What’s the difference between a degree in the humanities and a large pizza?
Only one of them can feed a family of four.
That’s desi parent humour for you. When they are asking their kids (sons, usually) to jettison their interest in History and get an employable Bachelors in IT instead. Hell, even a DAE in Carpentry from a technical college is better than a masters degree in the liberal arts.
PTI chairman Imran Khan was quite the desi parent himself recently, while reading out his litany of complaints against Maryam Nawaz. He said that she presides over so many important party meetings but what is her qualification? Just an MA in English; pick a rock and you will find MAs in English under it. Vatta chuko, te thalle…..
Needless to say, that sort of talk wouldn’t have endeared him to the vast number of his supporters who are, in fact, MAs in English. Or have a masters in any discipline within the humanities.
Now the chairman himself has a degree in the humanities. Politics, Philosophy and Economics; (though the Dismal Science comes squarely in the category of the social sciences) from Oxford University. So his dabbling in the arts doesn’t quite come in the same category as that of the Punjab University types. Or so he thinks.
Unfortunately for the PTI, statements like these aren’t a one-off slip of the tongue. They genuinely reveal the mindset of the party leadership. This mindset not only brims with distaste for the general public, but is also not shy of expressing such views. In the US, Donald Trump was a break from the careful, data-driven statements of other politicians that squarely avoided venturing into any area that might alienate any demographic (however small) within the voters. Going this overboard was once skewered by The Onion with the headline “Candidate turns to focus group for position on rape.” Trump went to the other extreme. Statements like the ones he made against the Hispanic and Muslim communities were previously the sort of stuff leftist caricatures of the far right were made out of. Trump’s election to the highest office of his land continues to boggle the minds of political scientists everywhere.
The PTI, however, did not get much success out of it.
Every time the party loses a bypoll, we hear across the various tiers of the party leadership, a vast, fast-moving deluge of muck against the very voters of the constituency that the party had just been campaigning in.
Jokes made about eating donkey meat used to be regaled with self-deprecating good humour by Lahoris themselves a couple of years ago, which is around the time when they stopped being funny. They are not funny anymore, specially when they are thinly veiling a categorical judgment about voter behaviour.
If electoral politics was as simple as getting the desired outcome by doling out qeema naans, then we have institutions in the country that can afford to hand out entire tanoors, but they still haven’t been able to wean the electorate off genuine political parties that have presence in the grassroots.
For a lot of the online supporters of the party, the qeemay waley naan example is taken literally. Let us not even discuss this group or take apart their narrow view of the world. Another group interprets it as a humorous euphemism for constituents giving their votes not for some lofty principles but for low-hanging fruits of ground realities. Like what? Like roads, sanitation, security, a fair shot at jobs etc. It really is a comment on the privilege of some supporters who view these valid demands as some sort of trinkets that votes shouldn’t be “sold” for.
Political ideologues can have problems with the priorities of the voting public. They can wish to reform the public. But to have an arrogant distaste for what all makes the voters tick is the sort of pride that will most certainly have a fall.
Post-script: they might be studying literature to dive deep into the intricacies of the Human Condition, but English graduates can make a good living in the country by teaching the language. Do not despair.
