The Reality about the Future of Pakistan
By Pervaiz Alvi
US

Of late in many circles it has become fashionable to predict the time of ultimate demise of the state of Pakistan. In fact a whole cottage industry has mushroomed around this sport.
Writers and sellers of books, electronic and print news media, movie makers, small and large auditorium speakers, retired or unemployed government functionaries - all have joined in this senseless clamor. Even the living room entertainers have picked up on this theme. The topic is juicy enough and it draws the audience and has thus developed a life of its own.
In the forefront of this crowd are the ill-wishers of Pakistan of various hues and degrees. First and foremost are the Indian nationalists who have never accepted the idea and the reality of Pakistan as it deprived them from being the sole heirs to the old British Raj. Then there are the Indian Muslims who are in an unhappy state because the creation of Pakistan has left them ‘state less’. They would love to see a ‘soft’ border between India and Pakistan so that they could traverse back and forth between the two countries at their will.
Indian Muslim politicians want to be the middle-man in India-Pakistan politics as that would give them some political standing in their own circles.
And then there are the spineless, unethical and opportunistic provincial, ethnic and tribal leaders in Pakistan whose eyes gleam at the thought of a separate Lilliputian state of their own. The answer to these baseless noise makers has to come from patriotic Pakistanis. They must have the realization that the creation of a state of their own is not the final answer to all their problems. It never was. Even though our people have inhabited this land for millenniums yet Pakistan is a new country carved out of an empire. It is a modern country put together by combining half a dozen adjoining states. It is the best the Quaid and his companions could salvage for us from the ruins of the old Muslim Empire in the peculiar pre-Partition circumstances.
The people of Pakistan have a common culture, heritage, history, values and over riding common language and lineage. Together they inhabit the mountains, the plains and the valleys of the mighty Indus. They are one nation with an inseparable past, present and future. Now it is up to them to make Pakistan a strong, viable and stable state. It is up to us to shut the mouths of those busy bodies writing the epitaph of our motherland. We could do it by developing national cohesion and unity of purpose.
God bless Pakistan.

 

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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