Blind men and an Elephant

There was a town in which all the inhabitants were unfortunately blind. There a stray elephant came from the jungle, as the people could not see, so everybody defined elephant by touching some part of its body, there were uncountable definitions, unmeasureable interpretations, but not even one person could name the elephant. Such is the outreach of human interpretations. When it comes to religion, the same become sacrosanct. Jungles are run by rules, the rules of bio diversity and hierarchy of species. The well being index of jungle is measured by examining the health of lions, being the umbrella specie, as it depicts that there is an abundance of other species which comes in their food chain. In society the different laws of well being applies, here the health of a society is measured by looking at the well being index of the weakest, the poorest and the desolate. Societies were formed when homo sapiens shifted from jungle and came to know that now different rules apply for the sustenance and survival of human species. Societies are eaten up by the growth of parasitic mold in the form of dogmas from within. This phenomenon of political decay makes societies more primitive by every passing day. Political decay and the term political development are closer to the studies of sociology, economics, anthropology and the history, rather than being part of mere politics. Question arises here, is Pakistani society suffering from political decay or there is a lack of political modernisation over all these decades. A society which was much open in debate and reasoning in 1960´s is clinched inwardly up to a level of recluse. To understand this, the concept of political development of a society is to be understood first. Political development takes the route of rationalization, integration, and democratisation. This is achieved through national integration and assimilation, identifying the crisis of national identity and moving on to the sacred act of nation building. Finding the crisis of national identity is so important that Samuel hutington in his famous book ” Who are we ” defined the coming into being of American nation through the complete process of political evolution under the principle of ethnic diversity. Societies progress once they achieve the art of associating together, as explained by de-Tocqueville. Traditional societies are usually non participant and deploys people by kinship into communities, isolated in political and sociological terms from each other(despite living together for centuries) and the centre. The creation of political centre is therefore very important. The present political revolution in the world after the third wave is the participation explosion. Identification of political development with modernization in infrastructure, roads, motorways, airports etc is actually the reduction of time and space by the vectors of communication, energy and transportation, the progress in thought, reason and the society is still a question which haunts whenever the mob blocks the road and questions your fidelity . Theory of progress of a society passes the bench marks of national integration, international accommodation, political participation (not only the ritual of vote casting once every five year )and welfare distribution. I f social mobilisation due to technological advancement of sophisticated means of communications in the hands of doctrinated masses outpace the development of political institutions, it will result into frustration and new social actor would create a huge hyperbole outside the political participatory system . The last four days vindicates the same when TLP gridlocked the complete country with scores of incidences in which the properties and belonging of common citizens were damaged and burnt. In Pakistan the social mobilisation through cheap network packages(a new connectivity mantra) is outrunning the ability of political institutions to incorporate these actors in the system and also this is outpacing the capacity of state institutions of law and order to respond. Francis Fukuyama in his famous book on political decay defined that how societies should grow with every era of modernization. State is defined by max weber as the legitimate monopoly of force that covers a defined area. Rule of law and the accountability as per fukuyama are two principles upon which state functions along with others. Every state has its social theory , as per its own social and political aspirations. European social theory was killed after the two world wars. This was scary; the social scientists led by talcott parson started a research in Harvard with a hope to create an integrated, interdisciplinary social science that would combine economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology to carve out new social and political laws and dogmas under overarching modernisation. Pakistan can take a cue from this programme of Harvard and find out its theory of progress and development. Foreign terminologies, good practices, case studies and references of research are appreciable only whence it works for us. No state in this complex era of modernity can live without its own social theory. Father of nation had already given the guiding principle that” you are free to go to your mosques, temples and places of worship”. Ibn-Khalddun’s muqqadama is nothing but the theory of political economy which many European countries have adopted in ditto . Khalladun says that everything actually revolves around economic surplus , a state is duty bound to create the surplus and the best surplus is the specialization of economy. Pakistani state can learn from Ibn-Khalddun, whose economy theories resulted into social equality even after the failure of European social theory. The writer is a free lance who contributes regularly on security related issues. He is also a Ph.D Scholar who can be reached at sindhulatif@gmail.com Published in Daily Times, November  4th 2018.