Pakistan - The anti-valentiners

Gul Bukhari

Valentine’s Day is one of those dozens of meaningless but commercially useful celebrations the right wing has latched on to recent times to try and ‘shut down’ in the Islamic Republic. Just a couple of the other equally meaningless, at least to me, are Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day type of western celebrations. Asinine as these days might be, I wouldn’t carry out crusades to have them banned. But our mulla brigade must try and get the Valentine’s Day banned.

The venality of the entire exercise is so transparent: of the 200 million souls that make up the population of Pakistan, how many thousand celebrate Valentine’s? And in celebrating it, how many people do they actually kill? And in what ways do they break any laws? And how many people do they hurt, injure or kill? The answer is zero, and zero and zero.

Yet it’s been made into a national issue by the moral brigade that defends the toxic ideological boundaries of this country. A complete non-issue has been made into an issue. To me it does not even matter whether people celebrate Valentine’s Day or not. What matters to me is that if anyone whishes to indulge in folly, they should be free to do so; that the Ansar Abbasis of this world should not insert themselves into everyone else’s lives to curtail them in any way.

Yet, my president said this a couple of days ago: “Valentine’s Day has no connection with our culture and it should be avoided”. Quoting the Dawn: “President Mamnoon Hussain on Friday urged people of the county not to observe Valentine’s Day, saying that it was not a part of Muslim tradition but of the West.”

Here I would like to quote my friend Saqlain: “By officially opposing Valentine’s Day celebrations, Nawaz Sharif’s hand-picked president of the Islamic republic of Pakistan has categorically delineated the ideologically driven rightist agenda of the present government. In such circumstances, citizens should ask their representatives as to what the purpose of the civil liberties and fundamental rights provisions in the Constitution of the country is.”

“Why does Pakistan have a National Action Plan? To end extremism?” He goes on to add, “it seems obligatory upon the enlightened citizens of Pakistan to celebrate Valentine’s Day to make an unequivocal statement that people are ani-rightist….”

Saqlain made an important connection. How does the president of a country fighting an existential ideological war side with the enemy?

How did the president side with the anti-valentiners (who are the essential political voices of the violent extremists)? The country is supposed to be in the throes of the National Action Plan (the NAP), which is billed as a plan to fight for our future. But the president goes and finds in himself to side with the agenda of the extremists. Can somebody please tell me how this statement of the president gels with the vision outlined by the NAP? Or at the very least, he should stay quiet as in the words of someone wise, ‘when you have nothing better to say, say nothing’!

It’s not about the specific occasion really. It’s about the symbolism. Whether this is the right battle to fight, or the wrong one, this is that one time that our symbols and values are of utmost importance. But many have lost sight of the right fight.

Valentine’s, to me, is as useless, cynical, commercial and bogus as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. But just because the Islamists have chosen to revile it, I shall choose to support it as a symbol of freedom; freedom of expression; freedom of emotions; freedom of love.

Dear God! Will they tie their knickers into a knot at the name of love? It pains me to even write about it. We should have been way beyond these things by now. But the Ansar Abbasi’s of this world would like to ensure that won’t move beyond. But we shall ensure that we do.