In this God-granted Islamic Republic of Pakistan, gods have
overgrown; humans have shrunk
No news is good news. The mainstream media sing songs orchestrated by someone
sitting far in the shadows. Social media is rarely reliable. The only truth was
the T-20 World Cup. Pakistan was left out of the battle after succumbing to a
shameful defeat at the hands of a cricketing baby. That is the truth.
The best bet is not to watch or listen to the news, for if you are tempted to
shout foul, you are liable to be booked for insulting a holy someone. In this
God-granted Islamic Republic of Pakistan, gods have overgrown; humans have
shrunk.
‘The law of insult’ in a much-trumpeted democracy is a sheer affront to human
dignity and the spirit of the Constitution of Pakistan. It might fully cater to
the psychological and egoistic needs of the ultra-sensitive, the royals, and the
schizophrenic. Still, it is unjust, could be stretched to any limits, and is
open to gross misuse. The gods, however, insist on usurping the rights allowed
to ordinary citizens since the first century AH — his right to question the
highest in the land. It is atrocious.
The Muslim rulers of today will be remembered for their queer conduct both at
home and abroad. In the past, people bought slaves to serve them and mercenaries
to ensure their security. Today, rich Muslims spend billions to select masters
who could rule them. This is the crux of their foreign policy. Instead of
sharing power with their country-mates, they accede total control to a foreign
master.
At home, they are ferocious tyrants with zero tolerance for dissent. We treat
our people as slaves, sub-humans, herds of sheep as if we had conquered or
acquired them. How could we be such terrible sadists and miserable masochists at
the same time? The rulers consider the plentiful resources nature provides as
exclusively their own. They dole out a fraction of that to people and think they
own them also. Revolutions can only correct this outrage or God’s hand that fell
on the Pharaohs or Nimruds.
In Pakistan, the situation is the opposite. Our politicians, rulers and the
departments, judiciary, the military, and the police all live on peoples’
resources, the taxes they pay, the food they grow, and the industry they run
with their sweat and blood. They have just no right to treat people as their
subjects and slaves. They are, in fact, the peoples’ servants in every
derivative of the word. How can they frame rules asking the masters not to
question the servants? If a servant fails to perform deserves to be admonished.
That applies to all the categories of servants in any position of
responsibility.
Pakistan is supposed to be a democratic country. We have a constitution that
guarantees rights to every Pakistani. It fully protects the rights of government
servants to prevent their exploitation. If someone is guilty of violating the
Constitution, the courts and courts alone must decide the matter. In a
democracy, a woodcutter’s son can rise to be the president of the United States,
and a nobody’s son could become the prime minister of Pakistan. The woodcutter’s
son never tried to behave like a king of his country; a nonentity’s son also has
no right to act like one.
My favorite Shabbir from the UK sounded utterly despaired. “Pakistan is
finished; there is no hope,” he said. I told him, “Not me. I will never lose
hope in Pakistan. I firmly believe in the truth of its birth: It was ordered by
the Prophet (PBUH).” All those who were responsible for its dismemberment in
1971, Bhutto, Mujib, and Indira, met with unenviably ignominious ends as they
had sinned against Pakistan. It is not a human judgment. It is the verdict of
history.
The present enemies of Pakistan will also meet a similar fate. There should be
no doubt that those who have ruthlessly sucked the blood of the people of
Pakistan and committed untold heinous crimes against them – from murder,
grabbing, and looting to violating female modesty, will face the wrath of Allah
here and hereafter. They have rubbished the law and made a mockery of the
Constitution. They have destroyed institutions and created a culture of
lawlessness and might be right. They have openly nurtured relations with the
enemies of Pakistan and Islam. They only accord cosmetic treatment to Shariah.
Their men and their women consider immorality, as understood in Islamic
tradition, a mere ultra-fundamentalism. They make no bones about it. One of them
said that sexual relations before marriage are perfectly normal, blatantly
mocking the Quranic injunction.
The Americans are no doubt a beautiful people. They are tremendously loving,
courteous, law-abiding, cultured, caring, sharing, and down-to-earth humans.
They are innocent in many ways, and most are ignorant of the life around them.
Most are born, live, and die without visiting outside their states. They depend
on the news fed to them by the multi-billion dollar electronic and print media
industry controlled by the ‘Deeper State.’ When in power, they change. They are
over-awed by the colossal military power America possesses. Arrogance overwhelms
their wisdom. Their foreign policy ignores the guidelines laid by their founding
fathers. Their major failure as a nation is in their dealings with nonwhite and
non-Christian countries. They have constantly been humiliated in the East.
Still, they continue to reinforce failures. They leave when no more is in need
of others, abandoning their allies in limbo. They did it after the Russian
withdrawal from Afghanistan (later naively falling into the same trap). They
deserted their darling Musharraf for Benazir and then discarded her, too.
The easily excitable and myopic leadership here must review their attitude
towards life, have trust in God, and place ‘Pakistan First’ in their priorities
for real this time, unlike the mere slogan-mongering of the previous power
brokers. Life is short. It often does not allow enough time to make amends. The
torture of regrets, however, is forever.
(The writer has served Pakistan Army as Major General. He is author of the book
“Pakistan - In Search of Messiah”)