What is Pakistani in the 21st century? Is it just because of the world competition over GDP increase, urban networks, and IT advances? Or does it refer to something more fundamental, based on history, culture, spirituality, and ecology?

A Romantic Movement in the Pakistani sense can become a philosophical and practical solution to such predicaments.

The 18th and 19th centuries in Europe marked the emergence of the Romantic Movement as an intellectual, cultural, and artistic reaction to industrial chaos and to the disaffection of industrialization, materialism, and rationality. Romanticism was not based on poetry or a piece of art. However, it was an appeal to go back to nature, to search for the values that were misplaced and lost, as well as to restore the feeling that they belonged to the land and people.

In Pakistan today, the time is ripe when a similar revival should occur. Since Pakistan has been facing a lot of problems because of rapid urbanization, destruction of the environment, loss of culture, and the challenges of modernity, a Romantic Movement in the Pakistani sense can become a philosophical and practical solution to such predicaments.

There has been a bulk of movement of the rural to urban in Pakistan over a span of past few decades. This change of times, which may be labeled as progressive but has resulted in the neglect of the conventional lifestyles. The original languages, ways, and social systems are being washed away with the wave of concrete development and the hurry to a Westernized vision of modernity.

The way the people lived in families with a close connection to the community, in extended families, the urban lifestyle has made the society alienated in nuclear families, which are more individualistic and consumerist. Such cultures have been losing traditional festivals, folklore music, narration, and even local cuisines, more towards younger generations. English and Urdu are pushing native tongues such as Brahui, Shina, and Dhatki out of the urban preparation schools and the public discourse.

When one forgets his or her roots, there can be a cultural vacuum, people can fall prey to extremist ideas.

It is not all a sentimental loss; there are serious consequences on national identity, social cohesion, and even policy-making. When one forgets his or her roots, there can be a cultural vacuum in a country as pluralistic and diverse as Pakistan, and people can fall prey to extremist ideas or cultural simulation, which has no base and is merely an imitation.

One more significant outcome of the urban migration is the increasing detachment from agriculture, which forms the mainstay of the Pakistani economy. The Pakistani society has historically been one of the agricultural communities, where more than 60 percent of the population was directly or indirectly connected with agriculture. The agricultural sector is now supplying less than 20 percent of the GDP, and the new generations are looking at farming as an inferior or retrogressive field.

It is a dangerous economic perception as well as an environmentally harmful one. The young men and women are migrating to the cities in search of white-collar jobs, thus the agricultural sector becomes less productive. Cultivated lands are abandoned, and skills that were held over the generations have been neglected. Also, the practices of industrial farming, which replace the traditional ones, tend to be heavy on the chemical fertilizers and monocultures which resulting in the erosion of the soil and reduced diversity.

Given the fact that the population of Pakistan is over 240 million people, it ranks as the fifth most populous country in the world. This has increased the population to a point that is extremely straining on natural resources as forests, water, arable land, and even clean air. Urban areas are growing extremely fast and at the cost of green lands and farmland. The level of groundwater is also decreasing; the forests are being deforested; the rivers are being destroyed.

Such uncontrolled expansion, however, makes the idea of continuous improvement not only unrealistic but hazardous. A romantic reaction would be to oppose the ideology of constant growth and to promote sustainability, balance, and respect towards nature. Modern Pakistani Romanticism would be neither anti-progressive, but rather it would inquire into progress into whose interest, with what kinds of costs, and over how long?

Romanticism does not consist in driving away to the mountains. It is concerned with translating the beauty into everyday life.

Pakistan is no longer a country looking into the future to counteract the threat of climate change, but a country experiencing it. Facing devastating floods in 2010 and 2022, more common heatwaves, droughts, and glacier melting in the north, Pakistan is one of the countries most susceptible to climate change. Yet, environmental issues have stayed at the fringes of national discourses, which it is being relegated as being elitist or part of an international agenda.

In this respect, the Romantic Movement may take the form of the opposite of environmental indifference. Romanticism suggests a strong emotional and spiritual relationship with nature. Nature in the writings of Iqbal is not used as an object to be exploited but as one who teaches, heals, and is divine. The most effective way of climate activism might be to reconnect people to their natural environment through poetry, art, spiritual teachings, and grassroots movements. Pakistan also has its history of environmental piety: the environmental piousness of the Sufi poetry, or local heritage of indigenous pertinent monoculture, and sacred groves guarded by local villages.

Modern technologies, in addition to increasing the convenience and linking the world together, have brought people spiritual and emotional alienation. New forms of relationships have been re-shaped along with social media, consumer electronics, and automation. People are getting used to perceiving the world through the screens rather than through their senses. Young people are involved in the digital monologue as opposed to communication with the captains in charge or nature.

Although Pakistan is fast moving to the digital front by moving towards e-governance, e-learning, and e-commerce, it needs to remember the psychological and cultural price that this transition can cost. It is increasing mental health-related complications, reducing concentration, and lack of purpose among young people due to the excessive use of screens.

Romanticism is captivated, as it is at the very heart, a kind of fight against striving towards conformity, against commodification, and spiritual soullessness. It is also a renewal of kinds: community renewal, of creativity, and renewal of compassion. Romantic spirit can provide hope in a country like Pakistan, where disillusionment with corruption, inequality, and environmental degradation has been practiced ever so much.

It is not escapism. Romanticism does not consist in driving away to the mountains. It is concerned with translating the beauty, the balance, and the belonging to everyday life. It is a matter of developing an inner life that will resist the storms of the outer world. It is all about the development of such a Pakistan, not only modern but meaningful.

A future that cannot forget its past.

It is high time a Pakistani Romantic Movement should take place, one which will talk not only to the intellect, but also to the heart. Urbanization, changes brought about by technology, and changing climatic conditions leading to geographical changes lie in the history of reshaping the landscape; we should never overlook the spiritual and cultural ecosystem that ensures our identity.

Politicians and bureaucrats would not be the only people leading such a movement. It would come up out of poets, farmers, artists, educators, and common people that strike back into the air at the chance of a dream of a new nature of progress; a non-rootless progress. A future that cannot forget its past.

Recapturing the Romantic spirit, its attitude towards nature, its interest in the local, its distaste for soulless modernity, there is a way that Pakistan may become more humane, more resilient, and more inclusive. The dream of Romanticism, contrary to another opinion, is not a long-forgotten phenomenon, but perhaps, on the contrary, what the country requires to reinvent its identity.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.