They say 14th August 1947 was the independence day of Pakistan. But I say, hold on, and let me rephrase the statement. 14th August 1947 was the day of independence from the geographical colonization of Pakistan by the West. Three score years have passed, and even today we are not an ideologically independent country. Let me paint the canvas of your perspectives with the colors of my standpoint to make you break away from this pre-defined vague notion that Pakistan is an independent state.
February 2017 has been hard on us, as a nation. Numerous terrorist attacks have been witnessed and a large number of poor, innocent souls have departed on their eternal abode. The thing that bothers me the most is that why our Pakistani nation feel 100 times more shattered when something disastrous happens in the West? And why do they flip Pakistani news channels when they are repeatedly updating us about the terrorist attacks? For instance, when Paris was attacked, why did our nation get extremely moved that hashtags like #PrayForParis started trending on Facebook and Twitter? Would any person living in Paris ever bother to use a hashtag #PrayForLahore on social media? Or would anybody there actually care about the blast that exploded on Thursday at Z block, Defence, Lahore? Would any person in the West start to feel sympathetic towards us? Certainly not. The reason being that the West already considers us a fallen nation and that is all because of the fact that we have never sympathized with our own nation the way we sympathize with the rest of the world. The dilemma is that Westerners were taken out of our country in 1947 but even in 2017, we are unable to take this prejudice out of ourselves. If something is related to the West, it is supposed to be given more priority than something that is our very own.
As far as our government is concerned, more than ten bomb blasts have occurred in the country over the past fortnight and have destroyed the lives of a number of people but still what is the government doing? “Muzzammat dar muzammat dar muzammat” – Condolences, condolences and condolences. Is the job of the government and the security agencies just to condole these heinous terrorist attacks after the damage has been done? My social media has been flooded with “Security Alert” messages in which apparently the government has warned us to avoid public places which are over-crowded. What a wonderful way of tackling stately affairs. Instead of doing something about it, just warn the nation to stay where they are and ask them not to commute. What sane advice and how perfectly they are exercising their power and authority. Bravo.
Does this statement of our Prime minister "Iss saanhay ki PM Nawaz Sharif shaded muzzamat kartay hain" heal the mental and physical torture that our nation has been going through? Not enough right? So how about announcing a holiday to celebrate the grief of another black day? Sounds good? How ironic is that CM sahib on one hand is (apparently) doing countless efforts for educating the youth through his laptop schemes etc, and on the other hand we are genuinely fighting for our lives to acquire education. Education is our right but do we have to fight for our lives to get it?
Where is the system? Whose responsibility it is to make sure that horrendous incidents like these won't be repeated? I am really sorry but we were not raised to be killed brutally by the terrorists. Where’s that thing called "peace of mind"? How can we study and flourish in our careers under such circumstances when we are not sure that when leaving for university, if would we be coming back home safely or not? How would we grow as individuals… as a nation?
My sincere apologies to the complacent, ideologically colonized Pakistani nation, if this piece hasn’t stirred your emotions. I know if I would have written about any sad incident from the West such as #ParisAttack, #PaulWalkersDeath, or even #BrangelinaDivorce, you would have felt more heartache. Why to talk about the delusional future of this country?
