Pashtoon - Lost and dazed

In my search for a topic I stumbled upon"Pashtoon Culture" by Raj Wali Shah Khattak at http://www.khyber.org/articles/2003/PashtoonCulture.shtml.

After a long description of grandeur pashtoon qualities Raj Wali comes to reality and laments the present state of utter confusion and dismay. He states:

However, all this is changing rapidly today. During the last half a century, the process of cultural change as well as destruction has been at work. This has resulted in weakening of cultural institutions. Hujra, Mosque and the home are undergoing change. One factor that contributes towards this instability is the lack of proper education of Pashtoon Culture. Very few systematic efforts have been made to understand Pashtoon traditions and its philosophical foundations. The old order is being replaced by disorder. Perhaps this is all because of external cultural onslaught. Of course we can face this cultural onslaught and change its direction.

If it was a matter of fighting with swords, I would have fought it out. However, in this fateful war of fate, which has come upon me, I am standing all lost and dazed. That is:

د تورو جنګ که وو ما به کوي وو

د نصيب جنګ چي دي وار خطا ولاړ يمه

Raj Wali's statement of being lost and dazed is a ubiquitous pashtoon sentiment these days. Gone are the days of feeling an aura of superiority about oneself. A certain self assurance that comes with knowing what to do. A sense of self worth that is not dependent on outward show of material attachments. Today the pasthoon is both materially poor and also devoid of his legendary sense of self worth and self assurance. The result is a prevalent decay of all pashtoon society and desperate attempts to remain relevant in a world that has become infinitely more complex in the meantime.

Raj Wali like others yearns for this sense of pakhtu and pakhtun but fails to show us its essence. Where and how did this strong sense of being originated within a group of people accustomed to both a harsh terrain and equally ferocious foes through out its history? Its an understanding that is mandatory to our survival as a culture, a people and a nation.

Having being privileged to have lived in the company of a few last remaining souls that exemplified this pashtoon ethos, through some unusual set of circumstances and then to have left pashtoon watan before its present annihilation and thus avoiding any painful recent interactions to see these memories all get destroyed, I consider myself uniquely placed to comment on what made these people great.

First the assumption that most pashtoon's exemplified such character is false. Even at the best of times only a few carried themselves this way. Outside their environment the characteristics became more apparent and a few others manifested such traits when compared to other local populations.

Rather than describing each individual person I will just present the underlying common thread that exemplified their true nature. They were both men and women who's strength of character was not only confined to themselves but obvious to others around them as well. The were all simple people. Simple in the sense that they worked with very few principles. A new situation did not demand a thorough analysis of pros and cons of ones actions. Situations were dealt with the same set of rules. Most if not all human interactions were guided by the same basic equation which after repeated expression was well recognized by all around them.

I will stress on this point to make it a little more clear. Earlier I was talking to a pashtoon civil servant in Northern Pakhtunkhwa. Consider his situation. He lives with his wife and children and his widowed mother. He works under someone and has many that work under him. He confessed that he has no skills to argue with his mother as she gets sad which is deeply disturbing to him. He has thus developed a relation with his mother that is one of total subordination. Given such a license the mother does what she pleases fit. This creates situations where he may have to justify his actions to others. Since his irrational support for his mother cannot be justified or explained he resorts to anger when confronted with such a situation. Thus his relation with his own wife is completely different than with his mother. Her will is not expressed and routinely subdued. To do this he usually keeps an angry demeanour about himself. She in turn takes it out on the kids or servants. At work he nods at anything his boss says and dishes it out to subordinates in the same manner in which he receives it.

With this mindset (of a present day pashtoon) a stranger is first judged. Thus one is assigned a master or a servant class tag and dealt with different sets of values. The situation is made more and more complex as new lies are added to the mix at times to keep peace with conflicting narratives that had been previously forwarded to advance a momentary stability. This complex set of values, at times conflicting and mostly fabricated consume more and more of ones time and energy to the point that one is totally consumed by just such activities.

The end result is that one is perpetually exploited and in turn exploits others. The society on a whole becomes a jungle where one excels by destruction of another, rather than a civic society where effort is synergized for a common good.

With the slow pace of global change, modernity did not influence the pashtoon land until the 1970s. The local population lived with the same social setup it had for centuries. With the rise of middle east and mass migration of pashtoons to Karachi and the gulf changed a lot of local social dynamics. The subsequent Russian invasion brought world attention and outside manipulators that acquired local collaborators. The social fabric started to change. Unknown drug dealers appeared with dubious connections, warlords with outside handlers, religious scholars with outside fund channels.

By the 1990s the local economy had entirely transformed to be dependent on outside connections. If you grow tobacco in swabi you have to have a 'chit' from the Pakistan tobacco board to sell your product. The mulla in your village has a million dollar mosque donated by a Kuwaiti sheik while the rest of the population has mud walls.

With this change came a change in the psyche of the people. Each family had one that dealt with the outsiders. Either you had a tableeqi brother or cousin who had tableegi friends, or you joined as a low rank in the army and did their dirty work. Places in bureaucracy were similarly acquired as collaborators and not in charge. To justify such anti-pushtoon activities these collaborators developed complex paradigms. The tableegis were full filling a higher religious duty, the war lords the same, the army officers are protecting against imaginary evil forces that threaten a pan Islamic dream, the drug dealers are only hurting the infidels and so on. By 1990s, living in such a chaotic and complex environment the pushtoon of old could no longer survive on his simplistic code of life that did not allow any economic gain or social stature.

Soon nobody could do anything without being either a collaborator or a direct sponsor of this mismanaged economy. At home you keep conflicting values by creating even more confining rules that brings all social activity to a halt.

The pashtoon of today is a confused, lost and dazed individual that has forgotten his core values and apart from a language bears no resemblance to those gone by. For them to regain any sense of former glory they must first shed the many layers of filth that they have accumulated over their skins. The simplistic older model of existence based on pashtoonwali and a pinch of religious piety is unfortunately no longer relevant in the 21st century. Modernity still is best lived with a single equation in a single mind, but a different equation than what our forefathers had. It is high time for the pushtoon to define this single equation that can be relied on in most situation in day to day existence.