Nighat Leghari
My dear Captain,
Happy Birthday to you, I wish you many happy returns. The day is a glad tidings for your family and for the Pakistani nation. Hoping you are good but sad enough I am not good, because the conditions in the country are not good, anyhow.
To begin with, I would like to reveal a reality to you (may you believe or not) that certain individuals who are committed to some “Cause” in their life and live on for its activation, though vanish corporally but live on like living beings, people can take it just as an mythologist approach but I believe in it because I have gone through this experience, this letter is the testimony.
I have been restless in my last resting abode for the last 72 years and wanted to talk to your predecessors many times but founding them incompetent and insane, I gave up the idea and now when you came to my seat and expressed my vision (Riast-e-Madina) as your mission for Pakistan, I took up the pen, I hope you will take it as my live address to you. I am writing this letter to you in anguish, not in anger if I want to extend some admonitions to you it would be like a father’s advice and not as an exacting master.
I found a similarity between you and myself. You are a Fulbright sportsman in cricket who brought pride and prestige to the nation by winning the World Cup. I am also very fond of cricket; here I would like to narrate to you about my interest in cricket. When I was a teenager, one day I saw a group of young boys who were playing coloured marbles in the dusty street; I moved to them and said, why you are playing this useless game, it will spoil your hands and cloths with dust, come along with me we would play cricket. They looked upon me very friendly, left the game forthwith and we played cricket on grassy ground and they were all very happy. For my next similarity with you for which I shall have to give a quote from my maiden speech which I delivered when Pakistan came into being. I had said, “Our Prophet (PBUH) was a messenger of God and I am a Messenger of Prophet (PBUH) Pakistan which I visualize will be an ideal Islamic State based on Islamic justice, social order and free opportunities to every citizen. Every citizen belonging to any other faith will be free to practise its rituals. Don’t judge the people by their prayers; judge them through their behaviour and practices. If that is good that is Islam, if that is not good that is not Islam. Keep it in mind that we achieved this separate state on the basis of Islam.
A head of the state wields the power but the polity will be serving as an instrument of the service. All the activities of a ruler must be monitored by the people; the supreme command of the state must spend his life according to the Islamic laws. In Islamic system the treasury is the property of the people and every member of the commonwealth is entitled to have an allowance out of income of the state. There is no place for feudalism, the tillers of the land would be the owner of the land and will deposit money in the form of tax in the state treasury.
In Pakistan, which I envisioned, a ruler is more than a father of the nation but all your predecessors deviated from this path. They built up their own empires by fraudulent means, extracting this wealth from the meagre exchequer of the public. I am happy that you have held them accountable, but I am not satisfied with your work, you are going on a long and lethargical manner in their accountability cases. According to an Islamic law the hands of the thief are chopped off and that’s all. FINISH it; don’t waste time and money this is a KEEPSAKE of downtrodden people with you. They have built palacious vast homes in the style of LUIS VX where the uniformed footmen speak in a hush tone and where security guards stand as if unbreathed. Here I would like to narrate another story related to this patron of life of your predecessors when I entered the Governor General House as a G.G., the very second day security incharge Col Burnny suggested that the walls of the G.G. House should be raised for security reasons, I said, I am among my people and feel no danger, there is no need for this extravaganza. Your predecessors brought all havoc to Pakistan especially the market men rulers. They put everything related to public on the market table for sale/purchase and earned a lot for themselves. I love my young people who wanted to do high for their country but almost all the Fulbright scholars move to off shores for earning and honour. Merit has become mockery. The ruling class also admirably is responsible for the constitutional abrogation and military interference. The Quran reads, “That an army came upon you from above and below against your sins, God knowing wise”.
May God give you the strength to enjoin the right and forbid the wrong, I was like to admonish you one thing more that you have been surrounded by friends who can cause harm to you at any stage, so don’t rely upon them for all the stages.”
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
From Heavens
While writing this column, I am reminded that as to what the father of the nation envisioned for Pakistan. Almost all his successors brought a horrible shatter to his dreams. He lived a saintly life and worked miracles. He went through a path full of thorns with his ailing feet, sacrificed his health, wealth and happy married life to provide all this to his people, but his successors snatched all that from their hands.
—The writer is freelance columnist, based in Germany.
