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We are the most pusillanimous, miserable collection of humankind that ever breathed the air
Recently, the BBC reported about a woman from Azad Kashmir who jumped into a river to commit suicide but was instead washed ashore on the Indian side. Predictably, she was arrested and jailed. While in jail and being tried, she was made pregnant by a jailer and gave birth to a girl. The Indian authorities have been trying to repatriate the woman for many years but Pakistan would not accept her. An Indian court, in a humane decision, asked the authorities to give her shelter and a monthly allowance until she is repatriated so she and her daughter can survive. But pray, why would Pakistan not accept her back?
The answer to this question is the collective shame of a country that might have gained much personal piety in the name of Islam in the past quarter century but in the bargain has lost even the last vestiges of national character. While the woman is from Azad Kashmir, her daughter, born in India, is an Indian. Is that why we would not have her back? Possibly. But more likely, we have another reason for not accepting her with the daughter: the child does not have a father and that means, under the Hudood Laws, that upon the woman's arrival we will have to charge her with fornication unless she could bring four witnesses to prove that she was raped. The only way she can return is if she leaves the child in India - in which case, of course, there would be no case against her. Of course, we would still have the choice of charging her with committing suicide and/or illegally crossing over into India.
While she is desperate to return, she won't do so without the child. One doesn't have to be a mother to know why.
There is something so utterly inhumane about legislation based on a literalist exegesis of religion that it gets under one's skin. Anyone who thinks that the ulema are amenable to a more humane view of things should watch Geo TV's programme, Alim Online. It is, at best, a comedy of the grotesque. At worst, it is a moral strip-show where we present ourselves in public in all our naked glory. I am told the programme has great ratings. If that is true, and it is likely to be, I stand vindicated on my earlier point about the depths to which we have collectively sunk.
Just as in the case of the individual, it is the small things that inform of the character of a nation. The thought takes me far back into history to 216 BC. ... Such was the Roman character. ...
Compare that character with our
lack of it and it should become clear why we crawl on our belly like the
Biblical serpent and have charlatans as our rulers and religious scholars.
Why indeed, despite being the most pusillanimous, miserable collection
of humankind that ever breathed the air, our daily discourtesies, savageries
and depravities remain matchless. Do we have enough character to accept
the woman waiting to return to Pakistan along with her fatherless child?
Or would we invoke our regressive legislation ostensibly to do ourselves
proud as Muslims and, in the process, establish our credentials once again
as barbarians? Let's have an answer to that before we begin to talk about
nationalism.
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