Growing child’s view of a ‘united nation’

Never mind if anybody asserts we have come to such a pass that we can say we have as many problems as there’re individuals, families and groups of people called parties.

About 98 per cent of population want unadulterated food, shelter for safety from calamity and clothing to cover bodies because men and women can’t live naked in any community. This is 21st century, not ancient period.

We’ve another problem, and that’s national: we lack faith, we lack unity, and we lack discipline — election or selection, or nomination of a person as candidate for presidency exposes the kind of democracy we have in Pakistan.

The young child whose grandparents sacrificed life and whatever property they’d at the time of the Partition says he doesn’t like such a system in which quantity outweighs quality. He, in fact, wants direct democracy without any pressure from outside or inside.

There’s yet another problem: if anybody tells lies as many times as he needs for his interest, he is taken as true. But if somebody always speaks the truth he is regarded as liar. “Aren’t some leaders good liars?” asks the child.

So, we’ve come to such a pass that we can say: It is falsehood Vs truth; bad Vs good; and right Vs righteous. Who should win? “The righteous, because God is always on the side of the righteous,” asserts the child.

There’s again another problem: We’ve no selfless, dedicated leadership like the one provided by Mohammad Ali Jinnah respected as father of the nation. “Are we really a nation?” loudly sounds the young child like an elder.

“The dictionary”, he argues, “says a nation means a body of people marked off by common descent, language, culture, or historical tradition — a nation means the people of a state, preferably an independent sovereign state, for instance Pakistan.” The child is quite right.

There’re more than a hundred such states in the present-day world, but what is indispensable for a state, or for a nation, is people’s unity strengthened by the concept of being one in thought, word and action.

Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah borrowed the idea of unity from one God, one Prophet (PBUH) and one Book. He called upon the people not to forget the motto: “Faith, unity and discipline — faith in God, in ourselves and in our destiny.” Islam advocates honesty, tolerance, law and order, peace, prosperity and socio-economic justice, harmony and broadmindedness.

The child wants severe punishment to encroachers, price raisers, hoarders, profiteers, kidnappers, rapists, extortionists, murderers and whoever breaks law and rules. He asks why for so long the administration did not remove the security-risk encroachments around various places? “That’s in short the story of almost every family. How can I assert we’re a united nation?” says the growing child.

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