Dear Mr Jinnah.
I hope you are doing well and that they feed you better than we did here. After all, you did look in really poor shape when you left us. And of course, I hope the ambulances you have there are better than the one which we provided for your last terrestrial ride when you were among us.
Do forgive me for a delayed response to your last letter. Things have become really expensive here and I just couldn’t afford the postage to heaven. So I had no way out but to bribe the postmaster, and that took a lot of bargaining, and time.
Besides, you asked me to describe Pakistan in one word, as honestly as I could. And this created another problem because I haven’t done anything honestly for upwards of two decades since honesty went out of fashion, and it stopped being used in anything other than in speeches.
After a lot of thinking though, I think what best describes us is, “DYNAMIC”. Yes, dishonest too, but we have been dishonest in a very dynamic way.
You also wanted to know the state of our religious practice. You’ll be pleased to know that significant improvements have come about in this sphere. For starters a lot more people pray today than the time you were around, though, in your day truth was still spoken. Nearly every mosque has been supplied with loudspeakers. And these are often in use even after the Azaan is over. That is when the Mullas take time out to train their kids to disturb the peace.
And we’ve made Haj free for some of the most influential people and the journalists who travel with them so that the dignity with which these fat cats performed Haj can duly be reported for the edification of those left behind. They know of course that free Haj loses all meaning, but they’ve become so used to freebees, they couldn’t care less what God Almighty may think of this, as long as it creates the right impression on the neighbours.
Also, despite the fact that most of us are so given to theft, we use the intervals between thieving to discuss Hadith and topics of similar sacred gravity. Most of us know many Ahadith, but we also make them up at the spur of the moment to impress guests.
You may well ask how we reconcile theft with worship. Well, we are so naturally gifted, we can almost pull off anything. Besides, you’d better have the answer for this one yourself, since it was you who gave us an independent country where we could give free expression to our potential. So, we’ve honed to perfection the art of keeping a fine balance between invoking the name of the Almighty while simultaneously filching something from the pocket of the person seated next to us. And we feel especially certain that assets belonging to the state actually belong to no one, and thus there is no feeling of compunction or remorse for stealing these.
A good example of this was when a few years back the state received some aid for people who had lost everything in an earthquake, and an elite son-in-law discovered this sum of money lying unmolested. He got together with his elite father-in-law, pocketed the sum, and took it to London to have a good time. And you’d be happy to learn that this elite father-in-law was made the Prime Minister of the country by the Army Chief about two years earlier. And this elevation came on the very day he was to be charged for money laundering! So, as you may gather, in some things, especially with the assets belonging to the state, we have achieved a rare liberality of acquisition.
And, you will be happy to know, that we have not forgotten to reward merit. So, the next Army Chief did not hesitate for a moment to subvert the entire election process to make the same man Prime Minister again earlier this year, because of his past performance in office! And to be even-handed in dishing out rewards, Mr Ten Percent was given a second shot at playing the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
So, as you may be able to gather, the practice of religion in your country is in fairly safe hands. For this, gratitude is due primarily to our Army Chief, who has spread the rumour that he knows the Holy Book by heart. He has encouraged the belief that each step which he takes for our discomfiture is backed by an appropriate verse from the Book. That could be the only explanation for why things were proceeding so swimmingly with us.
No one can miss the display of “free Haj” morality in the Land of the Pure. In two years two different army chiefs have handed the country over to the same set of thieves and pimps who had already made a name for themselves, destroying it. It took just these two years to completely destroy the stock of the army among the people of Pakistan.
The prayers therefore of many are that soon the army chief will have reason to fly to Bahawalpur, and will take along the pick of his generals who have done so much to make our lives so wretched. Hopefully, on their way flight back “exploding” mangoes will do the needful.
Part 2 of 4.
Industry in Pakistan threatened to do well for a time but has now sputtered to a halt. The venture that has taken its place is our dirty video industry. The inspiration behind this is a youngish grandmother trying to keep herself comely by practically living in a beauty parlour. Her aim is to be prime minister. The path she has chosen to get there is peculiar, to say the least. From the content of her videos, you may guess what most occupies her mind.
Thankfully her beauty parlour image, when “beauty” among the elite has become the sole value beside money, has given a real boost to the beauty business in Pakistan.
It will gladden your heart to see the progress our beauty parlours have made. Honestly, you send in a duck, and a few hours later she will emerge looking like a veritable princess. But what some of them get up to after that, you wouldn’t want to know. In these inflationary times, this after-parlour activity has become a thriving industry because it needs no gas or electricity to run, the shortage of which has closed most of our other industries down.
So, as beauty has spread, the regal instinct of some who can afford them, has encouraged the formation of unofficial harems. Some of the girls who were earlier employed by industry have now become a part of these extended families.
Whether the rich man has become any richer, I cannot say, but he has definitely become much more unequal and is having much more fun. During moments of inebriated flight, it is not uncommon to hear him confess that though carnal pleasure may have a part to play in setting up his harem, yet the spirit of charity was not entirely absent from the project as a motivating factor.
Spreading and deepening poverty is steadily pushing young adult males from poor families into the waiting arms of religious militants, while it is allowing girls from poor families to be sucked into the ranks of the oldest profession. Leadership given over to the cause of theft and injustice, is helping both to thrive.
This, alas is the justice of the times. Speaking of justice, we have put this through many dynamic reforms as well. First, we’ve had a bifurcation. Justice for the poor man has been separated from that meted out to the rich and powerful. The poor guy is either sent to jail or goes to his grave, waiting for justice.
And the rich man can buy justice. But not everyone, even among the rich, can afford to do so. Between him and the judge stands a very expensive lawyer, and not all have the money to pay them both. But this problem is being rectified.
Many judges have made themselves directly accessible to the litigants, so that the need for expensive lawyers has diminished.
Yet this is not to say that the judges of late have not tried to give their best in order to keep the judiciary independent. This they are striving to do. And some of them are emerging as heroes for the first time in our history.
They were first massively corrupted when they found themselves to be unequal to the assaults launched against them by Nawaz Sharif. He launched his first assault with suitcases full of money in Quetta, and to conduct this operation, he hired the services of a retired judge of the superior
judiciary. This assault was eminently successful. And the judge in question was made the President of the Islamic Republic in solemn acknowledgement of services rendered.
For the judges he couldn’t buy, Nawaz Sharif had a special treat. He had the Supreme Court physically assaulted by his goons, and the judges barely managed to scramble to safety by the skins of their teeth. This happened around the time Mr Sharif nearly succeeded in having himself elected ” Amir ul Momineen!”—yet another instance of how dear religion has become to so many of us! It was only after this attempt failed that he employed himself and his family as full-time thieves.
Since then the judges have come to greatly respect the politicians. And the politicians have set up a special selection system to appoint the judges. This system was put in place by our one-eyed Judge [“Kana”] Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhary. His system ensures that the judges are both pliable and purchasable. And some come prepurchased. But despite all the exertions of “Kana” Iftikhar, there are still some in the higher judiciary who have not misplaced their probity. A few of these are battling for the sake of Pakistan today. And if the country you made survives, it will be largely on account of these judges.
But most recently, NRO2 has come into force. All higher theft now stands legalized. This has given well-deserved relief to our thieving classes, and will greatly reduce work pressure on the judges, which is good news. But the news which is not so good is that the judiciary overall, is bound to suffer a quite severe cut in their “over the top” earnings.
So all in all, what we now have is a judiciary so shaken, that whenever they have to decide a case which has a politician on one side, and the interests of the state on the other, it is the politician who is the likely winner. It is just of late we have learned that when this happens, standing behind the politician, more often than not, has been a general from the army which we have so loved.
The generals meanwhile have shown much advancement in their professionalism. Whereas there was a time when they held a monopoly on patriotism, now they sell off the country directly without an intermediary. This they do at the macro level. At the micro level, where they were used to abducting or disappearing Baluch students, they have now graduated to blackmailing judges or abducting their loved ones.
Part 3 of 4.
And you asked about the state of democracy. Well, you’ll be happy to learn that our people have taken to it like ducks to water. No, it’s not exactly like one person one vote. It may mean thousands of people with no vote; or single persons with thousands of votes. This depends on how our ChiefElection Commissioner, thief and scoundrel Sikander Sultan Raja counts them, and he relies on the directions of the army chief. And both of them are helped to fine-tune the electoral fraud by Qazi Faez Isa, the Thief playing at Chief Justice.
Beyond that, the system is pretty sophisticated. What pulls people into politics is high-mindedness. This consists of their need to throw their weight on lesser people, and also to make plenty of money. So they start by spending a whole lot to get elected. And then they begin stealing to get back what they’ve spent, and then go on to make an indecent profit on their investment.
For the rest, they keep looking up reverentially at the person above them, while crapping on the one below. So at the end of the day, the whole edifice resembles a human pyramid covered in excrement. The only one left uncovered is the man at the very top. But he also gets covered when he is in the opposition. Little wonder then, why being in the opposition is not very popular.
But this was sought to be remedied by the famous ” Charter of Democracy” hammered out between Benazir and Nawaz Sharif. If you cut out all the superfluous verbiage from this charter, its basic aim stands out clearly for all to see i.e. instead of looting the country in opposition to each other, it was decided that it would best serve all parties to do so in partnership.
This was simple and so doable, and yet it did not work out. For it to have worked, it was required that dishonesty and greed would be put under voluntary restraint for some time. But by this time the people concerned had already forgotten how to restrain dishonesty and greed. And the army, which used to periodically make incongruous noises in this direction, had already been wooed into this partnership itself! This ended any possibility of restraint. The combined effect of the foregoing was that the day Shahbaz Sharif was to be charged for laundering 14 billion rupees, he was sworn as prime minister!
You’ll agree that it really is difficult to be more democratic than this.
You also wanted to know about our population explosion, growth of shanty towns, and treatment of minorities etc.
The elite cannot be blamed for contributing to population growth. They normally have one or two kids, often bad eggs, The behaviour of some of these marks them out as being products of cross-pollination.
It is the poor who have little entertainment beyond producing kids. And it is they who are really to blame for the exploding population. But then the mullahs keep assuring them that it was their job to get the kids out, and God’s to provide for them. And this promise of a free lunch has kept them humming, with each one trying to get out two kids where previously one would have sufficed.
Most of the shanty towns you can see from heaven are sweepers’ colonies. When you ask why we’ve not provided them with clean running water and sewerage etc, you don’t realize that oursweepers Mashallah, are mostly Christians. And if we began treating them with kindness, they may well begin converting. And where would that leave the opulent thieves, whose behinds are national assets? Who will clean their crap the next morning!
And as for the minorities, I can’t help recalling Liaqat Ali Khan showing off a replica of our flag to our constitutional assembly and explaining that the white part in it represented the minorities. A wit did not take long to observe that this was perhaps why the flagstaff had been driven through the behinds of the minorities.
We have not wavered from living that symbolism down as expressed in our flag. As a result, we have lost most of our Parsi and Christian population due to immigration, while concurrently, new minorities are being created and persecuted, and the flagstaff is being put to effective use so that such people are also being driven out. Therefore there is a good chance that soon our flag will lose all that is white about it, including its crescent and star. It will then be left just a homogeneous green!
Part 4 of 4.
And now Mr Jinnah, you must be dying to know about the army. You will be happy to know that no organization has undergone so many institutional reforms. Very early on we decided to give a dynamic new meaning to merit. Choosing the army chief on merit was always going to be tough because there is a problem with determining merit, especially when hypocrisy has been so dear to us. So we began to choose them from the bottom of the heap. We chose either the most incompetent or the most controversial. And if we chanced upon someone whom we did not know to be to either, all of them [except two] almost immediately obliged by proving themselves to be both.
We have of course spared no effort improving their situation. Each one of them retires with plots whose list is as long as their value is impressive. Our last Chief just retired with a part-worth of Rupees twelve billion. When the remainder of his wealth is exposed he is widely expected to be a dollar billionaire. Now that is impressive, or wouldn’t you say so?
And that is the least of it. A nice measure of the “worth” of an army chief may be expressed by the steps we take for his security. At least till some time ago, whenever he travelled, he did so in a cavalcade of three latest model Mercedes staff cars and a long security detail, so that if someone wanted to bump him off, he wouldn’t be sure which car to aim at. And should he eventually pull the trigger, the hope was that he would get the wrong car and so the blighter would escape.
We have now improved on that and even given our Army Chief his own plane. Among other things, this will help him to flee the country at his convenience when the time comes!
And how these Chiefs repaid the country can best be measured by the fact that the last one handed the country over to the country to the very scoundrels who had mercilessly subjected their motherland to rape. And NONE of the generals around him lifted a finger to stop it. The new army chief has ensured that the same lot of pimps and thugs are given another shot at further despoiling the country. How these generals can gather the shamelessness to show up at weddings and funerals and golf courses beats me. But that is because, among other things, shamelessness has also made great progress since 1947.
The one part of the army which mercifully has shown no change in commitment to the motherland are the junior officers and the rank and file. They continue to volunteer for every mission. In every military engagement the ratio of casualties among officers versus their men, continues to favour our young officers. This is proof that they lead their men from the front and this ratio is among the highest in the world. This we can still be proud of. Traditionally this is the index which separates the “fighting” from the “fighting-shy” armies. This young blood is the real phalanx which has stood its ground, sacrificed, given life and blood, and ensured our security for seventy-five years. How long will their spirit last uncorroded in view of what is happening at the top, God alone knows.
I am sorry Mr Jinnah, if from the foregoing you get the impression that the country you created, maybe about to pack up. But you did ask for an honest run down, did you not? And you being you, wouldsurely know the fate God has reserved for unjust societies. Had He promised salvation to a community on the basis of property accumulation among the leadership, both military and political, our future would have been envious. But that, unfortunately, is not how He put it.
Most of our thieves and the generals who’ve joined them however are very optimistic. In their view whenever misfortune strikes, it gets the poor man, while the rich one flies off to London. And they have the history to prove this.
So while you are up there, you might as well beseech God to tinker with things a bit, so that occasionally a fat cat can be caught and and strung up. If things are to remain as they are, with the whole game being so one-sided, the poor are fast losing faith in the bright side of poverty, and in divine justice.
Before I sign off, I must urge you to come down for a weekend with us. I want to introduce you to Qazi Faez Isa, our Chief Justice. Off and on he keeps reminding us about all his daddy did to help you to create Pakistan. As recompense for the services rendered by his dad, you cannot imagine the slices he is gouging out from our destiny. No one has done such horrendous damage to us. Only you can put the record straight. And if you then have any time left over, I could arrange for you to go through some of Qazi’s landmark judgements, especially the one about the PTI and the Bat.
That will give you some idea about where the country stands today on the road to its final crash, and why it is teetering on the edge.
Few men stink of unadulterated rot worse than Qazi Faez Isa. The only one in credible competition with him is his lord and master sitting in GHQ. So do your own calculations about what awaits us.
Sorry Mr Jinnah, for bringing home to you the present-day reality of the profession which you invested with such grace and integrity.
I’ve tried to be honest with you. I must confess though, that trying to be honest was so exhausting!
Email: saeedakhtarmalik85@gmail.com