Pakistan: One Nation with Two Identities

Identity Number One:

We are Pakistani people.

We were the people who in our past had lived lives in ignorance for ages, till fortuitously the light of Islam came to us. It was a moment of good fortune in our history that Mohammad-bin-Kasim was sent to us by the Caliph of the time to deliver us from the ages’ of our ignorance and impure life.

Before Islam came to this region, the history of this area was the story of ignorance and Kufr of its people. The history of those native people is not our history. We are not the descendants of the people who had lived in this region before Islam came here. Those who lived here before that period are not our forefathers. We are the people whose glorious history starts with the advent of Islam here and we are proud of our history.

The army of Islam, which delivered the inhabitants of this area from the curse of ignorance and kufr, was the army of Arabs – the descendants of the Prophet of Islam. This vast Arabian army, after its conquest of the native infidels, took their women as Mal-e-Ganimat or the booty of war as sanctioned by the Holy Book of Islam and its soldiery converted these women and married with them. We are begotten of those women by the Arab conquerors and we owe our origin to those Arabs.  We are proud of our Arabian origin.

It is not painful to us – or a matter of shame for us – that the native women were used to beget us by our Arabian forefathers because in the light of Islam these women were the justified booty of war. These women were converted and thereby delivered of their ignorance, and were utilized to beget children of Islam, which was an act of Shabab – an act of piety – on the part of our forefathers. We are proud of our Arabian forefathers.

The fact that a large native population – consisting of men, women and children – converted to Islam and continued to propagate their population with their surnames, Hindu-castes’ vestiges and titles still remaining intact till today is an inconvenient chapter in our history and deserves to be glossed over by us in the interest of our glorious history of Arabian descent and its Islamic expansion in this vast region.

We are of an Arabian descent and our forefathers had unfurled the Islamic flag by their valor in this land of Kafirs, of which some part is still left under the rule of Kafirs. We have been left with a legacy by our forefathers to unfurl the Islamic flag in this remaining part still being ruled by Kafirs. It is an unfinished agenda of the Islamic conquest and expansion in this left over part. Our glorious history in this land of once united India commences with the advent of our glorious religion. Not only we are of an Arabian origin, we have a glorious religion in Islam and the glorious Holy Book Koran, and we are proud of our origin, religion and the Holy Book.

We are proud of our religion because it is the word of Allah. We are proud of our religion because it is the last word of Allah. It is the merit of our religion that it, being the word of Allah, is eternally true and is not amenable to doubt and questioning. It is the merit of our religion that doubting and questioning the last word of Allah is equal to doubting and questioning Allah himself. It is the greatest crime on the part of those who doubt, question or defile the word of Allah, calling for the severest punishment of death to those who so doubt, question or defile.

Our long traditions have taught us that the meaning of the word of Allah as given in the Holy Book can be discerned by any learned person – Mulla or Alim and Fazil – who devotes his life-time in reading and learning the Holy Book and other related and assisting literature. An attempt by those who go beyond mere words used in the Holy Book to discern their true meaning, like Sufis, and allege that they have surrendered themselves to Allah to understand their true meaning are nothing but heretics bordering blasphemy. Their interpretation of Allah’s word deserves no attention of the devout Muslim.

We have a long list of our glorious forefathers who in obedience of the command of our religion brought the light of Islam to this part of the world, carried a victorious sword against the native infidel inhabitants and established the rule of Islamic law over this vast land. Mohhamad-bin-Kasim, Mohammad Gazni, Mohammad Ghauri, Iltutmish, Kutub-u-ddin Aibak, several Khiljees, Babar, Humayun, Akbar, Aurangzeb and countless many others who had the good fortune to devote their life to fulfill the dictates of the Holy Book are the shining stars of our ancestry. However, among them some were more and some were less illustrious in carrying their duty towards their religion and we cherish the memory of those who were more illustrious in performing their religious duties.

We admit with remorse that some of our forefathers with less illustrious career in carrying out their religious obligations did commit mistakes. We admit with remorse that, because of the lack of prudence on the part of some of our forefathers, the British people by making their cunning moves were able to subdue them and ultimately to usurp political power from their hands in 1857. These British people, in order to take revenge against our forefathers’ efforts to regain their power, put Islamic people of this land in a calculated design under the subjugation of infidel Hindus, who were once our slaves.

Still the outmaneuvered Islamic people, despite their calculated subjugation by the British, did not lose their heart and with their usual valor initiated the struggle against these wily British and Hindu combine. The Islamic people carried this struggle forward, under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, till its success in 1947 in the form of partition of India carving out our own country Pakistan.

We are fortunate that we have got ultimate light in Islam. Our ancient ancestors might be pagans living in the ignorance long back in the past ages but their descendants long back 1400 years ago had come out of this ignorance with the advent of Islam. For us Islam is the ultimate light for all eternity to come. True to our religion and its mandate, we as people are sincerely engaged in creating a worldwide Ummah. As Muslim people, we are conducting ourselves in the light of our religion and its obligatory prescriptions in carrying out Jihad. Towards this end, we are leading our Jihad against infidels the world over in general and against infidel Hindus of India – our erstwhile slaves – in particular.

In this endeavor, we care less whether this Jihad is waged by using swords or atom bombs. Being unmindful whether we survive in this Jihad or become a shaheed, we are resolute and confident in our conviction that ultimately a worldwide Muslim Ummah will be established on this earth. Our nation is an Islamic republic and, being true to our religion, we as the Muslim people are solemnly committed to carry forward its command, by utilizing intentional lies and deceptions – Taquia – as warfare tactics sanctioned by our religion, for establishing a Muslim Ummah the world over, at whatever the cost we may be called upon to pay. We, as a nation, up bring our children and raise our armies with this Narrative. And, we are proud that in furtherance of our solemn commitment to the command of our religion we so up bring our children, raise our armies and remain ever ready to become shaheed – martyr – here in this world to reap their sweet fruits in the next world.

Identity Number Two:

We are Pakistani people.

We are proud to be Pakistanis. We are very ancient people. We inherit the DNA of our forefathers who had lived at least 5000 years ago in Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, Dholaveera and Rakhigarhi. We are not ashamed of this legacy; on the contrary, we are proud of our ancient progenitors. We are proud that we are very ancient people.

We are the people who crafted and perfected the most ancient language of the world – Sanskrit language. The great grammarian Panini – who set rules in ancient times for this language – belonged to us; we own him and cherish his ingenuity. It is not our demerit. It is our merit and we are proud of it.

We are the people who had defeated Alexander – the ancient world’s conqueror Alexander, the Great. We had mortally wounded that world-conqueror and forced him and his naughty arrogance to go back home, safely – if possible. We are proud of the bravery of our forefathers, we are proud of our history. We are not ashamed of our progenitors. We own them, cherish them and bow to them in reverence. It is not our demerit that our forefathers had ingenuity and were brave and courageous people; it is our merit that we carry the genes of our brave ancestors.

We are proud that Poros – who by his bravery gave a taste to that world-conqueror of his own bitter medicine – belongs to us; we own him as our ancestor. We are proud that our ancestor Chandra Gupta Maurya had defeated Selucus – the successor king of that Alexander – and had forced him to offer his daughter Helena in marriage to the victor (Chandra Gupta Maurya). It is not our demerit that Chandra Gupta Maurya, the first emperor of Asia, belonged to us; it is our merit. It is the merit of our ancient and great history.

We are an ingenious people and we are proud of this merit. Since the days of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, we have been fond of investigating and adopting the best that was available to us in the passing current of time. We have been investigating, adopting and adapting the best to the still better one. It is our merit that we had the ingenuity to improve the best one into still better one. We are proud of our ingenuity; we are not ashamed of improving upon what we had got. We are not a stale and dead people.

In the mighty current of time that we call history, it was we who had compiled the most ancient book of humanity called Rig-Veda. In those dark ages too, we were inquiring into the mysteries of this universe and its creation. It was a great achievement of our forefathers. We were Hindus and we are not ashamed of our history; we cherish our past that once belonged to us.

We as people have never been dumb in our thoughts and inflexible in meeting new challenges of the changing times. We possessed of ingenuity and we lost no time in adopting the teachings of Buddha and investigating and understanding the mysteries of this universe in the light of what Buddha had taught. In our usual investigative urge, we had carved out caves in hills and mountains to turn them into Buddhist mediation dwellings, which exist till today. We are not ashamed of our history. It is our merit and we cherish it.

We know the time never stops and so our history did not stop at ‘one best, forever best’. We cherish the change; it is not our demerit; it is our merit that we march with the time.

Mohammad-bi-Kasim came to us with his army at our doorstep in Debal – now known as Karachi. He had an order from the Caliph and a message from Holy Koran. He had his army of man and not of women in his mission. We accepted the message and the order, and once again plunged ourselves into our new inquiry into the mysteries of this universe – this time in the light of the Holy Book of Islam.

We as a people – men and women, all – embraced the new light but did not surrender our women – except in comparatively a few cases – to the soldiers of this messenger of the Holy Book and the servant of Caliph. Our surnames, titles and tribal nomenclature, which we still bear with our names, are the testimony to this reality of retaining our womenfolks with us.  We are not ashamed of our roots and our history; we cherish them with pride.

We as a people were possessed of the ingenuity and we took the light of the Holy Book to the core of our heart, and our leading lights of the time – Bulle Shah, Farid-uddin, Nizam-u-ddin, Salim Chisti  and a host of Sufis like them – taught us the real meaning of what has been said in the Holy Book. They taught us that only he who has denounced the attractions of this perishable world is alone wise enough to understand the real meaning of what has been said by Allah in the Holy Book and not him who has simply memorized this Holy Book by merely reading it.  We are proud of such leading lights and we revere them.  We do not denounce but cherish our history.

We are possessed of ingenuity since the dawn of history. We have shown this ingenuity throughout our history since the days of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Also we are not going to put a full stop today to this ingenuity. We have marched with time, improved and innovated in all spheres of human endeavors. This time also, the new wind of science and technology can never bypass us since we are deeply rooted in our history of innovation and adaptation as no one else is rooted.

A new wave of reason is roaring today across the sea of humanity and we, as before in the past ages, would not deprive ourselves of this new door of knowledge. We have proved in the past that we are flexible and innovative, and we shall prove to the world once again that today also we are as we were in the past: Ever ready to welcome and knock at one more door of knowledge, a new one door of knowledge: the door of reason and science.

Our past is not a roadblock to our future. On the contrary, our past is the pride in our unfolding future. We wear our past as the garland to welcome the future. We are proud of our history, which shows that no past legacy has ever been too heavy for us to tie our feet from marching ahead with the changing times. And this time too, we shall prove ourselves true to our history.