PRIDE AT THE GRASSROOTS

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/08/14/pride-at-the-grassroots/

May God bless the people of Pakistan

 …it isn’t the leaders who make us proud. It is people like this. 

The common people of the country.

 Seventy years into the creation of Pakistan, it may be a good time to remind ourselves of the national anthem of the country. Since it is written using words that are gobbledygook to the bulk of the population, here it is in English, which is also gobbledygook to the bulk of the population.

Blessed be the sacred Land:

Happy be the bounteous realm

Symbol of high resolve

Land of Pakistan

Blessed be thou citadel of faith

The order of this sacred land

Is the might of the brotherhood of the People

May the nation, the country, and the state

Shine in glory everlasting

Blessed be the goal of our ambition

This Flag of the Crescent and Star

Leads the way to progress and perfection

Interpreter of our past, glory of our present

Inspiration of our future

Symbol of the Almighty’s protection

Jinnah said, “I have lived as Mr Jinnah, and I hope to die as Mr Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title of honours, and I would more than happy if there was no prefix to my name.”

Next month, on the 11th of September is the sixty-ninth death anniversary of the man we prefer to call Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It would take too long to enumerate all the things he hoped for that have been dashed to the ground. Let’s just say: long live the Pakistan of Mr Jinnah’s dreams, and may the one which promotes exclusivity, discriminates against its citizens, and is riddled with corruption of every kind mend its ways, never mind what the rest of the world does. Amen.

The foundation of neither Jinnah’s Pakistan nor Nehru’s India was based on walls and exclusion. Yet earlier this year, General Bajwa announced the building of a fence between Pakistan and Afghanistan had commenced. And India last year activated eight virtual laser walls along the border with Pakistan, and had plans to activate four more.

India and Bangladesh share the fifth longest land border of the world, and half of this border has been fenced. Upon this the impaled body of a fifteen year old girl was once discovered.

All these walls and fences divide people who are culturally one.

Elsewhere in the world, Israel has been building a wall for more than a decade, and the US has plans for another. Saudi Arabia not to be left behind by its greatest buddy, is building a six hundred mile wall cum ditch in the north, to separate itself from Iraq.

As for discrimination, there is no need to look further than the blasphemy law.

The Islamabad High Court recently suggested that the blasphemy law should be amended to make it as punishable for a person accusing someone of blasphemy as it is for a person committing blasphemy. The problem is of course, that if people are falsely accused of committing blasphemy, they can also be falsely accused of accusing someone of committing blasphemy. It isn’t hard, and in this country where there is little recourse to justice quite tempting for people that way inclined. Would it not be better to remove the law completely? Such a law is discriminatory and has no place in any society.

Meantime, a couple of months ago, a Christian man was arrested in Lahore, for alleged blasphemy. And a Christian man was tortured in Sheikhupura by a Muslim woman’s family, for being ‘friends’ with her. They saw no irony in their actions, much less the inhumanity.

Meantime also, the latest PM unable finish his term is back home in Lahore. He was not accompanied on the way there by his tweeting daughter, or his tweeting sister in law. You wish someone would close down Twitter, which would have the added advantage of giving the POTUS a bellyache.

Jinnah would firmly request to be put back in his grave if he ever returned and witnessed the corruption in Pakistan. The Sharif family is not the only one riddled with corruption, although the relationship between that and Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification was nebulous enough to point towards corruption in other quarters.

This is rather a negative tirade on the occasion of Pakistan’s seventieth anniversary. But tell me, what should we celebrate? Although wait, there is this:  There are people such as the Edhis, Adib Rizvi – whose SIUT provides free medical treatment for kidney and liver disease and cancer, Parveen Saeed – the three rupee lady, who provides meals for that price to the poor at Khana Ghar, and many others like them. As long as people like this can call Pakistan home, this country can hold its head up in the world.

Yes, it isn’t the leaders who make us proud. It is people like this.  The common people of the country. May God bless the people of Pakistan, for it is from among them that we obtain our pride.