When the jackal is in trouble

“Jab geedar ki shamat atee hai to wo shehr ki taraf bhagta hai”

The literal meaning of this famous Urdu proverb means that a jackal always runs towards the city when some trouble befalls upon it. I see a lot of ‘jackals’ today and the ‘cities’ they run towards when someone steps on their tails. One of them I really want to point out is our religious leadership, and its only hope and ‘weapon’ (or the city it run towards), no prizes for guessing, is Islam.

Let me set it straight that this is not an anti-Islamic article but a reflection on the way many factors, including Islam, are used for exploitation by the many who ‘hijack’ these notions for their own interests. These factors extend to every denominator we can think of today with culture, ethnicity, gender, religion, clans (biraderies), and class structure being some of the critical ones.

I would try to contain this huge topic by narrowing down our focus upon the religious leaders for the moment. Yesterday I read about a Deobandi leader’s address to some religious groups, a piece on which can be found here http://epaper.dawn.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=14_07_2010_003_001

What the ‘Maulana’ said in the meeting was more of a ‘warning’ to the government to stop the evil plot of the leadership of ‘Sunni Itehad Council’ or be prepared to face the next elections on a sectarian basis. The council, even if (in my opinion) created to keep appearances and exhibit some sort of sectarian harmony, is a half decent measure to at least condemn religious extremism in an institutionalized form. But the ‘Maulana’ was somehow content on issues more important to him, like the council leader’s agenda of increasing disparity between Deobandis and Barelvis.

The ‘Maulana Saab’ (not surprisingly) was an ex-member of the banned outfit ‘Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’ and most certainly exercises a great amount of influence on his people. This is yet another classic example of religious hardliners creating issues of intolerance and hatred out of thin air. It is understood that apparently the council openly criticizes the Taliban agenda and Islamic militancy, which might have conflicted with the interests of the ‘Maulana’ and led him to believe that the council is fuelling the Deobandi-Barelvi feud. But what’s more important is his conviction in stating that elections would be held on a sectarian basis. This is blatant acknowledgment of the fact that the ’radical’ exercises a significant control over his people so as to channel their emotionally and religiously charged decisions (like that of voting) in any direction he wants.

The idea is scary as hell. When I see the masses or even the ‘educated’ class (pseudo-intellectuals, most of them) ‘indoctrinating’ Islam into most of their decisions, what they conveniently forget is the fact that that ‘Islam’ is a virtual reality created in their minds by our everyday ‘Mullah’, and not the Islam in its true essence. For that matter, they form a public opinion meant to uphold their ‘Islamic’ ideals while they themselves believe in something else. This phenomenon of contradictory beliefs is referred to as ‘cognitive dissonance’ in psychology and used in journalism as well. For example, the ban on facebook was welcomed by the same ‘confused’ class (which by the way constitutes a big majority of our population) as a very ‘Islamic’ step, but as soon as the ban was lifted, most of those people promptly started using it again. This shows they had no problem with the facebook for whatever they were doing or not doing about the blasphemous sketches but when it comes to expressing their opinion on the matter in public, it becomes a matter of life and death for their ‘Islamic’ conscience.

Another example of cognitive dissonance, rather a heavy one: If someone starts a movement to legalize consensual sex before marriage in Pakistan, he’ll face extreme opposition (‘fatwas’ to be killed, very likely) by almost everyone in our society and such a proposition would be labelled as ‘Un Islamic’, ‘shameful’, ‘disgusting’, or whatever that suits your creativity. The ones who would object heavily to such an issue would also include ‘sexual deviants’ whose needs are catered to by hundreds of thousands of prostitutes in Pakistan. This means what people do and what they want others to know about what they do, are two different things. Such a short term or situational ‘moral retreat’ of our people has developed a hypocritical fabric of our society and rendered it vulnerable to attacks in sensitive areas.

In the same way, religious leaders like that ‘Maulana’ make an agenda which benefits them the most and whenever any ‘shady’ working of the agenda is highlighted, they point towards the ‘obvious’: the Islamic cause. In other words, whenever someone steps on their tails, such people run towards Islam to use it as a shield against pragmatism, humane values, and all such factors unveiling their hideous faces. The most pitiful are the vulnerable masses of Pakistan, whom these radicals make feel miserable, as they’re not ‘proper’ Muslims, and just in order to feed the ‘Islamic’ conscience of such naïve people, the ‘Mullah’ gets most of his jobs done by them in the name of Allah. What most of them exhibit in their behaviour is the notion of ‘wilful suspension of disbelief’; the idea where they just surrender themselves to ‘authorities’ on issues of ‘divine’, or in most of the cases, any significance. The same principle, when equated in extreme cases, translates into actions as severe as suicide bombings and sectarian killings.

All that being said, like I said before, there are a lot of jackals and their respective cities in our system today apart from the religious elements. Such exploitative jackals have been feeding slowly on the flesh of Pakistanis for decades. Now it’s going a bit too far with the worth of a Pakistani life decreasing day by day. What’s imperative is the identification of such jackals and the cities they run to when someone paddles their backs. They’re all around us, in the form of politicians, bureaucrats, military officials, religious hardliners, and even teachers. Many such elements are quite deeply embedded in our society. Once the identification of such elements is complete, only then can their nefarious plans be overturned, but we have to start off at the right footing by taking drastic measures as rejecting them first.

Ethical Dillema of Academics

The article was first published on blogs.tribune.com.pk with a few changes made by the editorial staff. This one is the original version.

Amidst all the hue and cry of the severe problems we today face as a society, a lot of crucial matters have taken a back seat. The concerns of ‘lighter’ nature are almost completely ignored and on a cumulative scale, the implications of such indifference could be dire in the long run. The issue of morality has become a grey area for the whole system and most of the elements of our society whether they are politicians, military officials, bureaucrats, religious leaders or just a common man; don’t hesitate in making immoral decisions even if they are in clear black and white codes on the moral spectrum.

The recent commotion of parliamentarians having fake degrees is a horrendous scenario compromising every ethical standard in the academia field and its quite relieving to see many politicians taken to task for that. The idea behind this article is to highlight another area, towards which we’ve almost turned a blind eye; plagiarism. What intrigued me to write it is a book for sociology referred to CSS students in a local academy here in Multan. The book is ‘written’ by Mr. Javed Jiskani Baloch, commonly referred to as J.J. Baloch, who is the AIGP forensic division, Sindh Police. While I was preparing for my sociology exam, I mainly read ‘Sociology by Horton & Hunt’ (McGraw Hill Books Company) and consulted some other books for the Pakistani perspective on different topics (JJ Baloch being one of them). I remembered Horton & Hunt being taught to us in LUMS as well for Intro to Sociology and I must say it’s a very comprehensive book for introductory sociology and of course a ‘legitimate’ one.

The problem arose when I read ‘An Introduction to Sociology by JJ Baloch’ and was shocked to find whole sections or parts of sections from chapters of Horton & Hunt’s book literally copy pasted in the relevant chapters written by Mr Baloch. Now this does not mean that he had only duplicated H & H but had used his own, as the book reviews said, ‘lucid’ expression as well. Not much effort was required to discover that much of the work by Baloch was paraphrasing and at certain points blatant copy pasting. While doing so, he very conveniently ‘forgot’ to cite the work and today his book is out in the market credited to none other but himself.

I must admit here that I’ve been procrastinating upon writing for a long time and due to my lethargy it took me this much time after my CSS exams to write about this matter. Out of the same laziness, I was least bothered to open up both the books for references for plagiarism, so I randomly opened a page of JJ Baloch’s book to page no. 52 on social class, then I referred to the same topic in Horton & Hunt and found out the whole page 52 to be paraphrased or at some points just copy pasted from pages 347-349 of H & H. I didn’t bother any further as I remembered many such instances while I was preparing for the exam and I’m sure a lot of such ‘instances’ could be found where Mr Baloch and H & H share the exact same ideas in the exact same words. Now that’s what I call the ‘similarity of opinion’.

I didn’t want this article to be a bashing of the civil servant (Baloch) but somehow it did fall victim to the same idea. I don’t even know the guy; he might be a very competent police officer as I don’t know anything about his professional life but recognition for writing such a book is not what we want as a precedent against him; certainly Horton & Hunt would not have wanted that. He might have worked hard to consult different books and paraphrased them into simple words for better understanding of people coming from our education system, but that’s not ‘writing’.

I mean, am I wrong here to be upset upon such a happening? Because during my, and I’m sure everyone else’s, course of education, we’ve been taught to strictly condemn plagiarism with serious penalties for the offenders. HEC’s policies for plagiarism can be found here.

The penalties for students and researchers/teachers are quite severe but I wonder if the severity extends to other govt. officials as well. And obviously there are a lot of instances where such plagiarism is going on in Pakistan. It was a relief to find out that HEC is now working on the problem and even took action against a departmental head at International Islamic University, Islamabad who was found guilty of plagiarism with his group mates. A small piece on the issue was published here.

On a lighter note I would like to quote one of the book reviews of JJ baloch by Khadim Hussain Rind (ASP 24^th common):

“I have only one thing to tell the aspirants of CSS that is to read this book otherwise they will repent. I have put a cursory glance over it and hence not in the position to comment on its material. But I am fully convinced that Mr Javed’s book is full of zeal for studies, his spirit for guiding others and his endeavours to facilitate new comers in the field.”

I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle after reading a review of a person who admits that he hasn’t read the book completely and was somehow in a position to recommend it highly to students, probably because of his ‘perception’ of Mr Baloch’s personal aspirations. And the book was full of similar reviews, mostly by his CSS ‘comrades’ out on a ‘back-scratching spree’.

Like I said before, probably this is not the only instance of plagiarism in Pakistan, and I’m sure many people would have found this book useful as well but didn’t happen to have read other books at the same time and thus couldn’t find out about the whole story. But there’s another sad side to it, that such a book comes highly recommended by many CSS academies, which implies that for CSS exam, such a book is an effective tool.

Points of Reflection

This whole scenario gives us a lot of food for thought.

First and foremost is the inefficient education system of Pakistan which does not have effective anti-plagiarism tools. Even if educational institutions could somehow deal with it, other areas of academia fail to do so, like getting your own work published is quite simple, all you need is the money to pay the publisher and contacts with booksellers for the marketing of your work. Check for plagiarism is hardly the agenda in most of the cases (except for some renowned publishers) as most of them neither have the tools nor the motivation to do that. And for people who don’t give a bleep about ethics in such cases do not have a problem to begin with. That being said, another shortcoming of the system is the lack of moral training and for that matter, ethical dilemmas like plagiarism and cheating are not hard to be conquered. Apart from that, the pressing need to produce results in our system, regardless of respect for knowledge, makes the students and such writers to achieve the ends, with a complete disregard for the means.

The mention of the fact that a book like that by Baloch is recommended for CSS students if they want to ‘succeed’ in the exams, is reflective of the fact that CSS exam can be ‘cracked’ with certain formulas. The criteria for the exams is an absurdly large syllabus shoved into the faces of the candidates which never made any sense to me as civil servants are not even required to have studied so many subjects. The test for knowledge and truly competent people is not the top priority, as most of the people who pass the exams actually ‘cram’ piles of books down their throats with virtually no insight on issues of ‘real’ importance. The induction of such ‘mechanical’ people into the elite bureaucracy then translates itself into the inefficient system that runs our country. This practice is being carried out since the colonial times, and the state still calls for people who could actually facilitate the status quo by being ‘just another brick in the wall’.

The education system plays a major role in the personality development of people, and a system with all the aforementioned problems is bound to create people with low moral standards. For the same reason, on a cumulative level, these people make up a larger system which turns out to be inept as well, thus hardly producing people willing to deliver for the society. In order for us to even start progressing, we need to lay serious focus on moral issues in academia and set knowledge as a benchmark rather than superficial success and glory.