The story of Pakistan

In ten slogans

With Pakistan having just celebrated its 69^th birthday, this is as good a time as any to look back upon the journey so far. There are many ways to examine this history, one of which is to see it in the light of slogans that became popular over the years. Once on this track, the author soon realised that such has been the competition that gems such as ‘Sab se pehle Pakistan’, ‘Seyaasat naheen reyaasat’, ‘Haan, main baaghi hoon’, and ‘Marde momin marde haq, Zia ul Haq’ didn’t even manage to make it to the top 10 list. What also became immediately apparent was that most of our slogans have been outright ludicrous – or lugubrious, depending on one’s sense of humor. Be that as it may, no account of our history can be quite complete without them.

The author ranked the candidates based on an objective, systematic points system, where the criteria of evaluation for a slogan included popularity, ability to explain or define historical milestones, and comic value (if any). If you don’t agree with what follows, please consider the probability of your being wrong.

On the #10 spot we have the famous ‘Roti, kapra, aur makaan’. Except in reference to Bhutto Sr., who well and truly walked the socialist talk with his land and industrial reforms, this slogan is used mainly for comic relief purposes.

The #9 spot is occupied by ‘Qarz utaaro, mulk sanwaaro’, unveiled by the able team of Nawaz Sharif in 1997. The results must have been abysmal even by N standards, for the stunt was never repeated (recall that this is the team that thinks nothing of repeating medium-level disasters).

The #8 spot is claimed by ‘Zalimo, Qazi aa raha hai’. The year was 1993, the occasion the general elections. The oppressors kept trembling in fear; the oppressed waited and waited. In what proved to be a big anticlimax however, the Qazi never arrived.

The entry that makes it to #7 is, ‘Pakistan ka matlab kyaa, laa ilaaha illallaah’. People say all sorts of things during political campaigns, so it is possible that this was used during the freedom struggle. However, there is very little doubt that it was employed after Independence as a systematic propaganda tool to make the state more and more ‘Muslim’ and bellicose, in the process forcing the minorities out from the mainstream to the fringes.

The #6 slot is claimed by, ‘Tum kitne Bhutto maaro ge, har ghar se Bhutto nikle ga’. Like most slogans of this sort (also see #5 below), this one has severe accuracy issues – we now have irrefutable evidence that all the Bhuttos that have ever emerged have come out of the Bhutto household – but the charmingly uninhibited desire for martyrdom more than makes up for this minor deficiency.

On #5 we have, ‘Ya Allah ya rasool, Benazir beqasoor’. Nothing captures the poor masses’ blind love for their favorite leader better than this one. Of course not confined to the PPP alone, this noble love is simply incapable of seeing anything wrong with the beloved, notwithstanding any contrary evidence on display.

The #4 position is taken by ‘Idhar hum, udhar tum’. Abbas Athar is on record that it was he who coined this newspaper heading, while Bhutto neither used these words nor meant what was later attributed to him. Armed with this however, many ‘intellectuals’ think their analysis of the separation of East Pakistan complete as soon as they repeat this slogan. That it is widely believed too by the laymen tells a great deal about our preference for simplicity over accuracy. Who needs nuanced accounts when we have catchy slogans?

Our second runner up – ‘Qadam barhao Nawaz Sharif, hum tumhaare saath hain’ – represents opportunistic sycophancy at its peak, a culture of telling the boss what he wants to hear, however inadvisable it may be. As Sharif found out to his horror – when he looked back after advancing as exhorted, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

The runner up is ‘Shukria Raheel Sharif’. This, along with the more explicit, ‘Ab aa bhi jao’ brilliantly captures the sorry predicament of the public, which alternately looks, in vain, towards the politicians and the military for an improvement in its lot. This vacillation, exhibited by distribution of sweets on each transition to and from civilian rule, is the equivalent of copping and eating alternately the proverbial 100 sandals and 100 onions.

And finally, our winner is… ‘Go, Nawaz, go!’ Though Nawaz is in no mood to depart for anywhere, this has arguably been the most popular, and the only really international slogan we’ve had. It has been raised in important capitals around the world; and there have been reports of the Saudi Hajj authorities having to strictly instruct the pilgrims not to shout it while stoning the devil.

Bonus: I must mention here a slogan recently seen on billboards in DHA Islamabad, with the Pakistan flag and the DHA monogram on either side of it. It reads: ‘Watan ki mitti azeem hai tu, azeem tar hum banaa rahe hain.’ For good measure, the phrase is followed by the equally catchy, ‘Taameer o taraqqi, aik naye jazbe ke saath…’  The billboards may be of a recent vintage, but as far as the sentiment is concerned, no patriotic Pakistani can help nodding approvingly.