The Real Ideology of the Pakistani Male

Dr. Tariq Rahman

The author is a historian of language policy in South Asia

Pakistan has often been described as a strange mixture of the medieval and the post-modern.The resulting reality can often be surrealistic. For instance, how do you describe a middle-aged couple (the Solangis) who are in fear of their lives simply because they want to live an normal married life? It is simply surrealistic. But it is not so incomprehensible if you understand that the real, primordial ideology of this area is male domination. Islam came later and it was selectively adapted to serve the ideology of male domination and, of course, domination over the working classes. This assertion becomes clear if one reads Nusrat Javeed’s story given in The News (21 July 2004) about the debate in the parliament about the Hudood Ordinance and honour killing. Although nobody could justify ‘honour killing’ as an Islamic practice many did justify in the name of honour. This surprised many decent human beings because such views are not expressed so openly, so triumphantly and so unrepentantly in public. But sometimes the defenders of male domination get so exasperated that they lash out against those who would limit their prerogatives.

The unwritten laws about honour come from the age of the colonization of the land, the animals and women by men. In time the most dominant males also came to exploit others thus getting soldiers and serfs. The domination over human beings was justified by the myth of ‘eating one’s salt’, fidelity and ‘blue blood’. The peasant and the soldier allowed themselves to be exploited by those whom they considered superior to themselves and remained faithful to their exploiters since they had ‘eaten their salt’. The women were subdued by appeals to virtue. Although Islam made similar requirements for both sexes as far as sexual conduct was concerned, the ideology of male domination made such amendments as were necessary to keep the women captives of their male kinsmen. The men too were trained to keep the women under lock and key. The myth of the frailty of women was propagated through oral and written literature.

In my book, Language, Ideology and Power (2002) I looked at the canonical texts of Persian taught to the youth in Mughal and early-British India. One major theme is that the man is befooled by scheming women who find ways of fornicating with their lovers despite all odds. Stories in the Bahar-i-Danish, Alf Laila and Tota Kahani etc revolve around this grand theme. The point driven home is that womens’ sexuality is so powerful, so uncontrollable and so undirected as to require the discipline of a vigilant man and, even more importantly, social conditions which make it impossible for them to meet other men. This myth did not die with the change in curricula. It became part of jokes, songs and idle talk. It permeated the sub-conscious of Pakistani men and is also part of the world view of many women. If this distrust of women is added to the desire of conquering other mens’ women, the ultimate dream of the conquering macho man, we get the notion of ‘family honour’. It is this lethal combination which is now exploding in our faces.

Modernity posed a challenge to this old ideology of male domination. Ironically enough the men had to prostitute themselves to the demands of modern life. They had to go out to make a living under British rule which meant learning English and wearing Western clothes. So, to compensate for this desecration, they made women become the symbols of Oreintal femininity. Women had to stay at home preferably not reading at all but if there was t be any reading then it was to be that of the Bahishti Zevar. The ideal was being as pious and boring as Deputy Nazeer Ahmad’s Asghari while the men brought home the cash. But modernity pressed on and some of the men, including the Quaid-i-Azam and Liaquat Ali Khan, joined the modernists and actually brought their women out of seclusion. Male domination got a beating and it seemed by the nineteen sixties that women would really get empowered.

But then came history’s gift to the old ideology of male domination. This was General Zia ul Haq and he needed something to legitimize his rule. He found it in Islamization and the Hudood Ordinance of 1979 was his contribution to the reassertion of male dominance. Here was a law which appealed to the religious lobby and the credulous masses because it was couched in the idiom of Islam. However, it really made women even more insecure than before and could be misused to suppress them more easily than any existing law on sexual conduct. So, in one stroke, Zia ul Haq had a law of very wide appeal—ostensibly appealing to religious sentiment but in reality appealing to the macho faith of our men.

The law replaced the section of the Pakistan Penal Code on fornication dating from 1898. Adultery was punishable upon the complaint of the husband (or somebody on his behalf) of the adulteress. Her male partner in adultery could be punished but the woman was protected. While our tribal and feudal society did hunt women on charges of adultery just as it does today, the law actually protected them. This protection was withdrawn. What is even worse is that the protection given by Islam was also withdrawn in an ironical reversal of the application of the law. Islam allows maximum (hadd) punishment only if there are four male witnesses of the act of penetration. Since this condition is impossible to be fulfilled adultery is not punished by the maximum punishment. What happened under Zia ul Haq was that the woman’s pregnancy or delivery of a baby was considered proof of sexual intercourse and she could be given the maximum punishment for adultery. This could mean, in a Kafaesque reversal, that raped women could be punished while rapists went scot free. Moreover, as the evidence of women was not admissible, a rapist could rape a girl in a girls’ hostel and still not get the maximum punishment while the girl could if she became pregnant.

This is not the ‘theatre of the absurd’ but reality. A blind girl, Safia Bibi, was raped by her landlord and his son and delivered a baby. It was she who was convicted while the rapists escaped for lack of evidence. Though Safia’s conviction was reversed later the trauma must have wrecked her mentally for ever. In any case the point is that the law is such that it permits grave miscarriage of justice. Some people argue that all laws can be misused. That might be true but some laws are misused more than others. In the case of these laws the victims are poor, powerless women. Men blame their ex-wives since village women do not know that divorces have to be registered and when they marry again they can be accused of fornication. Sometimes the laws are used to remove a woman to take away her property and sometimes it is merely a desire to torture a woman. Above all, a good law either demonstrably deters would-be offenders or makes the society safer. In this case none of these objectives have been fulfilled as the brothels are as full as ever and the rapes seem to have increased. It just seems that what has been achieved is making some poor womens’ lives hell. This being so, is it too reasonable to ask for its repeal even if such a demand is resented so much by those who still follow the ideology of male domination? Or those, who possibly because of a misunderstanding, think they are guardians of Islam?

The voices for the repeal come from the liberal lobby both among the parliamentarians and among the intellectuals. But why? Why are the others quiet? Is it because people do not really bother about something if it does not touch them directly and personally? Or is it that the law is couched in the idiom of religion so that people think they would be doing something un-Islamic if they ask for its repeal? Or is it because these laws were introduced by Zia ul Haq and his legacy is being reversed by general Musharraf so people think these laws too are being reversed at American behest? Or, is it because people do support male domination, the real ideology of Pakistan, and are secretly glad that Zia ul Haq left behind a tool which helps to keep women down? I do not know what is true and to what extent. But to all except the supporters of male domination, I have one question: “Suppose somebody very dear to you gets raped and has a child, which law would you prefer: the one which punishes the rapist or the one which punishes her? And what punishment would you want for her? Being stoned to death or just prison? Your answer will indicate not only your attitude to the repeal of the Hudood Ordinance and the code of ‘honour killing’—your answer, our answers as a nation, will be an indicator of our humanity.

Dr. TARIQ RAHMAN