In a November 2001 essay, the American political scientist Marc Howard Ross wrote that, “(political) narratives are explanations for events in the form of short accounts that often seem simple.” But he added that the imagery they contain and the judgements that they make have an emotional impact. They are especially relevant in times of high uncertainty and high stress. 

According to the Israeli political scientist Shaul R. Shenhav, political players create narratives that presume to be representative of a contemporary reality, but these should be seen as a means of persuasion, because the purpose of political narratives is not to provide a mirror image of reality as such. 

Before a political narrative is rolled out by a politician, it is often shaped by the intelligentsia. For example, in the 1970s, when the US economy began to slide and the country’s status as a ‘world power’ started to erode (because of the defeat of US forces in Vietnam), a group of liberal thinkers became alarmed.

These American intellectuals were all associated with or were supporters of the Democratic Party. However, during the economic and social upheaval in the US in the late 1960s and 1970s, they had put the blame of the crisis on the ‘overtly liberal’ policies of the Democratic Party which, they claimed, had become ‘soft’ towards communism and social deviance. They had also lambasted the social welfare programmes that were introduced in the US in the 1930s. 

Political narratives are usually the result of politicians wishing to push a certain agenda shaped by the intelligentsia rather than a true reflection of the issues around them

The narrative of these intellectuals was further used by right-wing politicians such as the Republican Party’s Ronald Reagan. He singled out the loss of family values, the erosion of America’s entrepreneurial spirit and the entrenchment of a defeatist mindset in dealing with the Soviet Union as the reasons responsible for America’s downward slide.

This narrative not only helped Reagan get elected but it also became a justification to become more aggressive towards the Soviet Union, and sideline the welfarist economic initiatives and other socially liberal policies that had dominated US politics between the late 1930s and late 1970s.

In Pakistan, five major narratives have been applied in this manner. All of them were initially the products of intellectuals. Of course, like almost all political narratives in this regard, these too weren’t necessarily mirroring reality.

One: during the 1946 election in the Punjab (a year before Pakistan’s creation), the future founding party of the country, the Muslim League, began to claim that Islam was ‘in danger’ in India. Here’s the thing: firstly, the League’s main opponent, the Indian National Congress (INC), was not only secular but it was also being supported by one of India’s largest Muslim clerical parties, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind (JUH).

Secondly, the League itself was a (quasi)-secular and modernist Muslim nationalist outfit. But it adopted the ‘Islam is in danger’ narrative only to rouse the emotions of Muslims residing in Punjab’s rural areas. Thirdly, this narrative was hijacked by the League from its original author: the Islamist ideologue Abul Ala Maududi, who, ironically, was a staunch critic of the League. 

In 1937, Maududi had written a series of essays in which he had claimed that the INC governments in various provinces of British India were forcing Muslim students in schools to study Hinduism and recite Hindu religious texts. Maududi had warned that the INC was working on a plan to wipe out Islam from India.

In 1946, this narrative, which was an entirely exaggerated observation of the Muslim condition in India, was adopted by the League during the elections in Punjab. Decades later, the onslaught against Indian Muslims did come — not from the INC, but from the anti-INC Hindu nationalists. 

Two: in the late 1960s, the Pakistani economist and intellectual Mehboobul Haq claimed 22 industrial families controlled a majority of industrial, banking and insurance sectors in the country. This narrative was quickly picked up by politicians who were opposing the Ayub Khan regime. They insisted that this ‘monopoly’ was the cause behind rising poverty and injustice in the country.

The narrative received widespread approval, and a powerful ‘leftist’ movement forced Ayub to resign. However, years later, Haq wrote: “The slogan of the 22 families was taken too literally. The 22 families were not the cause, but a mere symptom of the system that created them.” 

Three: interestingly, in late 1976, the ‘Islam is in danger’ narrative returned. An alliance of mostly right-wing parties opposed to the ZA Bhutto regime revived it to mean that the government was planning to overturn the ‘Islamic’ character of the 1973 Constitution, so that Bhutto could become a dictator.

This narrative was built up in newspapers supporting the Islamist parties. It then poured out during the 1977 anti-Bhutto protests. The protesters claimed they were involved in a ‘jihad’ to oust a ‘drunk’ tyrant. When the regime was overthrown in a coup, this narrative was conveniently adopted by the new military regime.

Four: in the 1990s, when ethnic violence was peaking in Sindh, a large segment of the intelligentsia began to posit that ‘it was a crisis of the state.’ During a survey of op-ed pages of the country’s leading English newspapers from 1993 till 1997, I found this statement repeated over and over again in articles by economists and political scientists.

According to the narrative, the state’s traditional mechanisms of power and control were being threatened and weakened. One 1996 article even suggested that, to resolve the ‘crisis’, the country was in need of a military take-over. Three years later, this is exactly what happened when Gen Pervez Musharraf launched Pakistan’s fourth military coup. 

Five: today in Pakistan, economists and political commentators are speaking of ‘elite capture’. Articles and tweets often mention this term. According to the philosopher and author Olúfémi O. Táíwò, the idea of elite capture has been around for decades and typically describes how the most advantaged people in a group take control of benefits that are meant for everybody. But in his book on the subject, Táíwò laments that the idea has been trivialised. Those using it the most, too, are from the elite. 

These can be populists like Trump and Imran Khan raging against the elite, or the black mayor of Washington DC getting the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ painted on a street days after her police force had brutalised protesters. It seems, ‘elite capture’ as an idea has been captured by the elites.

They have been using it in a most rhetorical manner. It has become what most ideas usually become in a decaying postmodernist milieu. That is, to paraphrase Táíwò, ‘faddish calls’ which abound in academic and activist circles and which then bleed out into the corporate world.

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 30th, 2023