“March against Fundamentalism” has become a rallying cry for even those elements that hitherto constituted contending camps of Pakistani polity. All groups from diverse political ideological spectrum have joined the chorus led by the state and echoed by their international allies. One will have hard time in being out of tune with the band, given the threatening proportions of the fundamentalist reality. However, one must question the symphonic harmony of other wise conflicting voices. What has happened that changed the ideological make up of the mujahadeens and freedom fighters of the previous days into the terrorists of the present?

I guess one doesn’t have to be a Socrates to make it out, as several handy explanations of changing balance of international power (or inequality!) are in order. But one may be aspiring to the ideals of ”Socratic individual” to analyse the role civil society, comprising of non-government groups of secular democratic intellectuals, played when state and international allies were refusing to see fundamentalist threat to the society.

It is no longer a secret that so called fundamentalists served their time as hired mercenary of state to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan and Kashmir. It is not a secret either that their ranks were swelled with state’s authorisation and under the watchful eyes of our American allies. However, the hand that fed the mouth was also occasionally bitten (or made to bite) is a separate story. But it will be revealing to wonder what civil society was busy doing when the Great Game of the 20th century was being played by much maligned  “inefficient” and “crisis-prone state” and “instrumentalist,” to borrow expressions from the prevailing vocabulary of Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the country. 

The secular democratic intellectuals in NGOs are, as in the past, busy chewing the fodder set as policy agenda by the so-called New World Order and its sister frameworks rooted in inequality of world resources. They are engaged in whipping their hobby horse, officially called state, for its acts of omission and commission strictly along the lines set by the policy agendas. This policy agenda has taken many forms. From giving policy advice to the state, to trying to substitute it, a whole battery of NGOs committed themselves in organising the poor and building up the capacities of marginalised as well as lambasting the state for want of good governance.

All these are undeniably noble and politically urgent measures and steps were and are being taken in good spirit. However, what was not included in the agenda and consequently not taken up by NGOs is the abuse of the rights of a ’community of believers’ that has been used as pawn in an interstate game of territorial remote control. An abuse whose history can be explored through the employment registers of the Pakistani state. If we are critical of state’s abuse of rights of citizens, then are not the fundamentalist citizens of the state? Are they not consumers of goods? Are they not members of this society? How they can be divorced from a society through an ideological operation of secular democratic intellectuals in NGOs? The question – why an individual citizen, a consumer and a member of Pakistani society, was eulogised as mujahid when he fights against the Zulim perpetuated by enemies of lslam, but denounced as a cool blooded terrorist when he raises arms against the violence authored and sanctioned by the state –  has not been a popular NGOs’ concern.

The madrassa-educated citizens have an equal right to hold their views and we should learn to respect their differences, as long as their faith does not become a polemical one. Even if their doctrine has turned into a prejudice, then what NGOs have done to soften it up, to date? How many instances of reaching out to communities of fundamentalists can be reported from the annual reports of NGOs? How many agendas of capacity building of sectarians can be quoted from the grant registers of donors? How many credit and savings programs for the religious extremist have been launched?  How many attempted coalitions with ’religious organisations’ can be cited from the ever increasing number of NGOs? How many campaigns to expose this exclusion can be quoted from the advocacy registers of think-tanks swelling the ranks of Pakistani intelligentsia?

These questions could have provided some affirmative answers, had civil society not lapsed into a fit of historical blindness, where it is failing to see the fundamental character of their institutional existence and location of their public action. Ignorance to sectarian or religious ideologies is example of this historical forgetfulness. Why ideological questions have not been raised in the annals of development? Why the success of AKRSP, to name a flag bearer of planned development as modernisation, not been studied in the context of its ideological leaning? All successful models, be it (Orangi Pilot Project) OPP or (Khuda Ki Basti) KKB are routinely attributed to the structures of rational management, in complete disregard to ethnic, linguistics, sectarian and a host of other cultural factors, which have turned the question of development on its head.

The historical amnesia has been facilitated by dominant discourse of western intellectuals and policy makers in donor agencies. They are committed to the ideals of empowering women, securing the rights of child, and generally committed to the protecting human rights. But human is defined in a secular democratic order, which excludes all those categories that do not subscribe to specific configurations of state and market in a society. The praxis achieved by NGOs is firmly rooted in a secular democratic ethos that restricts the travesty of thoughts in other directions. The prevailing spirit (in Hegelian sense) of NGOs circumvent any efforts towards one such ’community of allies’ who had the potential to share much with the promise and failure of state and society in The secularist truism has to reinscribe itself for its rejuvenation.

Post script:

In all societies, different ideologies protect its social organisation. Rich and poor, moral and immoral, strong and weak have to survive together despite their conflicting claims to the survival. Call them culture, myths, or belief system; these ideologies tend to ensure the survival of a social order. Interplay of conflicts of social and ideological orders is called as human history. However, one particular version of human history has prevailed over the others. 

From ideas of History as Progress to the claims laid by End of History, the ideologies of western social order have ensured the survival of its host population. For how long, it will survive have been sounded off by cries of decline of the west to the rhetoric triumph of the west. Science fiction is a good place to speculate about it. However, the rule of these ideological social orders is all too pervasive. Thanks to the hegemony of capitalism and (neo) colonialism on the imaginative and material landscape.

The foregoing realisation requires several responses. One response is to accept it. We, the secular democratic individuals, have accepted it. Accepting the realisation that one particular social order has triumphed in ensuring human social order means two things: Make best use of it or make bad use of it. If we are to make best use of it, then its is important to see how it suits to various locations across the spectrum of these ideologies, thus ensuring their survival. The conflict of interest is not denied here, but presumed to be manageable. However, if we were to make bad use of it, perhaps as we do, then we will try not to subject it to organic mutations and not work out the modalities of its forms. The result is in-human mayhem. This is what we should hope to avoid in the future by questioning the fundamentalism of thought.
A few suggestions can be made on the basis of present realisation to further questioning. Ideological factors in development process need to be addressed. The role of state in sponsoring sectarian ideologies also requires to be seriously questioned. On the part of secular democratic individuals the binary opposition of secularism and fundamentalism would need analytical reworking. Some of the recent studies done in South Asia can be instructive in this regard.

The author teaches Cultural Studies at the National College of Arts (NCA),