A man from South Waziristan, a woman with a 2 year old son from the plains of the Punjab and a school teacher from the snow capped mountains of Gilgit. It was an assortment that was diverse but not divided — what united them was an abiding faith in simple dreams; a desire to reach for those abstract visions we call dreams. These remarkably talented individuals are only three out of the 126 students who will be traveling to the United States in August to pursue higher education on the Fulbright Scholarship.
Meet Khalid; a young man from Lahore brought up in Shahdara. He graduated from an engineering school and is as intelligent as any 22 year old you can ever hope to meet. He is ambitious yet modest. What drives him is the fearlessness of youth. Khalid did not learn how to speak English till 4 years ago. Even now, each time he speaks in English he apologises for the lack of perfect proficiency in a disarmingly charming manner. A year ago, he set up an online business which allows people to order books from any shop in the city and his company delivers it to your doorstep within hours. His friends call him ‘the man of ideas’. He loves his life in Shahdara and the communitarian values of the joint-family system. He is an authentic Lahori who stresses that ‘learning a language is never as useful as learning a tool or a skill. Therefore do not get intimidated if you do not know a language’. What Khalid speaks about is practiced by all successful businesses that do not hail from countries with English as their first language. Yet it is a lesson that the State of Pakistan and its educated elite ignore each day. Speaking English in this country will open doors for you at most places, regardless of your ability. This is not a comment against the English language but a criticism of our practices.
The Fulbright Program in Pakistan is the largest anywhere in the world. Each year it gives more than a hundred Pakistanis the chance to explore their dreams in a way that has never before been possible. It is funded by the US government and is administered in Pakistan by the US Educational Foundation Pakistan — helping the applicants and the grantees every step of the way. The average annual cost of this program in Pakistan is about US $20 million. This funding has continued despite the worst recession in the US since the Great Depression. American taxpayers’ money is used by the millions every year to educate and fulfill the dreams of individuals from a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant. For all this and so much more, the United States deserves credit.
Be it states or individuals, only the ones most confident of their values will engage with the world. Our own deliberate inability as a country to acknowledge, let alone deal with, our problems is a stark contrast. Our media never acknowledges the enormous generosity of that country which is derided everyday on our TV screens.
A prescient philosopher once remarked: ‘Unfortunately, the moral looking-glass can be extremely deceitful. There is not in the world such a smoother of wrinkles as is every man’s imagination with regard to the blemishes of his own character’. Pakistan’s moral looking-glass is flawed. It refuses to engage in introspection. And these flaws are perpetuated by a largely conservative media and an increasingly anti-US elite.
Blasting the government or sending your kids to American colleges is not liberalism, but a willingness to engage with all that is wrong with Pakistan is. Questioning the hegemony of the military, even and especially on days when it does not threaten the media directly, would be liberalism. Efforts geared towards setting our own house in order, rather than imagining US-sponsored conspiracies, would be liberalism. That requires courage and it requires difficult choices of breaking the delusion filled mirrors we carry around.
The saddest thing about our media and right-wing US-bashing politicians is that they suffer from intellectual poverty. The US does not claim to be a flawless country. And therein is its greatness — America is a great country because its most nuanced and intellectually powerful criticism comes from within its borders, from its own people. Whatever the issue, the most important and toughest questions are raised by Americans themselves. Asking the right questions is solving half the problem. Our problems are of our own making but unquestioned — and they pose an existential threat.
Anyone here admiring the US is labeled as ‘brain-washed’, ‘naïve’ and all that jazz. And how would cynics describe Ali Afridi; a man living in Peshawar, threatened by the Taliban and our agencies for his ‘pro-America’ views? His ‘crime’ is attributing Pakistan’s problems to factors and actors within our borders. We are poorer for not being more open. The poverty of the soul is not measured by a dollar a day.
This monsoon too may pass without clearing the horizon dominated by intellectual dishonesty. Our poverty of introspection is robbing us of honest answers. But find the answers we must. And the first step towards that is to take ownership of our problems.
The writer is a Barrister and a Fulbright grantee. He has a special interest in Anti-trust/Competition law. Email: wmir.rma@gmail.com