So, what is the state of Pakistan’s dilapidation today? Even a peripheral but honest survey should reveal the following:
- The country stands financially bankrupt, and economically trashed.
- Every national institution is gasping in various stages of decay.
- The moral backbone of the nation has surrendered completely to hypocrisy, mendacity, and greed.
- And the elite, which normally provides leadership to a people, have embraced the ethos of pimps, committed to prostituting the people they lead. And our high command stands steadfastly behind them.
How could this country, born of so many noble aspirations, have fallen on the dung heap of unrelieved depravity so fast?
How could its elite and its army have sold the country out so brazenly in the clear light of day, such that no betrayal in near history can match this treachery except the Quisling sellout of Norway? Could this be due to a malignancy in our DNA nurtured over thousands of years i.e character shortcomings ingrained in us by any or all of the following:
- An unbroken tradition of sellout first recorded in our history when Alexander invaded India at the invitation of a local raja?
- The transactional aspect of religious practice borrowed from Hinduism, of trudging to the grave of a saint and pledging something of merit or value to the Almighty, in case He granted our prayer for which the pledge was made?
- Confusing an act of worship with that of goodness or charity; and coming away from such worship with the conviction that now since what was due to God had been duly bestowed, and our duty on to Him discharged, we were therefore free to do our duty to ourselves, prime among which was the filling of our own pockets with wealth which belonged to some other person or entity?
- Or has our greed been engendered by thousands of years of historical tradition where all land in India belonged to the king, and even grants made by him reverted back to him on the death of the beneficiary; and this king was the heir of the wealth of all his people so that when a person died, his family could inherit nothing, except at the pleasure of the king?
Something must indeed be amiss either in our stars or in our genes for us to have been so singularly condemned, that there should hardly be a saving grace to relieve us of our myriad frailties as a people. I wonder how many apart from me are daily assailed by this thought. And has any of these has found a reliable answer to this agonizing question!