Re-visiting the Sixties

The three-day Woodstock Music Festival of 1969, attended by half a million young people, formalized the cultural change that began with the beat generation of the fifties, bringing in an era of humanitarian ideals, peace, hope and progress to benefit all humanity. It was “The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius”.   The sixties ethos spread to countries in the sphere of American influence, both in Europe and in the newly liberated countries that looked to the western model of progress. So Karachi, at least it’s elite, had it’s own 60s culture of music, psychedelic Smartelle fabrics and marijuana.  

Behind the haze of LSD, free love and the Beatles, the sixties were also known for achieving many political milestones. In USA, the Civil Rights movement gained momentum, there was a call for equal pay for women, reducing the voting age from 21 to 18, since this was the age for being drafted in the army, and equal voting rights to African Americans. Politically aware students now included the first working class youth and minorities, making campuses and public spaces arenas for civil resistance, sit ins, boycotts and marches.

Conservative forces were alarmed and as White House Aide, John Ehrlichman, said “We understood that we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure.” However, the change could not be contained. By 1960, colour TVs in almost every home showed images of the Vietnam war, poverty, racism, and the nuclear threat.

The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, spearheaded the change. Along with committed social activism this was a generation of inventors. The World Wide Web, internet, the USB, nanoscale motors and new business models reshaped the world. By the end of the decade, the first men had stepped onto the moon.

The philosophy of think big, live big, unwittingly ushered in consumerism and capitalism. Stew Albert, the American radical described the spirit of the 1960s as “socialism in one person”. Janan Ganesh says “it’s emphasis on the individual reinforced the market, not the revolution,” epitomized by the entrepreneur Richard Branson whose business grew from a 100 pound loan from his mother, to a 4.8 billion empire.

There was change across the world. Africa acquired an international presence as 27 countries gained their independence from colonial rule. The Berlin wall was erected in 1961, and the Soviet Union faced many rebellions. China broke with Russia to create a second large communist bloc, sending waves of panic into USA that moved from Cold War to active war, and scrambled for influence in the many new nations that emerged, finding it easier to deal with autocratic one-party states and military juntas.

While the sixties was a difficult period for India, a time of scarcity and prohibitions, the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, wars with China and Pakistan, and a looming foreign debt that devalued the rupee by 57%, for Pakistan it was a time of progress.

The Green Revolution and the boost to industry created an economic growth of over 5% per year  - more than other developing countries. the GNP rose by 45% and manufactured goods began to overtake exports of raw materials. Several hydroelectric projects, canals and dams, and a nuclear power plant were completed. Educational curricula were revised and many public-sector universities and schools were built. PIA became the first Asian airline with a jet aircraft in it’s fleet.  Suparco, a space programme, was established that launched sounding rockets throughout the 1960s.

Despite reservations from USA and Europe, foreign relations with Russia and China were strengthened. A Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD)was established between Pakistan Iran and Turkey and interestingly in 1962, President Ayub Khan signed an international agreement for establishing a single world constitution alongside many idealists including Martin Luther King Jr and Bertrand Russell.

We are sixty years on from the sixties, living once more in authoritarian times, part of what Vinay Orekondy calls the exhausted majority   Sixty years before the 1960s, was another decade of world changing events – the first airflight by the Wright Brothers, Einstein’s theory of Relativity, Freud’s theories of the subconscious and the first full length feature film. The Babylonians, the Chinese and Hindus consider 60 an important time marker. Are we on the brink of another era like the sixties? Or as Fariduddin Attar said “The Sea Will be the Sea Whatever the drop’s philosophy.”  

 

Durriya Kazi

October 5, 2023

durriyakazi1918@gmail.com