Pakistan started off as a promised land, and after some struggle, started creating promising national and international narratives. The nation succeeded doing that because the society was focused, and created excellence in the given resources of the day. Those who have lived through the Pakistani society in any of the decades from 1950s, to mid-1980s find it hard to believe that they live in the same country that once had more of promise and less of pessimism. The latter did not topple the former by accident. There were political, social and interpretive-religious processes of failures that gave birth to a muddled thinking one finds rampant in a confused population giving way to even more confused youth.
Those who left for greener pastures should try and become loyal citizens of their chosen lands, and leave Pakistan to those who either could not find an opportunity to leave or deliberately chose to stay back
Here’s how it happened. The political nexus of civil-military bureaucracy was already undercutting the reason and rationalism in our society since 1956, but the sudden political shifts between 1965 and 1977 bedazzled the collective Pakistani memory. Then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began in 1979, and this pushed us into a spiral of conflicts that has further confused the already-confused. This strange war brought death and destruction to our people and their hopes in strange ways. People started losing hopes for a stable, prosperous and peaceful Pakistan for them and their generations. Those who could afford or cheat to migrate, migrated. And while doing so, thousands of pucca Muslims did not even hesitate to obtain fake certificates of declaring themselves Ahamdis, Hindus, Sikhs or Christians when it came to tricking the immigration officers of the foreign governments.
Confused state narratives create confused social narratives, and vice versa. Hence, leaving Pakistan, particularly since 1977’s martial law of Gen Ziaul Haq, has been a discussion that probably every lower-to-middle class household in Pakistan has had. The elderly implicitly or explicitly but commonly encouraged the younger to leave. Interestingly, this very stratum of the society comprises of the super-patriots, and the self-proclaimed guardians of the ideological narratives of Pakistan; yet, the discussions! War, any kind of war precisely does that to a people and their socio-political psychology. From sanity, it pushes people towards quick and mindless reactions — reactions that create more noise and less of sound. Resultantly, a nation breaks down into groups, and groups devolve into individuals where each living person tries to do just one thing: survive either by fighting or fleeing away.
Fight and flight, both, have been in abundance since the General Zia’s military dictatorship failed to contain the negatives of Afghan war on the Pakistani society. Crisis of the Pakistani State and society aggravated as a sectarian-political revolution in our neighborhood tried spreading its wings in our courtyard, but the Arab-brethren wanted Pakistanis to rather grow Arbi and not the Ajmi wings. The melting pot of the geo-strategic and sectarian conflicts created an environment that culled the middle class creativity and their ownership of the society. Alongside, the state formally promoted a certain version of Islam and tried making people good Muslims, instead of responsible citizens. Consequently, neither good Muslims nor responsible citizens, a scaring majority of Pakistanis chose becoming habitual pessimists criticising the state and society with half-baked ideas and knowledge.
Look around, and you shall find a predominant number of people pressing their thoughts as information and knowledge. This mixture gets exponentially interesting if you get to interact with the expatriate community, particularly the ones living in established Western democracies. Themselves enjoying rights and freedom that the Western democracies ensure, many among these hyper patriots want ‘quick and ruthless change,’ military rule, Islamic caliphate, or revolution. People who took the flight, should rather become loyal citizens of their chosen lands, and leave Pakistan to the competence or incompetence of their compatriots who either could not flight, or deliberately chose to stay back and fight whatever the menaces and opportunities their land offered.
Probably for the first time in four decades since 1977, political elite as well as the deep state in Pakistan are talking about recreating a representative national narrative for varied audiences, locally and internationally. Whether it creates more muddles is yet to be seen, as Pakistanis have seen that happen before many times already. But here’s a hope that the mess does not get messier, and a clear thinking process unfolds. Haven’t we had enough of muddled thinking already?
The writer is a social entrepreneur and a student of Pakistan’s social and political challenges. Twitter: @mkw72