KU lecture sheds light on Pakistan’s history, punctuated by mistake after mistake

The SYM Professional Development Centre of the University of Karachi arranged a lecture on “Between Dream and Reality: Today’s Pakistan” at the KU Audio Visual Center on Friday.

International scholar and renowned historian Professor Aslam Syed was the keynote speaker while Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi presided over the event.

Addressing the faculty and the students, Professor Aslam Syed said that when the foundation of a country is shaken, it can never be stable and this is what happened to Pakistan in the case of East Pakistan — the region that laid the foundation of Pakistan and Muslim League — was ignored in the decision- and policy-making and forced to take a serious step to establish their separate identity.

“The Indus Water Treaty secretly allowed India to occupy Kashmir, we gave India the right to our three rivers and they were all on the Kashmir side.”

He said that like General Ayub Khan, the then head of Wapda, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who later became the president of Pakistan, was also involved in convincing to hand over the rivers to India. The US and the establishment were very happy with him.

Professor Aslam Syed shared that if the Muslim League had lost the election of 1946 then Pakistan would not have been formed. He observed that if the British rulers had rigged those elections, it was almost impossible for Pakistan to form. The British government and the Congress did not try to rig the elections and Pakistan was formed.

He mentioned that there is a difference between state and government because the state is a country while the government belongs to political parties, and opposition to the government is not opposition to the state. The first martial law was imposed in Pakistan because we did not want the government of the leaders of East Pakistan.

Professor Aslam Syed further said that we were given a narrative that Pakistan developed a lot during the Ayub Khan era, but what happened due to his wrong decisions are still avoided and never discussed in any public forum.

He said that in the 1970 elections, Pakistan gave a mandate which was not accepted and the country broke up. Those elections were our red line; it was the first general elections of Pakistan in which public participation was high. but the power of their votes was completely ignored. In 1971 we lost Pakistan and the foundation of Pakistan. Pakistani people are courageous but they were always cheated.

Aslam Syed said that now the question is being raised as to why Pakistan was created. He added that he has not seen any country in the world which has such a perfect geography. Our bureaucracy has maintained the same attitude towards the people as the British government did towards the local people.

He narrated that the British governor wrote a book on the Pakhtuns and the American government took help from it to build relations with Pakistan. On the other hand, our state adopted the policy of opposing communism and adopted the policy of becoming the guardian of Islam. The United States researched the people of every nationality in Pakistan and dealt with them according to their homework.

Meanwhile, VC Professor Dr Khalid Iraqi said that we are unable to learn anything from history and do not do research. If we learn from the mistakes of the past, strengthen democratic values, and get used to accepting each other’s existence, we will become strong in the economic field, he remarked.

He mentioned that unfortunately, we have not been able to create the Pakistan of Quaid-e-Azam to date. “Our tragedy is that instead of learning from history and reforming ourselves, we cannot change the situation, due to which we are still in the same state.” Professor Iraqi shared that societies that do not have freedom of expression are not healthy. He stressed that we have to promote a culture of tolerance and accept others’ identities.