What you see is what you get
“You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosque or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed –that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as the citizens of the State.”
These are the very famous words from the Presidential address of Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, few days before it was announced as an independent state. The vision of the state in the mind of Jinnah is very clear and evident from his speech, that Pakistan was to be a state which would give equal rights to its citizens, regardless of caste, creed or religion. That it would not bring up class differences and discriminate people when choosing political, military or civil representatives, or when providing basic human rights, or when simply communicating with each other. It would not hurt the sentiments of its citizens on these grounds and will not repeat the treatment meted out in British India, the very reason for which the demand for a separate state was made.What we see presently in this state, is quite different.
Sharoon Masih, a 17 year oldstudent of a government school in Burewala – the only Christian in his class, was killed few weeks back by one of his Muslim classmates. The police says that Ahmed Raza and Sharoon got into a fight because Sharoon inadvertently stepped on Ahmed’s mobile, which enraged Ahmed, although he did not mean to take his class mate’s life. However, Sharoon’s parents claim that the action was religiously motivated. According to his parents, Sharoon’s ‘crime’ was to drink water from the same glass his other classmates used – an act which some Muslims find unacceptable as they consider the non Muslims ‘impure’. A day before the tragic incident took place, his teacher not only sent him back home for not wearing the proper uniform, he also hit and abused him in front of the class by calling him a churha– a derogatory word for Pakistani Christians. Bearing the brunt of humiliation, Sharoon attended his school the next day wearing proper uniform which was to last only for few hours. His parents found his dead body later in a hospital, with the crisp blue shirt bought from their savings soaked in blood. His drinking of water – a basic human right – was such an issue, his mother claims, that since the day he joined school, Sharoon was not allowed to quench his thirst using the classroom’s water cooler only because of his faith and would remain thirsty in the hot and humid weather of Punjab, until he would reach back home. On that ill fated day, he must have convinced himself that using a glass of water could bring him no real harm. Little did he know that it would actually cost his life.
According to the statistics compiled by US Commission on International Religious Freedom, seven Christians among non Muslims were killed in attacks between June 2012 and June 2013 in Pakistan, while in the following year the figure jumped astonishingly high to 128. In 2015, at least 15 worshippers were killed on a Sunday in a suicide attack on churches in Lahore. In 2016, a suicide bomb blast killed nearly 70 Christians celebrating Easter in a park, also in Lahore. These are, but some examples of violence against the Christian community in Pakistan in the recent years. Similar incidents against other minorities – mainly Hindus and Ahmadis, can also be quoted.
Farhanaz Ispahani, media advisor to the president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2012, noted that the population in Pakistan of religious minorities has decreased from 23pc in 1947 to around 3-4pc today. In her research paper aptly titled ‘Pakistan’s descent into Religious Intolerance’, Ispahani quotes a judicial inquiry commission concluding in 1954, headed by Supreme Court Justice Muhammad Munir and Punjab High Court Justice Muhammad Rustam Kayani. The commission had interviewed almost all the leading clerics of the time and while they often considered each others’ beliefs as incompatible to Islam, ‘they only seemed to agree on their contempt for and opposition to non-Muslims.’ One of the most noteworthy findings of the Munir Commission was related to the Islamist leaders’ attitudes towards non Muslims. “According to the leading ulemas, the position of non-Muslims in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will be that of dhimmis (meaning protected person in Arabic) and they will not be full citizens of Pakistan because they will not have the same rights as Muslims. They will have no voice in the making of the law, no right to administer the law and no right to hold public offices.” How fully this attitude has been adopted practically maybe debatable, but the mind set of the majority of Pakistani Muslims has surely been nurtured on this ideology. The ‘Islamisation’ of the curriculum in schools and colleges of Pakistan have only added fuel to the fire, with crafting ‘a version of history that emphasised Islam’s martial traditions, spoke of a long standing conflict between Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent, highlighted a pan-Islamic ummah and depicted other religions as inferior to Islam.’
This ‘culturing’ of our minds and thoughts is probably one of the rare tasks which was carried out with consistency and determination within this state. We, the self assumed ‘protectors’ of the weak and unprotected, lay undisputed claim over their lives and properties. We, the proud flag bearers of Islam, intoxicated with power and control, give refuge to an unprotected being – a camel for instance – in a worship place of another unprotected – the Hindu, without considering that this act may defile the sanctity of the place and strengthen the feeling in its occupant of being unprotected. We act so naïve to notice that most of us share common names with the unprivileged, owing to common history, possible common family links tracing back generations ago, only to have become separate because of a forefather relinquishing his ancestral faith to accept another. We forget to realise, that we may have embraced Islam with tongue, but not with our heart, for our minds are yet to be converted from an ancient belief of pure and impure to the much larger and accommodating spirit of Islam.
We pay tribute to the founder of our nation by hanging his portrait, quoting him in every possible event, celebrating his birth and mourning his death, all gestures in the guise of respect, which we do not give to his beliefs. We join our Muslim brethren all over the world when they suffer injustice – in Palestine, in Kashmir – only after narrowing the path of justice for our non Muslim and sometimes Muslim brethren in the nation. We express our anger over ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, when here in Pakistan, our concept of clean and unclean stays limited to a glass of water!
This duel over a glass of water has forced Sharoon’s father to rethink about his decision to send his other children to school – for now, he has decided to give priority to their right to live over their right to education, by keeping them at home. In this way, a glass of water has changed the lives of many. One hopes that someday, it changes our minds too and leaves the questions of purity and impurity behind the answers we can get from peace and love towards humanity.