Naya Pakistan Needs Your Magic Touch

“Nature has given you everything: you have got unlimited resources. The foundations of your State have been laid, and it is now for you to build, and build as quickly and as well as you can. So go ahead and I wish you God speed.” Quaid-e-Azam

 

The words above literally beam with a magical optimism. It seems almost as if the man who spoke them had never known failure or disappointment. And I wish that was true. Because maybe then, his life would not have been cut so painfully short. The bitter reality is that Jinnah, on one occasion was so disheartened by the course of politics in the sub-continent after years of struggling for Hindu-Muslim unity that it prompted him to migrate to London and stay there for some years.

 

 In spite of all that, he came back and then….he stunned the entire world with his vigour and achievement. In the words of Professor Stanley Wolpert, ‘"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. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three"

 

It is said the events of Indo-Pak 1947 partition are too painful for historians to study. For them it means having to look into the facts that back then were a maddening reality; trains arriving with dead bodies, whole families being massacred on the way, Innocent people being looted and abducted. It also means something else; history always has two faces. Loss and survival. Historians have to look at both. They have to face the gut-wrenching amazement of how, despite everything, people made it. And survived. So many of them are alive today, happily settled with their children and grand-children in the country they now call home.

 

Look at what we are made of. Look at the spirit that created our homeland. If we are truly to be part of it, now is now the time to give up or be disappointed. As Pakistanis, political insecurity and disillusionment come very easily to all of us. Given our history, that is not surprising. But are we going to let that get the better of us? If IK did not win in the way we hoped and prayed he would, are we going to stop changing ourselves? Are we going to stop being honest, stop fighting for justice, stop obeying traffic rules, look for ways to leave the country as soon as possible because it has 'gone to the dogs'? The country will only have 'gone to the dogs' when WE let it. It took IK 17 years to get even this far! For us it was ONE day and yes it was a difficult, tiring, exhausting day but we still WENT. WE GOT UP. Did you do that 5 years ago? Did you stay for hours in the sweltering heat just to get ink on your thumb? For the youth here, we have grown up way too fast. We have seen too much. And we have survived and today we tried our hardest to fight back. And in that sense, we won.

 

Oh and yesterday at the polling station, I saw something magical; thousands of people waiting more than 8 hours in the heat. The same people then arranging for food and drinks for others just so that nobody would go home without voting. I had my faith restored in my country again. I am not going to let anyone or anything take that away from me. Not now. Not ever. And you shouldn’t either.

 

If we want, we can make this the beginning of Naya Pakistan. Or we can give up. The choice is ours.