Don’t you know who I am?

By
Dr Faisal Bari
-
18
168

A few years back, I was at the Lahore airport to pick someone who was arriving from an international flight. There was a huge rush of people around the arrival doors. I think it was post-Hajj season and Hajj flights were coming quite regularly. It was also right after a bomb explosion in Lahore or another city, so there was a security alert too. There were a bunch of policemen, airport security and para-military personnel around who were all trying to maintain some order. They would ask people to move back from the gate and push them if they did not move, but after a while the people would creep closer again. So this game of pushing and shoving was going on regularly with the usual intermittent flair ups between the police and the people every so often.
There was a suited-booted guy standing next to me. In one of the to-and-fros he also got pushed back by a policeman quite rudely. They started exchanging the usual salutary greetings that Punjabis do on such occasions. The voices got raised, they challenged each others paternity and so on. And then suddenly the young man said, “What is your name, I will see to it that you pay for your insolence.” The policeman replied, “Tanvir, and you can do whatever you want with my name.” “Don’t you know who I am,” the young man shouted. The policeman came back with a gem: “If you were really someone you would not be standing here. You would have gone through the VIP entrance. So, do what you want but just step back.” The young man was livid but the dialogue ended with the brilliant line from the policewala.
Dipankar Gupta, a professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, wrote a book in 2000 titled “Mistaken Modernity”. He argued in the book that India was actually not modern even today. Forget the gadgetry, the amenities that modern science and technology have bestowed upon the rich and middle classes of the country, as that was no way to judge modernity.
Modernity, for Gupta, has to do with human interrelationships. Is the society based on universalistic principles, does it accept human dignity as a basic value, does it demand accountability from public life and is human interaction based on basic tenants of human equality or not? Are rights extended to all on the basis of citizenship or not? If human interaction in our society is still based on caste, family, creed, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and other such characteristics that lie outside of the individual and over which the individual has little control, then the society is not really modern. And this has tremendous implications for everything that happens in that society.
Using the same lens Pakistani society seems to be primitive. It is an exceptionally divided society. Though we take pride in how Islam did away with castes and other divisions in human interaction (not identity but as a basis for interaction) in a society, we live in a completely fractured and division-driven society. The gentleman mentioned in the above paragraphs was very aware of being from the ‘elite’ of the country. The policewala was also very aware of the fact that where this gentleman might have been from some ‘elite’, he was not from the ‘elite’ in power. So he need not have worried about him.
It does not matter which field one looks at, we see the effects of class in Pakistan. In education whether you go to private school or public, whether the private school is English medium or not, whether it is an elite school or not, what kind of accent do you speak English with, and even Urdu, whether you went abroad for your undergraduate or for graduate studies, all determine gradations of class and how people will interact with you, and even more importantly and sadly, how even institutions of the state will interact with you.
If you are from the elite you will obey no rules, break all rules, in fact your status in society is determined by your ability to flout rules publicly – the more publicly, the better. The bigger the car you travel in, the fewer the traffic rules you will obey. And so on and so forth. If you happen to be a minister or a senior bureaucrat you will be one of the last people to board the PIA flight, and you might be the cause of the delay too, but you will of course sit right at the front where you will act in a way that signals: “We may be equal but I am way more equal than you.” Our society is a beautiful and symptomatic example of tribalism and primitive relationships.
But it should be borne in mind that this is neither accidental nor irrational. In a state where resources are constrained and competition for them strong, and state institutions are weak and there is no understanding in society or state institutions that rights are on the basis of citizenship and not on the basis of class, people survive through patronage networks based on non-universalistic characteristics. We talked of this in detail last week. Today we are linking these patronage networks to lack of modernity and the spirit of modernity.
Once returning from overseas, I was stopped by Customs officers and asked to open my bags. While they were looking through my books and clothes and discussing various books with me a gentleman passed through Customs with a lot more luggage. When asked to stop, he just said ‘the Prime Minister is my mamoo’. The officer just waved him through. I asked the officer if he knew the gentlemen or how did he know he was not bluffing. The officer’s logic was simple. ‘If he is not, we might have lost some money, but if he was, though that was unlikely, but if he was and I stopped him I could lose my posting.’
Just for comparison, at that very minute, each worker coming in from the Gulf, even if he was just bringing a few toys for his children, had to pay something to get through the same officer. It is hard for me to come up with a more telling example of the elitist, patronage based, tribal society we live in.

The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email protected]

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18 COMMENTS

  3. I have seen people quarrelling in the USA and they were saying something similar, like
    "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!"
    "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM CAPABLE OF"
    etc.etc.
    Then the use of F word.

    • Hashim

      What you observe is pure nonsense. First, if you argue with a cop, you will be arrested, handcuffed and taen away. An argument between two US citizens never involves idiotic expressions such as ' You don't know me'. Please do not manufacture lies.

      • Hashim is right. US has one of the highest crime rate in the world. Cops get shot every now and then. Then there are cops who run over ordinary citizens under the influence of alcohol. Police brutalities get reported in the media on regular basis. Get a life mate. Learn to face the truth. A lot can be said and written but it’s not going to benefit an ignorant person like you.

      • You seem to be some cab driver who is always trying to impress his relatives and friends back home by telling them that you live in some kind of paradise.

  5. There are lots of positive things in Pakistan but media persons will to like to discuss those as such news do not sell.

    • Media is the same everywhere. Mostly negative things are news everywhere, why single out Pakistani media. Our media has a big big share in spreading a pro-democratic culture, and whatever democracy we have right now owes it existence to the media big time……

  6. I totally agree countries dont become modern because new fast-food chains open up, the rich can afford more expensive cars and gadgets….Societies modernize when all citizens have equal access to resources and opportunities. Where all citizens are equal in front of the law no matter what family they belong to, who their relative is or which school they went to. Of course access to information and being able to communicate with the rest of the world is also a way to modernization everyone has a cellphone or access to internet are ways to move societies beyond these self-created classes (which are purely based on economic divide). If Pakistan is to become a progressive nation we must start by addressing these issues.

  7. I work in a service based industry … ,meaning I am a doctor working to serve my nation… however, rudeness, jeering, sexual harrasment … not to mention elitist harrasment is a part of my everyday routine ( the perks of living in Pakistan ) . Quite alot of people come up to me with this statement , " Doctor ! do you know who I am "?
    I always look over my shoulder , shrug and say," No ! I dont know who you are but listen Sir ! You definitely dont know who I am ?" they always back off ! am not sure if its my expression, my attitude or they really think I am a bigwig .. but works everytime ! this tip is strongly recommended to anyone who works in a job with public dealing in Pakistan !

  13. Dr.Bari, do you think is Pakistani nation in need of certain revolution? If yes, then what sort of revolution it has to be? Who is to initiate it? Through what means is that to be initiated?

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