Nostalgia was once seen as a medical condition — the pain felt by those who could not return to their homeland. Today, it reflects a longing for a past life seen as better than the present.

Edoardo Campanella and Marta Dassù suggest Europe and America are in the grip of an Age of Nostalgia. Most of their citizens believe life was better and more manageable 50 years ago. This is evidenced by Brexit, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, and the growth of far-right parties in Europe, unable to accept the social change generated by immigration.

There is nostalgia for a lost Empire, of being the foremost economic power and having undisputed global hegemony. Nostalgia, the authors say, is a coping strategy, especially for an ageing population, for dealing with “deep uncertainty and radical discontinuity”, since it restores self-confidence by recalling the more familiar past.

Nostalgia has a different role in countries that were once colonised or torn by war. Here, it is a natural process, after countries gained their independence or lost their homelands to war, to think back on their world before it was so dramatically interrupted. Much art and literature of postcolonial periods and war-wounded communities is an investigation or expression of “cultural memory”.

However, nostalgia can easily slip into living on past glories. In response to the global narrative that reduces Islam to a single story of violence, Islamic scholars have tried to retrieve and disseminate its legacy of science, philosophy, medical breakthroughs, architectural wonders and inventions that have benefitted the world. Will it generate a revitalising of learning, or will rich Muslim countries continue to build more shopping malls and seven-star hotels?

Author Margrit Pernau-Reifeld suggests that the disruption of power structures, such as when the British established colonial rule in India, left the princely states locked in the past. Where once maharajahs and nawabs provided warriors, they became dependents of rulers who merely wanted them to use their position to legitimise British rule, in return for retaining their courtly lifestyle. It did, however, enable the continuity of a lived culture into modern times.

Not all remained locked in past glory. In his many writings, Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan investigated the past with a view to guide Muslims to take their place in the modernising world. The Indian Khilafat Movement was not a case of reviving a golden past, but was seen as essential for holding the Muslim world together, politically and spiritually, given that most Muslim countries were under European mandates.

While Shehr-e-Ashob poets lamented the loss of the glorious past, Allama Iqbal encouraged his readers to imagine a future that carried religious and cultural values into modern times.

William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” There is, however, a difference between being aware of the past and living in the past. There is a space for reflective nostalgia that looks at the past in order to understand and learn from it. Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

However, all too often, nostalgia is accompanied by amnesia — a selective idealised memory that ignores the more difficult truths of the past. Although there are exceptions, Hollywood movies that glorify the ‘Wild West’ overlook the genocide of Native Americans and, similarly, European history ignores the ugly side of colonialism. The Pakistani nation ignores its pre-Muslim history. Modi’s India is promoting ancient and mediaeval Indian achievements, but is consciously erasing later contributions by Muslims and the British administration.

Pakistani social media abounds with images lamenting the loss of the simple life led a few decades ago, remembering Pakistanis were once a people of integrity and noble ambition. Overwhelmed by the environment of pessimism, most Pakistanis feel unable to retrieve those values for today. Allama Iqbal wrote:

Aayien-e-nau se darna, tarz-e-kuhan pe arrna
Manzil yahi kathan hai qaumon ki zindagi mein

[To be afraid of the new ways, to insist on the old ones
This is the only difficult stage in the life of nations]

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.

She may be reached at durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 26th, 2021