A different reality
THIS past week, a television host on a Ramazan programme made a statement about his right to have multiple wives. He made it before millions of viewers and his wife who was on that show.
Since then, the internet has been abuzz with people sharing their opinion on the matter. The backlash against his comments was so severe that the host in question has since issued an apology, insistent that he and his wife have no issues with one another.
Good for them. But the optics of special transmissions in the holy month deserve to be discussed. The programmes are geared towards creating a model of wholesome family-centric enjoyment. In this sense, the comments on the programme were debated as they reflected a gender gulf — a condition not just limited to Pakistan but that applies globally to situations where men can position themselves as having greater rights than women.
Pakistani visual culture, special shows, and TV dramas try to deny this truth or to present it in binary terms. On television, Pakistanis imagine and project a reality in which large family meals are taking place, where everyone gets together to break their fast, where husband and wife are a harmonious unit, and where women are expected to slave in the kitchen to make these imaginings come true. The truth is increasingly distant and different from the brand presenting Pakistani families happily downing glasses of sherbet.
The real Pakistan, along with the truth about gender relations, is different. Enterprising individuals are creating and presenting content that is different from what is on television. One genre of these is the vlog, in which people record unconventional Ramazan observances.
In many of these people are not in their home city or even the country. Their spreads are meagre and simple, focused on observance rather than decadence. A few vlogs also record the struggles of working mothers who are under pressure to do far more during the month of fasting. They follow women who cater to requests for fresh parathas at sehri to the demand for fresh-made pakoras every day for iftari.
Enterprising individuals are creating and presenting content that is different from what is on television.
In this sense, special TV transmissions during Ramazan fail to represent the truth of Pakistani women’s labour. There is no effort to make the public and least of all Pakistani men more conscious of the fact that all of it leaves women less time to focus on their own spiritual health and their own closeness to the Almighty.
Millions of Pakistani women willingly do the extra work and bear their extra responsibilities with grace and there should be recognition of this fact. The pressure to portray themselves as wives who are career women but are still committed to projecting domestic perfection is real indeed.
Meanwhile, the World Happiness Report 2025 presents some surprising data about the changing lifestyles of South Asians. According to the report, people in South Asia are least likely to sit together for meals on a regular basis.
On average, South Asians reported sharing less than four meals a month. This is remarkably lower than people even in the West where sharing meals is not a routine part of the culture. Sharing meals is correlated with social connections which appear to be devolving in South Asia, with many people living alone because of migration, etc, and having little time to develop social resources that would make their lives better.
Despite what we may believe about our family-oriented culture and our communal way of living, the truth does not seem to quite accord with this image. If people are reporting such a low rate of shared meals, it suggests that for most people — even if they do share their home with others — life is becoming increasingly solitary.
In poorer families, men have left to work in cities leaving behind women as heads of households, in middle-class families, there isn’t enough money, people’s schedules of working and studying don’t align, etc. There are any number of reasons that can explain the situation but all of them point to the central reality that the images that flit on our television screens and become the backdrop to our own domestic dramas are aspirational at best and terribly inaccurate at worst.
According to a study by Ipsos, men and women are more polarised than ever before. The study found that Gen Z women — born between 1997 and 2012 — are most likely to call themselves feminist and refuse to put up with gender stereotypes. Conversely, Gen Z men are most vulnerable to following toxic role models that encourage them to blame women for everything that is going wrong in their lives.
The tension between these two is all over social media platforms in reels and TikToks. Defined by the algorithms that dominate the platforms, they veer towards extremes. Pakistanis would do well to spend some time considering what sorts of models of wedded bliss they want to see as ideals on mediums such as television.
One useful avenue for Ramazan transmissions would be to spend some time acknowledging the realities of the people that are watching, the changing family structure, the tense relations between genders.
Ramazan is a month of tolerance and grace and beauty and all of these qualities can be put to good use in the complex and difficult conversations that are essential for cultural progress. The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2025