Letters to BBC
BBC: Are you worried about the future of Pakistan? Are your friends? Does it impact on your everyday life?
The future of Pakistan is bleak at best and we certainly are worried about it. Apart from terrorism, the crisis is further compounded with widespread social injustice in obscure corners of the country, where tribal elders mete out verdicts on conflicts – big or small – and most often without regard to actual Islamic Law.
The case of the 17 year old girl, flogged in Swat for having escorted her father-in-law to a market place is a prime example of this. The girl was alleged to have violated some mutated interpretation of the Sharia law and was publicly punished with, I think, thirty seven lashes on her back.
I believe that such incidents have been happening in Pakistan for long. Only difference is, these stories have found their way to mass mediums and can be shared with the populace at large now. It's just like the Napoleon-Hitler analogy. Napoleon and his armies invaded, killed, raped and looted - up to a scale, close in comparison with the devastation wreaked on Europe by Hitler and his men. However, in history, Hitler seems to have greater nuisance value because there were so many more avenues of communication in his time – it was like learning about the atrocities first hand.
Similarly, in Pakistan, with the advent of new media and deregulation, we have seen an exponential growth in news channels. As a result of this, what was concealed before and known only to a few, is now exposed and known to all. In the race to cover stories that haven’t been told yet, news channels are dumping information on us, at a pace, we are not used to. While transparency has its benefits, it can also spark mass unrest that may grind the establishment down to a halt or conversely, provide impetus for revolt.
While bombs blow up and claim lives almost everyday, drawing room discussions in Pakistan are vulnerable to hopeless surmise. The possibility of US invasion and Indian Intelligence exploiting unchecked media in Pakistan are ideas that continue to haunt us, among a plethora of other conspiracy theories.
But everybody is not haunted. Some of us deliberately avoid discussions on Pakistan so that we can carry on with our lives, uninterrupted by fear. Fear is a huge sap on our energy and it’s gnawing away at the social fabric of our society.
We are all scared about what awaits us. Some of us still talk about it, some of us don’t care anymore.
The future of Pakistan is bleak at best and we certainly are worried about it. Apart from terrorism, the crisis is further compounded with widespread social injustice in obscure corners of the country, where tribal elders mete out verdicts on conflicts – big or small – and most often without regard to actual Islamic Law.
The case of the 17 year old girl, flogged in Swat for having escorted her father-in-law to a market place is a prime example of this. The girl was alleged to have violated some mutated interpretation of the Sharia law and was publicly punished with, I think, thirty seven lashes on her back.
I believe that such incidents have been happening in Pakistan for long. Only difference is, these stories have found their way to mass mediums and can be shared with the populace at large now. It's just like the Napoleon-Hitler analogy. Napoleon and his armies invaded, killed, raped and looted - up to a scale, close in comparison with the devastation wreaked on Europe by Hitler and his men. However, in history, Hitler seems to have greater nuisance value because there were so many more avenues of communication in his time – it was like learning about the atrocities first hand.
Similarly, in Pakistan, with the advent of new media and deregulation, we have seen an exponential growth in news channels. As a result of this, what was concealed before and known only to a few, is now exposed and known to all. In the race to cover stories that haven’t been told yet, news channels are dumping information on us, at a pace, we are not used to. While transparency has its benefits, it can also spark mass unrest that may grind the establishment down to a halt or conversely, provide impetus for revolt.
While bombs blow up and claim lives almost everyday, drawing room discussions in Pakistan are vulnerable to hopeless surmise. The possibility of US invasion and Indian Intelligence exploiting unchecked media in Pakistan are ideas that continue to haunt us, among a plethora of other conspiracy theories.
But everybody is not haunted. Some of us deliberately avoid discussions on Pakistan so that we can carry on with our lives, uninterrupted by fear. Fear is a huge sap on our energy and it’s gnawing away at the social fabric of our society.
We are all scared about what awaits us. Some of us still talk about it, some of us don’t care anymore.
posted by khiju at 3:29 AM
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