Pakistan’s policymakers have embarked on a yet another mission to form a cultural policy for the country, which indeed is a worthy attempt in its own right. However, governments have generally preferred to work without a declared cultural policy, while they issue cultural dictates in the course of governance. Even the draconian decade of Zia’s obscurantism was without an official cultural policy. However, culture cannot be controlled through censorship or hyped up through corporate media. The radical policies and measures initiated by the Musharraf regime to liberalise public culture could not grow beyond the select projects for creation of a ‘soft image’ through the mass appeal of electronic and print media.
Given all that, it is crucially important to review national and international best practices which can guide the growth and development of Pakistani culture. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) is a leading but lone voice, which has consistently articulated the role of culture in promotion of peace, social cohesion, cultural diversity and education for sustainable development in Pakistan as well as worldwide. However, the cultural sector in Pakistan is regulated, as almost, completely oblivious of the conventions and guidelines of the UNESCO.
Pakistan has one of the world's richest heritages in terms of tangible artefacts
The social role of Pakistani Tangible Cultural Heritage (TCH) and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is constructed in terms of its potential for consumption by national and international audience and not in terms of a regeneration of cultural heritage that allows society to inherit its cultural past. The consumptive role assigned to culture has led to its relegation to the lower orders of the ministerial portfolios of governments in Pakistan. It also forms the lowest priority area of intervention for the diplomatic and the donor community in the country.
Moreover, the TCH and ICH is perceived in political and aesthetic terms with reference to its role in national identity formation and international branding. It is achieved, for instance, through investments in heritage conservation of select sites in Pakistan. Culture is also perceived by international donor community in terms of financial prospects and market linkages of creative industries such as musical performances, film or other popular media. The celebration of popular music within the culture industry as the preferred form of cultural expression, to be marketed worldwide at the expense of classical, literary and visual art forms - such as poetry, painting and sculpture - has been fashionably adopted by leading members of the international donor community in Pakistan.
Even the draconian decade of Zia's obscurantism lacked an official cultural policy
Judging from the recurring patterns of national and international investments in the cultural sector of Pakistan, it is clear that the funding is rarely drawn towards the architecture beyond monumental objects such as forts, palaces and shrines. The conservation of havelis or historic houses in sprawling urban centers or in the countryside is never a priority. Likewise, in the field of ICH, the domains of indigenous knowledge and local wisdom that enable a society to creatively pursue its intellectual traditions, worldview and values expressed through oral, performative and manuscript based knowledge are never recognised or integrated into learning and education through curriculum or mass media. Similarly, a variety of local social practices and customs, such as chopal or chaunk in Punjab (a common room for the members of a village community, which enabled the members of a society to interact on terms of relative equality) are never promoted in cities via urban planning, despite being a potent custom that can promote peace, social cohesion and tolerance of diverse views at the grass-root levels. The multi-lingual oral traditions and cultural expressions of Pakistan society are rarely, if at all, recorded or transmitted through mass media. Even if the oral traditions may not live up to the higher standards of literary canon or possess great aesthetic value, still they need to respected as they constitute the primary vehicles of the cultural memory of diverse groups in Pakistani society.
In conclusion, it appears that the investment in the cultural sector is not sufficient to nurture the diverse shades of Pakistani indigenous culture. Instead, it seems our cultural policy is aimed only at facilitating the assimilation of certain parts of heritage in the global cultural economy. Small wonder that ‘fusion’ is the new buzzword in Pakistani cultural industry, whereas an arbitrary synchronisation of de-contextualised musical scores from diverse cultures is celebrated as the successful outcome of cultural synthesis, promoting ‘peace and tolerance’.
It must be remembered that in the age of globalisation of cultures, the survival of a distinct cultural identity of Pakistan is at stake. The disproportionate cultural influence of Pakistan’s archrival India on Pakistani public culture points to the sources of soft power that India exercises over Pakistan. Unless policy makers attend to the risks of homogenisation of cultures, the cultural knowledge of the past - which is neither integrated through school or college education nor promoted through planned interventions by the state or NGOs - will be completely eroded. There is already a colossal loss of cultural memory and ethnic identities with each succeeding generation, with a consequent rise in religious obscurantism. We tend to know more and more about distant cultures in the world than our immediate cultural neighborhood. The cultural gaps in collective memory, perpetuated through higher education, have produced a cultural amnesia where even educated architects could only express their appreciation for historic buildings as beautiful objects, but without knowledge of the building construction methods, materials or techniques for conservation.
Pakistan truly lays a solid claim to a vast TCH spread over more than 5,000 years - sites, artifacts, customs and practices of diverse religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, and several syncretic religions and many spiritual orders. With a world of knowledge literally buried in the ground under our very feet, we have blinded ourselves to our deep cultural past. The sheer scale of Pakistan’s TCH and ICH obliges us to encourage conservation architecture in higher education as well as employ urgent steps to document the diverse voices of our living cultural past that still echo today. Pakistan’s ICH is at great risk of being lost forever and more radical steps are needed to secure it. Given Pakistan’s under-developed intellectual property regimes, its natural heritage such as botanical and herbal knowledge lies unattended and unguarded for exploitation by predatory capital.
One of the fundamental steps to be taken towards the conservation of TCH of Pakistan is a thorough review of legislation to identify the fault-lines as well as designate areas of interventions. Urgent steps are needed to reform the legislation and control of historic urban or rural properties, owned privately or by the Evacuee Trust Board or the Auqaf Department. The jurisdiction of TCH in the provincial governments after the 18th constitutional amendment needs to be addressed, so as to bring the fruits of administrative de-centralisation to the grass roots.
Pakistan’s cultural managers can draw on the resources generated by UNESCO, through decades of international experience gathered by the best of minds, rather than trying to reinvent the whole wheel of cultural policy again. What the country needs are specific steps and concrete interventions - taken across the board - and not grand narratives and master plans for social engineering.
Nadeem Omar Tarar is Director at theNational College of Arts, Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi and Vice President at the Council of Social Sciences, Islamabad
