maybe im cynical (ok i know im cynical!) but when someone says something like "support jinnah's pakistan"... i wonder if jinnah is looking at this Pakistan and writhing in his personal hell when this pakistan is referred to as "his" pakistan. what exactly do people mean when they want to return to or support jinnah's pakistan? was this pakistan the one where democracy reined and put a crook like zardari in charge? was it a couple of years ago when we had a military dictator in charge? or was it a decade ago before musharaff's military rule - during the corrupt regimes of benazir and nawaz sharif? or any one of those numerous times that the military took control in flagarant disregard of the ideals of democracy? or perhaps it was during those golden times when pakistan was first created and we faced the atrocities committed by our own country men in the name of religion and patriotism where women were raped and people murdered all in the name of a free and independant nation. pray do tell - which of these pakistan's would jinnah like to call his own?
its hard to be patriotic and support "pakistan" when pakistan seems to be lost and doesnt have a clue as to what its identity is. the ideal of pakistan that people seem to be supporting never really existed except maybe inthe heads of a few leaders way back when this country was created. and its quite possible that even these leaders did not buy into this "ideal" and mearly used it as a tool to garner mass support to achieve whatever they wanted to achieve for whatever reasons. (p.s. it was all for money - really!) im not trying to be funny here - the motivation for starting a movement for an "independent country" was really a movement by minority middle-class muslims to gain political control over regions where they were a majority, just to gain economic control. from there it progressed to a movement for religious freedom (cos hey the downtrodden poor fellow doesnt give a rat's ass about the already prosperous getting more money). and from independant states within the indian nation, the movement went to an "independant nation". the leaders wanted one thing, they told the followers something else, and in the end got a bloodshed, with most people losing track of what exactly they are fighting for and maybe they never knew in the first place. hmmm the pakistan of then doesnt sound that much different from the pakistan of now.
this schizophrenia of ideology and identity remains to day. i went to a protest on saturday. it was supposed to be a protest against the "talibanisation of pakistan" but im not quite sure what exactly we ended up protesting or supporting. apparently the protest devolved into a support pak army cheer-a-thon. waht exactly did that achieve. was that the message that was intended? if i had know it was going to be a pak army cheer leading squad i wouldn't have bothered wasting my saturday (sorry hubby dear - nothing personal - i was all for supporting anti-talibanisation).
im all for supporting anti-talibanisation, not on religious grounds and not because they are "anti-pakistan", but on humanitarian grounds. and for probably the very same reasons i dont really support the pakistan army or the government or the american involvemnet in our country.
im a cynic. i dont believe that pakistan should have existed in the first place. not at the cost that it was created at. but we are here now. there is no changing the past. so we really need to stop looking at the past to support us. imagine jinnah never existed. what would your idea of pakistan be then?
1 comment:
that was simply well put.
i wouldnt have been a part of it either if i knew it would have become that as well.
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