Politics of visibility

Pakistan’s elite has been seen to manifest a myriad of contradictions. Perhaps one of the most significant of these is the nature of its liberalism. Liberalism usually connotes democratic values, and possibly even secularism.

Our seemingly liberal upper middle class has a deep history of its complex if not contradictory liberal qualities. This history ranges from the liberal upper middle class’s fairly consistent support of military rule over civilian democracy to the role of Islam in politics and society. While this history is both complex and important, the task at hand is to raise a few propositions with regard to a more contemporary contradiction.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and its politics of visibility are the latest manifestation of a ‘contradictory’ liberalism that one often observes in Pakistan. There is something quite interesting at play with Imran Khan’s popularity with a particular socio-economic group who are, among others, young, educated and upwardly mobile professionals.

To speak more specifically to the element of contradiction, many members of this social and economic group panicked and hyper-ventilated in 2009 at the thought of the Taliban supposedly only 15 miles away from Islamabad. Their slogan: ‘Taliban bhagao, Mulk bachao’. Indeed they sanctioned and supported the Swat operation. But now many amongst this group are open to a negotiated peace with militant groups in Fata, as per the PTI’s party line.

The ‘original’ political position – that of accepting state-sanctioned violence against one’s own population – was not shocking. Instead, it was a classic reaction of the upper classes; when vulnerable and threatened (real or perceived) they are more than willing to turn to any number of ‘illiberal’ forces to maintain the status quo.

This has been the case during various military dictatorships. One example would be the widespread support of Yahya Khan’s military action in East Pakistan; not to mention praise for General Musharraf’s dictated enlightened moderation. On a broader level, these responses are exemplary of a kind of defensiveness that then leads to a retreat from a politics of engagement. Every day examples of this are also innumerable.

I can almost taste the disgust again after all these years as I recall a certain aunty suggesting to me that if I really felt the need to protest against Musharraf during the emergency then perhaps I should consider sending my household staff in my place. At another time, when I was doing street theatre, I was asked by a similar brand of aunty how I could be willing to ‘expose’ myself to the masses in this way. (A disclaimer here: I do not mean to homogenise aunties.

There were many who were tear-gassed during the protests against Musharraf and can be easily identified as a formidable force to any dictator).

My underlying argument, that the conceptions of vulnerability and ‘exposure’ in and to public space are distinctly classes, is abundantly clear in an upper-class discourse on politics and the public arena.

The elite’s disinclination towards a visible political engagement is a situation we are familiar with. How then can the change of heart with respect to the Taliban, a willingness to talk and negotiate be read? Most importantly, what does the desire to be ‘political’ in this very particularly visible manner – evidenced by the rallies and physical show of support for Imran Khan – imply?

While on one level this change of heart is certainly a manifestation of a seemingly conflicted liberalism, it is also perfectly representative of Pakistan’s neoliberal coming of age. Certain hard-line secular critics would say that the PTI’s liberalism is liberalism being done wrong and that a puritanical-secular (pun intended) liberalism is the only solution. However, this division implies that any mode of liberalism cannot be pure of its illiberal elements. It is thus useful for thinking about forms of liberalism emergent in the third world.

Second, the case of Pakistan’s liberal classes and their openness to a political settlement within their own borders presents us with a possibly productive contradiction at most and a change that we should seriously analyse at the least. Even as it raises incredibly difficult issues of sovereignty, secularism and the writ of the state, it potentially widens the space to face the supposed demons within. I am not only referring to the Taliban within Pakistan, particularly in Punjab, but this fraught (ill)liberal political self.

Through the increasing popularity of the PTI, in some ways the elite has emerged from its fortresses to occupy a visible – if not truly public – arena. I mean this in a literal way since the elite has dominated politics in a conventional sense for a while. It is important to remember though that the state apparatus has not been entirely subsumed under its tentacles either.

I am not suggesting that the fundamentally complacent and self-interested nature of Pakistan’s upper classes is forever altered because of Imran Khan. But simply that we have to take the very material phenomenon of packs of aunties appearing at his jalsas seriously. Is this the birth of a new kind of politics that will slowly give way to a comfort with the ‘public’ – be it in the form of people or space? Is this politics simply an attempt to re-sanitise and make palatable the same rotten system with a façade of transparency?

At my most optimistic, I suggest that these developments could undo some regressive notions around public life held by the elite. At my most disillusioned, I fear that this spectacle of politics indicates the cooptation of true public participation and inclusion.

The writer studied anthropology and history at Columbia University. She is interested in the electronic news media and spatial politics in urban Pakistan.Email: zehashmi@gmail.com