Picture Courtesy Dawn
Question is simple, “why you people hate MQM?” this question was asked by my Faisalabadi friend from my other friend who is Sindhi. By that time, I realised that politics is going to be the dessert of the dinner that I was trying to finish. The statement of Senior Minister of Sindh Dr. Zulfiqar Mirza has given a discussion topic to many people. And we four friends were enjoying this hot cake at that time.
My friend who is from interior Sindh and spent some years in Karachi unfolded charge sheet against MQM and Urdu speaking community, the final allegation was “they don’t like Sindhi people”. “Keep it simple mate, if you hate them then they have all the rights to dislike you”, I tried to add my notes into the discussion.
Throughout this discussion, my sindhi friend tried to convince that MQM is evil. The forth member of this discussion kept poking his opinion whenever there was a biased statement used to come from our Sindhi fellow.
Discussion ended without any result. When whole history and some recent incidents have failed to prove that who is the most violent force in Karachi then how come four of us could reach to a point in just one hour. However, this whole dining table talk put me into some thoughts.
Today even after almost 64 years of living together under one so called nationality we still are Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi, Pashtoon, Muhajirs or any other thing the one thing we are not is a Pakistani. One group of Pakistanis hate the other on the bases of provincial and racial belongongness. moreover, the kind of sentiments we have about others are clear with the statement of Zulfiqar Mirza.
This politics is a game but unfortunately in every match it is Pakistan who loses but the so-called leaders always win. That is what happened when Dr. Mirza tried to lift image of his ideal Urdu Community leader and put the situation of Karachi and whole country on stake.
Today there is call for Muhajir sooba (province) as once there was a demand or plan for Jinnah-pur; today if that demand has popped up again with a new name then we are responsible for that. We have always decided to stay divided and now see the fall.
those “bhooka nanga Muhajirs” are more Pakistani to me who left whatever they had just to reach and live in Pakistan, and many like us who got this land as a gift in golden plates want to be sole owner of it. If we have embraced those Muhajirs and accepted them as fellow Pakistanis then things might have been different.
The irony is that in Punjab (I do not know about rest of Pakistan) we still call them Hindustani. Is that the justice we do with them? respect can be earned with respect and we overlooked this fact.
Today we have reached to the point when real reconciliation and unity is the need of the hour. And here I do not mean the reconciliation that our beloved president has achieved.
It is already late therefore; it is request to all the political leasers to kindly compromise with their real principles. A request to the nation to wakeup and check our leaders with open eyes and decide that who is right and to what extent. No matter what ever you are, it will always come after your identity of being Pakistani and this fight over political and racial belongingness will only gift destruction as the winners’ prize… wake up for God sake wake up.
P.S: (1) I have no Political Affiliation with MQM. (2) By the time this post will be published Dr. Ishrat ul Ebad will be making his way back to his Governor office. so the Principles been compromised as i mentioned in my previous post.
good work… way to go…
I’d also like to say that when you say we are still not Pakistanis, its because unlike unitary states (which have singularity w.r.t ethnicity, religion and culture), our country is highly diverse, therefore rather than insisting on one single identity (i.e. Pakistani) we must embrace diversity and live with multiple identities – Pakistan should therefore be seen as a federation with multiple units which can only be unified if their political, social and economic interests are recognized, acknowledged and accommodated within a federal structure of governance.
Urdu is our national language and I think there are many people in Punjab who despite being punjabies mostly speak Urdu. If we will not promote Urdu we will create distance among the people of four provinces. Pathans, Sindhis, Punjabis and others does know Urdu in common then what’s wrong with Urdu speaking people.