KARACHI - Tehreek-e-Istaqlal head and Air Chief Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan has said that there is no room for the military Generals in politics to rule the country. The continuous democratic system only can save the country from the crisis. He was delivering a lecture on 'Pakistan - the way ahead challenges and opportunities,' organised by Pakistan Institute of Maritime Affairs (PIMA) at DHA Library auditorium here on Saturday. The retired Air Marshal recalled the speech of the Quaid-e-Azam which he had made in a reception held in Karachi on August 14, 1947 in which he (Asghar Khan) was also among the audience of 21 officers and quoted an extract from the Quaid's speech: "Never forget that you are the servants of the state and your job is to obey the orders of the representatives of the people. You don't make policy; it is the representatives of the people who make policy." Giving another excerpt of the Quaid-e-Azam's speech of August 12, 1947 he quoted: "The religion was the personal matter of an individual and the state should not interfere in one's religion." The veteran politician said that the present crisis faced by Pakistan had been caused because we, the Pakistanis, had deviated from the ideals set by the Quaid-e-Azam. Referring to the rule of Ziaul Haq in special, he said: "Some ambitious Generals use army for their personal interests such as Ziaul Haq who was a military dictator but posed as a religious reformer and contrived to convert Pakistan into a religious state with he himself as a Khalifa." "Zia is responsible for sowing the seeds of sectarian violence in the country and during his regime, a state of civil war raged for sometime in Gilgit between Sunnis and Shias in which many innocent people of both sects were being executed," he added. "Few years back, over 100 doctors were killed in Karachi alone, many of whom had came back to Pakistan from abroad to serve their people. This is the price we are paying by deviating from the teachings of Quaid-e-Azam," he commented. He accused political parties of not paying attention to this madness and some mislead the people to build their political fortunes thus destroying Quaid-e-Azam's Pakistan. He also held United States responsible for instigating religious extremists in Pakistan by joining hands with the former military dictator Ziaul Haq and waging Jihad against former USSR in Afghanistan. He charged that the ambitious military have made Pakistan a mockery, which resulted in the deaths of millions of people. "The defence services personnel are the servants of the nation; not their masters and politics is not their job. The nation should learn some lesson from the experiences of last sixty years. People should differentiate between the good and the bad, between the corrupt and the honest," he observed. He pointed out that when politicians have been proved inefficient or corrupt, a General has stepped in as a 'saviour'. Politicians should be given time to be recognised. "Sixty years is a long time in the life of an individual but not in the life of the nation." He said that nations take much longer time to build and there is no shortcut in it. He commented that so far, what we have seen is that a successful politician has been the one who has managed to fool the people. "This is in fact the yardstick of a successful politician in Pakistan." He regretted that honesty in Pakistan's politics is rare and the ability to fool the people is now become the measure of a great leader in this country. He advised that the Generals should confine themselves to their profession as Admiral Chaudhry and a few others have done. "We learn slowly and remember that this is probably the only country in the world where a minority forced a majority to separate as we did with East Pakistan," he observed. He shared that he had travelled in the Punjab extensively during those days and tried to stop the people from this madness. I was called a 'Bengali agent' and the people generally supported military action in East Pakistan. Replying to queries he responded that the democratic system could only save the country. Though there are many flaws in the democracy and continue election process should be continued. "If as a nation we become united than no super power could break Pakistan." Former diplomat Mehdi Masood and others also spoke on the occasion.