Pakistan at 70

[Dawood Ibrahim]

Mrs. Abidi's family prior to partition belonged to the state of Patiala;this state had a large Sikh population. As riots and violence broke out across India, tens of thousands of people decided to migrate to Pakistan. Her family was among them. Her journey at large was uneventful and they managed to reach Lahore unharmed but sherecalled a tragedy during migration about the disappearance of 3 of her distant cousins, 2 young girls aged15 and 17, and their brother. They were from her extended family and they to this day have not been able to trace them.

Most of the refugees coming from Punjab, after entering Pakistan stayed in a refugee camp near Walton airport. Her family did the same, they eventually settled in Rawalpindi.

Her father wanted them to contribute in the rehabilitation process. As young girls they helped out in the running and maintenance of the Bait-ul-Mal. There was no structure, things had to be done as needed. Refugees went to the Deputy Commissioners house where they were given ration cards with the numbers of all their dependence. Refugees brought the ration card to them atthe Bait-ul-Mal.

Most of the necessary items were collected from the vacant Hindu and Sikh houses, which were sealed. This process was carried out under the supervision of one elderly woman, two inspectors and a clerk. The seal was broken and the volunteers collected all necessary items like bedding, utensils, clothes, and charpoys etc. All the items were noted down in the ledger and it was taken to the Bait-ul-Mal.

While the newly formed Government of Pakistan was trying to rehabilitate the refugees coming in mostly from the Punjab, war in Kashmir broke out. This war resulted in more refugees coming down from Kashmir.

Abeeda Abidi joined Begum Rana Liaquat Ali to form the Pakistan Women National Guard (PWNC).

"I was also in the National Guard and I was the captain of the National Guard which begum sahib had you know made in Pakistan, it was a women's National Guard and we were attached the army, so we did all the army training, rifle training and typing and everything else that would go for a woman to take part if there is a war with India and if the men would've gone to the frontier, the woman would take over."

PWNC was created to provide support to the Pakistan Army, which was busy fighting at the border. The women were given crash courses in army training, rifle training, short hand, type writing, nursing, first-aid etc. The training was carried out for the duration of a month, and then they were sent out in field.

After the initial rehabilitation of the refugees from Kashmir, need for volunteersarose in Wah. Many refugees were shifted into military barracks, a few barracks were converted into a hospital and there were only 2 doctors. The women from Pakistan Women National Guard used to go to Wah to volunteer and help in any which way that they could.

Some of the local philanthropist helped the refugees by providing them with food and clothes. The biggest problem they faced was with the outbreak of the Typhus fever. They needed to effectively and quickly get rid of the lice that were spreading widely as lice are the natural carriers of these bacteria.


http://dailytimes.com.pk/pakistan/04-Jun-17/pakistan-at-70

 

[GlobalVillageSpace]

Pakistan at 70
Global Village Space |

Adil Najam |

Pakistan turned 70 on August 14, 2017. It has been a tumultuous journey. Exciting. Adventurous. Unpredictable. Sometimes uplifting. Often heartbreaking. And, often, rash and dangerous. But never has there been a dull moment.

As we celebrated country’s 70th birthday, it may be useful to look back at the journey thus far and try to see what lessons we could have learned. What is it that we have done in the past? What is it that we are encumbered by in the present? What is it that we can expect in the future?

Do the young people of Pakistan believe that they have a say in the decisions that will impact their lives? If they do, they will become a force for positive change in Pakistan

To help myself think about this, I asked myself three sweepingly big question: What has been our biggest achievement? What has been our biggest disappointment? And, what is the biggest opportunity before us today?

Here are the answers I came up with.

Past – biggest achievement: It may sound cynical, but it really is not. The only miracle bigger than the very creation of Pakistan was the survival of Pakistan. The battles of survival that were forced upon us then have had deep and lasting impacts that have shaped who we became. We came out victorious, but the wounds have been deep and some – most prominently, Kashmir – continue to bleed to this day.

Read more: Jeevay Jeevay Pakistan; but from now on, ‘Humaray Dum Se’

Today it is difficult to imagine just how slim the chances of this nation’s survival were when it was first created. Nor how purposeful the efforts against our survival were, most particularly by Lord Mountbatten, the last and clearly the most incompetent and petty British Viceroy in India.

The boundary recommendations of the Radcliffe Commission, made by a man who had never ever set foot in India before he was asked to divide it, carved out a crippled dominion condemned to be untenable. The deceitful delay in announcing Cyril Radcliffe’s Award created a panic that elevated the murderous bloodshed of Partition to barbarous proportions.

Young people complain, rightly, that their degrees don’t get them jobs. Pakistan will need between 10 and 15 lakh new jobs every year

Mountbatten may have thought that he was proving a point by being ambiguous about the fate of the princely states, but it left everyone confused and turned the once-beautiful Kashmir into the world’s longest-lasting and most dangerous flashpoint. Adding to the chaos was the impoverishment forced on the new state of Pakistan by the delay and mischief in the distribution of resources.

Jamsheed Marker, the famed cricket commentator and long-time Pakistani diplomat, writes of being at elite parties at the New Delhi Gymkhana, where the conversation was “whether Pakistan would last for three months or six months.” On his return to Karachi, he saw government offices working under the open sky in the sweltering heat, because offices were not available.

Read more: Pakistan : The home to South Asia’s Muslims

He remembers thinking at the time that this “was truly the Pakistan of Muhammad Ali Jinnah: indomitable, defiant, dedicated, and motivated. The country would surely last more than three months.” He was right. It did. And that may well be the most significant and singular achievement of a country that, in so many ways and for so many people, was meant never to be.

Unfortunately, most of our schools fail the quality test and our universities, which are starved of quality teachers as well as good students, are only making things worse

More than that, the idea that odds can be defied seems to have become part of a national belief. Unfortunately, whether on the cricket field in that last over of the game, or in response to horrific floods and earthquakes, that mysterious reservoir of grit and resilience has been on call far more times than it should have been.

Present – biggest disappointment: The pang of living on the edge of survival, literally from the moment of our birth, has not been without costs. None more horrific than the politics of division, distrust, and fear it has thrust upon us.

We have been disastrously unable to develop a social contract that is comfortable in a national narrative, or Pakistaniat, without being fearful of external threats to our survival (ie security) or terrified of our own internal diversity of cultures and identity.

For much of our 70 years, Pakistan’s political narrative has been told in stories of fear. There is constant refrain to ‘the enemy’ and the need to ‘defy its ugly intentions’. The only thing that excites the masses more than talk of “Pakistan key Dushman” are discussions on “Islam key Dushman.” While some enemies are well-known and ever-present, there is also enough ambiguity in this politics of fear to be able to create new – including unnamed – ones.

Read more: Elitocracy: The Pakistani democratic system

Herein lies the opportunity – but also the responsibility. The young can, indeed, turns things around dramatically, for the good or the bad

The root of the problem has been our failure to reconcile, let alone embrace, the ethnic, sectarian and, yes, religious diversity that came with 1947’s Pakistan. Our unwillingness and inability to create a unifying national identity have led us to seek refuge in the cloak of cosmetic religiosity.

Most directly during the era of Ziaul Haq, but clearly from the very beginning, including during the rule of both Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the religious symbolism was used as a tool to force a uniformity that did not, in fact, exist in society.

This politics of fear has given us a deeply divided society, ethnic unease, sectarian discomfort, a securitised state, at least three decades of direct military rule, and a deep distrust of all institutions – including that of the military itself, but especially of politics and politicians.

Trust cannot be cultivated under the assumption that no one can be trusted. If our democracy has seemed flawed, it is mostly because our trust in democracy has been so flimsy.

Read more: Pakistan’s foreign policy and current challenges-part 2

Today’s Pakistan not only feels and looks young, it is young. Go to any workplace in Pakistan, and the faces will be younger

Nowhere was this reality on more painful display than in the events of 1971. But, of course, 1971 did not actually happen in 1971. The distrust of the majority of the then Pakistanis whose language had been shunned, whose politicians sidelined, whose culture brought into question was borne out of fear. And out of fear, the clearest electoral results became contestable.

Yes, India took advantage of the situation. But what else could we have expected it to do? The disappointment is that the situation was created by our own politics of division, distrust, and fear. The deeper disappointment is that our politics continues to be defined by division, distrust, and fear.

Future – biggest opportunity: I remain staunchly optimistic. Pakistan survived its first three months. It will certainly survive next 70 years. Yes, our politics is still ridden with division, distrust, and fear, but I have no doubt that democracy, even if it is stumbling and imperfect, will define our next 70 years much more than it did the last 70.

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Pakistan at 70