The Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metro Bus is impressive and people seem to be enjoying the ride and the convenience. It rips through nine kilometers of the densest part of old Rawalpindi city flanked by thousands of shops, mohallahs (small neighbourhoods), hospitals, schools, a cricket stadium and a bustling university. Thousands of men, women, children, inattentive university students, patients and their attendants continuously cross over roads below the pillared track at grave danger to their safety. The blighted planners of the Metro Bus completely neglected to provide any pedestrian crossings anywhere along the track. The neat looking footpaths that one sees were the result of a necessity to cover storm water and sewage drains on both sides, and prevent vehicular traffic from driving over. The footpath, presumably, came up by accident and not as a deliberate act of care for the pedestrians. Those hit during very risky crossings would also be insensitively dismissed by the czar of the Metro Bus, Mr Hanif Abbasi, again as collateral damage when “major projects like this are built,” as he believes. A drive over that route is enough to make one realise what kind of serious personal peril pedestrians have been placed in just because the planners were so impervious.
One hears too much chatter and too little delivery as there is more spectacle than substance to their undertakings. Our executive specialises in taking notice after an incident and not preventing it at the first instance, setting up commissions and then glorious inaction. They invariably fail to walk their brave talk just as a psychopathic mullah in Islamabad declares allegiance to the murderous Islamic State (IS) caliphate and places the federal government on two weeks notice. Nothing moves while he parades around radiating terror and wearing sharia on his shirtsleeve. Pound the police force into henchmen and mince the bureaucracy into personal servants, and this is what we end up with: a sulking mass of scurrying mice that seek burrows at the first sign of danger.
We have a decent looking speaker of the National Assembly (NA) who thinks the floor of parliament is a property where rules of business are applied subject to his pleasure. He thinks it is proper to keep a vocal opposition MNA’s mike shut for years and seek a pliant opposition to deserve his favours. It is astonishing how otherwise composed looking men at that level run out of their depth so quickly. Geo-fence any ruling elite in the country and one finds bags full of arbitrariness, personal pleasure and nepotism at its worst. Ordinary citizens have been viciously marginalised or else why should infants die in their hundreds due to malnutrition in Thar when hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat are rotting away in open storages in Sindh?
The other day they burnt houses, a factory and hounded out Ahmedis from their homes in Jhelum district because somebody accused them of burning loose leaves of the Quran. Nobody bothered to verify or report to the police for proper legal action if any. Spite against the would be blasphemers rose quickly and the mob went wild in their frenzy. The army had to be called in to restore order. This is civilised? It is not Islam. My Islam places a non-negotiable duty on me towards humanity regardless of one’s faith and creed guaranteeing right to life, property and worship as equals. The holy Prophet (PBUH) signed the Medina Charter of peace (622 AD) with Medinites and its Clause 21 reads: “Conditions of peace and war, and the accompanying ease or hardship must be fair and equitable to all citizens alike (Muslims, Jews, Christians, idolaters and all).” No mufti and no follower can claim to be more Muslim than the holy Prophet (PBUH) himself. None has the right to kill, displace or persecute anyone else just because the other believes differently — what with Ahmedis, Shias, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis or anybody.
We have an ex federal minister from a major political party who was booked under the Anti-Terrorism Act and other laws for sheltering terrorists to kill our own people while his party sat in solemn indignation in the all parties’ round table conference against widespread killings and bombings by the same terrorists. After months of squirming and squealing around as innocents admit wrongdoings and record confessional statements in the court. What a horrendous subterfuge and unspeakable come down. Who does one trust now with the lives of our dear ones?
You know what; I am not as disappointed as I might sound. One’s faith in our people will remain rooted as long as that poor old man outside his humble mud plastered hut on a country road keeps feeding birds with few crumbs in his chipped earthen bowl. As long as dirt-poor madrassa (seminary) children keep opting to go skating in a neighbourhood park whenever a kind man hands them a bit of money each. Yet another bunch continues to gleefully play cricket like normal children, after their grueling rote in a roadside mosque next to a teeming slum. More when legions upon legions of colourfully dressed little schoolboys and girls keep going their way lugging heavy school bags in their intimate, carefree twos and threes. That, purposeful young men and women keep pouring over books and the internet determined to populate their Masters and PhD theses in time. My hope will still be flickering even if a single child — a girl, a woman — manage to attend their school, college or university. When people still gather to help those injured in traffic accidents, buried under collapsed houses and factories, and those displaced by earthquakes, floods and famine. Meanwhile, let us put our hands together and pray hard for the flame to burn brighter.
(Concluded)
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at [email protected]