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The day before Pakistan’s semi-final game against India in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, I received an email titled, ‘Bring Revolution in 23 hours!’

The writer and sender of the email, someone called Haider, was suggesting that when (and not ‘if’) Pakistan will beat India, how this can become the cause of an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

Of course, being a Pakistani and a huge cricket fan, I also wanted my team to sail into the finals by beating India, but my reasons in this respect were purely cricketing and obviously, nationalistic. So I was intrigued by this particular email. Thanks to the usual jingoistic form of so-called patriotism that is paraded in the local media, more and more young Pakistanis are getting confused about exactly what it means to be a mohib-i-watan Pakistani. But certainly, this writer’s claim took the cake in the art of making convoluted nationalistic proclamations.

The hyperbolic gentleman who sounded so sure about Pakistan’s victory, followed by an Islamic revolution, is not a lone, delusional crank. He is among the many desperate young, urban middle-class folks out there who are increasingly mistaking some rather nihilistic ideas and dreamt-out scenarios of glory for being proud exhibitions of nationalism and, more amusingly, revolution.

What fascinates me is their seamless smugness. So confident are they about their delusions coming true, that no space is given or is left for any rational considerations.

In fact, sometimes the act of someone even desiring to air such considerations is not only viewed with suspicion but shouted down as being unpatriotic, cynical if not entirely anti-Pakistan or anti-Islam.

Take the examples of the so-called ghairat brigade and how it went about during the whole Raymond Davis saga as well as the build-up to the Pakistan-India semi-final.

This brigade, which one usually comes across in the electronic and print media and on various social websites, behaves as if they are the only ones who have the right to define what patriotism means and should stand for.

The problem is that their definitions in this regard are so convoluted and farcical, that it can only appeal to impulsive teenagers or those with a rather awkward and misplaced strain of what is called emotional intelligence.

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This narrative, in a nutshell, vehemently enforces and emphasises a singular, myopic and state-constructed concept of faith and nationalism upon a country heavily dotted by a number of distinct ethnicities, religions and Muslim sects.

It places Pakistan at the centre of importance in the Muslim world against which ‘eternal enemies’ – like the Hindus in India – in conjunction with the Muslims’ ‘historical enemies’ – the Jews – are always conspiring.

But in the face of the many economic, political and social failings that Pakistan has faced, this narrative has begun to come under scrutiny from those who see it as being both, a crutch and an illusive magic wand of forces whose influential existence depends on it. Forces such as the armed forces, and their middle- and upper-middle class lackeys, as well as the political clergy.

This narrative’s solutions in this respect are equally flimsy and rhetorical. It suggests that the solution to Pakistan’s economic, social and political malaise is Islam. What does that mean?

It means nothing – especially in a country that is home to various ethnicities, religious minorities and Islamic sects.

However, when you do think about the audacity and the futility of this suggested ‘solution,’ you realise what this really means is that Pakistan should be ruled by a military-religious-feudal nexus along with the elite backed by large business interests that would define for us what Islam and Pakistan stands for.

That is why this narrative begins to sound like an anomaly and out-of-place when aired during a democratic phase in Pakistan’s ever- spinning political cycle.

It is just not compatible with the principals of democracy. In fact, it plants seeds of suspicion in the mind alluding that democracy is akin to chaos and corruption in a country like Pakistan, conveniently bypassing the fact that there has been more chaos and corruption in this country during the many years it was under military rule.

There is no surprise in the fact that even when the above is gradually being realised, this narrative has begun to further mutate – in the sense that instead of most young Pakistanis willing to bare the usual teething problems of a young democracy, they have been shot into the orbit of yet another (equally farcical) dimension of the said narrative.

Suddenly, it is now all about how ghairat (proud sovereignty) and revolution are the answers to all the daunting problems we are facing as a country.

Of course, in its jingoistic and chest-beating content there is a sheer lack of anything to do with a plan, vision or idea, or for that matter, even a basic understanding of revolution.

It fails to comprehend and realise that revolutions usually come in countries with large homogenous populations, or peoples with same ethnic, lingual and religious backgrounds.

Let’s say a mohajir stands up to lead a revolution, how many Sindhis, Punjabis, Pashtuns or Baloch do you think will be willing to follow him or her (and vice versa)? Or, let’s say, a Sunni Barelvi Muslim sets out to bring an Islamic revolution, how many Sunni Deobandis, Wahabis or Shias are likely to endorse his version of revolutionary Islam?

On the other hand, it is only under a democratic system that, on a number of occasions, voters of one ethnicity or Islamic sect have been willing to vote for a MNA and an MPA of a different ethnicity or sect.

This suggests that Pakistan’s unity actually depends on giving democratic respect and autonomy to its various ethnicities, religions and Islamic sects.

That old-school concept of unity based on an enforced or Utopian idea of a singular faith and nationalism is not only outdated, but has been a colossal failure.

It has been nothing more than a reactionary fantasy of what we call the establishment and some political-religious outfits and the urban middle-classes.

We must come to a democratic compromise with this reality. We cannot keep fighting and repressing it, not unless we want to continue falling on our faces over and over again.                                                                            _______________________

The Raymond Davis episode is one. The media harping about the ghairat spiel fed to it by some wily folks in the intelligence agencies were all too willing to revert back to the old, redundant narrative of patriotism.

Thus, since this narrative hardly ever allows any rational analysis or thinking, the media’s chest-thumping in this regard simply failed to figure out the many political and Machiavellian intricacies at play between the CIA, the ISI, the US government, and the Pakistan and the Punjab governments.

Had the media understood these complexities, the outcome of the Raymond Davis case would not have hit it the way it did.

It was a surreal experience watching a string of TV anchors and their audiences glorifying Davis’ arrest as some amazing exhibition of Pakistan’s ghairat.

The media was convinced that the complex nature of the relationship Pakistan’s military and governmental establishment has had with the US, can be undone with a simplistic swipe of good old ghairat.

What was even funnier (or painful) was the way most of these gung-ho media men and many Pakistanis went pale in the face with shock after Davis was quietly escorted out of the country.

Their protests in this context had little to do with principles as such; it had more to do with feeling anguished and embarrassed at being made to look foolish, if not entirely childish.

Same thing happened a week before the Pakistan cricket team’s semi-final game against India. The local media hyped it up as a matter of ghairat. And thus, as we now know that whenever any such hype which involves chants of ghairat, it rips people away from reality.

This rip is then bound to lead to some arrogant and delusional talk, in which God is evoked along with war cries and some terribly smug attitudes – the sort that began seeing Pakistan as the sure shot winners of what turned out to be a devastating game for the team.

Anguished and feeling ridiculed by the hype that it created itself, did the media back down, or better try to analyse the defeat in a sporting and intelligent manner?

Nope. Ghairat to them does not mean pride based on positive economic, political and social achievements and facts. Instead, it means a misplaced ego. Period.

Take the example of one TV talk-show host who was wearing the green Pakistan team T-Shirt and whom I saw actually scolding Pakistanis for their habit of watching Indian TV and films!

Shame on you for watching films and listening to songs of an enemy was this man's reaction to the defeat.

I am not joking. That is what this gentleman’s reaction was. Like so many media personnel, he too had convinced himself and his audience that if only we play with ghairat in our hearts and pray hard, we will be certain winners.

Some even took the farce a step ahead in wailing some incoherent clap-trap about how this match was a Muslim vs. Hindu event.

Once again basing their ‘analysis’ on that redundant and myopic narrative about patriotism and faith, and adding to it this narrative’s newest fluff: ghairat and revolution, this left many Pakistanis sounding smug in their misplaced arrogance, their chest-puffing and their thinking (rather emoting).

The result, once again, a humble pie right on a face that had grinned with jingoistic conceit and self-righteousness mistaken as being patriotism and ghairat. 

It was tragic watching hordes of well-meaning young Pakistanis just sink after Pakistan’s disappointing performance in the semi-finals.  They had been lied to and cheated again. Not by the ‘corrupt politicians’ that they hate or unpatriotic cynics, or Afridi and his team, but by those who claim to be the most patriotic and faithful of us all.

I think intelligent and constructive scepticism about what is dished out to us as 'patriotism' and ghairat will serve our young people more than the creamy, foamy nonsense in the name of revolution or patriotism that comes their way (and is blindly lapped).

Scepticism can generate surprisingly constructive results. 

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.