Pakistan Link ’s Independence Day Issue
By Dr Basheer A. Khan
Garden Grove , CA
Chashme Bud Doo’re , your Independence Day issue was a real treat!
Editor Akhtar Faruqui’s article ‘A Foreigner’s View of Pakistan ’ has exposed the painful reality that foreigners know Pakistan better than its leaders. Jane na jane gul hi na jane, Baagh to sara jane hae.
The Austrian scientist, Dr. Irsigler, has correctly figured out the truth that the “crust of Pakistani civilization is strong”, but our leaders don’t think so and are alienating their own people by their tireless effort to replace it with an alien culture and civilization.
More than eight decades ago, Pearl S Buck in her Nobel Prize-winning novel “Good Earth” had complimented the Chinese Civilization with similar words while lamenting the absence of this identity in the USA as a young country with people of multiple cultures and civilizations. Today, the Chinese civilization, like the Pakistani civilization, faces the same threat from the melting pot which Dr Shahid Athar has outlined in his article “What it means to be Pakistani American”. Dr. Irsigler has nicely acronymed the attitude as the HBTA complex (Had Been To America). Our sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, and, of course, our religious scholars, should try to understand why the tables have turned upon us if indeed the crust of our civilization was so strong.
Dr. Issigler’s observation about the sign of servitude in the self-assured, warm-hearted educated class is correct, but it is not attributable to deep seated caste system alone. It is not just reminiscent of the British Raj, but is its remnant. Late Frank Moreas, Editor of Indian Express in the sixties, had remarked in one of his articles, and I am paraphrasing it: What India has gained by way of Independence is that White skin is replaced by white caps. Implanting and overthrowing of rulers in the liberated colonies by “leaders” who share the epithet of “our bastard and their bastard”, was done to promote this attitude of servitude, and has resulted in the dismal state of affairs in these erstwhile colonies. Syed Arif Hussaini in his article “Independence Day: Memories and Nostalgia” has poignantly painted the picture of these countries under such rulers: “a pedestrian who manages to cross a street in say Karachi amid a traffic jam deserves no less a notable place in the history” than Moses who crossed River Nile with his people to reach Sinai. Sugar, electricity, drinking water, health care all become luxuries in this situation.
When “Our Bastards” and “Their Bastards” are promoted and demoted in the game of musical chairs which we are hoisting in the countries of the Third World to promote our strategic objectives, it is not just the US-Pakistan relations which become enigmatic, as Mowahid Hussain Shah points out in his article, but US relation with the whole word does. Unfortunately, people in Washington or Islamabad have no time and appetite to listen to his honest advise: “Hypocrisy has not worked; perhaps, a dose of honesty would”. While ears and muscles in Washington are at the disposal of “luminaries” like Kissingers, Meads, Ajamis, Bergens, Huntingtons, etc, who have succeeded in defaming the US in the Muslim world to secure Israeli interests; their ‘chelas’ who control the beat in Islamabad are contributing fuel to this fight by following their overseas “gurus”.
Emotions surged high in me when I read Dr. Irsigler’s compliment to the Pakistani women: ”In Europe there is an unwritten rule to try to look attractive to your husband. This is not so in Pakistan. The women appeared too obsessed with the upbringing of children. One good outcome of this attitude is that in Pakistan kids have their mothers, in Europe they don’t”. If Pakistani women continue to shun their desire and their comfort in favor of upbringing of children, I am sure that we will get those real leaders who will replace the present generation, one day soon, and they will rescue not only Pakistan but the entire world.
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