The insecure nation

If there was ever an apt title for a book, then Farzana Sheikh’s Making Sense of Pakistan is it. Those four words sum up the raging debates inside the minds of many young Pakistanis, for how does one move forward without first making sense of the existential? Whether it’s the question of language or the issues pertaining to how equal citizenship is hostage to the state’s idea of a Muslim, we still in many ways have to make sense of Pakistan.
On the 28th of May last year little in Pakistan made sense yet, in other ways, things came to pass in a crystal clear manner. Freedom’s jugular is slit in Pakistan each day by knives that you and I helped sharpen. Such attacks do not occur in a vacuum. The bullets fired at the Ahmadi mosques were loaded as we the constitutionally recognised Muslim majority of Pakistan looked on and went about our lives. The list of things which we dare not speak against with any sustainable frequency is increasing every day. Each topic that becomes a part of the unthinkable or the taboo is an argument lost without being made and represents space ceded to those spreading militant extremism.
As a state, Pakistan is fundamentally insecure. It behaves more often than not like an obnoxious professor towards each idea that it is not familiar with — as if each new idea or question adds to its insecurity. There seems to be an obsession with ensuring uniformity of opinion, religion, language and identity. Talk show hosts each day speak of the importance of ‘being one’ — ‘bus hum aik ho jain’ — as if uniformity of views will solve all our deep-rooted problems. There are questions that we need to grapple with and the rhetoric of ‘being one’, in so far as it discourages questions, is misplaced and will severely harm us. This country needs to have uncomfortable conversations and have them with openness. It needs to acknowledge the freedom to question every answer. We must realise that the most loudly voiced opinion is not always the right one and that the level of popularity of an argument should never be used to allow or suppress it.
In order to come up with a perduring and sustainable concept of national identity, the State of Pakistan must speak in a voice that resonates with all its people today and not just the remnants of a displaced past. Pakistan needs to embrace its diversity especially with regard to different religious sects and it is imperative that the state should stop playing God — deciding who is a Muslim and who is not. In the private sphere discrimination against certain sects may always exist (and laws can be enacted to curb that) but if the state marginalises a religious sect (the Ahmadis for one) then violence, and not just state-sponsored at that, is legitimised. Indeed, this is how and why the Ahmadi community in Pakistan has suffered for decades. Will our law-makers ever have the intestinal fortitude to move for the repeal of discriminatory legal provisions, including those enshrined in the Constitution? It seems that things will get much worse before they get any better. And while they get worse, we must remember to question every putative answer furnished by the state.
Making allowance for acceptance of diversity and any efforts to improve the future of Pakistan will have one thing in common: an honest examination of all that goes on in Pakistan and all that is wrong with it. Such introspection necessitates that we confront the problems at home first rather than perpetuating conspiracy theories of how the world is against us. Last year, nearly every protest organised to condemn the attacks on Ahmadis turned into anti-India and anti-America rallies. Needless to say many left each such protest with a bad taste in the mouth.
A prevailing apathy towards the plight of the Ahmadis translates into inaction by the police and a near deliberate failure by the court system to uphold the rights of this community. The most vulnerable in a society are most worthy of protection but owing to our innumerable insecurities we target and marginalise the most vulnerable, in theory as well as practice. 28th May, 2010 was just the culmination of how we have failed a community that shares this home of ours. Many celebrated 28th May as the day on which we tested our nuclear weapons but there is little point in spending billions on securing borders if those within our borders face a mortal danger.
If Pakistanis are a nation, then we are one that has been constructed and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But it is a work in progress. The sort of nation that we become will be determined by the narratives we shape, the languages in which we allow those narratives and the protection we afford to the weakest among us. Also, how do we create an equal Pakistani citizenship for all?
Pakistan must listen to its diverse voices and reconcile with them. Not doing so runs the danger of never being clear about our identity and being a schizophrenic nation. That is something we can hardly afford.

The writer is a Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn and practices in Lahore. He has a special interest in Anti-trust / Competition law. He can be reached at [email protected]