MicroPakistan

“Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.” Stanley Wolpert

Usually, on Independence Day, speeches are made and principles venerated. Then, the day ends and it’s another year of business as usual. This does not happen simply in Pakistan on 14th August, but in India on the 15th as well, and many other countries too. But we should not use the ubiquitous nature of lip service to exonerate ourselves from this blatant hypocrisy, where we honour Jinnah but throw his principles away.

I find it highly ironic that there is a picture of Jinnah in nearly every government building and office in Pakistan and in the Pakistani embassies abroad. You would have thought that this man’s life was not only remembered, but also hopefully emulated by his countrymen. Not so. In Pakistan, it seems there is anything but “Unity, Faith, and Discipline”. Consider the following before you remonstrate. Unity: there is abundant sectarian strife and provincialism is rife in the country- look at Balochistan and the long-standing problems in Karachi. Faith: those that don’t have it profess their belief (or lack thereof) openly; those that do (or at least think they do) profess so openly as well. It is a classic internal clash where the country, like a pair of shoddy jeans, is ripped apart by two opposing pulls in opposite directions. Like Orpheus, it is ravaged by the Furies of its time. Pakistan does not know whether it is coming or going, and chooses instead a perpetual state of agony for itself. Discipline: in such a scenario, how can Discipline exist? The military government has lost all credibility and control. It has sparked a constitutional crisis of its own making, forcing itself to play musical chairs with an unsavory character of yesteryear who does not seem to know when to call it time. It seems too many now subscribe to the classic Miltonian philosophy of “better to rule in Hell, than to serve in Heaven”- each man and woman their own Lord or Lady onto themselves.

But I do not agree. I simply do not fathom that a good thing, if lost, cannot be recovered in another form. For those of you who listen to music (which includes nearly all of us), I am sure you will understand. When an artist or band comes up with a hit first album, what do they do to follow it up? Do they try the same trick twice, or do they branch out, explore and grow? Do they sing of yesterday, and how all their “troubles seemed so far away”? Or do they go on to “Imagine”? The choice is clear: Pakistan must not look backwards, but forwards. It must emulate its great moments not by copying them verbatim, but by creating equally great, different moments. The input is the same: inspiration, perspiration, and “Unity, Faith and Discipline”. Then we will see the good times again- when Pakistan is welcomed, not shunned, by the comity of nations. When Pakistan becomes in various sectors a world leader, and not follower. When Pakistan can be comfortable about its past because its present is impressive and its future bright.

Too often we hear about grand plans and grand designs, whether on the temporal or metaphysical levels. We would do well to remember the importance of gradualism and detail- as Deng Xiaoping put it, “crossing the river by feeling the stones underfoot”. If we look to our faith, the Holy Prophet took 23 years of struggle to complete his mission, the fruits of which are still being eaten 1400 years later. If we look at Jinnah’s life, we find immense hardship as well. His mother and bride died when he was in London studying for the Bar; his father had grave financial problems at that time; his young wife died tragically of cancer; and his daughter left him to marry a non-Muslim at a time when he was birthing a unique nation-state based on religious identification. And yet, like the dedicated soldier he was to his cause, he marched forwards and grimly fought on for Pakistan to come into existence.

Jinnah was a man who lived by his principles, to the extent that compromise was a nebulous concept for him. Despite Nehru and Mountbatten’s attempts to influence him, he would not give up the idea of Pakistan, even when derided as the “great Unpersuadable”. Despite warnings from his doctor to take rest and look after his health, he ignored them and devoted his last years selflessly to giving Pakistan some foundations. Here was a man who died by his commitment to his cause- as Lord Pethick- Lawrence so eloquently stated: “Gandhi died by the hands of an assassin; Jinnah died by his devotion to Pakistan.” The title of Quaid-e-Azam is not one bestowed without merit. We would do well, instead of pitying ourselves, to tread such a noble path of selfless commitment, and follow Jinnah’s exhortations to “mobilize all our resources in a systematic and organized way and tackle the grave issues that confront us with grim determination and discipline worthy of a great nation.”

People will always find faults with Jinnah and make untoward accusations- we all know the charges. But ask yourselves: how many Pakistani politicians have been paragons of selflessness, industriousness and utter devotion, like Jinnah? A man who, if he wished, could have easily settled down to a very comfortable lifestyle in Hampstead, and lived out his days with a highly respectable practice in Privy Council cases? Were it not for another great man, the Philosopher-Poet of the East Sir Mohammed Iqbal, Jinnah would in all likelihood have stayed in London and there may not have been any Pakistan at all, at least not as we knew it in 1947.

There is a great dialectic between the East and West on Destiny. The West proclaims that man creates his own Destiny, whereas the Eastern discourse proclaims that Destiny makes man. Personally, even if Destiny does make man, that does not mean man may absolve himself of his responsibilities. Even if the bestowal of success and/or failure is not within man’s remit, surely the obligations to maximize his or her own efforts are. In case you read this and think that principles such as “Unity, Faith and Discipline” can only serve as mere jingoism and not be the foundations of great achievements and great nations, we would all do well to remember the words of Sir Winston Churchill: “All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

If we can maybe, just maybe, put Jinnah’s principles into practice in our own lives gradually, instead of venerating him with a portrait on the wall and then leaving his principles there as well- then one day, as the Quaid envisaged:

“I can look forward to Pakistan becoming one of the greatest Nations of the world”.

I’m looking in the mirror right now- are you?