A strange kind of nationalism
By Aqil Shah
For days, Pakistanis watched in a state of suspended disbelief as the government and cable operators locked horns over the ban on Indian channels. Even as the two sides wrangled bitterly, their one-upmanship was couched in calculated appeals to nationalist sentiments.
The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) argued forcefully that it was acting in the best national interest by reinforcing a ban on vulgar Indian channels. Cable operators, initially nonplussed by the contradictory behaviour of a government ostensibly engaged in a normalization process with its eastern neighbour, fought back by saying they had always supported the official ban on Indian channels and were only demanding “international entertainment channels”.
Whether PEMRA’s original motivation was financial or ideological is a moot point. In the tussle that ensued, an otherwise important debate about the legitimate need for freeing electronic media was once again drowned in a sea of ideological righteousness. Also sunk were claims by the government that it was committed to a free flow of information. Wholly frivolous in itself, the ban has focused renewed attention on the deeply controversial parameters of our cultural and social mores.
Moral policing is nothing new in an authoritarian state steeped in the tradition of intellectual and literary inquisition. But where does it all end? Through frequent notifications, for instance, PEMRA has been instructing cable operators to block out this or that foreign channel because of its ‘obscenity’.
Silent on the question of the suffocating state control over Pakistan Television and Radio, the arbitrary Ordinance (and rules) that govern its conduct empower PEMRA to simply prohibit broadcasts that are supposedly against ‘the ideology of Pakistan’ or ‘endanger national security’.
These euphemisms for draconian censorship practically preclude independent news and analysis. Programmes against ‘good taste or decency’ are also proscribed. Just whose standard of decency, no one knows. And who is to decide? Appointed PEMRA bureaucrats now acting as guardians of our social morality.
While the recent cabinet decision to allow more private media channels is welcome, it is hard not to be cynical. PEMRA can mandate private broadcasters to telecast programmes in the “public interest”. Unless Pakistan was Alice’s Wonderland, could there be a cruder device to recruit them for state propaganda? Ironically, the government doesn’t really need to commission these channels. Though better presented and covering a wider array of issues, news bulletins on private channels rarely go beyond the received wisdom on national security issues.
Often, they mirror state propaganda on Kashmir. While there is much to write home about, ideological overloading is also commonplace in prime time programming with self-proclaimed Islamic jurists evoking divine authority to settle contentions public issues. Each time, though, they open a new can of worms that adds to our unresolved cultural and ideological confusion.
Pakistan is destined to become another Madina, proclaimed retired General Hameed Gul in unison with a talk show host recently, drowning out any hope that a reasoned debate on the origins of Pakistan was possible.
Current affairs experts are mostly right-wing generals, retired diplomats or pro-military intellectuals. As they generously dismiss the establishment’s foreign and domestic blunders as minor miscalculations, any potential debate on the urgent need to rethink or re-evaluate flawed state policies is also conveniently swept under the carpet.
Mindless anti-India propaganda spewed through scores of officially sponsored videos is relayed endlessly. Sung by the country’s most popular rock stars, the Pakistan army’s souped up bravado is mixed with state-of-the-art special effects to drive home the bestiality of the enemy who kills indiscriminately. Even if the excuse is that the Indians do it too, this hyper nationalism remains at odds with Islamabad’s declared intent of normalizing relations with India.
Equally mystifying are attempts by some military-run entities to make up for their gross inefficiency through appeals to the people’s patriotic instincts.
My favourite is a dramatic rendition extolling the war-like readiness of Wapda. With national flags fluttering and a stern, uniformed Gen Musharraf saluting in the background, the song spins the fiction that Wapda is about to revolutionize our lives. Who foots the bill for all this crude propaganda? The Pakistani taxpayer, of course.
According to Antonio Gramsci, the state’s hegemony rests not only on material and coercive power but also on a measure of “consent, cooperation and collaboration” that comes from cultural and ideological support of civil society.
In Pakistan, civil society has been manipulated and coerced to extract this cultural and ideological compliance for reasons of state. The unsurprising result has been the subservience of all other priorities of civil life to the narrow national security concerns of an “Islamic” state pitched against a “Hindu” India.
In adhering to the notions of an ambiguous religious ideology, the country’s civil-military elite has projected Islam as the primary basis for state legitimacy. In the process, they have played with religion to accommodate and manipulate the religious lobby. The mullahs reaction, by and large, has been ever more boldly and violently to push their demands while refusing in most cases to abide by the rule of law. Just who is using whom has not always been clear, however. Compare the MMA’s crusade against cable TV in the NWFP and the state’s resort to regulatory mechanisms to curb what it deems immoral. A right-wing establishment, naturally, sits pretty at the table with the mullas.
Governments around the world often concern themselves with manufacturing consent to protect themselves against the enemies of the state. As the Nazi spin-doctor Joseph Goebels had famously remarked: a lie told often enough ultimately becomes the truth. In Pakistan, principal forms of socialisation (history textbooks, state-run electronic media) are thus infused with an undying sense of militaristic nationalism.
Despite all that, and more, why is it that over 90 per cent of cable TV viewers still demand Indian channels? Simple answer: They are not the dimwits the establishment considers them to be. Pakistanis can well differentiate between harmful propaganda and harmless entertainment. There is much that is wrong with Indian TV channels, and ours for that matter.
But that is no excuse for PEMRA or any other government agency to resort to tactics of thought control. The unbelievable condescension with which some PEMRA officials have been publicly speaking for the “millions of illiterate and impressionable Pakistanis”, who are not yet ready to make “free choices”, is an insult to the dignity of the whole nation.
Informed observers say memories of the aggressive media blitzkrieg by private Indian channels during the Kargil conflict was still fresh in Islamabad’s corridors of power when the Indians slapped a ban on PTV in early 2002. Though localized and short-lived, that ban only provided the pretext for a decision the Pakistani establishment would have liked to make anyway.
For some, the government’s plea of “stabilizing” Pakistani private channels and continuing the ban on Indian channels, therefore, smacks of foul play. Don’t blame these cynics for casting aspersions on the government’s oft-repeated desire for regional peace. From the way they conduct themselves in the 21st century, the abiding motto of Pakistan’s ruling elite could well be: Ignorance is strength.
http://www.dawn.com/2003/09/05/fea.htm
everyone in Pakistan is happy now.