Back in November of 2005, The News published a series of articles on the good things about Pakistan that we tend to forget in the midst of our everyday lives. What I have done is reproduced each of the articles so that we can start looking at the reasons to be Proud Pakistanis.

Proud to be here
Optimism and defiance and roots are three important words that bind Pakistanis to Pakistan
By Adnan Rehmat

There are many things about Pakistan that make it my home, where my heart is. And — warts and all — the love of my life. No amount of compensation or temptation — and over the years I have had many — will tear me away from it. There are many reasons that make me proud of Pakistan.

Here are only ten.

The conscientious voter

Four spells of military dictatorships of virtually every kind — from the brutal to the benign — have failed to brainwash millions of voters who refuse to be fooled or to surrender their conscience when it came to choosing the political manifesto that appeals to them. They exercised their maiden right of adult franchise with gusto in 1970 — 23 years after the country’s founding — and elected a left-of-centre party despite the facade of a religious identity. Ever since, they have repeatedly defied the military-controlled establishment’s versions of manufactured democracy by voting always for parties that are forward looking. Electoral rigging and manipulation may give another picture — the first past the pole system, which does not always put parties with most votes in power — but count the votes and you see the conscientious voter has always pitched for a hopeful tomorrow, not an obscurantist yesterday. The Pakistan People’s Party may not have been allowed to form a government but they certainly got the largest number of votes in the last election. And coupled with the Pakistan Muslim League-N, they were given a public mandate to govern the country by voters who know what they wanted.

The indomitable woman

The average Pakistani woman is born with the potential to suffer indignities that no one should — from child marriage to gang-rape and from being given away as settlement of disputes between men to being killed in the name of the honour of their men. She cooks for the household but more often than not gets the smallest portions and is usually the last to eat. She is likely to not being guaranteed a decent education and is taught since birth to be submissive, unquestioning and repentant. And yet she dares to defy. The likes of Mukhtaran Mai, Dr Shazia Khalid and Sonia Naz not only decide to fight against a system stacked against them, they fight a willing battle that puts the men to shame for they fight a just cause.

The optimistic youth

Military dictators like General Ziaul Haq wanted the Pakistani youth to become cannon fodder in someone else’s war in the inhospitable mountains of Afghanistan and his military wanted to use them to fight its war against India in valleys of Kashmir. But denial of quality education and opportunities to discover their potential did not stop them from getting what they wanted — a better future, a meaningful life. It is illustrative to see even former and current supporters of violence and militancy adept at employing IT to plug into the mainstream and carve out careers out of thin air. It is invigorating to see a whole new generation that refuses to wallow into the dark short history of the country or to shoulder the obsolete emotional baggage bequeathed to them by the generation traumatised by the partition both of India in 1947 and of Pakistan in 1971. Their battle against pessimism is infectious!

The plucky pen-pusher

Yes there is yellow journalism and yes there is darbari poetry in Pakistan but which country doesn’t have its share of the tabloid instinct? But what really defines Pakistani media is its pluckiness — from leaving blank places on newsprint instead of filling them with praise for military dictators to braving lashes in public and risking their lives to expose abuse of authority and from refusing to buy the establishment’s fabricated national ideologies to raising the ‘kalma-e-haq’ in the face of tyrants, there’s nothing like the journalist of Pakistan. No country in the Muslim world has a media as vibrant and outspoken as Pakistan’s. It’s the media that’s fighting the battle to beat hypocrisy. It is the last line of defence in a country where even the judiciary falls short of expectations. The pen is mightier than the sword? In Pakistan, proudly yes.

The magnificent non-Muslim

For a country created by a minority, perhaps the biggest travesty is what the state does to its own minorities. From institutionalised discrimination — a non-Muslim cannot become the head of state (president) or government (prime minister) — to laws designed to hang them for having a difference of opinion (blasphemy law), the non-Muslim of Pakistan is, by law, a lesser citizen. Not only are they not allowed to openly profess their religion, they are also forced to endear the in-your-face piety of a brute majority.

And yet, they are as proud a Pakistani as you and me and refuse to desert ship. Being a minority is never easy; being a Pakistani non-Muslim harder still. The dignity of the Pakistani non-Muslim is magnificent.

The Salam tribe of scientists

In a country where dealing in property is the ticket to heaven, where it is more respectable to be a jeweler than a jurist, it is no small miracle that we have scientists. The tribe of Dr Abdul Salam is the jewel in the tattered crown of Pakistan. From the crowd of IT professionals to the minority of biotechnologists and from the army of engineers to the scarce space technologists, each Pakistani scientist is worth thanking the Lord on a daily basis for. A man who can forgive his country for disowning him — he gave Pakistan its only Nobel prize and created a world renowned centre of excellence and not to mention who donated the Nobel prize money to the cause of science in the country — is a man who every country aspires to have as its Citizen One. Such was Salam.

The manic musician

What perfunctory monstrosities would we be if the likes of Noor Jehan, Farida Khanum, Runa Laila, Ahmed Rushdie, Naheed Akhtar and Nayyara Noor didn’t tame the beast in us all? These manic musicians who put us in touch with our inner selves, who contextualise our yearnings and bring melody to our mechanical lives, who allow us time travel, taking us down memory lane and who soften our hypocrisies in the sharp edged world of today. As for the youth of today’s Pakistan, how would they fuse spirituality with their material world if not for Junoon with its soulful Sufi music, Jal with its mix of angst and desire and Noori with its raw anger? Without our musicians we would be robots (not very good ones)!

The art of the heart

Roohi Bano taught us to cry, Jamshed Ansari to chuckle. Uzma Gilani showed us how complex is the Pakistani woman and Talat Hussain how confused the Pakistani man. Wahid Murad and Zeba, of course, took us through the ropes of romance. Were it not for the stature of these artistes, the sophisticatedly simple Pakistan would have been not just a Third World country but a Third World banana republic. What giants these artistes are!

The gallant lover

In a country where the there is little love of law, the law of love is difficult to practice. And yet in a land that officially frowns upon romance, boys and girls dare to not just dream of love, many defy the shackles of cast and creed to follow their heart. Girls in rural areas across Pakistan get killed for love. Boys risk ruin, ostracised by their families and denied inheritance. And yet, if love is a deal with the devil, they are willing to make it. We should be grateful to those who dare to love in a oftentimes joyless land. Oh these wonderful Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punno and Shireen-Farhad of today!

The overseas Pakistani

They leave Pakistan for greener pastures. And many times find them. They have comforts they would normally not have if they had stayed put at home. nd yet, their hearts are almost always left behind. They never really let go of Pakistan — dusty, noisy and chaotic but a Pakistan that cannot be divorced from them. They may wish to live their life to the fullest in foreign lands but they want to rest in peace in the land that gave birth to them.

Without them who in the world would love Pakistan out of Pakistan?

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