Daily Times

Despite our many failures and reverses, humanity marches in one direction: towards greater personal freedom and human rights. We do not know what the future will look like precisely, especially in these times, which seem like the end of the world, but we can try and imagine. So what will Pakistan’s society and government look like on 2 February 2222? I choose the date because such a number i.e. 2.2.2222 comes once in approximately 1111 years (last one being 1.1.1111) and it would be the second of its kind ever since the present calendar was adopted. It is a little less than 202 years out and will come again approximately 1303 years, when the date turns to 3 March 3333 i.e. 3.3.3333. The human mind loves elegance and it does not get more elegant than a date like this, which will only come in total of 9 times in human history for foreseeable 10,000 years.

Now putting the magic of numbers aside, let me state with certainty that on 2.2.2222 Pakistan will not be an Islamic Republic. Either that or the world will not exist, as we know it i.e. to say a new system of world government or a federation of humanity would have replaced the current nation state model. The irreversible and irrevocable march of humanity makes it almost certain that theocracy will become obsolete. Indeed the chances of the royal family of UK sustaining itself till then are better than Pakistan remaining an Islamic Republic. I do not suggest that people will no longer ascribe to religious faith and beliefs. They will. However the idea that religion is the personal faith of an individual will have taken root to an extent that would make it impossible for any country to sustain a theocratic model of government, where one religion or idea will be privileged over another. Indeed the posterity will look back at us and wonder how it was possible for the kind of laws that exist today to be sustained for as long as we have. Those generations will be horrified that there was a time when people were killed for expressing opinions and when we took pride in our weapons of mass destruction while spending woefully little on education and health. Indeed these generations will read the textbooks of our time with both sadness and amusement at how ignorance was allowed to flourish in this land for so long. After all do we not look back at horror at the arbitrary and violent world that existed 200 years ago when cities were laid to waste by tupenny ha’penny upstart conquerors and when a significant part of humanity was in bondage? In many ways this present time will be called the second dark age of humanity, one of wars, starvation, religious bigotry, populist tyranny and exploitation.

Those generations will be horrified that there was a time when people were killed for expressing opinions and when we took pride in our weapons of mass destruction while spending woefully little on education and health

One thing I fear, as a Pakistani, is that even at that advanced an age Pakistan will be a good 100 years behind the rest of the world in terms of technology and standards of living. This is because our reactionary bigots masquerading as religious scholars would have wasted precious time during the 21st century that would have widened the gap further between the most advanced and the least. We have to understand that this century is the Mullah’s last hurrah and it is the darkest before dawn. In coming decades the situation for freedom in Pakistan is going to get significantly worse, till it will become completely untenable leading to a complete overthrow of the present system some time during the 22nd Century. In this period Pakistan will be pressed more and more on issues like population, because as such we will see people living longer. Climate change towards the latter half of this century would have ravaged Pakistan more than the rest of the world, owing to the fact that Pakistan’s rulers will be busy mediating religious disputes instead of dealing with a global catastrophe. Facing these innumerable challenges, Pakistan would have only gotten out of its quagmire by mid 22nd Century and settled down by the beginning of the 23rd. Nevertheless it will be a progressive society far beyond anything we are even allowed to imagine today in the Islamic Republic. Compared to the rest of the world though it would still be impoverished and backward. That is the burden we leave for our future generations because of our present inability to reason.

I do not claim psychic powers. So all of this is merely guess work and calculation. Nor am I a technologist and so cannot predict if we would be part human part robots or if we would have neural implants that would allow us to live forever in some form. For that you can read science fiction. What I do know is that everything we write today is going to preserved in some form somewhere. When the posterity looks back at this age of darkness especially in this Islamic Republic of ours, they would know that there were some of us who had the courage to speak out against the ills of the day and question the existing narratives around religion, state and fundamental human rights. They would know that there were those who mounted a resistance against theocracy when the Mullahs were at the peak of their reaction. It is from this one can draw satisfaction at a time when any attempts at social and political reform is akin to banging one’s head against the wall of orthodoxy.

The writer is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan