The struggle for survival is nature’s gift. But a struggle for identity indicates some fundamental contradiction. Pakistan is a country which was born out of hate and deceit and gradually evolved as a cannibalizing society for its own citizens. A society that proposes only to destroy itself.
If one were to look into Pakistan’s history, some of the earliest to have called for Nation for Indian Muslims were Syed Ahmad Khan, Mohammad Iqbal, Rehmat Ali and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. All of them were votaries of a Strong India when the British decimated the Mughals and banished the Muslim elite from Governance leading to mass impoverishment and disenfranchisement. The era from 1707 to 1920 was that of wilderness and darkness for these unidentified groups within Nation called India. It was Mahatma Gandhi who provided them with much needed oxygen by mainstreaming a religious cause called Khilafat movement absolutely unrelated to Nation of India.
By 1940, they had put themselves together and were able to coin a name of a nation called Pakistan which had Urdu, Persian and Pashto connotations. The origin of the nation’s name was in itself an infringement upon originality. No historical assertion and no cultural bonding existed with the name.
In the 1946 election over 90% of the Muslim populace voted for the Muslim League supporting its demand to create an Islamic state in India by the name of Pakistan, but when Jinnah created Pakistan he left a sizeable population in India and refused to accept them as their own citizens. Yet a few million managed to make the journey to their promised pure land only to be branded as second grade Urdu speaking Mohajirs. The city of Karachi was systematically underinvested in and discriminated against and left to rot as its capital status was snatched in favor of the Hindko-Punjabi majority city of Islamabad only because of its status as a Mohajir majority city. The plight of the Mohajir community is all the more poignant since Pakistan was enabled financially in its first few years because the mercantile Muslim communities like the Memons, the Khojas and the Ismailis, who were willing to give up their income to fund the infant Pakistan state machinery yet were rewarded with persecution, oppression and exile. Today, most Mohajirs belonging to the Ismaili and Bohra sects of Islam have been exiled out of their adopted homeland and similar fate awaits those of the other communities.
The demand for a utopian search of purity has been such that even the minority sect of Ahmadiyyas have been branded as non-Muslims by a constitutional amendment no less and are lynched upon and expelled from towns and cities for such non-existent crimes as calling their places of worship masjids. The Ismailis are all but apostates in the eyes of the surrounding society and have been systematically reduced to being a minority in their demographic strongholds in Gilgit-Baltistan, which is only marginally better than the fate of the Hazaras and other Shia communities who are being arrested and branded as Kafirs simply for carrying out their Muharram processions and reciting their Ashura prayers. The Baloch, despite being Sunni, are being oppressed, exiled and murdered for their reasonable demands for autonomy, preservation of cultural identity, and equality in access to natural resources. The list is simply too long if we talk about Pakistan’s other communities.
Despite having a cultural and civilization identity of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, their academic curriculum could not discover and educate their posterity about their original identity. They rather tried to make them acquainted with Mughal and Afghan Kings. While Turk, Mughals, Arab and Afghans never accepted Pakistani as of their lineage, the Pakistani continue to beg them for their own identity. Pakistanis changed their name, dress, food habits, as well as their social fabric and rejected their folk lore only to find their acceptance as foot soldiers and cannon fodder in the brutal fratricidal war of the Arabian Desert. Pakistanis were employed as mere laborers in Middle East on a similar social pedestal like their Bangladeshi Muslim counterparts.
The political narrative of Pakistan since inception was built upon an anti-India rhetoric hovering around Kashmir. In order to gain religious legitimacy in the Islamic world, they have upped their ante on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and have successfully brainwashed themselves into believing that any failure of Pakistan is a product of an international conspiracy of the Yahood (Jews) and the Hanood (Hindus). The Middle East’s refusal to acknowledge let alone support the Kashmir bogeyman has eroded this political chicanery. The abortive attempt of intellectualizing letter “K” in the word Pakistan with Kashmir has eroded the Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s credentials. Citizen are only slowly realizing now the fake narrative of their political masters. A nation that survives on the donation of the Middle East finds no words to defend its political position before an uneducated illiterate citizen today.
With the arrival of Covid-19, oil-dependent economies find themselves in dire straits. The Middle East has forgotten its servile attendant’s needs. Saudi’s demand for returning over $ 6.2 billion has left Pakistan in an existential crisis. A modern nation’s survival depends on two primary pillars: – Food security and energy security. Today Pakistan has slipped below the threshold on both basic parameters.
How long Pakistan will survive as nation on the world map is in the hand of ethnic minorities of Baluchistan, Sindh, Pakhtunistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. It is in the interest of world peace that the incomplete division of Pakistan with Bangladesh be completed among all its ethnic groups under the leadership of UNO to give the matter a peaceful rest.
