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Salam All,

Thanks for the replies, but I think everyone has kind of missed the point that I was trying to make.

If you were to ask a 25 year old today, what the people in the 50s and 60s had in their lifestyle, what they thought, what they watched, what was popular food, what they talked about..... I can gaurantee, that in only 0.1% of the cases will you get a response. In the other 99.9%, people will just not know. About 2-5% may be able to name the political figures and tell you about the political situation in those times. They are both important, but isnt social and popular cultural history more important? Popular culture IS the real history in a country like Pakistan; politics is not representative of what was happenning in the streets everyday throughout the year.

Why so little knowledge then? That is because of a number of reasons in my opinion:

1- Popular Culture (please note the distinction from regular culture) of Pakistan is a topic on which people have hardly written anything, I mean like a history book or something.

2- The history books in school bore the students so much, that they run away from anything that says 'History' and 'Pakistan' together. Hence, growing up, they never really read about their own history, and even if they do, they get bored with political history very quickly. Is Pakistan's social history boring, or is it just never taught? I think that will be a good question to ask.

In the USA, most of the Americans are fond of the 60s and 70s, even those who were not born till the 80s. How did they achieve that? Was their social history more interesting than us? Or did they just promote it much much better than the rest of the world?

Roman, what you see in the high end restaurants is not popular culture, it is culture. Popular culture generally has to do with a period, and then dies afterwards. If something sticks permanently, it becomes culture.

Regards,
Nasir M. Khan

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Nasir, the main reasons for the lack of such books is that, first, the literacy rate in Pakistan is very low. One quick measure of standard of literacy in Pakistan can be the popular newspapers. You'll see that majority of them are totally trash. Sheer yellow journalism.

Secondly, books are expensive. Any such work by someone would have to be sold at at least around Rs 500. An average person can't afford that much money just to buy a single book.

On the high-end restaurant note, my point was that such places or efforts try to make them "popular culture", a trendy revival of customs, food, dress combined with ingenous modifications. To give you an example, back in 80's, everything was about a rapid inclination towards mimicing Western fashion and lifestyles. After a decade or so, people have gotten either used to it, bored, or more open to creating their own flares embedded in the indigenous culture. So going by your definition of "popular culture", the strife highlight indigenous culture into more trend-setting culture in 90's or presently is period-oriented as you put it, different than back in 80's. Similarly, the shalwar kameez thingie promoted by Zia or Banazir was more political but still something specific to that era. Presently, people at workplaces are moving more towads slacks and Oxford style shirt with tie.

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Actually, pakistan has a very strong and colurful culture which is a blend of Persian and Greek with a mixture of cultural infulences from South East Asia and not forgetting the British raj!!

Unfortunetly our culture is overshadowed by India as it is able to market it self quite well now i was shocked to see posters for Koy Mil Gaya, and indian movie in Picadilly Gardens-London. They have really managed to succeed in global marketing and have desgined a sort of global imperssion that everything from the sub-continent is actually india. All the tandoori and tikka restruants in England are labeled as Indian Cusine very few are maked as Pakistani cusine.

It is sad when you see these things people selling shalwar kameeze as Indian Dress and the Sharwani as Indian Dress Coat. The Indian's sell their inferior cloth internationally for pittions and the smaller contenders just cannot compete.

OK what i propose is that Pakistan should adopt the Japanse tactic of custom building their culture, we need to re-design our selfs and remove our terrorisim/violent and militarististic image!!

I went to China and Japan in 2003 and was amazed to see how they have taken the cultures of the world and addpoted them to their enviroment. Yet if you goto the less developed parts of china you will find that everything is as it was during the raign of Chairman Mao.
We should look up to the Japanese and Chinese!!! Let try to be something like them. Paksitan Zindabad!