"Vote for Amanat", "Pray for Amanat" was written all over the walls of our colony. I was amazed to know the name for once. I inquired if there were some local elections or some by-elections but none of my queries was replied in affirmative. I searched the dozens of news channels to know if some other candidate has arisen to take part in the presidential elections and "to take the regime by its horns". Even this time, my effort to find some worthwhile information went futile. At last my problem was solved by my 9 year old sister. When asked about amanat, she replied with an amazed face " Don`t YOU know amanat, He is a great singer and he is in the final round of some singing competition.He is such a great person, I wish I were HIS sister."
Although its not a very new concept but lately there has been a buzz about "talent hunt shows" or desi versions of "American Idol" in our country. My Oxford Dictionary gives the meaning of Idol as "an image, representation or symbol of a deity made or consecrated as an object of worship". But this meaning is quite old now as nowadays idol is someone to be followed, someone to look at as an example of some craft. We have read in our Islamiyat books (at least I have, if not many of my country-mates) about people worshiping Idols in the Arabian Peninsula before the arrival of Islam. The odd and shocking thing is, that in "Islamic Republic of Pakistan", people are doing the same thing almost 1400 years after the pre-islamic days. Islam may not have prohibited music (its my personal view, I'm not a liberal as Mr. Shoaib Mansoor to give some fatwa in this respect) but it certainly has not allowed its promotion.
Taking the issue farther, are musician (so-called marassis) the only people left on planet earth to be our idols? Aren't there people like Naom Chomski, Stephen Hawking even Dr. AQ Khan (I might be added on the hit-list of IAEA for even mentioning this very name) to be our idols? Maybe its a matter of priorities more than idol worship. We Pakistanis have got "music" and "enlightened moderation" (simply put : vulgarity) lot higher on our list of priorities than "nation-building" or "education" or to say the least "poverty management"? In a country where 75% of people are living much below the poverty line(latest World Bank Report), where millions of children are uneducated(despite hefty sums spent on "Parha likha punjab" project, the drop-our ratio is on the rise), where scores of people are moving from pillar to post in search of jobs(despite the KHUD ROZGAR scheme which was a ploy more to sell the 4-stroke rickshaws than to provide employment), where one woman in three is dieing during childbirth, where politicians and military personnel are looting and plundering national exchequer, where 4 provinces are being ruled by the high-ups of 1 province, where hundreds of innocent (and useful, I say) people are being slaughtered on daily basis in the so-called "War for terror", is this the state of affairs that needs to be? We still want Pakistan prosperous and healthy. How come??
We as a nation have got short-memory and severe lack of any foresight. We can't simply see how the west and our neighbors have conspired to play on our weaknesses. We are all being led to a big craven full of fire with our hands cuffed, our eyes blind-folded in the name of "development" and "progress". Sometimes I'm forced to think if Khalil Jibran had our nation (Sorry for calling it a nation, its actually a CROWD) in his mind when he said:
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it doesn't weave, eats a bread it doesn't harvest and drinks the wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as a hero, and that deems the glittering conquerer bountiful...
Maybe the Musharraf Government and its reception by our nation is paraphrased in the last line - Pity our nation.(pardon me, read CROWD here)
