Dr Abdus Salam was possibly the greatest Pakistani since 1947. Not only was he one of the greatest physicists in the world, hewas alsothe founder of SUPARCO and PAEC. While he was much bigger than the idea of an atomic bomb, his contribution to Pakistan’s nuclear program was certainly much greater than the metallurgist who takes credit for the bomb. The metallurgist, Qadeer Khan, had about as much contribution to the bomb as a painter does for a car after coming out of the assembly line. Qadeer Khan, the self styled Mohsin-e-Pakistan, is no Mohsin of Pakistan. Qadeer Khan is someone who sold nuclear secrets to other nations and thereby put Pakistan’s deterrence policy under threat, bringing ignominy to our nuclear program. Yet he is hailed as a hero while Dr. Salam is slandered by the right wing.
Stories are concocted against Dr. Salam by Khadim Rizvi types and transmitted to the populace, attributed to Sahibzada Yaqub Khan but there is no evidence of the Sahibzada ever having said anything like that during his life. It is a wild story, which is so unbelievable that one wonders what kind of idiot believes it. According to this hilarious tale, Sahibzada visited the CIA headquarters and was shown the location of Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear facility on a map. When he was coming out, he saw Dr Abdus Salam coming out of another room and laughing. First of all Dr. Salam’s association was withPAEC and not the metallurgist’s Kahuta facility. Secondly one wonders how stupid CIA people have to be to have Dr Salam in the next room and then have him come out at the precise time that Pakistan’s foreign minister was coming out. I mean if you are going to spin a yarn at least spin one that is believable.
The bigotry against the Ahmadi community has blinded the people of Pakistan. Despite their admirable role in Pakistan’s founding and their many contributions, they are abused as being traitors to Pakistan
There is a foul mouthed bigot from Chakwal and the head of the so called Youth State Parliament of Pakistan who recently encouraged a group of stupid boys to go and blacken the portrait of Dr. Salam in Gujranwala. In reality they only blackened their faces because Pakistan needs Salam more than Salam needs Pakistan. It is a matter of great honour that Pakistan produced a Physicist who could talk back to Einstein and whose research in Electroweak Theory laid the foundations for important work in Physics. He is also the father of Pakistan’s space program and under his watch Pakistan became one of the first countries in Asia to launch a satellite into orbit ahead of China and India. How many satellites has Pakistan launched since then and what has our space program achieved is a question that I leave to the reader.
The bigotry against the Ahmadi community has blinded the people of Pakistan. Despite their admirable role in Pakistan’s founding and their many contributions, they are abused as being traitors to Pakistan. They were declared Non-Muslim through a spurious amendment despite the fact that the founder of Pakistan, Mahomed Ali Jinnah, considered them Muslims and relied on their support. Jinnah’s right hand man, Zafarullah Khan, was an Ahmadi. Instead Iqbal, who had nothing to do with Pakistan, is elevated to the status of ideological founding father of Pakistan. This is because, unlike Jinnah, Iqbal was in favour of excluding Ahmadis. This was borne out of personal animus after the Kashmir Committee where he was supported by Majlis-e-Ahrar, a bigoted fascist party. Even Nehru had come to the defence of Ahmadis though later he would prop Majlis-e-Ahrar because of its antipathy to Jinnah. Jinnah was the only politician in the subcontinent who had the courage to unequivocally state that Ahmadis were Muslims if they professed to be Muslims; earning the undying hatred of Majlis-e-Ahrar and other religious parties on the payroll of the Congress Party. The man of principle that the founder of this country was, he refused to back down from his position. In the early days of Pakistan, he could already see the direction that the country was taken causing him to wonder if he had done the right thing by founding the country. We still have time to redeem ourselves but we would have to follow Jinnah’s vision, as expressed in the 11 August speech, to letter and spirit. This means we have to jettison the excess baggage of Allama Iqbal’s thought and ideas.
Meanwhile we have the likes of Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed, the scion of Majlis-e-Ahrar, writing against Jinnah and the Ahmadis, misleading the country about the clear and unequivocal vision that the founder of this country had. The country has ceased to be Pakistan and has become Ahraristan where the enemies of the founding father populate both the right and left. We must change Ahraristan back to Pakistan if we are to survive as a nation state in the 21st Century.
The writer is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan