Sorry,
Mr Jinnah, we had to ruin your beloved Pakistan
You wanted Pakistan to be a
state where we would be free; free to go to our mosques, temples and churches,
but today it is a country where many are free to bomb
places of worship. You said there would be no difference between
Hindus, Christians and Muslims, but today Pakistan’s Muslims
are killing each other (as
well as Hindus and Christians) because they cannot tolerate those whose beliefs
are different from theirs.
Your Pakistan would have been a
model democracy, but 10 years after your death, a
military dictator took
over the reins of the country, and we hailed him as a saviour. After the first
free and fair elections
in 1970, we
watched helplessly as a demagogue refused to accept the winner of the polls as
prime minister, which led to the dismemberment of your beloved country. Later, other
dictators came
and did their best to damage the country you created.
You created Pakistan because
you feared that Muslims would have no rights in a Hindu-dominated India. But
today, the country is ruled not by Hindus, but by a feudal
class which
considers itself above the law and flagrantly refuses
to pay its due
share of taxes (but decides how much tax honest taxpayers should pay).
When you were dying, Mr Jinnah,
your doctors advised you to go to London for treatment, but you refused because
your country was poor and because you loved its people. Today, Mr Jinnah, every
member of parliament is allowed
to go abroad for
medical treatment for the slightest of ailments (like constipation and
diarrhoea). You did not take a salary even though you were working day and night,
but today our politicians have looted
the country and
bought palaces in foreign countries, and we can do nothing about it.
You’ll be shocked to hear, Mr
Jinnah, that the kind of people who called you ‘Kafir-e-Azam’ (the great infidel) have appointed
themselves guardians of Pakistan’s ideology (even though they bitterly opposed
the creation of Pakistan). These men thought you should be portrayed in their
image, so they have dubbed your speeches in Urdu, a language which you could
not speak. They changed the name of your wife to Maryam, even though your
marriage certificate and her tombstone say her name is Rattan
Bai. Some of them even changed the place of your birth to an
obscure town in Sindh, even though you yourself said on many occasions that you
were born in Karachi. We won’t be surprised if in future they remove all your
portraits and show you as a heavily bearded man in an attempt to prove that you
were like them.
In today’s Pakistan, Mr Jinnah,
only one per cent of the population pays
income tax. There are regions which refuse to pay customs duty and
taxes on smuggled cars, the country’s industries are on the verge of collapse
due to rampant smuggling, and the government cannot impose its writ and recover
taxes from such elements (because practically everyone in the government is
highly corrupt). The streets of your beloved Karachi
are not safe, and we consider it a miracle if we arrive home safely every
evening without being mugged
or robbed (even though, as you said, the first duty of every government
is the maintenance of law and order).
You said that no nation can
progress if its women don’t work, yet today the Pakistani working woman is not
safe. The mullahs say her place is in the home and she has to bear as many
children as she can. And if, God forbid, she
is raped (something
that happens every day), she can be charged with adultery if she goes to the
police, as she can’t produce four male witnesses to the crime. In fact, one
religious leader even advised rape victims to remain
silent and say nothing (because in his version of the true religion,
that is what has been ordained).
We do
not know if it is true that you called Pakistan the greatest blunder of your
life, as you lay dying in Karachi, but over the years we have done our best to
make it come true.
Engineer, teacher, industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical industries for many years. Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those who know him), mentally unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/33976/sorry-mr-jinnah-we-had-to-ruin-your-beloved-pakistan/
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