Waving the Flag

AUGUST 1999 - While I am all for waving the flag and holding my right hand solemnly over the ticker as the buglers hit the high notes, permit me while I also reach for the sick bag. After 52 years of fooling about with this land that we won with so much pain, there is despondency as we end this century and look over our shoulder with general fear at the next one. There is no doubt that the world’s greatest mass exodus in 1947 which created this country, now seems a terrible waste of so many human lives. If what we have today is what we died for then, what a mess we have made of that unique moment in history.

What is very hard to digest is the sermons that are being unleashed all the time and will reach their usual all-time high this independence week. It’s always the same stuff. The newspapers run front page stories exhorting the people to remember the Quaid-e-Azam and what he said. All those who happen to be running the country or ‘ruining’ it as someone said the other day, will make the most fervent appeals to the people to make more sacrifices for their homeland which was won with great sacrifices, etc, etc. As the appeals to tighten our belts (we can, but our stomachs have disappeared) are issued from everyone who can reach a newspaper reporter, the public looks at these noble slogan-raisers and are not surprised any more to find the country’s best-known smugglers, racketeers and opportunists. The ones who have never had to tighten anything other than their iron grips on the souls of the poor who elect them, are fat, oily and corrupt to their big bones hidden under large loads of lard that usually cover their ample frames. Everyone in Pakistan does nothing else but issue piety-laden sermons. It beats cricket hollow as the all-time great favourite past time. The worse things get, the more rhetorical and hollow become the sermons. There is an equation here which I am sure Dr. A.Q. Khan can work out and win another award from this grateful nation.

Every leader in every province issues appeals and resolves. Everyone seems to want to follow Mr.Jinnah’s footsteps but no one is prepared to stand up and say that Mr.Jinnah’s footsteps are largely irrelevant in today’s Pakistan where there is no respect for the law, order or indeed any of the universal standards which govern human existence. Instead we have all of the other stuff and in abundance. There is no institution that Mr.Jinnah set up which survives today. In appearance perhaps, but in spirit, long dead. Because the waves of leaders we have had to endure till providence, chance or disease mercifully eliminated them, we have also had to endure their pronouncements and each year as we slide further into the morass we have so easily created, the hollow appeals rise higher. The newspapers run editorials dutifully. By and large these have remained the same on all independence days. We are passing through a very critical phase is what they usually tell us and apparently the critical phase is highest around August. It’s amazing how long this phase has been running. The papers spell out the usual scenario and make the usual noises. It seems more like the ritual that we must observe and having done so, think that we have done our bit. It makes little or no difference to the majority of the people who in any case have better things to do like bumping off their neighbour than read editorials. In fact so alike are the pronouncements, both of the leaders and the media (always under control by the leaders) that it is hard to tell them apart from one year to another.

We have sunk on many fronts and there is nothing to hang on to. The only ones who are brimming with hope are the ones who are milking the little that’s left over in the country. They too realise that they have to move fast and cut through the claptrap to make the proverbial killing. Politics has long been the best business to be in and those who think that running a business by following the rules is the way to go can be assured of a happy demise in double quick time. Politics require no intelligence, only cunning and deceit. In fact if there is any intelligence it should be replaced with lard quickly, because it can be an obstacle. As for things like integrity, fairplay, consideration and honesty, these are to be avoided at all costs. These are not the kind of qualities one should ever aspire to. Happily, most politicians have always understood this simple formula. Because they need henchmen and henchwomen to do their bidding and more than willing officials to make money for them, these are acquired quickly through the national palm-grease line, which sprang into action minutes after Mr. Jinnah’s frail body was lowered into the earth.

Our position can be evaluated from the rather sobering thought that we don’t have more than two national heroes alive today. Other than Mr.Sattar Edhi and to some extent, Mr.Imran Khan, there aren’t any others who can claim any international fame or who have done something remarkable for Pakistan. There are any amount of cardboard heroes that are propped up by their masters every now and then, but the common people of Pakistan who have been buffeted about like leaves, know they are worth nothing. There are many prayers that float heavenwards from this land of great promise and even greater despondency, but on this, the last independence day of the 20th century (read 14th), surely the one prayer that is rising above all is for a miracle to pull us out of this unholy mess we are mired in. Raise the flag boys.

Of course there are many people who will violently disagree and point out the usual advantages. After all look at the people who live in Rwanda, but if we are reduced to comparisons with such great countries, that in itself is a telling statement of our real condition.