An Unusual Ode to the Brave Souls of Pakistan

[block­quote style=“3”] Few parts of this arti­cle have been first pub­lished in Ele­phant Jour­nal. [/blockquote]

“Hatred is the cow­ard’s revenge for being intim­i­dat­ed” — George Bernard Shaw

I found the afore­men­tioned words by Bernard Shaw in the quotes sec­tion of a book and I don’t real­ly know the con­text behind them. Maybe that is the rea­son I don’t agree with him. Yet, read­ing these words reminds me of all the pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios in which hatred could exist. It could be direct­ed towards our own self or towards our exter­nal envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, the most impor­tant form of hatred which I have seen and expe­ri­enced while grow­ing up in Pak­istan is hatred due to oppres­sion.

Every­one in the world— regard­less of what coun­try they hail from — can under­stand the dis­com­fort brought about by oppres­sion. For some, oppres­sion may come from with­in the fam­i­ly while oth­ers may expe­ri­ence it from author­i­tar­i­an regimes, imposed ide­olo­gies and doc­trines, or gen­der-based inequal­i­ties. The fact is, every­one in the world is affect­ed by oppres­sion even if it has not tar­get­ed them direct­ly.

I write these words for all my peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced this oppres­sion and the hatred it triggers—a hatred which stems from pro­longed anger for being denied your free­dom to be a human. In my coun­try, there are peo­ple who are still going strong despite the oppres­sion. It’s not that they can­not afford to leave and set­tle down some­where else, where their beliefs, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions and lifestyles would be accept­able and they won’t be oppressed any­more. Nei­ther are they stay­ing just because they don’t feel the oppres­sion or are not angered by the cir­cum­stances. They do get furi­ous and feel suf­fo­cat­ed. It is this feel­ing that gives them the courage to stand up and declare that enough is enough, that moti­vates them to hold can­dle­light vig­ils and start social media move­ments to defend oth­ers who are oppressed. They are the ones who stand on the busy streets of metrop­o­lis­es, hold­ing hand­made charts, defend­ing the rights of oth­ers, shout­ing out uncom­fort­able truths. They are the ones being accused of being for­eign agents, while all they want to see is peace.

This ode is for these brave peo­ple of my coun­try. Although I am aware that this oppres­sion is not lim­it­ed just to my land– the sit­u­a­tion is the sim­i­lar in every part of the world where human free­dom is not val­ued, where doc­trines and ide­olo­gies weigh more than human lives, where the pur­pose of life is revenge, a cycle which nev­er ends.

It’s high time that we devote our time to each oth­er, learn about each oth­er, and find ways to reach out. The least we can do is to gain aware­ness and seek truth. Let us salute the brave souls who chal­lenge oppres­sion every day and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?