One of the biggest advantages of living abroad is the chance
to hear what people think about your country. I have been living in Germany for
the last three months. During this short stay, I have made friends from
different regions of the world. At first, it appeared mystifying, the fact that
everyone that I had met, knew something about Pakistan.
It is no surprise that with the ongoing situation in
Pakistan, where every day there is horrifying news, in the imagination of
people that I have come across; Pakistan comes closer to being an aberration.
Wishfully I often think, how wonderful would it be, if my
foreign friends ask me about Pakistani cricket, spicy food, resilience of
people, sheer beauty of the country, warm and fabulous hospitability and
amazing moral stature of Pakistanis. But what I often encounter, on contrary,
makes me realize that Pakistan after more than six decades of its existence
remains an enigma to world.
Here are few questions you should expect being a Pakistani
abroad. Each one reflects not only our identity dilemma but also an acute
challenge of transforming the common perception of Pakistan as the most savage
country into the stabilizing force in the world.
1) Brother you are from Pakistan and you don’t
speak Arabic?
The most intriguing question that many ask is how come
Pakistanis don’t speak Arabic. It is may be due to their ignorance about other
countries. But part of the answer for this inheritance crisis also lies in our
own yearning for Arab-ness that preoccupies all of us.
Especially, since 1970’s with Pakistan’s turn towards the Middle
East, there has been an attempt to escape from Pakistan’s Indian roots and
emphasize on shared consciousness of Islamic Brotherhood. It was reinforced by
the programme of Islamization with an objective of ‘otherizing’ India – which
meant removing the historic, geographic, civilizational and cultural traces of
Pakistan’s South Asian identity. What this desire ‘to be a Middle Eastern’
country has done is that it has established a national narrative which is
essentially not rooted in history, but rooted in fantasy.
Even to-date the struggle to define ‘the Pakistani’ remains
unabated. Unless, we revisit the national narrative to clearly reflect what
constitutes a ‘Pakistani identity’, we as nation would remain confused and
conflicted in different parts of the world.
2) Why Pakistan export terrorism?
In the minds of many, Pakistan is a warrior state – a
hothouse for jihadism – where Osama bin Laden was found and many other militant
groups flourish. Of course, there is truth in this brash assertion. For long,
we have used jihad both to gain domestic support and fight with imagined
security threats from neighboring countries. This consistent pursuance of
foreign policy within the narrow spectrum of security obsession has come to
haunt us in many ways. Internally, it has made us a paranoid and xenophobic
nation. Externally, it has made us a pariah state – as isolated as North Korea
and Iran.
The choice is clear – we either become a modern, progressive
and developed South Korea or remain known to the world as a nuclear-armed North
Korea. If we prefer the former, than we
need to adopt a radically different path one that includes; getting rid of the
menace of terrorist groups that define us today, reversing our attitude towards
India and redefining our geographical calculation.
Over all these months, I have come to two overarching conclusions.
Firstly, Pakistan is not all about that the world knows. Secondly, Pakistan is surely
what the world knows. My reaction to these questions has always been to support
people when they are right and to correct and rectify them when they are wrong
about Pakistan. For instance, I tell the world around me, that Pakistan is not
a jihadi state, how people are moderate and have always opted for democratic
self-expression, but I can’t be oblivion of the fact that there are a lot of militants
who live in Pakistan and we need to do something to get rid of those.
However, to their doubts over the fundamental question of
Pakistan’s identity, my effort has always been to correct our own historical flaws
and to explicate to those around me that we have much in common with India than
the puritanical strain of Islam that has influenced us in defining our
identity. Afterall, Ramadan was Ramazan and Allah Hafiz was Khuda Hafiz in
Pakistan until 1980’s. Whether we like it or not, this is what our history is
and we can’t escape history.
By: Kashif Ali
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