Critical Scholarship in Pakistan

S Zulfiqar Gilani

The Problem

As evidenced by various global indices, Pakistan has been on a downward trajectory in most important areas including democratic politics, governance, economy, rule of law, education, human rights, and terrorism. This has been variously examined, but the deeper and more fundamental problem of the entanglement of the descent with intellectual impoverishment has not been focused on. Intellectual poverty is evidenced in public discourse, expressions of the so-called intelligentsia, as well as by the meagre to non-existent critical scholarship.

Critical Scholarship

To conceptualise the state of critical scholarship in Pakistan, some of its ideally well-established aspects are briefly examined. Critical scholarship is based on critical thinking, intellectual integrity and ethical responsibility. Certain general norms of thought like being evidence and reason-based, logical and rational, are followed. There is recognition of the hidden dangers of prejudices, egocentric and socio-centric biases, and thinking simplistically and in linear ways about complicated issues. Its practitioners recognise, and attempt to foster the realisation in others, that the critical application of the mind is a life-long process, and that improving individual life and relationships is a life-long endeavour.

Critical scholarship challenges existing knowledge and value-systems, opening them up to debate. It does not aim merely to transfer knowledge but creates possibilities for production of alternative visions. It does not aim to provide any final ‘objective standards’ for moral argument and social criticism, but to recast the terms of moral argument by offering new ways of thinking about and interpreting the problems of society and culture. The stance toward values is independent and critical and avoids, unveils, and resists partisan politicisation in value-assessments or positions or expression. Such work is not about regurgitating existing knowledge, but about transforming it as part of a wider struggle for individual empowerment, human rights, social justice, and overall societal betterment. Critical scholars respond to evaluative problems and avoid becoming the servile representative of interests, including self-interest. It bears witness to history and the mechanisms that drive the larger social order, so that it is recognised that prevailing conditions cannot be separated from history or the ethical bases and values of society. It contributes to the development of a consciousness that uncovers truths hidden by lies, misrepresentations, or myths. It makes and articulates the very important connections between history and the present, knowledge and everyday life, and between power and human agency. And it draws connections between individual difficulties and the larger system and context.

Critical scholarship is never neutral and constitutes an important struggle over identity, knowledge, authority, power, and what it means to live in, and challenge, a world with inequalities, oppression, social injustices, and authoritarian governance. In the broadest terms, critical scholarship is moral and political, and a form of intervention that can increase the space for social transformation. Thus it is a kind of higher-order public service for a better moral, social and political order. In doing all this it raises the level of discourse and debate by constructing both a language of critique and a language of possibility.

As individuals, the practitioners of critical scholarship are self-motivated, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective. They demonstrate intellectual integrity, humility, civility, empathy, and commitment to values and justice. They are cognisant that objects and phenomena in the world out there can only be known through, or are entangled with, an individual’s psychological-perceptual lens and values-framework. They strive to develop the intellectual and emotional capacities of ongoing critical self-examination, awareness of their biases, and adoption of the norms that apply to the disciplined observation of the world. And by so doing, they are able to minimise their biases and inner constraints. Thus, critical scholarship is based on a kind of second-order willingness and ability to question attachment to one’s own or others’ existing values and assumptions.

Contextualising Critical Scholarship in Pakistan

Critical scholarship is notable by its almost complete absence in Pakistan, which is primarily a consequence of the incomplete intellectual development of the majority of those who go through formal education. Before exploring the factors contributing to the stunting in intellectual growth, it is emphatically iterated that ab initio children born in Pakistan have the same inherent capacities and go through similar cognitive developmental processes as other children in the world. However, like every child their physical, emotional and cognitive development is intertwined with the wider historical, socio-cultural, political, educational, and the more immediate family and extended familial context/s.

Below is a brief and broad-brush examination of the historical and political contexts in which cognitive or intellectual development and growth occurs. The most important contextual reality of Pakistan is the British colonial experience. The colonial policies and practices in politics, governance, justice, education, and in most other systems continue to varying degrees. Having been trained by and having served the British, after the so-called independence in 1947, the army Generals and higher civilian bureaucracy (the cabal) seamlessly adopted the role of the colonisers akin to the Black Skin, White Masks phenomenon. However, as the US emerged as the imperial power after 1945, increasing numbers of the cabal went to the US for training and other assignments, and thereon learned and adopted their methods as add-ons to those of the British.

In October 1958, through a coup, an army General imposed martial law, and from then on the hold of the army Generals (on power) kept increasing, with outright martial laws for about 33 of the 78 years of Pakistan’s existence. Even during periods when there were civilian governments and politicians ostensibly in power, the real power remained with the army Generals. Democracy remained a farcical sideshow and authoritarian and political patronage became the norm. Further, civilian governments were formed and booted out at will, most state institutions controlled, and policies dictated. Masterminded and operationalised by the cabal, elections were blatantly rigged and increasingly became blatant ‘selections’ rather than elections by popular vote. The pre-poll, polling-day, and post-poll blatant rigging and outright fraud of the February 2024 elections are a stunning illustration. An important aside was the army’sentry into the corporate world in a big way, wherein it has established a corporate empire through above the law acquisitions, establishment of monopolies through taxation and other policies that eliminated competition and favoured their businesses, and no accountability.

By now an individual, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), has unaccountable power, wherein he controls all pillars of the state (Executive, Parliament and Judiciary) as well as all other state institutions and the media. Pakistan has become an outright dictatorship behind a façade of democracy. And much like in the British colonial times, the primary role of the state is extraction rather than providing good governance, justice, and services to the citizens. In sum, the coloniser-colonised relationship between state functionaries and citizens continues, with the army officer-class being the ‘more equal’ colonisers by a big margin, under the command of the COAS, much as the British Viceroy or King.

The imprints of colonialism are widespread and the colonial-authoritarian mindset is discernible in most of the demographic that is formally educated, including amongst academe and scholars. For example, those who can read, write and speak English, wear the British/Western garb, and have a fairer skin are considered of a higher status. And the more closely one resembles and mimics the behaviour of the colonisers, the greater their chances of success in terms of status, wealth, and power.

The other significant contextual reality is the contested national identity that has had a deep imprint on politics. In 1947 there was considerable cultural, linguistic, and sociological diversity in the geographical areas comprising the then West Pakistan (the current Pakistan). East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, had greater cultural and linguistic homogeneity (the erstwhile East Pakistan will not be discussed any further). Pakistan became a State in 1947, but national identity and a sense of nationhood was weak because the majority of the people of Pakistan, especially those of the Western wing, were not engaged in a liberation struggle. So, although Pakistan emerged as a State in 1947, it had still to become a Nation. To that end a homogenised national identity was manufactured, with the two pillars of Islam and national security. This was imposed through distortion of history, curricular injections, propaganda, and brute force. The national security pillar of the manufactured identity allowed greater power to the army (read the Generals). To entrench its power further, the army also became the arbiter and enforcer of the Islamic pillar of identity.

Politics, governance, and even everyday life became more and more undemocratic, authoritarian/militarised, and ‘Islamised’. Further, the economic inequalities kept increasing, both at regional and at more granular levels. Freedom of speech and human and other citizen rights kept being eroded. All of these in combination variously triggered resistance and political turmoil in the smaller provinces of West Pakistan (Balochistan, North West Frontier Province – now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – and Sindh), but most strongly in East Pakistan, culminating in its secession in 1971.

Exactly the wrong lessons were learned from the 1971 breakdown. The manufactured Islamic/national security identity project was ratcheted up immediately, but with a vengeance after July 1977, when another army General staged a coup. During the following 11 years of martial law, ‘Islamisation’ was deepened and widened, democracy and citizen and human rights were further eroded, and inequalities increased.

The Intellectual Landscape

This longish detour into contextual matters was necessary because they are deeply entangled with intellectual growth and consequent critical scholarship, though the immediate context is the education system. Regarding intellectual growth or cognitive development, notwithstanding the academic debates around the formulation, we utilise Piaget’s stage model of cognitive development, according to which the first stage is sensorimotor, which lasts from birth to around two years (the timelines of each stage are rough approximations and not exact), when children learn through their senses and actions, developing key concepts like ‘object permanence’, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can’t be seen. Next, is the preoperational stage, from about age two to seven, when children start using symbols and language but struggle with logical thinking, are more likely egocentric and find it difficult to see things from the perspective of another. Between ages seven and eleven, in the concrete operational stage, children become more logical in their thinking and can understand concepts like ‘conservation’, i.e. that the quantity of an object doesn’t change even if its appearance does. They also begin to have the capacity to recognise others’ thoughts and feelings. Finally, in the formal operational stage, from adolescence onward, children develop the ability to think abstractly and solve hypothetical problems. They can now reason about complex concepts like ethics, science and mathematics, think systematically, and form hypotheses.

Most children entering school are therefore in the preoperational stage, and from then on it is expected that schooling would foster their cognitive development through the formal operations stage. Suffice it to say that in Pakistan education through high school or grade twelve fails miserably in this task. The reasons for this failure are multifaceted, complex, and have been variously documented, but often in a linear and reductionist manner. Very briefly, the overarching weakness is lack of clarity of policy and decision makers on the philosophy and purpose of education that is pragmatically germane in our context. In addition, there is lack of political will. Therefore, education policies are mostly copy-paste exercises, non-contextual, and not pragmatic enough to be implemented well; teacher training and pedagogy is, to put it mildly, wanting; curricula are misaligned with cognitive abilities, non-contextual, and full of historical distortions and factual errors; infrastructure is poor; financing meagre; governance structures and governance are horrible, and the education system is highly bureaucratised, i.e. rife with nepotism, corruption, and incompetence. Underlying everything is the compromised intellectual integrity and incompetence of a majority of individuals running the education system. These factors in various combinations and permutations are not conducive to fostering learning and intellectual growth, and in fact may be counterproductive. The result is that during school years only a very few children progress through the levels or stages of cognitive development, especially the formal operations stage. And even in those exceptions, schooling experiences are only a minor, if at all, contributor to their intellectual development. Rather, that is due to the accidental flowering of some fortunate children’s inherent cognitive capacities.

Therefore, most children entering higher education are not fully developed cognitively, especially regarding the formal operations stage, which is pivotal for critical scholarship. Then, institutions of higher learning are in turn bedevilled by a host of problems that are similar to those of schools, and more, but that is a separate debate. Suffice it to say that most of the so-called institutions of higher learning, instead of taking forward the incomplete cognitive development, consolidate the intellectual stunting, if not further degrade it. In summary, due to the historical and political contexts and the formal education system, the inherent potential for cognitive development and intellectual growth remains unrealised and excepting a handful, critical scholarship is not evident. In the discourse and debate of even the Pakistani intelligentsia (academicians, writers, bureaucrats, media persons, members of the judiciary, and so on), logic, reason, and the critical ethic are rare, be they on politics, governance, judicial proceedings or laws, or on any other area of life.

The broad category of the Pakistani intelligentsia can be roughly divided into three kinds: Neutral, Official, and Critical. Dominated by fear, the Neutral intelligentsia avoids meaningful or controversial topics, debates matters that are not germane to issues of real life, and most importantly, refuses to take a position. Therefore they do not much matter. The Official intelligentsia is compromised by political partisanship, or fear, or the enchantments of and benefits bestowed by the existing order. They lack intellectual integrity and ethical responsibility. The Official intelligentsia is a tool for justifying or furthering the intellectual and moral assumptions of the existing order, and the actions of the state machineries. In this the state machineries support them with material and other benefits. They are insidious and dangerous. Nevertheless, their outputs and voices do not meet even the basic requirements of factuality, logic, reason, and at times even common sense. The Critical intelligentsia embodies some or more of the characteristics of a critical scholar, challenge the existing order, and are the last ones standing in preventing a complete intellectual collapse in the country. However, they are few and the onslaught of the state machineries strong and relentless, so their already meagre ranks keep dwindling.

The state machineries take the following steps to eliminate the Critical intelligentsia. One, they tutor and then unleash the Official intelligentsia to present counter-arguments to the critique. However, their discourse mostly fails to capture the popular imagination as some or most or all of their discourse and arguments are either factually incorrect, or illogical, or analytically weak, or do not even make common sense. Two, the Critical intelligentsia is prohibited on regular media. But by the use of social media platforms, some critical voices have by and large overcome the prohibition. Three, if steps one and two don’t work, the critics are incarcerated, or disappeared, or outright murdered. This is in the context where though the façade of courts and judges continues, the judicial system too has been taken over by the army Generals. So, there is no legal redress or justice available to the Critical intelligentsia. In Pakistan today criticism has become a crime that is punishable (even by death) and as such it has become a very dangerous place for individuals who voice criticism. Consequently, many critical voices who cannot bear the brunt of the onslaught have joined the Official intelligentsia, gone silent, or have fled the country.

So where do we now stand?

In recent years the political context has been undergoing deep and widespread change where a serious and popular political challenge to the existing order has emerged. As a fallout, more and more people are gravitating towards the critical voices, which are targeted by state machineries, but which challenge the discourse and assumptions of the existing order. In the process the Official intelligentsia has lost credibility amongst a large majority of people. Meaning that the political struggle seems to have engendered greater intellectual discernment amongst the majority, which in turn has raised awareness of the importance of the ethical foundations of politics and justice, as well as in other spheres of life. So in Pakistan today, a majority of citizens seem to be ahead of the Official and Neutral intelligentsia in terms of awareness. One can somewhat optimistically hope that as the awareness takes root and deepens, it will contribute to the emergence of greater numbers of critical scholars and more critical scholarship. However, the caveat is that the proverbial glass of critical scholarship is almost empty, and it is difficult to predict how fast or slowly it will fill up, or even if at all.

Acknowledgement:

In the given order, food for thought from:

Wellen, Richard: “The Politics of Intellectual Integrity” (Max Weber Studies, November 2001, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp 81-101).

Giroux, Henry A and Paul, William: “Educators and Critical Pedagogy: An Antidote to Authoritarianism” (School Magazine (Website), October 27, 2022).

Talavera, Isidoro: “What is Critical Ethics and why it Matters?” (Academia Letters, Article 147, 2021) https://doi.org/10.20935/AL147.