We urgently need to launch our second freedom struggle, this time against our own rapacious ruling elite to win back our independence – a Political Revolution
“Happy Independence Day Maverick,” I said as I greeted him.
“Independence Day my foot,” retorted Maverick. “Now look who’s spreading lies. You should say ‘Happy Dependence Day’.”
I saw red, but by the time I counted to ten I realised that he was not all wrong.
Maverick continued without bothering about my complexion. “Haven’t we lost our fiscal independence? Are we not totally dependent upon America and its financial institutions to keep us afloat? What we need to do, Mr Humayun Gauhar you great sage, is something you have bootlessly written about and said on television many times: launch another freedom struggle against our own ruling elite to win back our independence – ‘Re-independence’ – and make Pakistan a truly modern and continuously revolutionary Islamic Welfare State. Didn’t our founding father Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah instruct us to do just that in the Social Contract he gave us in his inaugural speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, a piece of human writing no less great than the American Declaration of Independence? You yourself say that ‘Islamic Republic’ is meaningless, just a copout. I agree with you. How can a piece of land have Faith? To be truly Islamic a State must have an Islamic purpose to give the piece of land on which it exists purpose and objective. That can only be the implementation of Haqooq ul Ibad or the Rights of all God’s Creations.”
Maverick had me there. “But we tore up Jinnah’s social contract,” said I. “We replaced it with the Objectives Resolution nearly two years later. Have you ever heard of something being done first and the reasons for doing it adulterated after and presented as ‘objectives’? We thus handed Pakistan over to mullahs of various hues who had opposed its creation and who regularly misinterpret the word of God. We handed it over to Sindhi and Punjabi feudal lords and Baloch and Pashtun tribal chieftains who hardly supported the freedom struggle. The ones who really struggled for Pakistan most were tucked away in Bengal, ‘East Pakistan’, and ignored. Most were left behind in India. And look at what the Muhajirs, those who migrated from Urdu-speaking Oudh, have done to themselves and what the sons of the soil have also done to them. Karachi, our largest city and financial and shipping capital, is essentially a no-go area today. Industrial robber barons were added later to the list of our rapacious ruling elite comprising the many feudal lords and tribal chieftains, many of who also set up industries and grabbed every lever of State power to protect their benefits and privileges. Is it any accident that feudal agricultural lords are not required to pay income tax, though there is no excuse or rational reason for it?”
‘Have you ever heard of something being done first and the reasons for doing it adulterated after and presented as ‘objectives’? We thus handed Pakistan over to mullahs of various hues who had opposed its creation and who regularly misinterpret the word of God’
“Correct,” said Maverick. “Have you noticed that in one of our earliest national songs for children –Aao bachcho sair karain tum to Pakistan key – there is no mention of Bengal, Balochistan or Kashmir? That should give you a glimpse into the mentality that led to East Pakistan separating to become Bangladesh. Most of Kashmir is still under Indian occupation and Balochistan has been given a raw deal not only by its tribal chieftains but by the rest of us too: an insurgency is going on there funded, aided and armed by our neighbours the Indians. God, I wish we could help not having some of our neighbours and relatives, but sadly we are landed with them.”
I went on: “By making myriad sects, sharias and movements based on different interpretations of God’s word, don’t you realise that not only have our so called scholars divided the unity of God into pieces in people’s perceptions but have also twisted His word by superimposing new things, rituals and customs on His faith and making Muslims think that they are a part of the faith? Don’t forget: over 80 percent Muslims are not Arab or educated and depend on what their local mullahs, elders and peers tell them, people who have also been told it by their mullahs, elders and peers, and so it goes on generation after generation spreading discord, disharmony and the division of God’s word and intent. Could there be a greater sin? Genuine scholars are meant to help the followers of God to understand His word. These people are fitna. Fitna means sedition, revolt, mutiny, pest, mischief, perfidy, temptation, wicked, mutiny, rebel, without fidelity and thus infidels, who spread discord amongst the faithful and disharmony throughout every land. Muslims have raised the sword against other Muslims who don’t adhere to their interpretations. Which is why Iqbal said:
Allah say kary door to Taleem bhi Fitna;
Imlak bhi, Aulad bhi, Jageer bhi Fitna.
Na Haq kay liye uthay to shamsheer bhi fitna;
Shamsheer hi kaya, nara-e-takbeer bhi fitna.
“If it distances you from God then education is fitna;
Property, progeny and fief too are fitna.
If raised for lies the sword is fitna;
Forget the sword, even the slogan of Takbeer is fitna.”
“What is fitna and takbeer?” asked Maverick.
“I’ve already told you what fitna is,” I replied. “Fitna means rebellion, mutiny, infidelity that is equal to kufr which is where the word ‘infidel’ comes from while ‘takbeer’ is to reaffirm the unity of God and His Supreme Greatness – Allah o’ Akbar, God is the Greatest. Unity? Forget unity. Muslims divided themselves ab initio into sects, movements, five major sharia’s forgetting that there is only one Sharia, which is the manual of how to get to the Correct Path that leads to the well or water which is the source of life and stay on it. The one and only Sharia is the Quran, God’s word. It is the manual of how to stay on the correct path and not stray, given to Mankind by God in His own Words – the Quran and His earlier scriptures, the Quran being the last, the latest, updated, most correct. What arrogance for Muslims hiding behind the cloak of scholarship to arrogate to themselves the duty of creating their own sharias, laws and meanings and dividing themselves and the Almighty into pieces.”
Maverick got into top gear: “If one looks at our current condition, we cannot operate without regular IMF handouts, cannot even pay government salaries. The US has hinted that the Coalition Support Fund on which we are also dependent so much will cease by the end of this year. Then what?
“Now consider the plight of over 300 children,” continued Maverick, “with the figure still rising as more children come forward, boys who were kidnapped and regularly raped in the awful Punjab town of Kasur where people don’t even know how to eat at weddings in a civilised manner and even grab food from another’s plate and are proud of it. Worse, they show-off about how much they have eaten. The only good thing that Kasur has produced is the great Melody Queen Madam Noor Jehan. Anyway, the poor boys were videotaped being raped, blackmailed and forced to steal from their parents to give money to their kidnapper-rapists lest the videos be put on Internet porn sites in a country where porn viewership is amongst the highest in the world or sold as DVDs in the market. If I told you who research has found to be the most porn viewers in offices in Pakistan, you would be surprised and even ashamed if shame hasn’t left you entirely: bearded blokes and hijabi women, probably very frustrated. Some parents were also shown the videos of their sons being raped and were blackmailed for money that they handed over out of fear and to hide their shame. Those who went to the police were thrashed or shooed away. They are all very poor people and were forced to sell their meagre jewellery and whatever little they had. Worse, this went on for around nine years. Can there be any excuse for this going on for nine years – going on at all? There can be an explanation. There are compelling signs that the local Punjab Police was complicit – the Punjab Police, like all our governments, are really a huge official Mafia, which they can never be without government protection, patronage and participation. At least one politician parliamentarian of the ruling party of the Brothers Sharif also seems to be involved and is creating a smokescreen that this was done over a property dispute between the families of the boys and their rapists. A property dispute between 300 families – give me a break. Whoever believes this utter rubbish has got to be not only a moron but an infidel as well, a lunatic of the worst kind, intellectually challenged.”
‘If one looks at our current condition, we cannot operate without regular IMF handouts, cannot even pay government salaries. The US has hinted that the Coalition Support Fund on which we are also dependent so much will cease by the end of this year. Then what?’
“Don’t forget Maverick the eleven disabled people, men and women, who were beaten by the Sindh Police, another Mafia, on the precincts of the Sindh parliament, for protesting that they had not been given jobs as promised by what passes for the Sindh government, another Mafia,” I reminded Maverick.
“I know,” he said. “Three women fainted, including one who is pregnant. Where is our civil society, our selectively shrill human rights organisations? Holding forth on TV only? I can assure them that they will get more awards and dole if they say it with bricks and stones on the streets. This when our disabled children have just won 35 medals, including 12 gold, in the Los Angeles Special Olympics last month, with no help from government but from volunteers and well-wishers. Shame. Is this an Islamic state? Is this a democratic state? Is this an independent state? Is it even a state or just a cartographer’s drawing on a map? Habib Jalib’s question is crying out to be asked again: “Ae Quaid-e-Azam dekh rehe ho apna Pakistan?” – “O Great Leader, are you observing your Pakistan?”
“The system is coming apart Maverick,” I said, “and thank God for it, but at what cost and suffering? If evolution is moving us away from this man-eating system, is there any gainsaying that it will be replaced by something better?”
Maverick tittered: “So petrified are our rulers of foreign and home-grown terrorists, political militants and nefarious Indian agents, that they shut down mobile cell phones in Islamabad on the morning of August 13, a day before Dependence Day. They came back on at 1 pm. Going to the hill station Murree has been prohibited during the holiday. What does that show you? It shows you that our political and military rulers are not the most powerful force in the country, terrorists are. We better clean up our act fast to clean Pakistan up fast before someone else comes and cleans it up for us. But then our independence will not only be figuratively gone, it will be formally gone as well.
“So Happy Dependence Day, my dear Humayun, Mr Gauhar. Let me repeat for the sake of driving my point home: the need of the hour, the imperative, is to launch another freedom struggle, this time against our own rapacious ruling elite and win back our independence. If we cannot, why waste all the money on ‘Independence’ Day celebrations when it can be better spent elsewhere – like on Metro Rocket Trains? Khuda Hafiz.”
