I belong to a technology for whom Jameel Jalibi was not merely a scholar however an establishment
Not too long ago, I used to be invited to talk at a programme on Dr Jameel Jalibi’s landmark work, Pakistani Tradition: The Query of Nationwide Tradition. Revisiting the e book jogged my memory that some books belong to their time, whereas others proceed to interrogate each technology that follows. Jalibi’s work, first revealed in 1964, is firmly within the latter class. Greater than sixty years later, it nonetheless asks Pakistan a few of its most uncomfortable questions.
I belong to a technology for whom Jameel Jalibi was not merely a scholar however an establishment. As a scholar getting into the College of Karachi within the mid-Eighties, his title carried an mental gravitas that impressed awe. My very own profession took me into physics fairly than literature, but rereading his work after almost 4 a long time of educating and analysis, I realised that whereas the e book had remained unchanged, the reader had not.
One in every of Jalibi’s best contributions was his insistence that tradition is way over folklore. We frequently scale back tradition to music, meals festivals, handicrafts, conventional costume or regional customs. Jalibi argued as a substitute that tradition is a nation’s ethical vocabulary. It encompasses language, schooling, literature, ethics, establishments, historic reminiscence, and the values that form collective behaviour. A society’s tradition is mirrored not solely in what it celebrates but additionally in the way it governs, educates, resolves disputes and treats its residents.
His central query was equally profound: can a nation really exist with out a shared civic tradition?
Pakistan has by no means lacked cultural variety. Our regional languages, traditions and histories are amongst our best strengths. The problem, Jalibi argued, was by no means variety itself however the capacity to construct a typical nationwide consciousness that respects variety whereas nurturing shared values. That problem stays unresolved. Political polarisation, ethnic divisions and more and more fragmented public discourse usually make us seem extra snug defending our variations than strengthening our widespread floor.
The e book additionally affords an essential lesson for universities. Nationwide identification can’t be manufactured via slogans or official campaigns. It develops via schooling that encourages curiosity fairly than conformity, important considering fairly than memorisation, and dialogue fairly than dogma. As a college instructor, I’ve lengthy believed that schooling ought to produce residents able to asking considerate questions, not merely college students able to reproducing prescribed solutions. In that sense, Jalibi’s imaginative and prescient of tradition begins within the classroom.
Maybe essentially the most hanging perception for me, nevertheless, got here from studying the e book as a physicist. Science has taught humanity learn how to harness extraordinary energy. Synthetic intelligence, biotechnology and nuclear science are reworking civilisation. But science alone can not decide how that energy needs to be used. Expertise offers functionality; tradition offers path. A society could change into technologically superior whereas remaining ethically impoverished. Jalibi understood that materials progress with out mental freedom and ethical duty can not produce a wholesome civilisation.
Naturally, some facets of his evaluation mirror the realities of the Nineteen Sixties. Right this moment’s Pakistan faces challenges that Jalibi might scarcely have imagined: social media, synthetic intelligence, digital echo chambers and a globalised data financial system. If the e book had been rewritten at present, it might undoubtedly embody these developments. But its central argument would stay unchanged.
It could additionally ask whether or not our establishments are cultivating belief, equity and shared function, or merely managing divisions with out addressing the deeper fractures beneath them.
Pakistan’s best problem will not be financial or technological. It’s civilisational. Nations are sustained not solely by constitutions, infrastructure or financial indicators however by shared values, reliable establishments and an informed citizenry able to considering past rapid divisions.
Greater than six a long time after its publication, Pakistani Tradition: The Query of Nationwide Tradition stays remarkably related. It isn’t merely a e book about tradition. It’s an invite to mirror on what it really means to change into a nation.
