Yesterday my father and I shared a leisure moment, browsing through some old stuff that he had collected as a school boy. It was a compilation of photographs and newspaper cuttings from the 1960s, covering majorly the era of Ayub Khan in the country.
The photographs were mostly taken in Lahore, the city which my father narrated to me, was described as the Paris of the Orient at the time of the British Raj; one of the photographs showed smartly dressed families outside cinema houses in the Tollinton market, the others displaying young girls wearing regular sweaters and jeans enjoying ambling under the winter’s sun on the crowded Mall Road. One of the newspaper cuttings displayed Ayub Khan as President waving at the masses from a roofless motor with Jacqueline Kennedy sitting next to him with a happy countenance planted on her face, and the protocol relatively so little.
These photographs showcased a civilized culture coupled with a clean atmosphere of discipline and sophistication that prevailed. It was a moment to be absolutely taken aback at the stark contrast painted before me as I unconsciously kept drawing a ruminating comparison between the past and the present.
As an individual and as a Pakistani, I questioned our definitions of progress and development and while I was cruising through these photographs. I felt the surge of an inexplicable desire within me to somehow be transported to the time when Pakistan looked like this.
Nobody could be seen hurling abuse at young girls for wearing jeans; no muftis were heard of passing fatwas that advocated killing women in the name of honor (leaving the explanation of the word ‘honor’ to the perusal of men); nobody rushed to put people heading towards the cinema houses on flames; nobody loped to behead someone on the basis of the religious differences that he had with him.
It is excruciating to see a country engendered by a simple and clean political ideology being viciously stripped at the hands of blood-thirsty extortionists, racketeers and messianic-radicals. Where the expounders of Islamic law like Mufti Abdul Qawi deem it perfectly normal and not by any means antithetical to the values of Islam to have an unfettered, freestyle selfie-session with a social-media sensation like Qandeel Baloch and where self-proclaimed flag-bearers of Islam like Maulana Sherani are hell-bent to ostracize women on the basis of their gender; where the endless corruption tales of the democratic leaders form the only news reports of the day; where convicts like Ayan Ali are invited to educational institutions as chief guests and artists like Amjad Sabri are brutally murdered in sheer daylight. Women merely yearning for respect and recognition are forced to pay acquiescence to the mullahs, and the ones who belong to the minority’s segment of the social calendar are rushing to apply for emigration. Who can tell this once was a country with tolerance, respect for one’s individuality and religious sentiment?
Amidst all this, an onlooker’s gravest concern is the concern that hovers about the natural order of things, a natural order that,with time, starts setting in upon humans and hence upon nations.
Humans have a natural propensity to become immune to their surroundings. A time comes when their responses become cerebral, instead of being organic. They do not anymore care to establish a stance against what a sensible conscience might deem as wrong, reducing their voices to muffled whispers in their effort to ‘accept’ the perpetual twilight that stretches from one end to the other.
The gravest point of concern is the alarming fact that the moderates, the thinking minds of the nation have cocooned themselves in their tiny sanctuaries, something that throws light at the possible ‘acceptance’ of these things that our posture, as a nation, might assume.
From the colossal corruption cases of the ones who sit in Islamabad to the ceremony of innocence being drowned in Karachi, and layers and layers of the roaring expletives of the theykeydaars of Islam in between, one’s only hope is the rejuvenation of the voices of the ones who can still make a difference with it.
One’s only prayer, amidst the social havoc corroding the very foundations upon which this nation was brought together, could be that we as individuals not be moved to the periphery of completely giving up and surrendering ourselves to the hands of the ones taking this country to devastation. It needs to be understood that the demise of that moderate, secular, level-headed Pakistani within us would be the demise of every vestige of hope that might offer a silver silhouette of redemption and we, for one, cannot afford it as a nation. May we stand once again as a nation built of individuals who believe in veritable articulation of their balanced opinions, make our voice loud with appreciation of art, respect the beliefs of the various religious factions present among us and let ourselves know that it is but important to speak and make ourselves heard for “silence helps the tormentor, not the tormented”.