This article by Nadeem Paracha was shared by Tahir Mahmood
It is a sort of elaboration on Mian Sahib’s question # 3
Click on the link to read the article.
http://dawn.com/2012/12/27/faithful-fragmentation/
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Nadeem F. Paracha has minced his words. He stopped short of suggesting Secularism in place of Islam as the operative word for governance of Pakistan. Such timidity by an intellectual, is regrettable.
Nadeem Piracha’s article is a very good diagnosis of socio-political problems of Pakistan. The real problem of Pakistan and its rulers from Liaquat Ali to this day, is that there has not been a viable ideology to inspire the people to be knitted as one Pakistani nation. After Jinnah the most popular figure in the masses Bhutto could not give a vision to unite the people into one Pakistani Nation. Ultimately, Bhutto also had to include Islam in the socio-political set up of the country. It will be great if any one of us can reflect upon the ideology of Pakistan, which as I have already said in my comment on Jinnah vs Azad, was very vague for the father of the Nation. Secularism, as opined by Waquer Azeem is a form of liberal democracy, but it is not an ideology on which the foundation of a nation can be laid so that one can proudly proclaim, “Yes I am a Pakistani.”
Mirza Ashraf
I don’t think the author stopped short of suggesting secularism for Pakistan, on the contrary, he explained pretty good the vision of Jinnah, and Jinnah’s reservations towards religious groups.
If I remember correctly, General Pervez Musharraf said in an interview that two nation theory was to create a separate country and once the country was created, the purpose of the theory was achieved. I fully agree with this – two nation theory gave Muslims of subcontinent a chance to live without being discriminated and denied Hindus the opportunity to avenge centuries of Muslim rule over Hindu majority. We should not seek ,from two nation theory, any thing more than our freedom and build our future on this gift of freedom the way we want it. If Pakistan had not bogged down due to incompetent leadership and prospered the way it started off in Ayub Khan’s era, we would have been better than Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore etc. and I would have proudly proclaimed “yes, I am a Pakistani”…actually I still do. Despite of all the difficulties we gave the world of science Dr. Salam, we snatched the nuclear technology securing our freedom, we won Hockey and Cricket world cups, we produced legendary squash players, we excelled in music and arts…
All we need is a good leader, a few good men and we’ll be fine.
I don’t understand why some people keep talking about division of India, it was inevitable and is done and in the past, nothing is stopping us from marching forward. My father migrated on the night of 14th Aug. 1947, with my mother and my eldest sister from East Punjab to Lahore, leaving every thing behind and I never saw him regret that, ever!..what I am saying is that millions migrated leaving every thing behind and that is the proof of how they felt. Our people don’t understand the meaning of secularism. If there wasn’t this animosity between Hindus and Muslims, secular united India would have been okay but it wasn’t so, there was bad blood between the two and thanks to Jinnah, we have one less
headache, a big one. Minor aches and pains are part of life, in time Punjabis,Sindhis, Baloch and Pathans will synthesize if lesson was learnt from treating Bangalis as inferior.
Babar