Life, Art, and Politics: Pakistan and Social Misrepresentations

This paper critically analyses how Mohsin Hamid in ‘Discontent and Its Civilizations’ delineates the rupture lines prompted by a decade and a half of tectonic change, from the ‘war on terror’ to the struggles of individuals to maintain humanity in the inflexible physiognomy of repressive ideology, or the apathetic face of globalization. Whether he is discussing ritual love affairs or pop culture, drones or the pattern of day-to-day life in an extended family, he carries us beyond the doomsayer headlines of a perturbed West and a turbulent East and helps to bring a dazzling manifold world within spiritual and intellectual reach. The classifications under which the essays are congregated: Life, Art, and Politics may be considered universal, as the themes of these segments are wide-ranging. Hamid’s nonfiction pieces of writings are deep-rooted in the shifting nature of his homeland. He talks about the way in which Pakistan “plays a recurring role as villain in the horror sub-industry within the news business” (Hamid, 2014). He believes that in Pakistan, Islam has been as a binding force for developing unity for strengthening nationhood. Although Pakistan; “a test bed for pluralism on a globalising planet” (Hamid, 2014), is still struggling for “more pluralism” (Hamid, 2014). American drone attacks have had a deeply detrimental effect by refusing the sovereignty of Pakistan and Pakistani society, and by demanding ‘do more’ to accost the problem of extremists who tyrannize Pakistanis/Muslims or non-Pakistanis/ non-Muslims in the same way. Such social misrepresentations, for some selfish self-interests, neither only shatter the image of a nation in the world, but also play a vital role in transformation of the nation alike with the help of such vague reflections. Pakistan and Islam both need to be reviewed without any “makeup and plastic fangs” (Hamid, 2014) or else future generations will look back at our era and think of us with the same perplexity that we think of those who lived in societies that legalized slavery.