"Jinnah made a mistake and I am ashamed of being a Pakistani"

by Guest Fri May 30, 2014 6:00 am

http://www.dhakatribune.com/long-form/2014/may/26/jinnah-made-mistake-and-i-am-ashamed-being-pakistani

by Guest Fri May 30, 2014 6:04 am

Last year, a polio worker was killed in Peshawar, as well as another who was shot dead in Khyber Agency. Several were kidnapped in Bara. In January this year, gunmen killed three health workers taking part in a polio vaccination drive in Karachi, not Kabul, not Sierra Leone, not Riyadh, Karachi.

My heart boils and burns as more devastating news and reports flood the channels. The New York Times article further stated that according to a report, the highest refusal rates for polio vaccination were recorded in wealthy neighbourhoods of Karachi because they had “little faith in public health care.” In North Waziristan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have had vaccination forbidden for years. Pakistan thus has 59 polio cases to report, the highest in the world.

Being a mother, it scares me. It keeps me awake at night. It reminds me that even if I run far away from the borders of my own land, its demons will continue to haunt me and my future generations. I Google “Pakistan” on the news and everything that is reported is about death, destruction, squabbling politicians, ailing children, extremists blowing up things and a struggling economy.

I raise my eyes to our neighbouring country and see what could have happened if we were still a United India. Maybe we would have been polio free too. We would have been a unified part of a process of being the world’s next big force to reckon with, of being a part of the next blazing economy.

I find myself deeply wishing that Jinnah hadn’t made this mistake – that he had thought about the future of Pakistan. He didn’t think of the obscurantist mindset that he had propelled forward, the countless millions that died at the hand of this vague agenda that fails to unite us as a nation. I look at the years of struggles that Pakistan faces, the fall of Dhaka, the provincial wars, the stark separatist mindsets and I wonder what Mr Jinnah was thinking when he decided to leave the Indian National Congress (INC).

We share more with our Indian brothers than our ancestral DNA. Our food, language, clothes, lifestyles are more like them than the Arabs we so badly want to mimic and ape. I stare at the green passport with the same self-loathing as the fat 16-year-old girl with pimples on her face who is told that she cannot get married because she will always be blind, diseased and fat and her elder, stronger, prettier, better-educated sister will snag all the good catches because she ended up with the better caretaker after the divorce of their parents.

I am ashamed of being a Pakistani today.

I am ashamed that I belong to a country that kills human rights lawyers and sitting governors, and issues death threats to university professors.

I am ashamed that we believe in spaghetti monster theories and pie in the sky conspiracies and risk the future of our children.

I am ashamed that we have rejected our scientists just because they believe in a different dogma.

I am ashamed that we cannot protect our women, we cannot protect our children and we cannot protect our men from the evil that is extremism, fundamentalism and the foolhardy idea that Pakistan is a great nation. Pakistan is a fledgling, flailing state.

"Jinnah made a mistake and I am ashamed of being a Pakistani"

"Jinnah made a mistake and I am ashamed of being a Pakistani"

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