Friday, November 12, 2010
I have a bone to pick with Ms Samina Khawar Hayat, one I would like to pry out of her fame-hungry jaws of notoriety before she issues any more rabid statements in an assembly a taxpayer such as myself is paying for. Proposing a resolution in the Punjab Assembly seeking to ban Indian cartoons on Pakistan’s airwaves, Ms Hayat is beginning to sink to a level lower than can be imagined. Apparently, the PML-Q MPA is of the opinion that the culturally potent nature of the cartoons will impact our children in unimaginably blasphemous ways. Pondering on the many debasements of a Hindu culture setting up shop in the impressionable minds of Pakistani children, Ms Hayat is eager to strip media programming of animation because it is somehow “far greater” than the devastation brought on by the recent floods and the cataclysmic earthquake of 2005. I reckon catastrophes such as those are also nothing in comparison to the catastrophes sitting in our house of representatives.
It is here that I plead for a little restraint in ludicrousy and a quick dabble in cerebral sagacity if ever this land and its legislatures possessed some. Any broadcast, whether local or international, objectionable or functional, kiddy or adult, is subject to the laws of telecast objectivity before being unleashed on the white noise that has become the prime time backdrop of the idiot box. The cartoons in question are ones belonging to a mould of religious mythology, commonly broadcast all over the world targeting children aged anywhere between five and fifteen. Indian cartoons such as those depicting the Mahabharata and the Ramayana belong in the same league as, for example, the Judeo-Christian The Story Keeper series and the Buddhist comic strip series Rahula Leads the Way. All such caricatured attempts at feeding the ever-evolving child’s mind aim at one thing only: teaching the child the essence of good. All religions and all their mythological renditions profess only to teach the doctrines of love, struggle, faith and human goodness. The Mahabharata lays down some golden philosophical nuggets that transcend the petty limits that humans have blindly bestowed on themselves in the name of rejectionist ideologies. Using characters of allegorical standing, the tales carried in the Mahabharata speak of benevolent actions, intentions and righteousness (dharma), goals for life and fabled epics of yore. From where I see it, these are not exactly instructions in debauchery imparted to children who are today growing up in a society where the gun and jihad have become mascots in a macabre version of the desi Teletubbies. Instead of looking to wipe out such ideologies, more cultural and religious diversity ought to be introduced on the airwaves so that our children today understand the enrichment of cultural cultivation, where fables and folktales provide them with some sanity and sufferance, and the ethos of tolerance and human virtue. No bad can ever come out of learning about the essence of good, no matter which religious core it belongs to.
However, there are many like Ms Hayat who believe that such myths will amount to nothing except severing our children’s cultural jugular from the crescent on the green. If we allow the nation’s children to grow up in a world envisioned by Ms Hayat, we would have a youth of amplified proportions sitting on psychiatrist couches all over the country because the fathers of the land would be off making merry with four wives in tow. The recent marriage of a man in Multan to two women at the same time and the stupendous celebrations observed thereafter are jahaliyya practices that gain feverish momentum when political pedestrians such as Ms Hayat endorse them. Ms Hayat’s cultural jargon would have it seen to that women, who have fought long and hard to introduce some semblance of egalitarianism in this patriarchal void that disguises itself as a state, not even know when their husbands have decided to do the nasty with someone else. Horribly misleading the illiterate public with her rants and raves about what men can do at the expense of their wives, Ms Hayat is a sorry depiction of all that is wrong with our decision makers. Because most of them cannot utter a word of significance, they waste our time and money with nonsensical issues to garner some ill-gotten acknowledgement.
However, the people of this country have elected this intellectually deficit lot, probably because of our own national embargo on rationality and reason. Now that they are here, it is essential that they implement the will of the people, not defend their own diminished discernment. Citizens such as myself are fuming that in order to disguise their ineptitude, our parliamentarians are sullying the true nature of their calling. We do not want you to override the assemblies with dismal notions of morality and we do not want you to decide for us what to watch and when to watch it. Those parked in our assemblies have absolutely no right to decide how best to impart chaste fabrications to a society where the salt is mined from a blackened earth.
I have a novel idea for Ms Hayat, one that might actually benefit the children she is so keen to protect. Seeing that the practice of attaining power through ill-gotten means is a lesson in vice that every child is taught to abhor, your fake degree is morally repugnant for our future generations. The fact that you attained a Bachelors degree in 2002 from a university that did not offer it until 2009 ought to serve as a lesson in the diversion of ethics for our children. The fact that you endorse public and private humiliation of the mothers of these children by way of paternal profligacy does not place you on any pedestal of moral privilege. If you truly want to save the nation’s children Ms Hayat, stay far, far away from any matters related to them.
The writer is an Assistant Editor, Daily Times and participant of the Salzburg Trilogue and an essayist and lecturer on interfaith discourse. She can be reached at reemk80@gmail.com
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