From Others to Pakistanis
Since my father was in the Army, I have lived my childhood in different parts of the country. In Army the general trend is that an officer is posted to a new designation every two years and that basically ends up in travelling from one part of the country to the other. In essence, because of my father’s profession I have lived in every province of the country, have seen the diversity of the Pakistani culture first hand and have seen and experienced various places of the country.
I don’t like to divide Pakistan on the basis of Sindhi, Baluchi, Pathan etcetera. However, for the purpose of argument, I have to do so here. Among all the places I have lived at and have had friends at, hands down the most hospitable of the people have been the people from the NWFP. They would go out on a limb for you just because you belong to some other part of the country and therefore by default you have become their guests. And by god, among all of their humbleness and conservativeness they would make their guests feel like royalty. It doesn’t take a huge dinner or a sprawling mansion to do that, their warmth is in their attitude, their claims of tum tu mera bhai hai (you are my brother) and in the humility when they addressed my mother or sister as behen (sister). One needs not to have any doubts about either of the brother or sister claim, because the respect and love was extremely prominent.
We have travelled a lot by the GT Road and there have been various occasions when our car has had a flat tyre. I don’t recall once that me and my dad had to change it because some Pathan truck driver would always stop and change it for us. Not just that he would be practically offended when my dad would offer him to pay for his services. Sahab, ab humain hamare mehmannavaze ka paisa dey rahay ho (Sir, you are paying me for my hospitality…)
I talk about the people of the NWFP today because in the world of war against the terror the same race and the same province of which people I have the best things to say about are being slandered. Right now, I am speaking from my own experience and interaction with these people and as far as I can see, something went very wrong somewhere. As much as these people were proud of their Pathan race, heart and soul they were Pakistanis. From my childhood perspective it takes somewhat of a wild imagination to see the same people as people who would kill innocent civilians all over the country.
What I see today is that even when most of us have never stepped out of our birth city. We have opinions, ideas and judgments on people belonging to other provinces. No one has ever had any long-term interaction with each other but a general division continues to prosper based on baseless notions. I have said this before and I will say it again; in the last 61 years our major achievement has been the birth of a generation which on quite a few levels is beyond schism, which is beyond division, which is a generation of Pakistanis. What is sad is that the baseless notions which cause schism continue to trickle down from the older generations and continue to pollute the one hope for unity.
If we could all do one, just one simple thing for our country this year – Not categorize our nation on the basis of stereotypes, not divide each other based on the geographic location and not think of cultural diversity and division. If we could form our opinions based on facts rather than what we perceive others to be, they would not be others anymore. Let us change ourselves from others to Pakistanis.
