A turning point

We really can’t think straight when we are swayed by emotions and overwhelmed by feelings of uncertainty and grief. And we are in that state of mind at this time because of heartbreaking news from Afghanistan. A large human tragedy is in the making and we should rightly be disturbed about how it will affect us in Pakistan.

But this is also the time for our rulers to think rationally and calmly about the emerging situation and find ways of protecting Pakistan from what is a tsunami of religious extremism and intolerance that the Taliban, of whichever breed, have set into motion. The problem, though, is that we have already lost a lot of ground on this front and there is ample confusion about our ideological sense of direction.

If there are burdens that we carry, the rising chaos in Afghanistan and the surprising advances that the Taliban fighters were able to make this week may allow us to drop some of our previous initiatives and make a new beginning to take, as the poet said, the road less traveled by.

What could that be? A daring, fanciful thought it might be but why can’t it be possible for Pakistan to opt for a progressive and liberal dispensation in an antithetical response to the Taliban world view and mindset? If we listen carefully, this is what the logic of history is whispering in our ears. We have lessons to learn, and keep the promises that are inherent in the Quaid’s vision of Pakistan.

After all, with all these crises surging around us, this is a time of celebration for us. Even if in a ritualistic mode, every fourteenth of August is marked by the raising of the national flag and acknowledging the divine gift of freedom that was granted to us in 1947. Coincidentally, our Independence Day this year has overlapped with the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan.

In a historical perspective, we have intimations of what had attended our independence seventy-four years ago in the events that are taking place in Afghanistan, though at a lesser level. What the people of South Asia had suffered in 1947 has no parallel in the modern world. However, the terrible ordeal that the citizens of Afghanistan are living through is one more tragedy of our times – a tragedy that often comes when the people are cheated by their rulers.

Sadly, our own encounter with history is very problematic. Take our insistence on celebrating the fourteenth of August as the Independence Day without candidly conceding that the Pakistan that was founded on that date no longer exists and that we lost our eastern wing in December 1971. I have seen a page of a textbook in social media in which East Bengal is not listed among provinces that constituted Pakistan.

In fact, our standard accounts of the freedom movement and the creation of Pakistan are fairly doctored and we have not genuinely come to terms with the breakup and the creation of Bangladesh. We need to contend with the reality of Bangladesh marching ahead of Pakistan in most indicators of social development.

By the way, World Population Day was observed last month and it underlined our comparison with Bangladesh in a striking manner. Before the breakup, a major political issue was rooted in the fact that East Pakistan had a larger population than West Pakistan. They were 65.5 million and we, in the present Pakistan, were 59.7 million in number. Now, Pakistan has a population of 220.8 million whereas Bangladesh’s is 164.6 million.

There is another very crucial area in which Bangladesh is ahead of not just Pakistan but all other South Asian countries: the empowerment of women. I am pointing this out also because of my initial concern about what the triumph of the Taliban means for Afghanistan. It is all about the place of women in society.

Think about it. Confronted with the victorious advance of the Taliban and threatened by its reverberations, we must demonstrate our political maturity and our commitment to progress by raising the status of our women through radical measures

Pakistan may be in a difficult place now, with specific reference to foreign relations. But one way to step out of this isolation is to readily embrace the values of an open society, ensuring fundamental freedoms for all citizens. At the same time, violent extremism and obscurantism have to be suppressed with the full power of the state. It would appear that I am dreaming a dream, given the mindset and strategic delusions of our rulers.

In a very different context, Prime Minister Imran Khan invoked history on Wednesday when he launched the Punjab Kissan Card in Bahawalpur. “This will be the turning point in our history when it is written”, he said. He also asserted that this was the time when this country changed its direction for the purpose for which it was created.

We are aware of the promise to build a ‘Naya Pakistan’ but there is no clarity about what it is going to look like. Imran Khan’s varying statements about the increasing incidents of rape and sexual abuse are one example. His perceived sympathies for the Taliban and his recognition of Osama bin Laden as a martyr – later explained as being misunderstood – are not easy to explain.

Incidentally, there is bound to be a new focus on Afghanistan’s recent history and America’s aborted ‘war on terror’ on the upcoming twentieth anniversary of 9/11. Once again, we will have to contend with the enigma of Osama’s presence in Abbottabad and the circumstances in which he was taken out by the Americans.

As for the purpose for which Pakistan was created, there is still a lot of mystification about it. We have the speech that the Quaid had made on August 11, 1947, which is the credo of the country’s liberals. Meanwhile, we as a nation have forsaken history, unable and unwilling to read and understand it.

Hence, we are likely to let go another opportunity to make an inventive use of a transformative upheaval on our western borders.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com