Learning from the incredible heritage of Pakistan

Today the Pakistani nation is celebrating the 74th birth anniversary of Pakistan with gratitude to the Almighty where we are living with freedom and a sense of security. At this moment, what comes to our mind is that Pakistan can be termed as a new country but not a new land. It is the home of the Mehergarh civilisation that is considered almost 11000 years old. What we find during this Neolithic revolution is a planned lifestyle and culture where we see evolution and growth of a society that practised farming, built their settlement and were believed to start an economic activity through barter system along with herding and pastoral lifestyle. Some consider this civilisation is older than Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisation. Not only limited to that, even when we talk about the evolution of human history, Africa is believed to be the home of early hominids, called australopithecines which dates back to 2.5-4 million years ago but here in the Sivalik hills of the Potwar Plateau in Pakistan, archaeologist, Professor David Pilbeam discovered a fossil of an orangutan named Sivapithecus a Miocene ape, which is considered almost 08 million years old. According to Dr Sherry Nelson who compiled her PhD on the above mentioned fossil from Pakistan, she focused on the interaction of climatic, vegetation and faunal changes in the fossil record by using the stable isotopic analysis which helps to reconstruct paleohabitats, climate and diet to better reconstruct the past.

Indus Valley is another proud heritage and cultural identity of our motherland, which dates back to 2500-3500 B.C. It’s not only an archaeological site at Mohenjo-daro in Larkana, where we find a well-preserved city planning having streets with a covered drainage system, stupa which shows the signs of religious activity, great bath, granary, bull cart, the statue of a dancing girl, King Priest and the seals of Indus valley suggest the glimpses of whole socio-cultural conditions especially the presence of a possible political authority which was responsible for the governance. At University when we discuss political philosophy, we focus on the study of governments, how public agents deploy a system to maintain quality of human life and normally we study and take examples from Chinese and Greek philosophers like Confucius and Aristotle during their times from 550-300 BC to know their concept of state and government. Yet Site of Mohenjo-daro and the discovered artefacts from here, help us to raise a query that how people at Mohenjo-daro were able to run and manage their city with such a fine urban town planning that shows their wisdom and philosophy to maintain quality of human life in their times about 3500-2500 B.C. Though the Indus script is not deciphered as yet but archaeologists believe that with the help of new technology and scientific approach it will be possible to reveal more about the anthropology of Indus Valley by reconstructing the past and to address the question, how and under which circumstances this civilisation extinct.

The social life of Indus valley can also be reconstructed through the study of pottery dated back to 4th and 3rd millennium BCE found from the province of Baluchistan.

Pakistan needs a workable enduring policy to maintain and further discovery of its archaeological and heritage sites. We are struggling very hard to get our tentative sites inscribed on the UNESCO world heritage list because we do not meet the basic criteria which are required to bring one site on the world heritage list. So what do we need to do? We need to study the factors and causes which are responsible to slowly decay our archaeological sites.

On the 74th birth anniversary of Pakistan, it is up to us that we always try to find our glory in the past, which is indeed an honour or we also need to take steps that enable us to walk with the other developed nations through an education system which leads to scientific innovation that makes human life better.

In the present time, we need to further develop the concepts of Pakistan’s ideology in the 21st century where many countries have shown remarkable success in human development and economy. We need an enduring primary school education system by the state. We need to develop local governments without which the concept of public welfare is impossible. And above all, at present our ideology should be a green Pakistan. In simple words, if we help nature, nature will ultimately help us in terms of ideal biodiversity by growing different species of trees. It is concerning that our authorities are happy over the selling of records vehicle in Pakistan by auto Industry in 2020-21 and calling it as economic progress while they don’t talk about carbon emission and its consequences.

Our heritage is our memories of thousand years left by our ancestors and Pakistan has a very positive image when it’s come to the history of civilisations of our motherland. If we want this legacy to continue, we need to adopt sane policies and must maintain the quality of life of every citizen of Pakistan instead of encouraging the class system in our society by any means or pretext especially when we talk about ideal governance based on the Islamic principle and way of life.

-The writer is Assistant Professor at Department of History, University of Karachi and can be reached via email at ajkhan77@yahoo.cfom