WITH one year more to go before Pakistan completes 70 years of its existence, it is time we focused on a merciless self-examination to find out why and where we stand today in this hour of social anarchism and political duality. Could all this have been different if only we had avoided one mistake? Or is the abysmal state today the result of not one but a series of fundamental mistakes we made repeatedly — as if propelled by an uncanny force beyond our control — to all but destroy the values that the father of the nation stood for? Astonishing as it sounds, the loss of half the country and the humiliating surrender at Dhaka failed to shock us into making a clean break with the past and start afresh with a new resolve. Instead, where there should have been poise and restraint, history records recklessness, mob violence, repeated violations of the sanctity of the Constitution, and a flagrant abuse of state funds for personal and partisan gains. All this was topped by two military interventions (after 1971). Even when the civilian leadership returned to power after elections tainted by polling fraud, the spectre of ‘controlled democracy’ — an idea first mooted by Iskander Mirza in the pre-martial law days — haunted the polity. It still does.

The repercussions of military rule are there for us to see: the nation’s political growth has been stunted, its social fabric torn apart, and Pakistan’s image abroad tarnished. Acts of terror, like the one in Quetta last Monday and the carnage at the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014, are the visible form of the malignancy that has the country in its grip; the deeper and clandestine form of it is to be seen in religious extremism that has stymied liberal forces. More mortifying is society’s indifference to acts of mass murder, besides the perversion — often with the help of the establishment — of such noble Islamic concepts as philanthropy and jihad. The mishandling of the US-led anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ created a breed of militants who since then have been on their own, often beyond the control of their patrons, and are now at war with Pakistan — a state that nurtured them and made them victors in Afghanistan.

But even though we stumble and fumble and seem unable to find our way in the pre-dawn opacity, we should be sagacious enough not to show haste and, instead, detect the streaks of light piercing the all-enveloping gloom. The year 2013 saw the completion of a full five-year term by an elected government and a constitutional transfer of power. This march — howsoever arduous — towards democratic evolution must be maintained, and no follies and foibles by the elected should be considered reason enough for the non-elected to re-enact a play censured by history. This should not mean carte blanche for the civilian leadership to demean itself in the people’s eyes by glorying in the perks and privileges of power. Also deserving of denunciation is the evil use of law to persecute the opposition — a nostrum both civilian and military governments had recourse to. Quite often, the opposition invited and later regretted military rule, because it must know the generals have their own agenda.

The goal for all, and not merely the reviled politicians, should be to uphold Jinnah’s teachings, especially those he spelled out repeatedly during the less than 13 months he had after independence. The gist of those pronouncements make clear Jinnah wanted a Pakistan which would be a welfare state; which would not be a theocracy; where lawmaking would be the sole prerogative of the people’s elected representatives; and where all citizens, irrespective of religion and gender, would be equal before the majesty of the law. This idyll cannot be reached in a lifetime, but certainly we have a fair chance of giving the future generations a better Pakistan, if we begin the journey with sincerity — even 69 years late.

Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2016