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Friday, September 7, 2012

Lifeless State of a State

Is that where we are heading to - darkness?

11 year old Pakistani girl accused of blasphemy kept in prison for own safety”.

This had been making headlines in more or less the same way around the world, when a minor Pakistani Christian girl was taken into custody by the officials for allegedly burning a few pages of the Holy Quran. And to top it off, she was kept in remand for her own safety. How hapless could that be!

Over the years, some thing's terribly gone wrong in Pakistan. Or was it bound to go wrong given the way we've been leading our lives?

Every other day Pakistanis wake up to alerts and news that saddens the nation to bits.

The poor Rimsha Masih is only one of the cases that has upset the balance of Pakistan because news related to Pakistan keeps getting worse. The sectarian killings that the country is experiencing in the north-western parts of it, may not be new but the coverage it is getting, and demands to get, will only brew more hatred and widen unbridgeable gaps within a society already marred by divisions, sects and school of thoughts. Although we don't endorse any political party as such but he isn't far from truth when the Founder of MQM, Altaf Hussain said that the sectarian killing (more appropriate to call it genocide) will result in breaking the country.

And if one thought that this would suffice the misery for a country with a population of 180 million, then you'd be wrong – very wrong. In fact, there always seems to be some thing new in this country, though most of the times not good. There's always some thing to strengthen the views of sceptics and critics, deflate the hopes of the ones who dream and fantasise about Pakistan, while the rest of the world sits in their lounges with a cup (of whatever they drink) giggling and mocking at a country that came into existence on the basis of a religious ideology that spelt of its entirety, completeness and equality.

Most of our readers would agree none of this is to be found anywhere in the world now. But unfortunately more so in Pakistan when you read of a minor, probably suffering from Down syndrome, being jailed because of a law that is a mean to vent out personal vendetta given in the hands of those less-fortunate, less-educated and hence, less ability to think that what you sow so shall you reap. The law under which a minor is being tried is like giving a loaded gun to a baby, who knows nothing what to do with it until he gets angry. This is because it was later revealed, much to the shock and dismay for everyone, that evidences against Rimsha were planted by an Imam, namely Khalid Jadoon, generally considered as the care-takers of the religion. Even though it does come as a good news to all who've been following Rimsha's case that she had been granted bail, but what disturbs us is that charges still stand to date against her.

There are numerous killings around the country, even now when we are writing this. People in Karachi are being shot dead in broad daylight, while people of Balochistan have become targets of bullets on a daily basis making all the non-Balochis living in and outside Pakistan believe that the country is on the cusps of losing yet another part of its.

Then we have those extreme-minded, fanatics who are, god knows, hell bent on getting things done their way. So in order to achieve that, they consider blowing up themselves in a packed crowded market with hundreds and thousands of innocent people around them dead will some how pave the way for them to heaven. Illiteracy is initially a deprivation, and then it becomes a source of crime.

To counter these fanatic-minded lunatics, the Pakistan Army was coerced into a region where no army has succeeded, where no army has conquered the land to claim it as it their own. Armies in the past have lost battles, lost soldiers and some have even lost their mental balance. Yet, we decided to get into our tribal belt which has had for centuries its own laws and regulation to keep peace. It's hard to get this thing out of our minds that the Pakistan Army is fighting its own people at the behest of a foreign power for a few dimes that would run out tomorrow, but the people they'll kill today will not be brought back for the families who've lost them. And anyway, its a lose-lose situation for both of them, as the army has lost some of the best and valour soldiers in this war.

No doubt these are times of utter confusion and the presence of media and government makes it even more difficult to spot a black insect on a black stone in a dark-pitched night. We are getting sucked into this darker, and while you can soothe yourself by thinking that there is light on the other side of the tunnel, the trouble is we aren't in a tunnel but in a grave that we have dug for ourselves.

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