There is a “Madiba” in Every Legendery

Zaighum Abbas

Amid high trib­utes and lau­rels from all across the globe, Nel­son Man­dela bade adieu to the world which he strived to make a bet­ter place to live. He will always be remem­bered for his unflag­ging courage and com­mit­ment to the dig­ni­ty of human race. The south­ern part of Africa which was ripped apart by racial and com­mu­nal vio­lence for decades sud­den­ly found a sooth­ing balm when Man­dela became its pres­i­dent in 1994.

As a pres­i­dent of the coun­try he strug­gled for the dif­fu­sion of racial and civil­ian ten­sions which had haunt­ed the African con­ti­nent from decades. Mandela’s strug­gle, despite for a par­tic­u­lar nation, sur­pass­es con­ti­nents and bound­aries owing to the uni­ver­sal mes­sages of non-vio­lence, peace­ful co-exis­tence and denun­ci­a­tion of any dis­crim­i­na­tion. What mat­ters most at this junc­ture of his­to­ry is not only to com­mem­o­rate that leg­end but to under­stand his mes­sage in its true spir­it. The case of Pak­istan par­tic­u­lar­ly becomes rel­e­vant when it comes to the under­stand­ing of Madiba’s uni­ver­sal phi­los­o­phy. A coun­try which is crip­pled due to the inter-eth­nic, inter-reli­gious and com­mu­nal vio­lence is in dire need of mes­si­ah like Nel­son Man­dela who by virtue of his rec­on­cil­i­a­tion could draw the peo­ple out from the abyss of despair.

It is not enough just to com­mem­o­rate the death of this great soul; it is more sig­nif­i­cant to delib­er­ate upon the lega­cy of his life and his mes­sage. When Man­dela was elect­ed as pres­i­dent after the end of apartheid sys­tem, the white minor­i­ty which ruled the black major­i­ty for decades began to feel inse­cure and antic­i­pat­ed a pos­si­ble revenge. Against these fears Man­dela declared that “we will estab­lish a rain­bow nation at peace with itself and the world”. What we are cur­rent­ly wit­ness­ing in Pak­istan is quite con­trary to this spir­it. It even feels like we have lost all our com­pas­sion and love for human­i­ty. The grow­ing reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism cou­pled with sec­tar­i­an dis­cord has placed us between the dev­il and a deep sea.

Hate for oth­ers has pen­e­trat­ed to the low­est stra­tum of our soci­ety and we are becom­ing rud­der­less with each pass­ing day. Our con­di­tion at this point undoubt­ed­ly is, if not more, the same as apartheid South Africa. The recent Rawalpin­di inci­dent is just one exam­ple of the hatred that has pen­e­trat­ed our col­lec­tive mind­set. It demon­strates our inca­pac­i­ty to accept oth­ers with an open spir­it of peace and mutu­al co-exis­tence. It was an epit­o­me of bla­tant dis­re­gard to the respect and hon­or of human­i­ty when we saw chil­dren and elders being indis­crim­i­nate­ly slaugh­tered in broad day­light. We are quick to cher­ry-pick among the nar­ra­tives which pro­mote or defend our ide­o­log­i­cal or reli­gious posi­tions but we sel­dom show any restrain or calm when it comes to lis­ten­ing to oth­ers. Man­dela pre­vailed by receiv­ing hon­or and respect not only from those who stood by him but from all oth­ers as well who at one point of time denounced him as a ter­ror­ist and con­demned him to life impris­on­ment. A coun­try so splin­tered such as ours is in dire need of under­stand­ing the uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples estab­lished by the tow­er­ing Man­dela.

A spe­cif­ic politi­cized ver­sion of reli­gion and ide­ol­o­gy which is being vehe­ment­ly prop­a­gat­ed since the incep­tion of this coun­try has not only incul­cat­ed hate among the dif­fer­ent sec­tions of peo­ple but has result­ed in inter-faith dis­cord. It has hith­er­to proven itself as a xeno­pho­bic world­view which has ban­ished any pos­si­bil­i­ty of peace­ful co-exis­tence. Our col­lec­tive sal­va­tion lies in the phi­los­o­phy of tol­er­ance and love as shown by Nel­son Man­dela but we do not seem ready to accept it. By utter­ing few words of com­mem­o­ra­tion and by post­ing few lines on Social media we tend to extri­cate our­selves from a larg­er civic duty. Our focus as a respon­si­ble cit­i­zen of this coun­try should be to prac­ti­cal­ly real­ize the mes­sage which has been giv­en to us by the great human­ist of this cen­tu­ry.

Nel­son Man­dela is a glob­al hero and I reserve no doubts while say­ing this but there is a pecu­liar psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­den­cy in our love for heroes. In the course of our six decades jour­ney we pro­duced many notable per­son­al­i­ties who strived for the sal­va­tion of human­i­ty in gen­er­al and our coun­try in par­tic­u­lar. Take for exam­ple the case of Malala Yousafzai, a girl whose quote; “one girl, one pen and one book can change the whole world” not only appealed to the whole world but we wit­nessed a reju­ve­nat­ed glob­al inter­est in the edu­ca­tion for women. But what hap­pened in our coun­try is quite sad. We view our own heroes with the eye of sus­pi­cion and we take no long to declare them as some west­ern pup­pet or some for­eign agent. When Man­dela declares that “Edu­ca­tion is the most pow­er­ful weapon by which we can change the world” we are not ready to see the mutu­al coher­ence of both these mes­sages.

His­to­ry remem­bers those peo­ple who have altered its course and Nel­son Man­dela was undoubt­ed­ly one of them. It was hon­or for every human of this plan­et who longed to see Madi­ba liv­ing among them. But as this tow­er­ing per­son­al­i­ty has now depart­ed, his mes­sages of love and human dig­ni­ty shall be writ­ten in gold­en words for­ev­er and his strug­gle and life would be an inspi­ra­tion for those who aspire to change the course of his­to­ry in pos­i­tive direc­tion. Rest in Peace Madi­ba..!!