My Eight Dreams for Pakistan

“I have a dream that my four lit­tle chil­dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the col­or of their skin, but by the con­tent of their char­ac­ter.” These lines said by the Amer­i­can civ­il rights leader Mar­tin Luther King Jr. in August 1963 paved the way to end sys­tem­at­ic racism in Amer­i­ca. It would not be incor­rect to say that Luther’s dream was also the dream of many oth­er Amer­i­cans. Sim­i­lar­ly I have a few dreams for Pak­istan which, I am sure, many Pak­ista­nis would share.

I have a dream that one day pos­ter­i­ty will live in a peace­ful envi­ron­ment where bomb blasts, sui­cide attacks, and tar­get killing will be con­sid­ered as mis­eries of the past.

We are among those few nations who are a pri­ma­ry vic­tim of ter­ror­ism. We have lost over 50,000 lives in the war against ter­ror­ism. Due to the rise of ter­ror­ism, our infra­struc­ture and econ­o­my has suf­fered the most. More­over our image at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el has impaired so much so that for­eign­ers are advised not to vis­it our coun­try.

I have a dream that one day our soci­ety will be tol­er­ant enough to accept and respect the beliefs of oth­ers.

Extrem­ism, par­tic­u­lar­ly reli­gious, has plagued our soci­ety. This has led vul­ner­a­ble minds to accept the reli­gious inter­pre­ta­tion, no mat­ter how much dis­tort­ed, of extrem­ist groups. The grow­ing rad­i­cal­iza­tion has also choked the space for debate and dis­cus­sion, which has con­se­quent­ly made our soci­ety intol­er­ant.

I have a dream that one day Shia, Ahme­di, Chris­t­ian, Hin­du and oth­er minor­i­ty groups will pro­fess and prac­tice their faiths with­out any fear.

Thou­sands of peo­ple belong­ing to minori­ties have been killed so far because of their faith. Some­times their wor­ship places were tar­get­ed. For instance, the inci­dent of Ahmadiyya Dar-ul-Zakir that took the lives of 94 wor­ship­pers in 2010. Numer­ous times, minori­ties were tar­get­ed on streets. For exam­ple, over 73 Haz­aras were killed in bomb blast at Kirani Road, Quet­ta, in 2013. Some­times their hous­es were attacked, as in the case of Joseph Colony where a mob torched over 140 hous­es of Chris­tians in 2013.

I have a dream that one day reli­gion and laws will no longer be mis­used against indi­vid­u­als.

Let us not spark the banal debate whether Moham­mad Ali Jin­nah want­ed an Islam­ic state or a sec­u­lar one, but sure­ly I will argue that the mis­use of reli­gion has tak­en the lives of many, specif­i­cal­ly, blas­phe­my law is used as a tool to oppress and tar­get indi­vid­u­als over per­son­al griev­ances and vendet­tas. Rimsha Masih, a waste pick­er, was accused of des­e­crat­ing the Quran. Two weeks lat­er, local Imam of the mosque was arrest­ed after being found as a main con­spir­a­tor who had staged the whole dra­ma. Impor­tant­ly, those­who defend­ed the accused were bru­tal­ly killed. Apart from that, Salman Taseer and Rashid Rehman were among those who raised their voic­es against luna­cy in the name of reli­gion and got killed.

I have a dream that one day women will be treat­ed equal­ly.

Osten­si­bly, we claim that women in our soci­ety have equal rights as men. But the truth is quite dif­fer­ent and bit­ter. Remem­ber when women were barred from vot­ing in Low­er Dir and Mian­wali in the last gen­er­al elec­tions? The recent local body elec­tions in Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa — ruled by the so-called tab­deeli (change) par­ty — deprived women from their one of the fun­da­men­tal rights, when they were once again barred from vot­ing. The misog­y­ny and prej­u­dice against women does not stop here. A report issued by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Law in Feb­ru­ary this year men­tions an alarm­ing amount of hon­or killings i.e. 933, which were report­ed only in the last two years. Major­i­ty of the vic­tims were women. Despite promis­es by the politi­cians, women are still strug­gling to get equal shar­ing in prop­er­ty rights. We have also seen that some suc­cess­ful per­son­al­i­ties have always remained unfa­vor­able in the eyes of many. The youngest Nobel Lau­re­ate, Malala Yousufzai, is a befit­ting exam­ple. She has always been labeled as a ‘dra­ma queen’ or a ‘west­ern agent’ by a con­sid­er­ably large amount of peo­ple.

I have a dream that one day peo­ple of Gilgit-Baltistan will enjoy the same con­sti­tu­tion­al priv­i­leges and auton­o­my as oth­er four provinces do.

Gilgit-Baltistan has been an impor­tant strate­gic point for India and Pak­istan. From the Pak­istani per­spec­tive, the region is high­ly sig­nif­i­cant for its trade route, which enables Pak­istan to con­nect to Chi­na, and tourism. From the high peak of K2 to heav­en­ly-look­ing Hun­za Val­ley, the region is always an attrac­tion for for­eign­ers who keep rush­ing there every now and then. Despite such sig­nif­i­cance, the region has still not been grant­ed provin­cial auton­o­my and con­sti­tu­tion­al priv­i­leges even after 68 years. The peo­ple of Gilgit-Baltistan do not have rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the par­lia­ment, which they demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly deserve as cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

I have a dream that one day Balochis­tan con­flict will be resolved through dia­logue.

The con­flict of Balochis­tan is as old as Pak­istan. Three mil­i­tary oper­a­tions have been con­duct­ed so far. Appar­ent­ly, the fourth oper­a­tion is being con­duct­ed in the Awaran dis­trict of Balochis­tan. On the oth­er hand, Baloch sep­a­ratist mil­i­tants con­tin­ue to tar­get deployed forces in the region. As a result of this tus­sle between Pak­istani forces and Baloch mil­i­tants, ordi­nary cit­i­zens of Balochis­tan are suf­fer­ing since the day one.

I have a dream that one day elect­ed par­lia­ment will reign supreme above all oth­er state insti­tu­tions.

The suprema­cy of par­lia­ment is imper­a­tive for a demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­er­nance to per­form effec­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly. Arguably, a large sec­tion of peo­ple favors army (as an insti­tu­tion) instead of an elect­ed par­lia­ment. They seek help and sup­port from army in the time of polit­i­cal crises. How­ev­er, army’s sole pur­pose is to defend, not to rule. The demo­c­ra­t­ic cul­ture has nev­er evolved because army has ruled more than civil­ian gov­ern­ments as far as rul­ing terms are con­sid­ered. Con­se­quent­ly, army became more orga­nized and pop­u­lar in pol­i­tics. Sec­ond, civil­ian politi­cians were involved in cor­rup­tion and sought their per­son­al inter­est over nation­al inter­est which ulti­mate­ly dam­aged the demo­c­ra­t­ic evo­lu­tion the most.

I do not fear if these dreams will not come true, I am a dream­er and I shall dream on. How­ev­er, I fear our future gen­er­a­tions will have to live in the same Pak­istan we are liv­ing in.