A PLEASANT DREAM

A QUESTION FOR Father of Nation

QUAID-E-AZAM Mohammed Ali Jinah

Looking at all these conditions I was very upset. I thought Quaid-e-Azam would be resting in paradise. Let me talk to him on phone. So I rang up the father of the nation. At first he was surprised as to why some one called paradise from Japan. When I introduced myself to him he said the following:
Q.A. Humayun Mughal! You are a Pakistani but why are you calling from Japan?
H.M. I came here in search of livelihood and stayed on. But I do visit Pakistan after a year or so. And on looking at the conditions there I become sad and come back here.
Q.A. Every day I am confronted with sad stories about Pakistan. Now you are there. What do you want to ask?
H.M. O? father of the nation ! If it is in your knowledge what is transpiring in Pakistan then why are you enjoying in paradise. If Pakistan?s predicament is disturbing for you then why don?t you come in the dream of a Pakistani man of authority and shake him. Why don?t you tell him,? O? Pakistani , open your eyes and follow the principles and regulations that I laid down for Pakistan. Ask the people to follow it too. Due to your inaction you have dismembered half of Pakistan. Now take care of the rest of it.
Q.A. My son ! You are living in Japan. You feel pain whenever you visit Pakistan or read the newspapers. But in front of me the whole of Pakistan is present all the time. The daily events of Pakistan are flashed before my eyes like television transmission. Whom should I tell that they concoct my thoughts during the reign of every ruler. What ever has been said in the name of ?sayings of Quaid-e-Azam? on television or otherwise I wonder at it. Every one ascribes all his own thoughts to me. These are not my sayings at all. I gave only one lesson to my people:
Unity, Faith and Discipline
I never used that many words in my whole life which are being printed as my sayings.
Humayun Mughal ! You called me. You wanted to talk to me. I am at your disposal. In whose dreams I should appear. What should I tell them? Will they tell the same thing to the people next morning what I told them in the dream. But do tell one thing to the people of Pakistan on my behalf that whosoever will contact me with truth and love for Pakistan I shall come in his dream for guiding him. The respected father of the nation said, ? I feel miserable and my soul feels pain when some body betrays the land of the pure and talks of breaking it into pieces. He thus betrays the principles of truth and justice and tramples over the rights of poor people who are the true masters of Pakistan.

This is Pakistan. Here every citizen has a right to prosper and reach the highest office in the country. This country never came into being for feudals, capitalists and elite. These capitalists and feudals rather sided with the British but I had the support of the poor Muslims of the sub-continent. This country Pakistan was not formed for fundamentalists to indulge in sectarianism. I had on my one side Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani and Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad on the other side. I had Jogindar Nath Mandal with me and on the other side I had Sir Zafarullah as my foreign minister. I gave every Pakistani an equally respectable status in the country. But who are these opponents to decide as to who has a right to live in Pakistan and who does not have this right. The panacea to keep Pakistan strong and united was that here every one irrespective of his nationality, religious belief, colour or creed had a right to live in peace and tranquillity and love each other. They should have confidence in each other. But my soul gets wounded when some one for self aggrandisement tries to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the country. When some one for personal gain spreads poison in the beautiful and fragrant atmosphere of Pakistan. When ever some one talks of sectarian prejudice my soul shivers and I feel miserable with sorrow for a long time.

Humayun Mughal?. I tried to console the misery and pain of the old man by promising that ? I am opening my heart before you. It will be my endeavour that once again I bring before the eyes of Pakistanis your living picture and pour your voice in their ears so that it penetrates their hearts.? On this his face glowed with happiness and looking at me with happiness and satisfaction he said,? My son you are living far away from mother land still you have so much concern about Pakistan. I wish those who are in authority had the same feeling of patriotism.? He said,? I had laid down three basic principles for smoothening the differences among Pakistanis. These were Faith, Unity and Discipline. If they had adhered to these principles Pakistan would have been an unconquerable country today and no body would have dared or gathered courage to conspire for its dismemberment.?

When the father of nation uttered these words I got lost into their meaning. One needed lot of courage to fathom the depths of what the father had said. If we had a strong faith then we could ask our Bengali brothers in East Pakistan as to what were their grievances. What were their needs? They could take every thing as every thing belonged to Pakistanis alike. ?Do you need Islamabad or Lahore. Take it. But do not leave us.? Islamabad, power, prime minister and president all are symbols of federal authority. If we had offered to our Bengali brothers all this they would never had opted for separation. Lahore is the symbol of the grandeur and glorious history of Punjab. We could have told them to become prime minister or president, appoint their people as governor or minister in Lahore but remain with us. Then, could they think of saying us good bye? Today we would have been the biggest Islamic country of the world.

Unity?We, Baluchs, Pathans, Sindhis, Punjabis and Bengalis should have shown a spirit of unity and oneness and had established a collective culture to flabbergast the whole world.. Allama Iqbal saw a dream for that country and Quaid-e-Azam brought this on the map of the world. It could appear on the map of the world in such a manner that all other countries would have looked unimportant in its presence. But this could only happen if we had observed unity, a mutual brotherhood. By ignoring unity we did not only negate the ideas of the father of the nation rather we disobeyed the orders of Almighty God and our holy prophet. The God says, ? Hold the chain of God strongly? and the holy prophet said, ?All Muslims are brothers.? So Quaid-e-Azam was not wrong in emphasising the importance of mutual unity. He showed us the right path but we preferred to follow the path shown by our enemies instead of treading on his path. India is developing Indian nationalism in their country. But in Pakistan they are stressing for dividing us into Punjabis, Baluchis, Sindhis, Pathans and Muhajirs and we are listening to our enemy. There are various organisations operating in Pakistan under the garb of so called literature , culture and NGOs . Some times they publish a Pashtu newspaper and some times Punjabi and some times they try to prove that Baluch culture is different from Pakistani culture. I wish some one could disband those NGO?s who are working against the Pakistani nationalism. Today we can achieve unity only by laying more emphasis on and preaching for Pakistani nationalism. What a pity that fifty years ago the Muslims of India as a nation were striving for the creation of Pakistan but today Pakistan is a country which is searching for a nationhood. These scattered people are refusing to tie themselves ina single nation. The emphasis of the father of the nation on unity was not wrong. It is perfectly in accordance with our religious beliefs and national aspirations. Unity is a must because this is the basis of our Pakistani nationalism.

Quaid-e-Azam?s third principle was discipline. He wanted us to see disciplined like an army. A single nation from Chagi to Karachi, from Kashmir to Lahore. All Pakistanis from Sylhet to Dacca and Chittagong should have stood united but we got ourselves divided into factions. Today we have half Pakistan but we have not learnt any lesson from our disgrace and humiliation. We are wearing the cover of Punjabis, Baluchis, Sindhis, Pathans and Muhajirs. Instead of raising the flag of a united Pakistan we are busy in preparing flags of different nationalities. If this situation continues shall we be able to keep Pakistan in tact?.

Today instead of becoming a single nation we are divided into families, clans and castes . This division is wrong. All these families, clans and castes can make the basis of a strong and sturdy Pakistani nation. This was the dream of Allama Iqbal and the struggle of the father of the nation. Today not only Iqbal and Jinnah but even the holy prophet would be upset in their heavenly abodes. They had raised the flag of Islam and Muslim nationhood and had said, ? Today no white has any preference over black, or any Arab over non-Arab, rich over poor. All are equal and a single entity.? Are we today an equal and single entity? When the father of the nation talked of his three principles and all these thoughts came to my mind then I felt that the seed which our leaders had sown was good. The sapling was also good. But during the first fifty five years the plant was inflicted by some curse that we started decaying . Enemy?s job is to nurture enmity and therefore it is aimless to complain to him. . What we need to find out is the enemy within ourselves who is perpetually destroying us from within. Those nations who live in discipline do the self-accountability every year, assess their weaknesses. Have we ever evaluated our wrong policies? Never and why is it so?

Is Pakistan not a properly organised country? If our institutions are first rated institutions then why we have not been able to do self-accountability? Those nations that do their own accountability are in fact living nations. For creation of Pakistan we were a living nation. We had attained our goal of achieving Pakistan on the basis of Muslim nationhood spurning every temptation and greed. What happened after that? Quaid-eAzam said it was easy to make a country but it is difficult to keep it intact. For this we need hard work, honesty and intellect. This means that we have lost our honesty, diligence and intellect. The principles that Quaid-e-Azam gave us with his own practical example to make the country strong and secure were ignored by us and were not adhered to.

The saying of the father of the nation went straight to my heart. If instead of forgetting the three principles we had laid the foundation of our country on these principles then no earthquake or typhoon could demolish it. It has also been established that the seed which was used to create the sapling of the Pakistani nationhood and country was good. What lacked was that we did not nurture the plant in light of the sayings of the father of the nation. Not only we did not follow him rather we committed colossal mistakes. It can be compared to the birth of children. A person can produce many children but the problem begins if he does not attend to their upbringing which is the right of the children. If we start following these principles as a nation then our country can produce thousands of renowned scientists, mathematicians, statesmen, innovators and leaders to guide the destiny of the country and nation, economists and doctors. But alas we have failed to achieve our goals. Quaid-e-Azam left us after handing over this sapling to the country but we committed many mistakes and shortcomings in nurturing it and looking after it. We should bow our head before the father of the nation and admit our faults and then move forward so that we could discover some method of reforming ourselves.