Rational vs National —Ejaz Haider
Rational vs National —Ejaz Haider
History is the logic of might and for every slow community there is always a smarter one and the latter comes and screws the former. Thucydides was the first to report this and nothing seems to have changed since then
I was planning to write about some of our cultural practices related to micturation and defecation when I read the Fox News story about the US “military’s chief terrorist-hunting squad, operating in Afghanistan, [which] is working on a secondary mission to secure nuclear arsenals if the Taliban or Al Qaeda overwhelm Pakistan”.
Normally, this would have posed a problem, a conflict between writing the Other Column and penning a serious analysis. Luckily, this one doesn’t. The US Rambo-style effort, if there is such, needs no serious analysis. It can easily fit into this framework. Let me therefore begin with the more serious of the two issues at hand, the one I had originally planned to write about.
The prompt for this defecation-micturation discussion is my conversation with Qasim Nauman, my colleague, a decent young LUMS graduate who is the scion of a modern, highly educated family. He wears paati hui jeans, sneakers, mostly Arsenal shirts, is tech-savvy, highly rational and bloody smart.
Which is why, for the most part, he doesn’t know why the majority of us squat to do the needful, from micturating (euphemism for pissing) to defecating (euphemism for shitting).
About a year ago I discovered that Q’s elders come from Deena-Jhelum and that he is a Chaudhry. Since then I have tried to anchor him squarely in that identity ensuring that office staff understand what I mean when I want to talk to Chaudhry Saab.
But his hulia militates against this identity; the support staff want to respect him because they know he is Chaudhry Qasim Nauman “aaf” Deena-Jhelum but then look at his jean di pant and rucksack and think, probably, that I have planted this story about Q’s Chaudhry-ness. He is, if I were to employ Dr Muzaffar Iqbal’s category, a sound manifestation of our “obliterated history”!
Such is his brown sahib-ness that he finds it ridiculous that people should squat for pissing and shitting. “Why couldn’t we figure out at some point that it would be easier to stand and pee (for men, of course!) and sit down to shit rather than squatting and doing it?”
My rational instinct wanted me to agree with him. But my national instinct said I couldn’t do it. He is already a brown sahib and it is my duty to set him right. Thus I spake to him about cultural and historical continuity.
“Continuity is important even if it emanates from what you might consider some deeply ingrained idiocy. For instance, before the Portuguese arrived in these parts, our lotas were without a base. Now, I realise that thinking of having a base for a lota or gharra or sundry utensils should have been the most obvious thing but clearly we never thought about it because of our innocence in such matters. Colonialism sullied our pristine innocence which is why it is much better to remain slow, individually and collectively, than to have modern conveniences begotten of rational institutions and thinking.”
Motto: Better to be free and keep doing it wrong than to be enslaved and learn to do it right.
Of course, my modern, rational, obliterated Chaudhry doesn’t accept that argument. But the funniest was his expression when I asked him if he knew about butwaani, a most pious act that, in places like Bannu, Peshawar and elsewhere, was also performed publicly. Heck, he had no idea about it so I had to explain to him the intricacies of the act. He thought I was making it up; such is the power of the colonialist and the way he has rewritten and restructured our history.
But the act of recall is important so I felt duty-bound to inform Chaudhry Q of how romantic and indigenous life was before the virus of Weberian rationalism hit us. Ah! The rustic communities; doing the needful in the open, among the green fields, being one with nature. Damn the goras, now we have to stand and piss in a urinal, a most rational but very un-indigenous way of doing things.
There is of course one problem with my innocence argument: it’s called history. History is the logic of might and for every slow community there is always a smarter one and the latter comes and screws the former. Thucydides was the first to report this and nothing seems to have changed since then.
Which is why, to my unknown colleague(s), please don’t climb the pot the next time you use the office toilets. It’s the worst way of expressing post-colonial ressentiment against the colonist.
And now that I have set aside this important issue, a few words about the US special teams that are supposed to secure our nuclear arsenal if and when Pakistan falls to the Taliban.
A dangerous mission this: some highly skilled Americans, charged with the zeal to secure America and the rest of the world (always that connection; never without it), are lurking somewhere in the shadows along the Durand Line, collecting intelligence, making plans, identifying the locations of our weapons, cultivating sources that will help them secure this arsenal, and will move in when the time comes, the Second Coming, the beginning of the Armageddon, the earth unfolding on the Centre from the periphery…and so on.
Really? Is this something one has to take seriously; are we supposed to waste time trying to militarily analyse this possibility?
Not me, so fantastic is this scenario, so outside the capacity of anyone. As for the eschatology part of such scenarios, not for nothing does eschatology sound so much like scatology.
Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk
