As we celebrate our Independence Day, we need to assess why we allowed Quaid’s vision of a democratic welfare state to be reduced to a fiefdom of few individuals and institutions. Problems emanated when immediately after independence a class emerged which had accumulated wealth overnight through fake claims and thereafter acquired political power. This group of nouveau rich men were joined by remnants of the British Raj, such as the Unionists of Punjab, who then went on to negate the vision of our founding fathers.
We failed to change and reform the mindset of a civil bureaucracy created by the British to rule an occupied colony and a military trained by them to maintain their colonial hold. The well-entrenched institutionalised corruption mafia has destroyed our economic viability.
Pakistan can only survive as a sovereign modern democratic welfare state, if we function as a tolerant democratic society, where the writ of law is enforced and nobody, including our ruling elite, enjoys immunity from accountability and transgressions of constitution. Today those who have no stakes in this country, or those who like their forefathers have never reconciled to the creation of Pakistan, form part of the ruling elite. The religious parties that opposed creation of an independent Pakistan have self-assumed for themselves the role of custodians of Pakistan’s ideology, which they had opposed. We have allowed our history to be distorted and today we suffer the consequences.
MALIK TARIQ ALI
Lahore
