WASHINGTON DIARY: What a change a day makes —Dr Manzur Ejaz

From the Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan to the conservative Hindus of Haryana, all the extremists are obsessed with controlling the females in their respective societies

My ridiculing of Father’s Day for many years has not deterred my children from giving me befitting gifts every year. As a matter of fact, I have rediscovered my father through my children: one rediscovers the importance of parents after one knows the pain of having and raising one’s own children. I feel indebted to my father more than to my children because of his extraordinary efforts to carry a handicapped child dozens of miles on foot to be examined by various spiritual and medical centres. His painful struggle to enable a handicapped child to deal with the world humbles me.

I can appreciate Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, who initiated the recognition of Father’s Day in 1910. After her mother’s death giving birth to her sixth child, it was her father who fulfilled the responsibilities of both parents. Despite her efforts, the observance of Father’s Day struggled for a century to become an annual event celebrated all around the world, though on different dates. The day still lacks the passion and enthusiasm of Mother’s Day because human history of the last few thousand years, dominated by males, has been an extended ‘Father’s Day’ anyway. Now, with the slowly diminishing male superiority in society, Father’s Day has started gaining traction.

In the beginning it was ridiculed and taken to be a new commercial gimmick but after being defeated many times in the Congress for 62 years, President Richard Nixon signed Father’s Day recognition into US law in 1972. Of course, like many other such days, commercial groups have played a pivotal role in popularising it by advertisement campaigns starting as early as the 1930s.

While the new generation is embracing the changed roles of its parents, sections of traditional societies are violently reacting to new cultural patterns. If one examines the patterns of Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, etc, extremist movements in the subcontinent, the preservation of male domination stands out as a common single denominator. From the Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan to the conservative Hindus of Haryana, all the extremists are obsessed with controlling the females in their respective societies.

The extremists or even non-violent traditionalists are the villains in history’s stage play, who are going to be finished long before the curtain falls. Traditional society could only sustain itself in the tribal or archaic agrarian set-up but not in the age of globalisation when rising industrialisation, mechanisation, commercialism and information technology is demolishing the boundaries of states and nations. Such an overwhelming thrust of history, diminishing gender and religious or caste gaps, has profoundly incensed the conservative sections. As the liberalising trend has been fast and fierce so has been the reaction to it. Talibanisation and the rise of Hindutva have striking similarities despite the religious and regional differences, the states’ role and their mutual hatred for each other.

As a matter of fact, western lifestyle and culture could not change the traditional ways in the subcontinent during centuries of direct British rule. A small minority of Indians adopted the western style of clothing, while common people in the subcontinent maintained their traditional clothes, haircuts, etc, till the 1960s. The dhoti, kurta and turban were common dress and even the haircut was different. The western style shirt, with collars, was distinguished as the kameez and European style haircut had the special title of boda. The famous Punjabi film song “Puthe sidhe bode was ke shahri baboo langhda” (‘Young city boy passes by with his weird combed English haircut’) refers to the traditional versus western style.

With the proliferation of education, labour migration and, more importantly, industrialisation and commercialisation, the western lifestyle started penetrating the traditional society of the subcontinent. Information technology accelerated the process and in less than three decades, the dhoti, kurta, turban and old style haircut were gone. This is a mammoth historical change in such a small period, demolishing a traditional lifestyle of thousands of years. A violent reaction to such a rapid change was inevitable, whether states liked it or not. Pakistan foolishly tried to use the reaction for its policy goals while India is still confused and struggling to find ways to address the backlash.

Nonetheless, despite the violent reaction of traditionalists, the western lifestyle is becoming common in the subcontinent. Now, the observance of Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and many such international days is becoming common in India and Pakistan. Father’s Day must have been celebrated in the subcontinent with some fervour and may have been ignored or ridiculed by some. The process of embracing such days in the subcontinent is no different than in the US and European societies but, eventually, it will become an annual event. Therefore, overcome your cynicism and be prepared to give and receive Father’s Day gifts. I wish my father were alive to receive my gift because I have discovered his contribution to my life very late.

The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com