The Lost Generation

The name of this blog post seems a bit cliched. Im not talking about the lost generation of the American history . I use this cliched phrase because it is the name of one of my worst nightmares.

The existence of such a feeling began for the first time a few years ago, when we were recruiting some people for an energy sector organization. I was responsible for these recruitments and was a panelist. We usually like to say in our public discussions that we have lots of talent but our youth has no opportunity for employment. However, the young people we were interviewing had serious deficiencies in knowledge, understanding ,expression, work ethics. Most of them were not worthy of being employed. That evening when I drove back home, I noticed for the first time the pursuits of people in our streets. Usually idling, gossiping, or doing work without much interest, not able to make a success of what they were doing, and our young people, not adequately educated, lacking exposure and knowledge, many of them unemployable.
Everywhere I go, I meet young people like this. Lacking adequate education, weak ethics, weaker work ethic and motivation. Listlessness and lack of belief in their own ability to make things change. But we have used the earlier generation at the alter of expediency, of jingoism, of vested interest. They have not done well.
Last night, I was watching tv and there flashed names of young men who, in the nineties, were responsible for political shootings. They had such illustrious names: Naveed Nusrat, Minaj Qazi, Saulat Mirza, Mustafa. Surely their educated parents spent a lot of time to give their children meaningful names and did not foresee the future that would befall their sons. These are just a few. In the name of ideology, in the name of Jihad, in the name of social norms, our young people have been used and abused. Their minds have been played with so much that this generation finds it difficult to believe in anything, even themselves and their ability to control their lives. Why should they? Can we even decide whether a crime is a crime or not or where and when in our history should we start holding people accountable? when the normal definitions of right and wrong seem to blur and merge more and more as we progress to the higher echelons of society, how can we expect our young people to find their way out of this labyrinth of life? The only thing that holds a person together in adversity as well as in times of fortune, is belief and values, ethics, which one holds on to as the winds of upheaval blow. What do our young people have to hang on to? what kind of lives have they seen their elders live? what kind of social values have they grown up with? Only and only hypocricy, selfishness, twisting what is right to make it wrong just to suit people who have might? They have not learnt indolence on their fathers knee, they have learnt how to be a sponge, how to prey upon your near and dear ones instead of pulling your own weight and being proud of it. They have learnt self abasement and sycophancy, not self respect and respect for difference of opinion. They have seen brain washing and indoctrination without question, not tolerance and quest for real knowledge ,which starts with a question, not acquiescence .
So we have fifteen year old boys, beautiful , brawny, blonde, bursting with vitality, leading terrorist attacks in Charsadda, rather than leading a hockey or football match in high school, or doing charity work during school breaks, like my fifteen year old daughter does. There is a disparity of class and what a child from a specific family background can expect from life in our country. They are taught at the outset not to presume to be equal. Then why should they not be listless and slackers? they cannot be sure if they have a level playing field. And they are right. They don't. Unless we give them one, we will keep churning out multitudes of such directionless people. We say we have a huge youth bulge with great opportunities fro growth. But what we consider gold is turning into dust before our eyes.

Just a Light Beating

Pakistan's descent into the dark ages seemed imminent with the statement by the islamic ideology council head Molana Shirani that a husband may give a light beating to his wife as and when required. While humankind has evolved to a stage where the lasting psychological and emotional scars inflicted by physical violence are known to most civilized societies, this is an interpretation based on tunnel vision , the only motivation being to maintain the social ascendancy of the man over the woman in Pakistani society.

Now this approach has a number of aspects and implications. First, what constitutes a slight beating. depending upon the girth and size of both partners, it can be an unequal match mostly. But the more important question is, why should any of the partners need to resort to violence, albeit light, to get their way in a marital relationship. This reflects the ascendance of the man who can punish the woman as and when he feels right. If the concept of light beating is incorporated in the law, it will again establish the principle of the man's ascendancy in the relationship in a physical way, calling into equation so many freedoms that the law presently gives to women in Pakistan. The whole issue revolves around the idea of an unequal relationship between man and woman. Why a relationship may be unequal is because physically she is weaker and he is supposed to take care of her. But taking care of a weaker family member does not mean being their master. We take care of our children and old parents, but if we use the ability to take care of them as an opportunity to wield power, then the unfairness begins. This paradigm becomes even more irrelevant as more and more women are financially independent and have more of sense of self than they used to. On the flip side, the woman also takes care of the man in many ways, but does that make her justified in trying to gain mastery over her mate? No. The only answer is an equal relationship, where both partners respect and love each other, wish each other the best and try to be partners in life, rather than adversaries or competitors . The only way to achieve such a partnership is to be fair to each other, communicate to each other, not that one partners keeps taking and the other keeps giving. Both need to be aware of and be willing to make an effort to give importance to the other's desires. such a meeting point only comes when there is respect in a relationship. One partner feeling entitled to beat the other is enough to destroy respect, affection and sharing in the relationship. Allowing men to feel entitled to light beating will just reinforce the concept of being master of the woman, throwing out of  the window any chances of a mutually satisfying relationship. Considering how much importance is given to men and womens likes and dislikes while deciding marriages, the chances of being happy together are already rather slim.
The second implication of such a ruling is lack of communication in a marital relationship. How many times does a Pakistani man thinks of discussing with his life partner what her wishes and desires are? Usually its a monologue of what he wants. Many men think about asking and in their hearts their sole wish is to keep their woman happy, but our social norms inhibit his natural desire to make her wishes and thoughts important to him. It is the natural instinct for men and women to treat each other as companions and partners. That is what they were created for. However, our society scoffs at sensitive men, calling him hen pecked and so on. The concept of beating being permissible is again reinforcing this view of the man-woman relationship, which is unnatural and erroneous. It is not even Islamic. It is only an attempt to maintain the status quo and protect all the abusive men from law. Islam is not an unfair religion. It has not concept of papacy as rightly pointed out by some. However, the authority that such bodies wield allows them to affect our social fabric and to damage it in cases such as this one.
As the issue has been reduced to the supporters of the status quo against those who would change it, such as the Punjab and KP governments, Its time that the government thought about introducing women clerics, lawmakers and lawyers into these bodies, so that the ascendancy of one gender over the other in our social life is diluted. We need a system based on fairness and mutual respect.