| To born a Pakistani, as 4.25 million of us are each year at the rate of 8 babies per second, is to be condemned to a life of political serfdom. One is expected to spend one’s adult life as an obedient, compliant servant of circumstances, and never aspire to become master of one’s destiny, for there will always be someone who is higher, more powerful who will assert a seemingly unarguable claim to decide what one cannot be trusted to determine for oneself. |
| Since Independence, Pakistan has been in a sense a simmering crucible which has never been allowed to cool, a crucible of experiment in which the brittle elements of feudalism, provincialism, factionalism, adult franchise, democratic aspiration and brute ambition have been ground together and kept bubbling, in the expectation that from it would flow a solution to the problems of democratic representation and workable governance of our country. [EXTRACT] |
Published in DAWN 27 Dec. 1999, titled 'Having Tried All, What Next?', and reprinted in THE BARK OF A PEN (2O01). |
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