KARACHI, April 6: What do we understand by culture? Does culture matter? And is culture at odds with modernity?
These were some of the few questions that were discussed by Fakir Syed Aijazuddin, keynote speaker, at the Dr Nabi Bakhsh Khan Baloch memorial lecture on Saturday evening at the National Museum of Karachi.
Dr Baloch was a path-breaking scholar who devoted his life to Sindh studies publishing over 50 books and research papers in five languages. The talk was held to honour the memory of Dr Baloch on his second death anniversary in collaboration with the Endowment Fund Trust, Pakistan Academy of Letters and Department of Culture, Government of Sindh.
Speaking to an audience comprising scholars, officials and other distinguished persons, Mr Aijazuddin said the earliest definitions of culture pertained to improvement and later on social scientists described it as an integrated system of characteristics of society which is not the result of genetic inheritance. He added that ancestors leave an impact and in our part of the world it is particularly true because of the influence of Greeks, Afghans, Mughals, British and even the Pakistan Army. “One cannot also ignore the benign influence of Sufi tradition,” he said.
Mr Aijazuddin also raised other thought-provoking cultural issues such as whether culture is affected by geography and if politics has any bearing on it. “We are what we are because of our cultural identity, otherwise we have no identity,” he said.
“To which culture do we belong and are we to be relegated as a static culture,” questioned the speaker. He bolstered his point with the aid of the seminal book Culture Matters: How Values Shape Progress, edited by Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington that examined the differences between progressive and static cultures. Progressive cultures emphasise the future, static cultures extol the past. Frugality is the mother of financial security in progressive cultures whereas it is a threat to static cultures. Education is the key to progress in progressive cultures, of marginal importance except for the elites in static cultures.Merit is central to advancement in the progressive culture; connections and family are what count in the static culture. Code of ethics tends to be more rigorous in the progressive culture. Authority tends toward dispersion and horizontality in progressive cultures, which encourage dissent while authority in static culture leans toward concentration and verticality in static cultures, which encourage orthodoxy. The influence of religious institutions on civic life is small in the progressive culture; their influence in static cultures is often substantial.
Referring to Dr Baloch’s enduring contribution, especially in the area of education, Mr Aijazuddin pointed out that there is a wide gap between what is taught to the younger generation and what they want to actually learn. More importantly he said that we are a nation that happens to have five provinces with overlapping cultures and with a shared history that began at the dawn of civilization.