Acceptance, Belonging, Multiplicity>Pakistan?
If you’re keeping up with the news in Pakistan, you may notice concerning patterns:
These incidents highlight ongoing issues that call for urgent attention.
There is a collective need for change to break free from outdated colonial mindsets.
As intellectual leaders, we must assist our political and military ruling classes by addressing their fears, doubts, and traumas that drive them to appease colonial and external powers.
The state as we know it is stuck in a "fawn response" and "people-pleasing" because of the geopolitics of our identity globally.
We need to recognize one another—regardless of our political differences—and understand how we can support each other as we move forward together.
The state can play a vital role in this; it’s not too late to embrace and accept all citizens with courage, empowering them to take the lead.
We are not a threat to our state's ideals, our truths, our realities are not a threat to the state's ideals.
Who we are is essential - Pakistan can become a success story for itself - of how such diverse people have come together under a multitude of ideals for a collective identity that is shared yet discretely unique.
It's time to learn to accept and love ourselves: first and foremost. The rest of the world and their interest in us: can wait.
Our state is stuck using outdated nation-building to actively try and control our different identities, and aspects of our culture, but it is no longer working - nor should it - because our state needs to update/refresh and start to live in the world of our time.
This notion that the people of this nation need to be controlled or that our identity needs to be prescribed needs to END. NOW.
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It seems the state's machinations have lost sight of the plot.
The State's "Why" is in service of the West's external gaze (serving American coloniality)
The State's "What" is in service of outdated colonial practices and legacies
The State's "Who" is the military and whoever supports/funds them, not the citizens.
The State's "When" is in a past trauma of 'failure' that is no longer relevant to our collective future
The State's "Where" is a partition that we no longer need to worry about rather than an independence that we have to look forward to.
We are standing up across Pakistan to take ownership of our own state, our communities, our identity, what being a citizen means, and what being a human here should entail - and now is the time for us to define the power of our collective gender identity and acceptance of our ethnic identities within society - all over Pakistan.
We accept each other and respect each other - as citizens - we deserve to forge a future that serves us with state institutions that support and work FOR US.
Contrary to the main narrative we are fed to keep us feeling beholden and grateful: there have been no winners or losers after WW2 - EVERYONE GOT A COUNTRY - GETTING A MODERN NATION STATE WAS NOT A WIN. What we do with what we have is another story.
These outdated narratives should be examined as they seem to be a trauma response of a system that is incapable of reflecting, self-awareness or seeing how it affects gender norms and our discretely coherent national identities across the country today, impacting all our people: across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan.
An analysis of the current challenges we are facing shows that by recognizing the complexities of identity and the richness of Pakistan's cultural heritage in terms of their intrinsic differences - rather than how they can be tokenized/commodified for external gazes - the state can forge a path forward that prioritizes justice, equality, and well-being by embracing and accepting the multiplicity of all its citizens.
It is time to make space for us to live, breathe and be freely ourselves in our own homes here in Pakistan.
This perspective is essential for fostering a more cohesive and resilient society.
To create a more inclusive society, I suggest that the state embrace and support these multiple identities so that citizens stop fleeing to other nations for acceptance.