Major values reforms may not necessarily have major gains, I read your other comment and I guess you deleted it so I'm quoting this instead.
In this case, The opposite is true of Pakistan. A minority ruled state by a foreign aggressor for the sole purpose of economic drain allowed coercions and corruption at every single level of society. Depriving locals their language, culture and faith in fear that they may rise up against the tyranny and oppression. At heart of this manipulation was social engineering and manufacture of parallel structure. Civil servants were trained and military grunts were broken in...
.. much of this practice continues unabated.
...it has created generations of confused masses. Who have been culturally, politically and religiously divided. Each with their own shop... to the point where everything is surface deep and divisive... and everyone is powerless to do something about it... to the point of hopelessness. By removing the intellectuals and inteligencia, everything local has been deprived it's depth and gravitas.
Which is where this debate of secularism surfaces every few months. Pakistan is thoroughly secular... and people are culturally confused. Anything native, such as clothes or language are still different in positions of power, where local is considered regressive. Agendas have a seat and people have lost their mandate. They're easier to manipulate and shop keepers don't want to lose their undeserved perch.
The post could have been cogent, comprehensive and structured but it would have taken way too long and it is easier to lose interest so instead it is a hoj-poj…
"上梁不正下梁歪"
(Shàng liáng bù zhèng xià liáng wāi)
"If the upper beam is not straight, the lower beams will be crooked."
Lao Tzu
"If the government is sluggish and tolerant, the people will be honest and free from guile."
"If the government is prying and meddling, there will be constant infraction of the law."
"If the government is corrupt? then uprightness becomes rare, and goodness becomes strange."
China has a deep ingrained civilizational understanding... and it's distinction is such that cultural, social and religious imports become uniquely Chinese.
Well, we have it upside down south of Himalayas!
Background
Up until the Mogul rule the regions were governed under self rule that was undone by the champion of many here, Ranjit Singh, under a solitary goal. He purged the old order, sat his own governors and took power away from locals. Worst yet, by the time his spark and state faded under its own weight the British had arrived. Rule shifted from people, to agendas and ideologies! It was convenient for the occupation to have the mandate usurped by vested interests. And therfore first parties were in fact those of land owners. It is stupid to have the discourse revolve around finance and social values, but it is convenient.
Now,
The resultant state in Pakistan had a bureaucracy trained by the British that was high in optics. It was a ruling machine that was told how to behave and operate, how to keep the aura of power and prestige. How to stoke ego and create envy. It was distant and had disdain and contempt for the common man. The ones in were superior to the ones outside. Local language, culture, cuisine and arts were kept alive by the unkempt illiterates and positions of power were manned by chosen few, now a caste unto themselves, generationally gifted and endowed by the empire. They keep a distance from the locals and mingle as a local in western lands. The political ideology too is lost as it was never native and ones catering to these have moved on to a mishmash that belongs nowhere, same is true of religiously influenced polities. Each is a shop and a business. People assume them as representatives, they are not… nor are they true to their cause. They are LARPing a paradigm that left them long ago… so they must mimic it as religiously as possible.
It Is a twilight zone suffering entropy for as yet undetermined period of time to come… till the coma ends or the paradigm self distructs.
The apologists join in as the assimilated against the unwashed masses. Who deserve nothing better and like I shared the Chinese proverb blame them for their fate!
