A nation of shopkeepers

Not in a good way either

The official automobile used by Ahmad Faraz during his stint as Chairman of the National Book Foundation recently went under the hammer. In addition to the general public, in attendance were specimens of that most curious breed – the Pakistani car dealer. One of them was not impressed when the winning bid – a staggering Rs625,000! – was made by an old acquaintance of the late poet. The dealer’s observation on the successful bid was revealing to say the least. One can buy an equivalent car for Rs50,000 less, he said.

In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Darlington defines a cynic as a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. The same can be said about shopkeepers, who concern themselves with nothing but the market price.

That we are a nation of shopkeepers is getting more and more difficult to dispute.

It is debatable whether Napoleon ever actually referred to England as a nation of shopkeepers, but one can understand his contempt for money mindedness of the English, who have always been a very practical people. (Even the Bard was a hard-headed businessman in addition to his more renowned identity as a divine wordsmith.) Napoleon was of course not against being practical – couldn’t have been. Being a revolutionary, perhaps what he was against was being overly obsessed with the profit motive. (If so, one can only imagine what he would have made of Pakistanis.) Most probably though, he was simply sick of the British Merchant Navy and the revenue it generated for the Crown. Furthermore, England was shrewdly avoiding wars and making effective alliances with all Napoleon’s foes. England was, after all, Napoleon’s enemy and a formidable one at that. In this context, his shopkeeper comment – if he ever made it – can be seen as a grudging tribute to the enemy.

We are certainly not a nation of shopkeepers in the sense of causing our foes sleepless nights. Pakistan is not exactly setting the world alight by its exploits in world commerce either. We definitely don’t possess a merchant navy that is the envy of other nations; we are not renowned for avoiding useless wars; our exploits in the art of coalition building (such as the 34-nation Islamic Military Alliance) are laughable at best. So whatever our response to the US Attorney General’s rather unsavory comment about Pakistanis selling their mothers for a few dollars, we can at least discount national envy on the part of the US. Did the comment hurt so much because it was incorrect? Or was the AG too close to the mark for comfort?

A nation of shopkeepers (like we have become) can of course ignore the views of other nations’ attorney generals, but it cannot avert a decline of all human values at the societal level. With each shady transaction, the line between acceptable and unacceptable becomes more and more blurred, making life miserable for all. Any move that results in money is all right, provided one can get away with it – which, in the absence of any governmental oversight – is practically everything. (The government, almost completely consisting of shopkeepers with fancy designations, is in no position to perform any real overseeing.)

Unfortunately, the process doesn’t halt here. Very soon the inverse also gets ingrained in the collective psyche of the society, namely, anything that doesn’t involve making of money is useless. Bertrand Russell says about one of his visits to an American university: ‘Some students took me walking in the spring through a wood on the borders of their campus; it was filled with exquisite wild flowers, but not one of my guides knew the name of even one of them. What use would such knowledge be? It could not add to anybody’s income.’ Bertie might have been talking about Pakistanis. What makes us a nation of shopkeepers is the sad fact that this mindset is no more confined to shopkeepers alone.

Is there anything an average man or woman can do to stop this tide? I am sure teaching of values at school leaves a lot to be desired. Parents are definitely not being the role models they should be. There is too much emphasis, on the part of both parents as well as teachers, on teaching crafts that enable graduates to be part of the work-force, at the cost of developing their higher faculties through literature and music. Individuals can of course look into these aspects, but I am afraid the parents have very pressing reasons to be concerned about the employability of their children. Most of us are, unfortunately, in that stage of evolution where survival is too big a concern to be able to think about culture, or anything else for that matter. It appears that the situation is not going to improve any time soon.

Coming back to the auction, it could be argued that perhaps the NBF should have stuck to selling books and resisted venturing into the world of car sales. The automobile could have been donated to a museum instead. But would it be fair to expect the NBF people to behave any differently from the nation at large? Also, there are not too many museums (or libraries, for that matter) around anymore, are there? Finally, when the government is hell bent on privatising everything from the national career to power generation to power distribution, can one really blame the NBF for following suit in its modest way?