Dawn, 21 May, 2009
The Taliban within
by Jawed Naqvi
Suppose one day, soon, the Taliban are militarily defeated and the government in Islamabad makes it mandatory for girls in Swat, as elsewhere in Pakistan, to attend schools.
What would they be taught? Going by conventional wisdom their curriculum would include a heavy dose of obscurantism, and a surfeit of gender biases. Our great grandmothers faced similar challenges across South Asia.
There are several theories and beliefs about something as basic as how human life came into existence. Let’s begin there, for the issue is at the heart of essential choices that must be made between a questioning spirit and hidebound faith. The question goes beyond the gender issue. Even in the supposedly liberated cultures straddling the United States a raging dispute exists over schoolchildren being exposed to the innocuous evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin.
Harmonising scientific theories with creationary beliefs is required. Such beliefs are not peculiar to Semitic traditions alone. Hinduism has its own version about how the world came into existence. One would have thought that the sobriquet of ‘Islamic republic’ that comes as part of the package called Pakistan makes the resolution of such imminent questions a more daunting task. The example of the United States is illustrative of the malaise being more widespread. A wider definition of Taliban is required to understand how the demons of obscurantism lurk deep in the recesses of overtly secular and liberal societies.
In the hurly burly of the election season I overlooked a relevant editorial in The Telegraph of Kolkata. The April 21 leader pertained to a Taliban-like attitude towards sexual education expressed by no less an authority than an Indian parliamentary committee of elder MPs.
‘It is alarming that crucial decisions regarding something as fundamental to human health and happiness as sexuality are taken by leaders of the nation whose thinking on the matter is a dangerous mix of bigotry and ignorance,’ The Telegraph protested.
The Committee on Petitions had recommended that there should be no sex education in schools since this would promote promiscuity and since India’s ‘social and cultural ethos are (sic) such that sex education has absolutely no place in it.’
Headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Venkaiah Naidu, the committee comprised nine Rajya Sabha members from the entire party-political spectrum, and had only one woman in it. The committee’s outrage was directed against the human resource development ministry’s Adult Education Programme. Launched in 2005 and backed by India’s National Aids Control Organisation, the AEP had focused on safer sex, together with adolescent physical and mental development, for the 14 to 18 age group.
Not only was the committee ‘highly embarrassed’ by the human resource development ministry’s PowerPoint presentation on this curriculum, but, according to The Telegraph, it also recommended for that age group an alternative curriculum based on the lives and teachings of saints, spiritual leaders, freedom fighters and national heroes. This would endorse ‘national ideals and values’ and ‘neutralise the impact of cultural invasion from various sources’ with the help of naturopathy, ayurveda, unani, yoga and, of course, moral education.
‘Such a combination of conservatism, chauvinism and sheer irrationality is disconcerting for several reasons,’ The Telegraph observed. First, emanating from the highest levels of the polity and uniting a diversity of political positions, it showed the extent to which the lives and bodies of some of the most vulnerable members of Indian society remained in the control of the limited understanding and unlimited powers of a few.
‘A blinkered and almost mythological understanding of the lives and sexuality of growing children, generalised to the point of absurdity, underpins such a mindset. The children themselves, as well as the adults who are responsible for their well-being, remain entirely deprived of agency in the making of these decisions and policies.’
The committee posited that pre-marital sex, together with sex outside marriage, was ‘immoral, unethical and unhealthy.’ Now one had argued on behalf of any one of the committee’s nightmares. But to use their irrational fear to argue that sex education promoted abusive behaviour in school, among students as well as between teacher and student, and that it was detrimental to the stability of the family, was stretching the point.
As the Telegraph said: ‘Perhaps the only hope lies in the fact that these are just nine shockingly regressive individuals trying to control the robustness of millions of sensible Indians.’ Social bigotry in India is of course more widespread than a committee of nine individuals. The fact is that an entire new culture spawning a new and vicious brand of vigilantism is of a piece with the difficulties faced by young women and men elsewhere.
The problem is two-fold. I am aware of fairly well-meaning activists of impeccable liberal ideals in Pakistan and India who would rather leave some of the questions unaddressed on the plea that defeating the Taliban was the more urgent issue. Other (trivial?) matters should be left for a more opportune time. We are blaming the Taliban for too many things. Before the onset of Talibanisation students in many Pakistani schools were for decades taught ‘k’ for kafir, or infidel. A former Indian envoy to Islamabad noted in his memoirs how young children were indoctrinated to hate Hindus. Fighting the bigots in Swat is a worthy cause, but what about the Taliban lurking within?
Part of the enormous difficulties faced by women under Taliban rule is but a replica of what was once mainstream society. A grand aunt who migrated to Pakistan in the 1970s left behind an ancestral home with telltale signs of subtle repression. We discovered under her bed a cluster of books about girlie romance. She was not allowed to read them as a girl. Lady Wazir Hasan, mother of Sajjad Zaheer, the much-feted founding father of progressive writers in undivided India would speak only Awadhi, as did all the elderly women of Awadh of our memory.
She was asked once what prevented her from learning Urdu. Her answer holds the key to the problem that girls face, not only in Swat but all across the so-called civilised swathes of South Asia. ‘Urdu padhai ke mohey paturia banhaio ka?’ (Do you want me to learn Urdu and become a courtesan?) Women were deprived of education then, lest they began reading the Zehr-i-Ishq, Gul Bakawli and other romantic masnavis that were the preserve of men. The issues faced by the girls of Swat will continue to mock us even after the global military campaign defeats their current tormentors.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
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