Daily Times

Absence of reason is an ailment that has plagued this nation for long. With the passage of time, it has become even more pungent, poisonous and lethal. There is no avenue where it leaves a more devastating impact than when it concerns matters of religion.

According to a report, a medley of religious zealots and district administration personnel joined hands in demolishing an over 100-year old place of worship of the Ahmadi community in Sialkot — a city I am emotionally attached to for being the place of my birth. It is beneath human dignity to be attacking people for their religious beliefs or practices. Stopping them from pursuing their religious obligations by demolishing their worshipping places is tantamount to opening the floodgates for others doing likewise on you as and when an opportunity would come their way.

The hydra of religious bigotry has been eating away at the vital of the state for as long as it has been there as an independent country. There is virtually nothing substantive that the state, represented through its succeeding governments, did to control its tentacles. As a matter of fact, it did everything to nurture and patronise it further. In the process, it has poisoned an entire polity, thus depriving the state of its very rationale to be a non-partisan arbiter.

Continuing along this course spells doom, but an alternate narrative is nowhere on the horizon. It is a classic case of waiting for Godot. But saviours don’t descend from heavens. They would come as a culmination of a genuine realisation that the narrative has run its course which should be followed by a sustained struggle to delineate the contours of what needs to replace it

We started with a dream — the dream of an independent state that was to be regulated by the principles of equity and equality before law: “You are free. You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or any other place of 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”.

How long did it take us to demolish that fundamental principle of our creation? How long did it take us to force the state to wear an apparel of prejudice and intolerance, setting its Muslim citizens apart from its non-Muslim subjects, in brazen violation of the guidelines as enunciated by its founding father? Quite literally, we split the state into two unequal halves: one for the privileged Muslims and the other for those who believed in other religions. It was like offering a bouquet of scorn to our non-Muslim community at the very beginning of our journey which was feared to be laced with pitfalls and challenges, requiring unqualified devotion and dedication of every citizen, irrespective of their religious inclinations, or their caste, colour or creed.

And what did we do? We asked our non-Muslim citizens to stand apart from the Muslims and be discriminated against in the pursuit of their dreams in the new homeland. They were disallowed merit beyond certain benchmarks and promotion beyond certain ranks. Some positions were earmarked only for the Muslim segment of the population while the adherents of other religions were consigned to a lower ranking among the citizens as enunciated in the preamble to the constitution: “Wherein adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to freely profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures”.

This enactment as contained in the Objectives Resolution, which was adopted within months of the Quaid’s death and declared as substantive part of the constitution to have effect accordingly, is in contravention of article 25 of the same constitution which proclaims equality of citizens: “All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law”.

How can you declare the non-Muslims as equal citizens alongside Muslims, yet pronounce that measures shall be taken to facilitate the minorities to practice their religion? If all were equal citizens of the state and also equal before law, what reason can one cite for creating any special provision for a certain community of people? This is like putting the non-Muslim segments of the population in a cage and drumming the beat that they were equal citizens, and free to do whatever they wanted to do. It is like wishing that the world would only look at their faces and ignore the chains in their feet, curtailing their movement. It is a provocative and vile violation of the founding principles of Pakistan: “We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state”, and the religion that one may practice does not fall within the domain of the state.

From religious bigotry to ethnic and sectarian divisions, we have bulldozed the society into a dead-end alley from which there is apparently no coming out. In the process, we have descended from the higher moral pedestal and espoused a cause which is without any shred of reason rooted in a conscientious appraisal. It is plunging downhill at an electrifying pace with no end in sight. It is sinking into a pit which does not have a bottom. It is a degenerative, debased and debilitating mechanism employed by the state to perpetuate the ugly face of discrimination among its own citizens.

Since this malady is sunk deep into our national psyche, cosmetic cures will no longer provide any remedy. What is needed is a surgical procedure to remove the parts which have rendered the state dysfunctional. It is like curing the body of deadly cancer which has spread widely, impacting all its organs. Every part needs to be cleansed of the venomous infusions sustained over decades. The chemo has to be more deadly than the malady.

But, then, who has the clarity, the courage, the conviction and the will to undertake this mammoth challenge? Who can risk his future, even his life for doing something that is so critical to the long-term well being of the state and its people? This fight is against a narrative as well as all its attenuating constituents which have been rendered sacrosanct. Who shall erase the blood that has stained our polity and who shall fight the demons that we created and continue to nurture?

The cumulative manifestation of this rampaging monster was publicly on display when one of its key stalwarts staged a sit-in at Islamabad to literally force the state on its knees, begging him to take his militant goons away. He did, but not without receiving his bounteous pound of flesh.

Leaders of today have been reduced to devising vile mechanisms for an effective exploitation of this sickening syndrome. They neither have the vision nor the courage to realise that continued espousal of this narrative would be the ultimate death-knell for the state and all that it has bred over decades.

We need to move away from what a few may have done, but most have endured through seven decades starting with the adoption of the Objectives resolution. Continuing along this course spells doom, but an alternate narrative is nowhere on the horizon. It is a classic case of waiting for Godot. But saviours don’t descend from heavens. They would come as a culmination of a genuine realisation that the narrative has run its course which should be followed by a sustained struggle to delineate the contours of what needs to replace it.

Most importantly, a change will come only when there are people who are willing to take the risk of putting the course right beyond their immediate political and strategic occupations.

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 29^th 2018.