I have had the honour of witnessing all of the ‘Independence days’ since Independence. As very young kids we used to run around shouting ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ waving small green flags.
However, it is not the Pakistan that Quaid and the founding fathers of Muslim League created or the one that I grew up in. Now we have members of this very forum who rubbish the Quaid (not even willing to call him father of the nation) and even refuse to acknowledge their selfless efforts. These are the second generation of the enemies of Pakistan who did not want Pakistan in the first place and only adopted it when it was a ‘Fait accompli’.
We have sections of the population who harbour and support Taliban in destroying PN aircraft, attack PA HQ etc., all for what? Was the creation of Pakistan as a Khilafat ever in the agenda of Muslim League?
Here a cold blooded murderer of the Governor of Punjab, Mumtaz Qadri, is garlanded as hero of Islam. Women are paraded naked in the streets by the Muslims, Hazara’s of Quetta are targets of ethnic cleansing; we have no electricity, no gas and not even railways to speak of. Everything from degrees to medicines is fake. Who cares if a large section of Pakistanis live in a hell-hole in this life; we are content to gloat when Mullahs issue videos describing in details the pleasures one will get with the 72 houris after death.
Call me a spoil sport but I find nothing to celebrate about.
Here a poignant article:
‘You are free to go to your temples’
Raoof Hasan
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Let me reproduce an excerpt from what The Economist had to say about religious vandalism in a recent issue titled “Extremist Islamists are threatening Mali-and an ancient African heritage”:
“Legend held that the main gate of Timbuktu’s Sidi Yahya Mosque built by Sufi saints would open only at the end of time. In a metaphorical sense, that is what Islamist militants have unleashed on the city. Since July 2, they have been battering down the ancient entrance with picks and shovels to “destroy its mystery” as part of the citywide campaign of cultural vandalism inspired by religious bigotry that has left inhabitants aghast with horror. Destroyed, too, are eight mausoleums and a number of saints’ tombs. More wreckage is feared.
“In its heyday, Timbuktu was a hub of learning that grew rich on trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, salt and slaves. When the mysticism of the wandering Sufis fused with pre-Islamic beliefs, it became known as the “city of 333 saints.” Islamic fundamentalists reckon such reverence is un-Islamic idolatry and threaten to destroy every tomb in the city ‘without exception.’ Scholars also fear that tens of thousands of brittle manuscripts collected in the city in its zenith, arguably Africa’s greatest ancient literary heritage, are at serious risk. These African jihadists are no different from Afghanistan’s Taliban who turned their tanks on two colossal statues of the Buddha in 2001.”
In our own midst, the recent “migration” of over 200 Hindu families to India for fear of rape and persecution is a shameful reminder of the pervasive religious bigotry that is being so wantonly practised against the minorities in Pakistan. Scores of Christians, Hindus and members of other minority communities have been brutally exterminated while our television screens gleefully run enactments showing conversions of non-Muslims to Islam. Whole villages have been torched on the behest of the intolerant religious pontiffs. To compound matters further, we have the Blasphemy Law which is often manipulated for use against the religious minorities.
Is this the kind of Pakistan that was envisioned by its creator? Although many attempts have been made to erase this from the official national archives by the proponents of obscurantism, the Quaid’s speech made to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, has somehow survived the regressive onslaught. In this pioneering address, the Quaid had clearly outlined his vision of a tolerant Pakistan:
“You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state...We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens, and equal citizens, of one state...Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
Try measuring this against the footage of the members of the minority communities being hounded by religious zealots with the state looking away, shirking its fundamental responsibility of protecting its people, irrespective of their allegiance to any religion, faith, creed or belief. It is a moment of shame for the entire nation that a country that was envisioned to become a living example of religious harmony and coexistence has been reduced to assuming the mantle of a bigoted state where efforts are underway for establishing the hegemony of one religion over others.
This is a microcosmic reflection of the attitudes prevalent in practically the entire Muslim world. When the rest of the globe is taking gigantic strides to establishing new milestones of progress and prosperity, we are sinking deeper into the quagmire of religious fanaticism and bigotry. A state where a murderer is portrayed as a hero, where killing a “heathen” is the most noble means to finding the way to heaven, where leaders lack the courage to do away with discriminatory laws which are contrary to the established principles of international jurisprudence, where obedience to the rule of law is considered an aberration and where looters and murderers are placed in the seats of power, such regression should be a foregone conclusion.
Worse still, there are no symptoms of us moving away from this regressive path. On the contrary, there are potent indications that this slide will only accentuate with the passage of time. This is so because of the quality of leaders who have ascended the mantle. Shorn of any vision, lacking in faith and afflicted with a woeful paucity of intellectual capacity, they stutter around displaying their ill-gotten bounties and bribing their way through to the power bastions.
Born in the laps of dictators, they have, one and all, perfected the art of loot and plunder which they practice with unabated zeal and enthusiasm. While some of them are practising their art of deception to their exclusive benefit, there are hordes of others lining up, waiting for their turn. A pathetic sight, indeed!
From the Quaid’s Pakistan to its present-day aberration-it has all been a move in the wrong direction. Even the early promise of the fifties and the sixties has been consumed by the ******** of bigotry, vandalism and obscurantism. Who can forget that that monster called Zia who introduced the jihadist culture and the retinue of arms and drugs? Or ignore his present-day followers vowing to take forward the concoction that has only brought unabated misery to its people and an increasing level of alienation at the international stage pushing Pakistan closer to the pariah status?
It is this culture of extremism and this refusal to espouse the course of logic that has cost Pakistan dearly and will continue to do so as long as it does not change course drastically. No angels are going to descend from heavens to put this right. Theoretically, it is the people of Pakistan who have to do it. But, lacking in education, enslaved economically, fed remorselessly on bigotry and hatred and driven by the endless struggle to survive-do they really have it in them to undertake the arduous challenge?
The writer is a political analyst. Email:
raoofhasan@hotmail.com
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-126540-You-are-free-to-go-to-your-temples
