Daily Times

India’s attempt at moon landing came to an unfortunate end last week and that some how was a cause for glee for many of us in Pakistan. So acerbic is our relationship especially in the backdrop of Kashmir that we take every failure of India to be a personal success. Still we have to admit that India at least tried and failed. We do not even have a credible space programme despite the fact that DrAbdus Salam’s efforts at SUPARCO had given Pakistan a head start in the space race. The idea that Pakistan would one day be conquering space had captured the imagination of Pakistani writers very early on. “Hotel Mohenjodaro”, the dystopic and somewhat prescient rendering of our future, was set up in the aftermath of Pakistan’s space program. We lost our imagination and the will to be all that we could in the 1980s under General Zia. The dystopic part of the classic Ghulam Abbas story came true but without the progress and glories in space that it had imagined.

The truth is that the future is in space. In three generations or so the current population of the world will become unsustainable and inevitably humanity will have to search for colonies in space. This is why Space-X and other innovative corporations are trying to plan for the colonization of Mars. Leading minds in India have also figured it out. As much as we make fun of them for trying and failing, they have the right idea and with time and effort they will get there. While we announced with great verve that we would put a man on the moon, there is nothing to show for it. We are living in a great void where science and technology go to die. In the 1980s General Zia sponsored research that sought to generate electricity by using the djinns. Long after the nation was rid of that tin pot dictator we are still caught up in that mindset.

India might be going down the path we did in the 1970s but there are still many in India who recognise that science has no religion

Truth be told that India is probably more mired in superstition and religious mumbo jumbo than us but somehow it manages to produce scientists and engineers of all creeds who can still work towards a collective future for the nation. There is no one who criticizes Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for his majoritarian politics than I do, but to give credit where it is due, Nehru laid the foundations of the scientific community there, which is now doing wonders. Had Nehru had his way, he would have taken away Dr Abdus Salam from us as well, but Dr Abdus Salam was too patriotic a Pakistani to leave Pakistan. Instead Salam had gone to Ayub Khan and convinced him of starting a space and science program in Pakistan. What little we have in this country today by way of science we owe to Dr Salam. Unfortunately as we fell into the abyss of religious exclusivity after 1974, we forgot that science has no religion. Dr Salam’s faith was declared to be of the wrong kind. Thus we scrubbed off the word “Muslim” from his grave. Meanwhile India made its Muslim rocket man Dr. Abdul Kalam the President of India and the current government of India, which we rightly accuse of being a Hindutvist regime, named a major road after him Delhi. India might be going down the path we did in the 1970s but there are still many in India who recognise that science has no religion.

What Pakistan needs is a science and technology programme on war footing! More than nuclear weapons or other such technology we need to invest now in creating more scientists, physicists and engineers. It is never too late to learn from our rival. We can also ask our Chinese friends to set up institutions of science and technology that replicate their own success. It is not that we do not have an eager population willing to invest in cutting edge technological education. On a recent visit to the Embassy of South Korea, I found hundreds of young men and women from all over Pakistan applying for student visas. This is because they do not have corresponding programs in Pakistan. NUST and GIKI are only a few top-notch institutions. We need many more and we need to bring the private sector into it. We need to establish global linkages in science and technology and that means bringing the best minds from all over the world to come and teach in Pakistan.

Science and technology can only take root if we remove the shackles of religious bigotry and fanaticism from our country. Make no mistake, true spirit of Islam does not stand in the way of science- the history of Arabs from 1000 years is ample proof of that. However this nation has a second religion called Mullahism which stands in the way of progress. Countless preachers and illiterate Mullahs have only served to misguide the people. Petty disputes about religious interpretation have taken up much time and energy. For us it is time to bid good bye to dreams and shadows and face the cold hard facts of reality. The clock has already begun ticking but are we listening? No our Science and Technology Minister is more interested in tweeting insults to India, calling it “Endia”, than doing his job and attempting to make Pakistan a modern scientific nation.

The writer is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan and a member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn in London