MUCH has been written in recent months about Pakistan’s ‘culture war.’ The plot is a simple case of good vs evil. On one side, there are the Taliban who despise indigenous culture, kill dancing girls, and bomb music shops.

On the other is a nation seeking to defend its artistic and literary heritage, staging plays, writing novels, and organising fashion shows against all odds. But let’s be honest, the culture narrative is more complicated than that.

Speaking at the Shanaakht Festival in Karachi, poet Fehmida Riaz declared that there is no place for poetry in Pakistan. She pointed out that most Pakistanis are illiterate and so have no use for poetry. She also highlighted the disrespect that this nation has long harboured for its intellectuals, angrily reminding the crowd how governments, both martial and democratic, have imprisoned leading writers and poets over the decades. She dismissed writing in English as a case of ‘converting the converted.’ Her complaint was not against the Taliban, but against the public at large for failing to engage with literature.

Last week, however, speakers at the Second International Urdu Conference in Karachi conveyed a different message, arguing that literature is an antidote to terrorism. Writer Intizar Hussain stressed that these difficult times demand a celebration of our literary heritage while Professor Sahar Ansari claimed that the only way to tell the world that we are a cultured people is through literature.

Such contradictions also plague Pakistani music. Many have bemoaned the Taliban’s efforts to purge the Frontier province of music and dancing. Outrage was expressed when the music department at Punjab University was forced to relocate off-campus after receiving threats from an Islamic student organisation. These days, many secular-minded Pakistanis are speaking out against rock and pop acts for failing to criticise the Taliban through their music; their disappointment implies a belief that music effects social change. But this September, a different take on the plight of Pakistani music emerged. Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University closed down its music department, blaming a ‘public lack of interest.’ The college’s principal claimed that the number of enrolled students had dropped from 30 to two, making it unfeasible to keep the department going.

Riaz’s pessimism and the varsity example quoted above indicate that the significant disagreement about cultural matters is not only between extremists and moderates. Rather, it is between those who believe that art can play a redeeming role in society, and those who just don’t care. Reframing the culture war this way raises the question of whether there is any meaningful connection between artistic practice and the shape of civil society. In other words, does art (including literature and music) matter at time when suicide bombings are routine, corruption has been institutionalised, sugar is a luxury and IDPs hanker for the basics of food, water and shelter?

These column inches are too few to resolve the centuries-old debate about the social role of art. Emphasising that art encourages social introspection and serves as a historical record may seem irrelevant in the moment. But as terror sweeps the country, there are some attributes of art that Pakistanis should celebrate, and support.

At the most basic level, flourishing art is an indication of normalcy. Those who dismiss cultural activity as a luxury are not entirely wrong. The practice of this luxury indicates that there is still some modicum of functionality in a society. That’s why the cancellation of theatre festivals and concerts provokes despair — it is a litmus test for how dire our circumstances really are. As long as there is art, there is hope that all is not lost.

Art also offers alternatives; it is the medium through which communities imagine other ways of being, re-prioritise social conventions and consider the pros and cons of value systems in conflict. Artists — like competent opposition politicians and minority representatives — are in a position to propose counter-narratives to the dominant perspective.

It is through prose and poetry that individuals such as Voltaire, Jonathan Swift and Muhammad Iqbal articulated what they believed could be a better alternative to their respective contemporary circumstances. They envisioned, and others acted to implement those visions, thereby determining the course of history. No doubt, it is art’s ability to be avant-garde and explore potentialities that makes it the first victim of authoritarianism and extremism.

At present, Pakistan is in urgent need of visionaries who can articulate the country’s predicament and its future possibilities. This is an insecure nation, unsure of its trajectory or place in the world. We do not like our present circumstances or the way that others treat us (hence all that squabbling about national sovereignty). Yet we have been unable to articulate who we are and what we want. We desperately claw for respect — by clinging to our nukes, rejecting the Kerry-Lugar act, negotiating with gun-to-head — but cannot demand it until the world knows what motivates us and what we aspire to.

Media theorist Manuel Castells once wrote, ‘Art has always been a tool to build bridges between people…. Art has always been a communication protocol to restore the unity of human experience beyond oppression, difference, and conflict.’ Through art, we can communicate the desires of Pakistanis — within this country as well as to the world.

Ultimately, only art can humanise us. Through words, images and sounds, the global community creates a repertoire of tangible opinions about and emotions towards an unfamiliar place and its people. It is on the basis of those impressions that people can act politically.

In the absence of a robust artistic culture, we have no control over our national voice and image. We exist as others see us, not as we see ourselves. As a result, our fate is not in our hands. And until we wholeheartedly embrace art, it will never be. n

huma.yusuf@gmail.com