Daily Times

The news of the daylight murder of another two Hazara men in Quetta sheds gloomy light on the widening fault lines which have bloodied our society along multiple hues and divides. But, as it were, with every such gruesome occurrence, we slump further back in our comfortable posture, mocking Voltaire’s genius: “To the living, we owe respect, but to the dead, we owe only the truth”.

Such killings along sectarian lines are not a rare happening. This was the second attack on the minority community during a week, and the third in a month. Their frequency and brutality are the very ingredients that chisel the face we are now recognised as.

And our foolhardy reluctance to acknowledge the scourge and initiate a remedial process is plunging us deeper into a state of utter disrepair.

Religion in sunk deep in our psyche. Or, should we say, that’s how we envisioned and perpetrated it through decades beginning with that eventful day when the constituent assembly of a new-born state, even before drafting its constitution, approved what was to become its preamble, the Objectives Resolution, wherein Muslims were enabled to “order their lives, in the individual and collective spheres, in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah”.

As to the adherents of other religions, they were promised “adequate provision to freely profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures”.

Thus, in its very inception, the state was manoeuvred to wear an apparel of discrimination separating its Muslim citizens from others. Through decades, and because of an uncaring and complicit state, this apparel is now soaked in the blood of thousands of its citizens who have been cruelly eliminated at the altar of the fault line that was created on that day when we should have been thinking of ways to unify a bruised and badgered people.

Similarly, the days of cosmetic cure are over for changing the tide of national direction. It is time to go back to the board to draw, in absolute clarity, all that needs to be reviewed, starting with the Objectives Resolution. To be recognised as a Muslim, and to be a good Muslim, one doesn’t need the crutches of the Objectives Resolution. In fact, it hides the human that you may be, giving you a face that you may not like, that others may not like — a face painted with the burden of religiosity

Chandra Chattopadhaya, the leader of the opposition in the constituent assembly, had pleaded strongly against adoption of the Objectives Resolution: “I say, give up this division of the people into Muslims and non-Muslims. Let us call ourselves one nation. Let us call ourselves one people — people of Pakistan”.

He went further, begging the house not to take away his privilege: “I do not consider myself a member of the minority community. I consider myself to be one of seven crore Pakistanis. Let me have the right to retain that privilege”.

That was not to be. This original blunder was followed by promulgating a string of offspring legislations through various tenures, democratic and dictatorial, beginning with Z. A. Bhutto who thought that by changing his constituency from the people of Pakistan to the mullah, he would find a way to wriggle out of the challenge that he was confronting. He was sadly mistaken. By playing into the hands of the obscurantist, he only hastened his end.

Now, seventy years later, we march around with that exclusive privilege of being Muslims pasted on our foreheads. But privilege does not come to someone displaying the stamp of religion. It’ll come if we enact the principles of being good human beings with ingrained virtues of empathy, affection and love for others, particularly those who may have suffered at the hands of cruelties perpetrated through mechanisms that we, and our forefathers, have been guilty of framing.

We have used religion to define our ethos. In the process, we have mutilated it to a point of virtual non-recognition. We have turned it into a brutal ploy to have our revenge on the ones we do not agree with.

This streak of revenge is nurtured by those driven by extremes of hate and inhumanity. It does not spare even the newborns. In a recent newspaper report, a few people found a baby at the doorstep of a mosque in Karachi and reported it to the prayer leader. The cleric proclaimed that this was an illegitimate baby and should, therefore, be stoned. And, in perpetration of gross sickness, the baby was stoned — to death. Oh, more blood: “I see humans, but no humanity”.

The problem that we suffer from is that we know what the problem is. But we are so deeply immersed in the malaise that it has become a way of life and no one seems to have the courage to challenge it and sensitise people to the truth that there is a need for reversing the tide away from a plunge into oblivion. We sit benignly comfortable amidst our respective environs hoping for the miracle cure to descend from the skies.

Well, nothing will drop from the skies. It is that something within us that sees and feels the injustice and its horrible consequences which should be our motivation to act without delay. We have indulged in this monstrous undertaking for much too long. We have to get down to real-time cares and cures.

Having committed gross mistakes, we have strayed off course. In the presence of laws and adjudications contrary to cultivating the spirit of humaneness in preference to the menace of religiosity, there would be no possibility of a remedy. The plunge will continue, picking in speed and ferocity along the fall as we find ourselves further bloodied by the senseless carnage.

By killing a few terrorists, we cannot claim that we have eliminated terror. To do that, we have to go to the sources that germinate terror — sources that we are afraid of targeting. If that is not done, we’ll continue to have terror in our midst, and more of it with every passing day.

Similarly, the days of cosmetic cure are over for changing the tide of national direction. It is time to go back to the board to draw, in absolute clarity, all that needs to be reviewed, starting with the Objectives Resolution. To be recognised as a Muslim, and to be a good Muslim, one doesn’t need the crutches of the Objectives Resolution. In fact, it hides the human that you may be, giving you a face that you may not like, that others may not like — a face painted with the burden of religiosity.

The other key component to the ultimate cure is the will to do it. This is so sadly missing. We live in an environment of pervading fear which is digging its tentacles deeper as we witness the gradual shrinkage of the domain of dialogue.

It’s time we put everything out in the open and let people come forth with their input. Let there be a national dialogue about what we need to retain and what we need to change. Let there be no fear and let no one dictate. Let’s, for once, respond to the call of our conscience and try to build a polity that, in time, would wash our hands clean of the blood that these have been soaked in for long.

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute — an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com. Twitter: @RaoofHasan

Published in Daily Times, May 1^st 2018.