The slow route to hell

Let’s press the rewind button and go back in time. We see a nation, carved out amidst pools of blood and despair, whose founder vows Pakistan will be a land where all can live as equals regardless of belief.
A few decades on we see persons from non-Muslim communities head the Supreme Court, claim honours as heroes in the armed services and draw thousands of fans singing patriotic, tuneful songs on television. And then they disappear, literally and metaphorically, pushed away from the mainstream of a land they were told was theirs.
We hear accounts of Jewish doctors and other professionals in major cities who were part of society until they were driven away, a process that by the mid-1970s had resulted in their number being reduced to a handful. That handful too has now vanished, some reports suggesting the last few may have lived disguised as Parsis. In Karachi a feeble effort continues to keep synagogues and Jewish graveyards safe. The Jews who once visited them have themselves vanished.
As we lift our finger from the rewind button we see other groups pushed to the edge too. The frenzy of extremism unleashed in the country, notably in the 1980s but beginning well before then, has turned almost every minority group into a haunted, marginalised community, identified by their belief rather than their actions or achievements.
Ahmadis have been driven to the fringes of society. Hindus and Christians both face intensified violence and outfits dedicated to the cause of wiping out Shias operate everywhere. Many members of these communities have left the country, in search of safety and a better future. In areas such as Quetta’s blood-stained Hazara Town talk seems to be only about getting out, relocating to a safer place and how to go about this task. The tiny Hazara community has of course borne the brunt of recent sectarian attacks, but others are no safer either.
When events take place like the church attack in Lahore which killed at least 15 this past Sunday, the plight of the minorities is suddenly highlighted. For a short time, we all talk about it and about the groups attempting to decimate these communities. But then we forget; and we wait for the next incident, the next act of mayhem. These take place periodically, signifying an apparent desire to wipe out all difference in the land it was once said was created for all. Clearly today within it some are more equal than others, far more equal and far more privileged.
While it is the killings, the bombings, the other acts of open violence which draw attention, a more subtle discrimination continues all the time. Children who attend Convent schools talk about being asked what they are being taught, as if the questioner is suspicious that they are being subjected to some devious form of brainwashing. This feeling had of course never occurred through the centuries when the best education came from missionary schools which still stand all around our country, catering to children of all religions and all income groups.
There are also other acts of differentiation and deliberate ostracisation. Within the armed forces, only Muslims rise through the ranks, regardless of performance. The process of vetting out ‘undesirable’ elements begins at the recruitment stages. This is true for private institutions as well, and some say even for the civil services. We seem to have reached a point where we are simply unwilling to accept the fact that our country is made up of many different groups who were made to believe they too had a place within it.
The space for these groups is being squeezed. Christians speak of more and more discrimination at many different levels. While we do not think about it often, the fact is that we have created a warped cast system based on belief, with Christians placed at the lowest ends of the social and economic ladder. This means they are relegated often to jobs as cleaners, sanitary workers and to other tasks that are considered in many cases too ‘lowly’ for Muslims to take on.
The same holds true to a certain degree for lower caste Hindus in Sindh. Certainly, we have not done anything to bridge the gaps. Instead, even deeper, darker ones have been created, with minority communities engaged in an increasingly desperate struggle to survive.
The heart of the problem lies in the fact that we have done too little to address the matter. The discrimination has been allowed to deepen. The groups which kill are not operated against even though we know who they are and presumably our security services have some idea of who leads them and from where. If they are not familiar with these facts, we should be asking why we maintain such an elaborate security system at high costs to the taxpayer. The truth is that these outfits were set up at one point or the other for specific purposes. Perhaps like the monster of Dr Frankenstein, they have grown out of control but certainly we are making no attempt to help tame them. Perhaps we simply do not know how to do so. But we have to learn and there is not much time to do so.
Do we want to learn? It certainly does not seem so. It is easier to try and put the truth aside and pretend we are in fact doing our best. Our leaders say they are. Perhaps by saying this so often they have come to believe their own lies. Or else they simply do not care, allowing disintegration and mayhem because they are not directly affected by it.
We have now reached a point where everyone is affected by what goes on. No one can claim distance. The Peshawar school attack illustrated this and of course we already know we are exposed to a demonic force that strikes down a growing number of targets whenever it can. The problems we see are one of a society very loosely knit together. In some cases the stitches have fallen away altogether. This perhaps is why we react to events in so limited a fashion.
The mobs that took to the streets after Sunday’s bombings were made up only of Christians. Apparently others did not feel their pain and did not choose to share in it. This has been seen before. We act then not as a single nation, or as humans linked by commonalities, but as separate groups living accidentally within one territorial space. Despite the green shirts we don for cricket games, there is no unity beyond the cosmetic. We have allowed divides to be created and today we simply watch as one group is mowed down.
Perhaps those responsible for these massacres believe they are doing right. But why do so many of the rest of us allow this to happen, accepting it as virtually the norm. Do they not realise that those driven away, hunted down and killed are human too and have a place in the nation? It seems this sense of wholeness, of looking beyond difference in belief, or race, or opinion has entirely disappeared or is on the verge of vanishing, and this of course is our collective loss.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com