Correction nation

Published July 27, 2016
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

A WOMAN is sitting and reading a chapter from the Quran, with her head covered, in a waiting room at a hospital. Even as she is engrossed in prayer, another woman comes up to her and begins to chide her. This is because our first woman is wearing shoes (something rather normal and unsurprising in a public setting). According to the second woman, it is impermissible to read the Quran while wearing shoes.

Now consider a second situation: two men are talking to each other at a social gathering. The first man has just been diagnosed with diabetes, a fact he shares with the second man. As per the instructions of the doctor, the first man tells the second man that he has stopped eating most forms of sugar; this is why he will not be eating dessert or even the dates that are being passed around among the guests. The second man appears aghast; he tells the first that he is doing it all wrong, that the real cure for diabetes is a tablespoonful of honey in the morning and at night. In addition, he insists dates are holy food and must never be refused. He doesn’t stop until the diabetic man finally consumes a date.

Finally, consider a third situation, where two women are at a beauty salon and one is about to get a manicure. As the woman hands over her selection of nail polish to the manicurist, the second looking on mutters loudly, “I would not select that if I were you, it does not suit your complexion at all.” Surprised, the woman pauses, long enough for our second lady to deliver all her expertise regarding nail colour selection and complexion coordination.


A society that elevates, simulates and celebrates corrections is one that does not believe in moral boundaries.


All these instances are true, and while some involve a religious component not all are born of faith. I mention them here because the phenomenon of delivering unsought correctives is one that is so increasingly common in Pakistan that it deserves special mention. Strangers on the street, fellow shoppers in markets, the vegetable seller, the lady at the mosque, the security guard at the airport and a vast variety of others have in recent years appointed themselves as critics and correctors for all others.

Undoubtedly, certain personality traits, some general extroversion, a proclivity for self-righteousness and self-worshipping narcissism are likely to increase the likelihood that the man standing in front of you or the woman standing next to you will be a corrector; the field, however, is generally open to all.

Meet the correctors, a breed of Pakistanis that has taken it upon themselves to issue guidance to everyone else on any and all matters. While the absence of compulsion in religion is a well-known moral precept of the Quran, its impact and impetus seem to have escaped most of this breed. If they are religious, it is only because the veneer of faith gives them even more authority to intervene and interject, condemn and condone the actions of all sorts of any number of other people.

These unfortunate souls — those of us who seek to do our business and skulk back home, or occupy a public space without calling particular attention to ourselves, or attend weddings without delivering sermons — are their particular prey, lesser egos who they must hunt down and overpower before the end of the day. There are many millions of these uncorrected souls, and the correctors are always eager to catch them.

Whether or not one is a corrector, wishes to be one or is regularly captured by one, the army of correctors roaming Pakistan incurs another cost for the country. The fact that they are seemingly unstoppable, their corrections littering all manner and moment of Pakistani life, has begun to give credence to the premise that the correction of others any time and all the time is a good in itself.

So the person calling in during a cooking show with an opinion about how the recipe could be ‘remedied’ is not simply a nuisance that the rest of us must tolerate; he or she is making an actual positive contribution to the collective correctness of our society in general. It is a subtle move, the tolerance of correctors and their prescriptions to the widely held belief that being a corrector should be a goal for us all, a moral elevation to which we must all aspire.

It is this second premise that has bred several collateral burdens. A society that elevates, simulates and celebrates corrections — the gifts delivered by such correctors — is one that does not believe in moral boundaries.

If I can judge your act, regardless of whether or not it concerns me, it imputes consequently that all acts of all persons are the business and hence corrective prerogative of all persons. Everything from the outfit my neighbour wears to dinner to the length of my nephew’s shalwar is now in my realm of public judgment and hence justifiable censure. The critique of any and all is not simply possible, but necessary, even required.

In theory, such a society, one so full of correctors all busily delivering corrections meant to improve one and all, would be a very corrected one, almost devoid of any wrongdoing, a model of efficiency and perfection. The reality, that persistent spoiler of magnificent ideas, does not, of course, accord with this premise.

A society of correctors is, in fact, a society without conscience, all of its moral energy directed at others, with really little left for self-reflection. With its critical gaze constantly directed outward, there is little room left for the inward; in all the capitalisation of shame, its packaging in the jibes and retorts, prescriptions and condemnations, the stores of its equal and crucial twin, guilt, run bare and empty. A nation of correctors, a correction nation, is a nation afflicted, its inhabitants so dependent on the policing of others that they forget what it is to police oneself.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2016

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