Opinion: Not-So-Happy Birthday, Pakistan
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Like birthdays for those of a certain age, Pakistan’s 60th anniversary has provided an opportunity for gloomy reflection. In the midst of political strife, religious violence and calls for Gen. Pervez Musharraf to relinquish his dual role as president and head of the army, this birthday has caused some Pakistanis to wonder: Where did it all go wrong?
Not least of those was Musharraf himself, who in a recent speech blamed the past lack of leadership for Pakistan’s economic and political problems.
Interesting words from a leader in one of the most embattled periods of his tenure.
Musharraf’s statement, no matter how ironic, does raise a good point. The exception to the rule remains Pakistan’s first leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
A revered figure in Pakistani history, Jinnah was not a radical or even a practicing Muslim. He never saw the new nation as an Islamic state, let alone a hotbed for radicalism. Just take a look at his presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on Aug. 11, 1947.
Jinnah dreamed of a secular state for all faiths, not just Muslims:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
He envisioned India and Pakistan as allies:
If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed.
He imagined a pluralistic, yet integrated society:
We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.
Pakistan’s founder was a powerful and charismatic leader. But Jinnah’s dreams, linked as they were to him, couldn’t survive his passing just one year later.
And it shows. This year’s anniversary has been marked by the rise of radicalism, in the form of the bloody struggle for the Red Mosque. That’s not to mention Pakistan’s incessantly antagonistic relationship with India and the increased isolation of populations such as those in Waziristan — populations that provide fodder for extremism and violence near the border with Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, Jinnah’s death, rather than Pakistan’s birth, better explains the nation’s history and its troubles.