Daily Times

Insecurity and economic depravity have become the prime causes for many to kiss Pakistan goodbye, leaving serious dents on the economy that no one seems to care about on a priority level in the government. What many do not focus on at the policy level is that many of these immigrants consist of a considerable number of minorities who feel helpless in facing the wrath of religious bigotry and violence at home. They feel they are out of options when it comes to continuing to live in their own country and are compelled to leave, even if they do not always desire to do so. Once Pakistan boasted housing 25 percent minorities but now there are just three percent left today, in a matter of six decades. But can our minorities be blamed for leaving Pakistan? Faced with discrimination in our institutions here, they are often dissuaded by the system to avail any opportunity to help them progress both academically and economically.

If we are to take the example of Dr Abdus Salam, the first Nobel laureate of Pakistan, we all should hang our heads in shame for ridiculing him, hurling insults at him and denying him national recognition even though he was determined to stay in Pakistan and serve his nation. He had many an opportunity to take up the nationality of other countries that were offering it to him for his profound scientific research and academic contributions but he chose Pakistan in the end, despite the constitutional disenfranchisement of his Ahmedi community and widespread social bigotry encouraged by the state itself. Disowning this national hero by society in general was due to his religious beliefs, which are considered heretic by mainstream Muslims, a reason, perhaps, why Ahmedis are more aggressively pursued and targeted by religious zealots in comparison to other religious and ethnic minorities.

Today, we have suddenly started owning Dr Nergis Mavalvala, an astrophysicist who detected gravitational waves in space. However, we do not often feel the need to mention that Dr Nergis immigrated to the US in pursuit of higher studies and to fully put her talents into practice. She was appreciated in an environment that enabled her with academic and scientific progress, an opportunity that is sadly lacking in Pakistan. Before giving her long due credit for her fascinating scientific discovery, the question that we all should ask is whether she, with her Parsi religious identity and professed sexual orientation, would have been able to pursue her career to this extent had she remained in Pakistan.

For the last three decades, social productivity has decayed immensely in Pakistan, all to be blamed on the sheer religiosity introduced into society by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and then later by General Ziaul Haq. Somewhere down the line, we lost our ability to value a person for his or her worth or their productive contribution to society. We must take a look at the quality of higher education institutes that remain underfunded, made to mint money in the name of education and thus focusing more on their financial returns than on academic quality. Where there are thousands of unknown talents, lack of academic opportunities force them to live with their unrecognised talents and skills rotting away. And those who have managed to find their place at higher educational institutes are offered rigid course selection that does not allow them to pursue diversified fields of knowledge. For the principle of fairness in academics, non-discriminatory quality checks on performances of all enrolled students at their institutes must be performed but education providers have instead given in to nepotism and undue political influences that have contributed majorly towards stalling academic progress. Due to high religious influence in student politics at our institutes, students are forced to give more attention to issues that should have no relevance to our academic fields of study.

Those exceptional students who manage to overcome societal hurdles, their contributions are hardly given credit here and their opportunity to succeed is lost to non-deserving graduates who use their political and religious influences to stay ahead of others. A major technical flaw in our system is that many non-Muslims students are not able to take the Ethical Studies subject as a replacement for Islamiat due to the non availability of textbooks, especially in rural areas, thus depriving many non-Muslims of the dignity when they are forced to read Islamiat and Quranic courses. Another academic injustice that must be addressed here is that many students are often denied admission to our higher educational institutes because they fail to reach the required merit. Their low merit is not due to any academic failures, rather it is because they lose their marks against a hafiz-e-Quran (a person who learns the Quran by heart), who gets bonus points even if he has scored lower than his peers in the exams. Apart from the academic loopholes that are particularly disadvantageous to non-Muslim students, there have been many cases of expulsion of students from educational institutes by the school administration owing to their beliefs. In 2010, a public school in Hafizabad district expelled about 11 students for no valid reason other than their being Ahmedi. If these students and young scholars cannot find any opportunities in their home country, why should they not leave Pakistan for their right to a better, more dignified and prosperous life?

These are the serious issues that not only minorities but also Muslims face in our country. Allowing our minority students to study in a discrimination free environment is a policy matter and, to this date, no serious effort has ever been made in this regard. The Prime Minster (PM) sending praises to the Pakistani diaspora for its academic excellence does not really address the issues at home that are responsible for such a brain drain here. More serious political will and efforts by the government are direly needed to improve education here and encourage scientific and academic development.

The writer tweets at @zeebahashmi and can be reached at zeeba.hashmi@gmail.com