Daily Times

Let us again recall Faiz Ahmed Faiz and compare what we are facing today: “My salutations to thy sacred streets, O beloved nation! Where a custom ‘that none shall walk with his head held high’ has been invented. And if a devotee yearns to go on pilgrimage, then he must walk with eyes lowered and body crouched in fear.
The heart is in a tumultuous wrench at the sight of stones and bricks locked away and mongrels breathing free.
In this tyranny that has many an excuse to perpetuate itself those crazy few that have nothing but thy name on their lips. Facing those power crazed that both prosecute and judge, wonder to whom does one turn for protection, from whom does one expect justice?
But those whose fate it is to live through these times spend their days in thy mournful memories.”
A sad incident has again forced me to read selected poems of Faiz. If one thinks deeply, the situation today is not at all different from what Faiz was saying then. Today, our prestigious and sacred security agency has allegedly forced a private university to call off an event that was a debate for the rights of the Balcoh people featuring Mama Qadeer Baloch. This old man and his young boy have travelled more than 2,000 kilometres on foot along with a group of Baloch women and men on their way from Quetta to Islamabad.
The purpose behind their non-violent long march was to raise a voice against enforced disappearances in Balochistan. They broke the 84-year-old record of Mahatma Gandhi who travelled 390 kilometres on foot from Ahmadabad to Dandi as part of his famous salt march. According to the concerned faculty of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), a couple of officers representing the director general of an intelligence agency came into the office of one of the heads of department looking for the vice chancellor, who is out of the country these days, and showed them a letter in which it was clearly mentioned that the university could not carry on with the event and so it should be cancelled.
The irony is that now even our universities are not safe places for such debates where scholars from different backgrounds can hold discussions about important issues. It is silly to mention human rights and violation of the law here. Banned outfits are operating freely in Pakistan while our brave sons are sacrificing their lives in the fight against terrorism and we all support them, but why do we have double standards? I do not question the agency’s integrity but why is there no protection for minorities? For example, a few days back, people from the Ahmedi community were arrested just for writing verses of the Holy Quran in their publications.
Leaders of banned outfits, like Ahmed Ludhianvi and Hafiz Saeed, roam freely doing whatever they want. What about Maulvi Abdul Aziz? There is a lot of stuff available online that is a clear manifestation of banned outfits using hate speech and other methods of communication against the Shia sect in Quetta and other cities of Balochistan. So why does no one take any action? When a news anchor called Mr Ahmed Ludhianvi a month back and asked hard-hitting questions, showing him video evidence of his crimes, the man was caught speechless but no one took any action and the channel apologised for the programme afterwards. This means that for that state, debates on Mama Qadeer Baloch, persecuted Bohris, Ahmedis and Shias are more dangerous topics than the growing influence of Hafiz Saeed, Abdul Aziz and Ahmed Ludhianvi. What can you expect in a place where self-confessed murderer Mumtaz Qadri is the people’s hero?
On one side we are united against terrorism but these double standards by state agencies are unbelievable. We can never win this fight against terrorism and extremism by limiting our thoughts and curbing the liberal culture in Pakistan. We should be thankful to God that after years there is a consensus on the war against terrorism, after so many sacrifices by civil society and the military. We should take advantage of this and empower our liberal and enlightened groups instead of limiting their activities, especially in educational institutes. LUMS is a place where students from all over Pakistan, from diverse backgrounds, come to study. There was a time when I studied there and I can say loud and clear that there is not a single person involved in defaming the military or agencies. Instead of creating an impossibly constricted situation, I think military representatives should attend these sessions where they will find that no one is against them, the people will support them and LUMS will always welcome military visits to work closely with military officials.
On the basis of such misunderstandings we end up making fun of our security agencies and educational institutes.

The writer is a Lahore-based journalist, consultant publicist, advertiser and bureau chief Lahore for the Weekly Education Informer