Pakistan at the Crossroads
By Dr Ismat Kamal
CA
In her biographical novel, “Kaar-e-JahaaN Daraaz Hai” (Volume 2, page 271), author Qurratul Ain Haider has described a conversation which the Quaid-i-Azam had with the Raja Saheb of Mahmudabad, one of his right hand men in the Pakistan Movement. This was at the dinner table at No. 10, Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi, a few days before Independence in 1947.
The Raja Saheb asked the Quaid, “What would be the form of government in Pakistan?” The Quaid replied, “What do you think it should be?” The Raja Saheb said, “Islamic”. The Quaid replied, “Which Islam are you talking about? There are seventy-two sects in Islam. Pakistan will be a secular democracy”.
Seventy-two is a figurative number. There may be more or less (probably more), but the conversation shows that the Quaid had the wisdom and the foresight to see the impossibility of basing a state on a religion with so many different schools of thought. This is applicable to all the religions of the world today. The Quaid-i-Azam further elaborated on this theme in his famous speeches of August 11, 1947 and August 14, 1947 to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. He pointed out that “the tolerance and goodwill that the great Emperor Akbar showed to all non-Muslims is not of recent origin. It dates back thirteen centuries, when our Prophet (pbuh), not only by words, but by deeds, treated the Jews and Christians handsomely after he conquered them.”
In these speeches, the Quaid had given an underlying principle of his vision for the future Constitution of Pakistan in the following words:
“I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community – because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis, and so on – will vanish. Indeed, if you ask me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long, long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls, in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place 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.”
What the Quaid said about the 400 million is true for the 190 million people of Pakistan today. The split into segments based on sects and ethnically-named provinces would only lead to shame and destruction, and recent events seem to indicate that, unfortunately, that’s where the country seems to be headed.
It was a sad day for Pakistan when the religious leaders decided to enter the realms of politics. God knows there is enough work for them in rectifying the social evils which abound in Pakistan: superstitions, exploitation of women and children by pirs and fakirs, preaching of hatred against other sects from mosques. Unfortunately, all this was put in the background in the lust for political power and the perks and privileges that go with seats in the national and provincial assemblies.
Today, Pakistan, which its founding father had defined as a safe haven for people of all sects and religious beliefs, is engaged in a great civil war against a group which openly claims that it is THEIR version of Islam and THEIR interpretation of the Sharia which all Pakistanis will have to comply with, or face the bullet. Such a system had taken a firm stranglehold in Afghanistan, and was aggressively spreading its tentacles towards Pakistan, with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi threatening to march on Islamabad with a ‘lashkar’ (armed force) of 100,000 people. This was before 9/11. Former President Parvez Musharraf, putting Pakistan first, faced up to this menace with courage and determination. He paid for this with three attempts on his own life, and with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
The Taliban way of life, where the answer to every difference of opinion is the bullet, where every sect except their own is a ‘kafir’, where innocent passing-out Pakistani cadets are shot dead without any reason, where a little school girl is shot at only for espousing the cause of women’s education, is foreign to Islam and to the Pakistani way of life, ably portrayed by Imran Khan in his documentary, “Islam and America” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9fW9jPnjgE). Unfortunately Imran Khan is currently showing the naivete of a teen-ager (which he often does), which has earned him the nick-name of Taliban Khan. He keeps defining the Taliban’s aims for them, rather than listening to their own long-term aims and objectives, their own vision for Pakistan, which they have made clear again and again, by words and by deeds. He ignores the fact that, leave alone the women’s college scenes shown in his video, the college itself would not be allowed by the people whose actions he is trying to justify and defend.
Credit goes to the Armed Forces of Pakistan for carrying out the thankless job of fighting the enemy within almost entirely on their own, quietly burying their dead, without any moral support from the high and mighty of the land, who are afraid for their own skins. The police force, which could have played a big role in confronting the enemy within, is bogged down by VIP duties, corruption and incompetence. The judiciary is, to say the least, not helpful. The public is confused.
In order to survive as a nation in accordance with the dreams of its founding father, Pakistan will need to get out of denial and make a clear choice on whether it wants to be a progressive, forward-looking nation like Malaysia and Turkey, or go back to a system based not on Islam but on a pre-Islamic, primitive, tribal system of the age of ignorance (daur-e-jahilya), with revenge killings (something which the Prophet (pbuh) expressly forbade in his last Khutba), so-called ‘honor’ killings, ill-treatment of women and the killing of innocent people without rhyme or reason. It requires a decisive, determined, and courageous leadership in order to accomplish this task.
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