The importance of debate

Asking the right questions vs Having the right answers

Writing is not something that comes naturally to most people. I confess I am one of those as well. Growing up, each time I was told to write an essay I had to rack my brains and the fear of not writing something ‘acceptable’ would render me paralysed. With time, I realised that that fear was to be blamed on our education system –which encourages students to write conformist accounts not just of history but also deeply personal experiences like your favourite book or city. There would be ‘guidebooks’ being sold mentioning the best essay on ‘my visit to a hill station’. One would think that that is a deeply personal experience but the fine authors of our curriculum had other ideas.
This, of course, applies to the Matric system and not those doing O’Levels. It wasn’t until I reached university that I realised that using my own thoughts could be rewarding. Since then, I have been most fortunate that my influences and inspirations have somehow conspired to give me an independence of mind that, for better or worse, I truly value. Throughout this process I learned a most important lesson — that argumentation and debate are the most necessary tools for the development of minds.
It has been more than a year since I have been writing in this space. In that time Pakistan has changed at breakneck speed. It has become more violent and more polarised than I have ever known. Even the new rhetoric of change is polarising and not in all ways good. I have touched subjects such as rights of Ahmadis among other minorities and I have challenged the narrative being thrown out by the army —now willingly being swallowed by the Imran Khan brigade.
During this time I have also travelled from Pakistan to the United States for a year. In most of my columns, I have stressed the importance of debate and argumentation. Not because I think I have some moral high ground but only because I want to do my best to ensure that young minds do not go through what I went through: far too much conformist thinking till the shell is broken.
Being young is an emotional time. One is excited about the learning process and there is a sort of certitude that accompanies most things we learn or are taught. Questioning it is uncomfortable. Consider the Imran Khan scenario: whenever I have said that his narrative needs questioning, people have shot back with ‘who else?’ That question assumes that others have failed as politicians. And it’s bloody easy to be simplistic and say, ‘look at all the crises, it’s their fault’. But the difficult thing is to question whether each crisis plaguing us is really the fault of politicians who have been in power.
Consider a child in school studying to take exams. But each time he gets close to exams you pull him out and throw him out of the school. His result and performance in that case will be based on an incomplete assessment. That analogy can hold true for Pakistan’s political parties too.
The narrative of financial corruption and its impact on different sectors is skewed. Of course, there is financial corruption but consider things like shortage of electricity and gas: is that because of financial corruption or are there structural issues at play? Every one of our young people would like to believe they know the answer but the point of raising questions and debating is precisely to make you feel uncomfortable about your own position.
There has been no shortage of hate mail that has come my way also. It has ranged from direct threats to attacks upon the principles behind the stances I adopt. Other criticisms have said that I am on the payroll of PML(N) or PPP while others have asked, ‘what would you know of our problems — you are not even here’. The point of raising what I see as difficult questions is not to assert a best solution. But it definitely is to eliminate the worst solutions whenever possible.
I have been mocked for ‘simply raising questions, criticising and providing no solutions’. But here is the thing that all young people must learn — a lesson that I learned the hard way. There is no magical solution to a country’s ills. Every critique of a system does not have to be accompanied by a solution. Sick of hearing criticisms of Pakistan? Here is the deal: the criticisms will continue and should continue as long as people see issues. The solutions only emerge when people collectively engage in a debate and when the discourse is freed from being held hostage to the ‘unthinkable’ and holy cows.
Whether or not I am in Pakistan these are some of the principles that I hope can guide us: open debate and confronting the credibility of our most cherished beliefs. None of this is easy. But growing up, as a nation and as individuals, was never meant to be easy. It wouldn’t be worth it any other way

The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He is currently pursuing an LLM at a law school in the USA. He can be reached at [email protected]