On February 25, 2024, the streets of Lahore erupted in outrage. A woman wearing a dress with Arabic calligraphy was mobbed by elements from the Tehreek-e-Labbaik, Pakistan (TLP) in the lower-middle and working-class neighbourhood of Ichra in Lahore.
The mob took an exception to Arabic calligraphy on her dress. Believing the jumble of vaguely familiar words to be a verse from the Holy Quran, they claimed it was blasphemous to display it and to wear it as a dress. Close inspection of the text revealed that all such fears were unfounded. All I could make out on her was the Arabic word ‘halwa’ (sweet pudding).
Social media and the press were awash with outrage. Some lamented that this signifies the end of Pakistan at the hands of extremism, others chose to blame self-proclaimed Islamic reformists such as former dictator General Ziaul Haq, and yet others blamed the placation of groups like the TLP by the Pakistani state. None of these voices were necessarily wrong, except that I think something more visceral and equally insidious besides radicalisation may be afoot here.
Women being attacked, molested, raped and killed for simply stepping into a public place has sadly become all too routine an occurrence on the streets of South Asia. Our neighbour to the East (India) is becoming something of a champion of this perversity. This comparison is not to belittle the gravity of the crime we witnessed in Ichra but rather to urge pause for thought on the strands that may link such normalisation of violence — mostly against women and at other times against men — in Pakistani society.
For four years, my team of researchers, along with colleagues at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Karachi, undertook a project investigating the drivers of gender-based violence in 12 lower-middle and working-class neighbourhoods of Karachi and Rawalpindi/Islamabad. A wealth of insights emerged from it on why gender-based violence happens. The findings are too complex and varied to cover in this short intervention, but a key insight was the failure of masculinity driving violence against women.
Kabir Singh, Animal And The Pandemic Of Alpha Masculinity In rapidly urbanising societies such as Pakistan, old social norms and taboos are increasingly strained. Young men, freed from the traditional disciplines imposed by kinship and community ties while living anonymously in cities, are increasingly trying to live up to different standards of masculinity and success than their rural ancestors. In working-class urban areas, traditional patriarchal values underwrite young people’s masculinity — a woman's place is in the home, she’s to be chaste, etc. — and men are to be the providers of their families. But these values run into contradictions of reality, such as unemployed men cannot be providers, and single-income households cannot survive in a monetised urban economy. Hence, the women have to work, even if their men pretend that they don’t have to and must not.
Insecure/toxic masculinity is not just the preserve of the powerless. The hyper-masculine arenas of elite sports and the military are equally fertile breeding grounds for the same
Cultural change in Pakistan also means that young people are not married in their mid to late teens, as was the case in the past. Instead, women and men are marrying later and later; for men living in urban areas, marriage is generally in their late 20s and for women in their early to mid-20s. For young men, moving about town in a sexually repressed society means that women’s bodies are objects of intense desire. But equally segregated education and patriarchal upbringing means that boys and young men do not have the social skills to approach women as human beings in an amorous register. The complete and utter social evisceration in the face of the objects of their desire inevitably leads to intense violent impulses, which are consummated under one pretext or another.
The above is not psychologising, but rather drawing upon a vast body of academic literature that links intense violence to an equally intense desire for the victim of violence. In the case of urban Pakistan, then, religion is the latest in a long list of justifications for failed masculinities to salvage some satisfaction through violence. From family honour to blasphemy, the eviscerated, socioeconomically impotent masculinity of Pakistani men finds refuge in violence.
A Class-Based Understanding Of 2024 Election Outcomes In Pakistan The seemingly well-to-do woman, with apparently good taste, had to have been intensely desired by the working-class men on the streets of Ichra who acted in one of the ways they knew that would grant them impunity to assault her modesty an allegation of blasphemy and desecration of the Holy Quran.
Also Read: How Did Punjab Become The Epicentre Of Blasphemy-Related Violence?
To the millions of the most powerless, the Pakistani state has unwittingly handed over the weapon of religion to attain some power. These people get smoke blown in their faces all day by the fancy and super expensive cars passing by. They see sickening consumerism around them even as they struggle to scrape together a few meals a day. They get humiliated by the begums of Lahore and Karachi every day and feel they can’t do a thing about it. And then voila! The fig leaf of religion gives them the pass to finally exact revenge. And what could be easier and more delicious than the female body upon which to inscribe class resentment?
Insecure/toxic masculinity is not just the preserve of the powerless. The hyper-masculine arenas of elite sports and the military are equally fertile breeding grounds for the same. I should know; I idealised them all in my youth and the patriarchal values that came with it.
The point of the above argument is not to excuse violence against women or inscription of unrequited male desire, and hence violence on women’s bodies. The point is to provoke a conversation around Pakistani masculinities, their toxicity and their corrosive impact upon not just women’s lives but, worse, on men’s mental and physical well-being.
Women, men and all genders in between are not going to separately find peace. The Pakistani state may have spent decades trying to promote violent, nationalist masculinity, but that project has imprisoned men in toxic masculinity and landed us where we are today. The Pakistani state is too brain-dead to see it. It is up to society to have new conversations and tell different stories about the foundational attribute of humanity — gender.
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Class, Masculinity And lchra
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27.02.2024
On February 25, 2024, the streets of Lahore erupted in outrage. A woman wearing a dress with Arabic calligraphy was mobbed by elements from the Tehreek-e-Labbaik, Pakistan (TLP) in the lower-middle and working-class neighbourhood of Ichra in Lahore.
The mob took an exception to Arabic calligraphy on her dress. Believing the jumble of vaguely familiar words to be a verse from the Holy Quran, they claimed it was blasphemous to display it and to wear it as a dress. Close inspection of the text revealed that all such fears were unfounded. All I could make out on her was the Arabic word ‘halwa’ (sweet pudding).
Social media and the press were awash with outrage. Some lamented that this signifies the end of Pakistan at the hands of extremism, others chose to blame self-proclaimed Islamic reformists such as former dictator General Ziaul Haq, and yet others blamed the placation of groups like the TLP by the Pakistani state. None of these voices were necessarily wrong, except that I think something more visceral and equally insidious besides radicalisation may be afoot here.
Women being attacked, molested, raped and killed for simply stepping into a public place has sadly become all too routine an occurrence on the streets of South Asia. Our neighbour to the East (India) is becoming something of a champion of this perversity. This comparison is not to belittle the gravity of the crime we witnessed in Ichra but rather to urge pause for thought on the strands that may link such normalisation of violence — mostly against women and at other times against men — in Pakistani society.
For four years, my team of researchers, along with colleagues at the Institute of Business........
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