There are certain instances in a nation’s life that play a pivotal role in reawakening its dwellers from their indifferent, apathetic slumber. December 16, 2014 was such a day which will remain etched in our memory. This is the day when our enemies decided to hit us where it hurt most; they took away 141 innocent lives, our children, our future. The agony is unquantifiable as nothing will ever be the same again. The fact that our internal conditions aided the terrorists in accomplishing their nefarious goals aggravates the pinch. Disunity was rampant everywhere in Pakistan before this uneventful day .We were waging our own wars, working towards our own petty aims not realising the fact that our very actions were making us susceptible to the evil designs of terrorists.
We forgot the message of Quaid-e-Azam to stand united at all times. Being a farsighted leader he did foresee the unity deficit that his nation would undergo and hence repeatedly stressed on the notion that unity will be our panacea against all ills. But unity, which was to be our asset, our binding feature and our faith, was long forgotten and we segregated ourselves in different factions. Drawing parallels between 16 December 1971 and 2014, one realises the grave fact that it indeed was disunity that led to these national tragedies.
Only Twenty four years after its creation, Pakistan was bearing the brunt of disunity of its dwellers and this disunity was an opportunity for our enemies to heighten the misunderstandings between the East and West wings, consequently causing us to lose a large chunk of our territory. This event had to cause us to mend our ways, learn invaluable lessons. But this is certainly not what happened as our differences and our priorities propelled us for the worst.
Today forty three years down the road from the debacle of East Pakistan the same message is reiterated to us in the form of the Peshawar tragedy to stand united, no matter how dire the circumstances are. This time we do stand united, we openly condemn the terrorist, we demand justice but the question arises that was our slumber so deep that it took 141 lives to wake us up? Does it imply that if the unity generated, as a consequence of this tragic event, is momentary as has been the way with us in the past, then will it take hundreds of lives in the future to jolt us to see the gravity of the affairs of the state?
MARRIA QIBTIA SIKANDAR NAGRA,
Lahore, December 23.