Today’s conditions don’t show very much promise.
There’s an interesting phrase I see popping up in Indian politics called “Mera des badal raha he” which translates roughly to “My nation/homeland is changing”.
It’s interesting because of how it’s used as a double-edged sword and has both right wing and left wing connotations.
The right wing use it to praise the BJP and its governance and claim the nation is on a path to economic progress, international prestige and nation reinvigoration. It promises a bright and optimistic future in a nutshell.
The left wing use it as a grim warning or a mockery and claim the nation’s secular fabric and institutions are being torn apart and an intolerant regime bent on persecuting minorities and imposing authoritarianism is rising.
Pakistan too could find such a phrase pregnant with connotations from both sides of the aisle.
On the one hand, we have the establishment-backed politicians like Imran Khan and his PTI and their right wing, military-aligned politics expected to sweep the 2018 elections and promising to root out corruption and institute reforms and what not. CPEC and tightening foreign alliances and reductions in terror related incidents promise a bright future of prosperity.
On the other hand we have the disintegration of major national parties like the PML-N and PPP and growing regionalism in the state. We are reaching catastrophic debt levels, currency failures and economic growth is slowing down. Climate change is reducing fertile land and water and population growth shows no sign of slowing down. Economic and regional inequalities have given fresh lease of life to ethnic nationalist movements and the grim failure of the state to cater to the suffering of its frontiers have meant a rise in movements like the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. Extreme far right politics like the Khatam-e-Nabuwat coalitions look set to enter mainstream politics on the back of their supporters in the establishment who find them useful idiots to use against the civilian democrats they can’t control.
So in a way, “Mera des badal raha he” is an equally apt phrase to describe our country and all the divisive politics that delineate it.
In a way, Pakistan already has changed so much in several seismic and traumatic episodes in our past that sometimes we wonder whether Pakistan currently exists at all.
Some would say the original Pakistan died somewhere in the blood-stained corridors of Dhaka university when our army turned its guns on its own citizens in one of the most shocking moments of our past.
Others would say Pakistan died in the whip cracks and screams of journalists flogged in public during the Zia years as authoritarianism and Islamism combined to forever transform Pakistani society as we know it.
Still others would say Pakistan died in the trinity of nuclear tests, 9/11 and Kargil.
A different Pakistan died during the Musharraf era reforms which led to a transformation of society, politics, media and economy that were never seen before in our history and culminated in the lawyers movement, the restoration of democracy and the beginning of the Taliban onslaught.
Perhaps Pakistan died in the halls of the APS school massacre.
Perhaps Pakistan died during the detente of the mid 2010s when CPEC, the destruction of Pakistan’s mainstream political parties and the rise of reactionaries across the board gave birth to a new Pakistan.
When I was young, I remember wandering the hills around Quetta, visiting the frontiers in the West casually, walking on Parade ground Avenue in front of the Presidential House and playfully running around military bases like it was nothing.
But I look around the country and it’s breathtaking how vastly different it is now from what I held in my memories..
No families walk leisurely on Parade Ground under the lights of the President Secretariat. The areas of Baluchistan I lived in have long lost their quiet, idyllic state. Barbed wires and bomb shields surround the grounds we used to play in as kids. Society itself has undergone vast transformations.
To be honest, such transformations and change are not uncommon in the life of nations nor always a cause for concern.
What’s concerning is how in Pakistan today there’s just…less. Of everything.
As if a wind has swept through this land and carried off with it a world that was once filled with poetry, culture, diversity, history and art.
It’s the lessening of Pakistan that puts me on the side of the aisle that says “Mera des badal raha he” with grim undertones of an ominous future.
During partition and the mutilation of the cultural powerhouses of the subcontinent (United Punjab and Bengal), we emerged as Pakistan but held a lessened version of the rich cultural, economic, military and political power that had once been the united provinces of Bengal and Punjab.
Neither of those two lands have ever regained their earlier glorious status and their cultural strength after partition.
But yes, it can be said that they still ‘existed’.
After 71 and the separation of Bangladesh, the Western wing continued to “exist”. We were bereft of the culture, language, political guidance and camaraderie of our Bengali brothers and continued to exist in a further mutilated form. But we existed.
After the trauma of Islamization and the Taliban wars, we continued to exist. Somewhat lesser than whole but in some form and function.
But “existence” cannot be the baseline we strive for.
Say in the far future, the pressures of the economy, climate change, tense diplomatic environment, global conflict and political instability cause a fresh round of trial and tribulation in the country.
Say KPK slips from the national fold, Islamists run amok and turn what little political process we have left into a theocracy and the military tightens their grip on the state with authoritarian measures.
It would be poor consolation at that point to say that “Pakistan still exists”.