Written by: Editor: Dr. Dushka H. Saiyid
Posted on: September 11, 2022 | 
The Quaid astutely played his cards against the Congress and the British imperialists, carving out a homeland for the Muslims of India. It was conceived as a state where they could develop into a prosperous nation, with freedom to practice their culture and way of life, an inspiration and a role model for the rest of the Muslim world.
Let there be no ambiguity about his position and relations with the more obscurantist sections of our community. As far back as 1929, when he supported the Sarda Act against Child Marriage, the conservative sections of Muslims opposed him. He told them to go and elect someone else in his place, because he was not going to pander to their jihalat/gnorance. In 1937, when he supported the Shariat Act, which ensured that women got their share of property as given in Islam, he was opposed by the landed gentry, who preferred giving their daughters dowry rather than dividing their land.
For purposes of political expediency, Pakistan has supported and cultivated the obscurantist sections of our society. This has been evident in various unsavory episodes of our recent history when obscurantist forces were given pre-eminence both in domestic and in foreign policy; the flawed notion of ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan being a prime example. Not surprisingly, now there are signs of a slow resurgence of terrorism in parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province (KPK), with them audaciously demanding that our FATA, which was integrated into KPK, revert to its old status.
Such self-defeating policies have only weakened our mainstream political parties and a pluralist functioning democracy. Increasingly our curriculum has become unscientific and filled with learning by rote. Since Ayub Khan’s fall in 1968, no Pakistani government has been able to have a population policy or focus on reproductive health. As Dr Zeba Sathar points out in her well-argued article in the daily Dawn, Culpable for Injustice, that the areas “most adversely affected by the floods are the ones with the highest fertility”! While Bangladesh, fast emerging as a model of economic growth in South Asia, has successfully reduced its population growth rate to 1%, India to less than 1%, ours is still 2% per annum.
With homes of 33 million washed away in floods, it is just not good enough to keep complaining that we have only contributed 1% to the emissions bringing about Climate Change. Our policy-makers, both civilian and military, have to take responsibility for the future of our people. Their constant power struggles and a complete flouting of all fundamental rights, is becoming increasingly unacceptable.
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