Aliya Anjum
In Pakistan, lying is a way of life, yet the nation desires an honest leader. Each Pakistani seeks for himself or herself what he or she denies others.
Religious innovations, or bidaat, over the centuries have infantilized and objectified women. Herein lies the root of all evil. The absolute denial of agency and public space to women turns them into prisoners under house arrest.
A lone woman cannot even go to the marketplace to buy groceries and return home in peace. She experiences harassment and disrespect. For more important matters, she simply cannot function without a male guardian. A woman cannot deal with any official matter on her own, no matter how dire the situation.
Such a state of existence makes women insecure and toxic. The relationship of women with men is consequently transactional and, hence, very manipulative. Women view a man as a resource. Women’s sole source of power and agency is their fathers, husbands, and children. Children are their most precious resource, because mothers exercise lifelong control over them, using religion to their worldly advantage.
A woman’s worth in our society is defined by her support network of women and her resource network of men. Women have to manage a very delicate balance of appeasement to ensure that they continue to hold value in society. Successful relational aggression by an envious female rival can ruin a woman’s life. Women treat their relations with all other women as a zero-sum game. There is jealousy, resentment, and relational aggression toward all other females.
Women, therefore, cannot be fair and just to other women. This attitude carries over even to their professional lives if they choose to pursue a career. From the day the children are born, mothers use them as tools to monopolize and control their main resource, their husbands. The main contender is the man’s mother, who shares this male resource with the wife. Wives then develop an unhealthy and excessive attachment to their children to establish their power base.
Mothers raise children according to their interests. They do not focus on raising good citizens or humans. Mothers use deft psychological manipulation, where lying is required.
This instills entitlement, ingratitude, and dishonesty in children all at once. Ethics, which are part of a person’s upbringing, are therefore never taught. People thus grow up without any understanding of the notion of fairness.
Children are encouraged to be willful and defiant. Mothers see this as teaching self-confidence and assertiveness. This is why it is not uncommon to hear of a house guest’s children acting unruly and destructive. Not only does this negatively affect familial and communal relations, but also teaches poor behaviour in terms of the use of public space. This is why the driving habits of the nation are very poor, and people do not even give way to ambulances. This is also why people waste food at weddings and destroy or damage public property at parks, railway stations, roads, bridges and airports etc.
Most Pakistani mothers proudly take this path, thinking it is a great way to protect their interests and teach their children the ways of the world early on. What these mothers view as ways of the world are directives from Satan’s manual.
The mother’s convoluted thought pattern and constant drama instil a severe inferiority complex in the child she is raising. Truthfulness and ethical conduct instil dignity and self-esteem. Lies and deceit make a child inwardly think that he/she is a fraud. Such children, hence struggle with low self-esteem and lie to themselves to cope with the ongoing moral crisis brewing in their psyche. It is said that rudeness is the weak person’s imitation of strength. Children raised this way are hence very often very rude. Mothers derive joy from their child’s rude behaviour, seeing it as fearlessness. This continues into adulthood, and we can thus see rude speech around us everywhere. Hardly anyone practices civility when speaking to others. Television shows are the best example of this.
A person raised this way preserves self-interest at all costs. He demands himself what he denies others-out of entitlement, selfishness, ingratitude and callous disregard for others instilled since birth. Such a poor upbringing teaches no understanding of moral obligation, civility, or ethical conduct. It only leads to people faking a noble and moral persona in public.
Convoluted patterns of thinking dull the mind. Such an existence makes one proud and lazy, and the person employs dishonesty and verbal abuse to hide these flaws. They thrive in situations involving drama but are stupid and weak when it comes to problem-solving and leadership. This can be witnessed nationwide, where a majority is adept at deceit and short-term fixes. However, when a crisis hits, then even highly educated professionals cannot respond appropriately to challenges. Building and maintaining effective systems are beyond our ability because the nation is not honest, fair and hard-working.
This is the only way a majority knows how to live – bearded or not, hijabi or not.
This is our nation, from the bearded, cap-wearing religious man and the burqa-clad Niqabi to the seemingly sophisticated dressed in local designer clothing or western wear.
This is the spring from which flows the dishonest trader, the corrupt government official, the unscrupulous professional, the violent rioter and last but certainly not least the suicide bomber.
It all starts with the mother.
Napoleon Bonaparte famously said, “Give me a good mother and I will give you a good nation.”
