The Spirit of Pakistan is Failing

Not mincing words and not twisting facts, let me take you all to a picture that appeared on the front page of Dawn, a major English newspaper, on Friday, December 29, 2006 where a youth is half naked and police is beating him incessantly. It maybe a usual scene in the minds of my readers but what is unusual is that he was beaten in front of his mother, Mrs. Masood and was stripped naked in front of her eyes. Youth’s name is Muhammad Bin Masood. His fault: he was protesting, along with many others, against the mysterious, illegal and unlawful detention of his relatives who “disappeared” in different spans of time over the past five/six years. One wonders if this is another gift of Musharraf’s cooperation in “war on terror” or is this the part of his “enlightened moderation” campaign.

Day in and day out, we are told that today’s Pakistan is better. Today’s Pakistan – in General Musharraf’s words – is a “changed Pakistan and it is not a Pakistan of the past where there was no freedom and finance.” No doubt we can see both the freedom and finance today. Freedom of the police torture on peaceful protestors whose right of being with their loved ones is recognized by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. And there certainly is no question of the financial strengths: we are a stronger-defended country now with the help of new F-16s and the JF-17 but are we equally strong socially from within? Our great General-President himself admitted in a televised interview that the federation has weakened in the recent past but did anyone question why? Maybe the ones who could have asked understood the meaning of the “freedom” in today’s Pakistan.

Going back to the start of this write up i.e. the picture, there is yet another picture on the front page of an Urdu newspaper, Khabrain, where a young girl of some 10-12 years of age is weeping with an ultimate helplessness on her face and joining her hands in front of a police officer – missing from the picture – demanding to meet her father. Meeting with a father; is this a crime? Shouldn’t these residents of the Land of the Pure be given a right to be with their families especially when no court of law has indicted them in any criminal offense? I can envision the great “slap minister” (read Federal Law Minister) holding his chin with one hand and scratching his head with the other to think of a response to this question. I am sure the readers know the answer, but again, does their opinion matter at all in the top echelons of Pakistani establishment that includes both the geographical and the ideological defenders of the nation? The answer to this question is also clear in my mind given the “freedoms” that exist today.

Pakistan was a promised land. The constitutional guardians of this nation have always taken pride for being in a better situation as compared to the Muslims in India. “See their circumstances and you would then understand the rationale for a separate homeland for Muslims,” is the standard argument. But our great neighbor to the east never was a promised land, Pakistan was. If one is honest about it, one can put his hand on his heart and ask the question - if any of the promises had been delivered to the citizens of Pakistan? Six decades after our independence, the nation is still struggling to get clean running. Forget about the education, health, infrastructure, employment or even respect. The imprisonment of the political leaders near GHQ on Thursday, December 28, 2006 is another proof of the "freedoms" in Pakistan today.

After seeing what happened to the protestors, I am sure the “lovers of Jinnah on the state controlled media” certainly remember what he said on August 11, 1947: “…We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.” Now I really do not know who was more right: Jinnah or George Orwell when he wrote in his classic Animal Farm that “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” The one’s who have read Animal Farm know that the one’s who proclaimed themselves as more equal were pigs.

Pakistan may not be failing as a state but its spirit certainly is!