Nostalgia
Nostalgia was once seen as a medical condition – the pain
felt by those who could not return to their homeland. Today it reflects the
longing for a past life seen as better than the present.
Edoardo Campanella and Marta Dassù suggest Europe and
America are in the grip of an Age of Nostalgia. Most of their citizens believe
life was better and more manageable 50 years ago. This is evidenced by Brexit,
Trump’s “Lets make America great again” slogan, and the growth of far right parties
in Europe, unable to accept the social change generated by immigration.
There is nostalgia for a lost Empire, of being the foremost economic
power, and having undisputed global hegemony. Nostalgia, the authors say, is a
coping strategy, especially for an aging population, for dealing with “deep
uncertainty and radical discontinuity” that restores self-confidence by
recalling the more familiar past.
Nostalgia has a different role in countries that were once colonized
or torn by war. Here it is a natural process, after countries gained their
independence, or lost their homelands to war, to think back on their world
before it was so dramatically interrupted. Much art and literature of postcolonial
periods and war wounded communities is an investigation or expression of “cultural
memory”.
However, nostalgia can easily slip into living on past
glories. In response to the global narrative that reduces Islam to a single story
of violence, Islamic scholars have tried to retrieve and disseminate its legacy of science, philosophy, medical
breakthroughs, architectural wonders and inventions that have benefitted the
world. Will it generate a revitalizing of learning, or will rich Muslim
countries continue to build more shopping malls and 7 star hotels?
Author, Margrit Pernau-Reifeld, suggests that the disruption
of power structures, when the British established colonial rule in India, left
the Princely States locked in the past. Where once Maharajahs and Nawabs
provided warriors, they became dependents of rulers who merely wanted them to
use their position to legitimize British rule, in return for retaining their
courtly lifestyle. It did, however, enable the continuity of a lived culture
into modern times.
Not all remained locked in past glory. In his many writings,
Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan investigated the
past with a view to guide Muslims to take their place in the modernizing world.
The Indian Khilafat movement was not a case of reviving a golden past, but was
seen as essential for holding the Muslim world together, politically and
spiritually, given that most Muslim countries were under European mandates. While Shehr- e -Ashob poets lamented the loss of the glorious past, Allama
Iqbal encouraged his readers to imagine a future that carried religious and
cultural values into modern times.
William Faulkner said “The past is never dead. It’s not even
past”. There is, however, a difference between being aware of the past and
living in the past.
There is a space for reflective nostalgia that looks at the
past in order to understand and learn from it. Kierkegaard said “Life can only
be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” However, all too often,
nostalgia is accompanied by amnesia – a selective idealized memory that ignores
the more difficult truths of the past. Although there are exceptions, Hollywood
movies glorify the Wild West overlooking the genocide of Native Americans,
European history ignores the ugly side of colonialism. The Pakistani nation
ignores its pre Muslim history. Modi’s India is promoting Ancient and Medieval
Indian achievements, but is consciously erasing later contributions by Muslims
and the British administration.
Pakistani social media abounds with images lamenting the
loss of the simple life led a few decades ago, remembering they were once a people
of integrity and noble ambition. Overwhelmed by the environment of pessimism,
most Pakistanis feel unable to retrieve those values for today. Allama Iqbal wrote:
Aayen-e-Nau Se Darna, Tarz-e-Kuhan Pe Urna
Manzil Yehi Kathan Hai Qoumon Ki Zindagi Mein
To be afraid of the new ways, to insist on the old ones
This is the only difficult stage in the life of nations
Durriya Kazi
December 19,
2021
Karachi
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