Saturday 27 October 2012

Identity Crisis - Will the real Pakistani please stand up



Case 1 :

2 years back I was on my way home in a public bus, it was the month of Ramadan, and as we all know that in Ramadan during rush hours people go mad . It was just another evening, I heard 2 people talking on the back seat, discussing the situation of Pakistan after some bad or unpleasant news they heard from someone, the conversation was somewhat like this .

MAN 1 : Pata nahi is mulk main kyun reh rahay hain, bas bhaagna hai yahan se ( Why are we even living in this country, we should leave this place )

MAN 2 (Laughing) : Ab to Green Passport ki bhi koi izzat nahi kerta, kon poochta hai Pakistanio ko (No one respects our Green Passport, and no one on earth gives any kind of respect to us)

MAN 1 : Bas yaar bahar niklo is mulk se ( Bro, we just need to get out of here )

And they carried on with the same old criticism, usually I don't keep quite when someone is blaming Pakistan for their problems, but I don't know what kept me from arguing with them, I controlled my anger and few minutes after I get off as my stop was there .

Case 2 :

Years back when I was studying , I posted a nationalist sort of article on my department's mailing group. After few months I received an email from a senior of mine who belonged to an Islamic organization, claiming that if you are a nationalist then you are against the teachings of Islam, as Islam teaches universal brotherhood beyond borders . Accepting that as a true point, I argued that my post doesn't disagree with this fact, if I love my country that doesn't mean that I am against the Universal Brotherhood teachings, but according to her even fighting for the country is against the teachings of Islam and insisted that I should drop the idea of loving my country in order to be a true Muslim, the point of her was that we need to come under the umbrella of Khilafah . The discussion ended with no conclusion .

Case 3 :

I often get laughed at for my too much of "Pro-Pakistani" posts on social networks, they call me Jazbaati (Emotional) , Pagal, or whatever they could think of, its not that I am wrong , its just that I feel sorry for other people's attitude towards Pakistan, it was one sort of discussion that cleanliness begins from home, so if you want to make Pakistan a better place to live then we have to change ourselves like we should keep our streets clean, we should follow traffic rules, and these are just a tiny bit of responsibilities that fall on each and every citizen of this country. But for my these points I got nothing but the same attitude that "these things wont help Pakistan" only true leaders will help you, and "1 Banday k change honay se kuch nahi hota" ( You can't change Pakistan, by just changing yourself" , we are too rigid to change ourselves ,then how do you expect a change in the whole damn system ?

Case 4:

A colleague of mine while trying to make fun of me told me that "You will look like Quaid-e-Azam when you will grow old, I said " At-least I will look like a Great Man" , this statement led to him claiming that creating Pakistan was a conspiracy to divide Muslims and all the crap and Jinnah wasn't a great man . My response was "Don't get me started on this"

Above mentioned cases are Actual events that happened in my life, and they are just not limited to these 4, they are a lot of them, reason behind sharing was to show that how much of a confused nation we are, we are in deep and critical sort of Identity Crisis, we fight on whether there should be Islamic laws, secular laws, whether Jinnah was secular or religious, was he a Shiite , Ismaili or a Sunni, whether voting in elections is "Shirk" or not, is giving taxes OK or not, were we better in India or Pakistan, whether I should call myself a Pakistani first or a Muslim first, whether or not its my right to kill anyone in the name of honor or religion .

Are WE  REAL Pakistanis, I am sure if our ancestors who laid their precious life for a more precious place called Pakistan were alive they would have regretted their decision to do so, NO NO by no means I am saying that creating Pakistan was a mistake, what I am trying to say is that we have made it a horrible place to live by our actions, by the rules we impose in our society , by misusing religion, by vowing to kill every other person, by make it dirtier with our own hands .

Will the REAL Pakistani please Standup !

No comments:

Post a Comment