A few days ago, St Mary’s University in London announced that it was awarding its highest honour, the Benedict Medal, to the Rev’d Sr. Berchmans Conway, of the Religious of Jesus and Mary. Thus, on July 17, 2019 when this honour will be bestowed, Sr Berchmans will become the first woman to receive this award, and join a list of illustrious award alumni which includes the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishops of Canterbury and Armagh.

The announcement of the Medal was warmly received in Pakistan with several people tweeting and writing about it and even ministers fondly remembering their time at the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Karachi, Lahore or Murree, where Sr. Berchmans has taught and served.

Among the people who lauded the announcement was former British Foreign Office Minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who noted that "it will be a fitting occasion for someone, who has given their life to education and to helping young people achieve their dreams." According to a news report Baroness Warsi also called upon the Pakistan government to give Sr. Berchmans ‘honorary Pakistani citizenship’. This remark made me stop and think.

Christian missionaries have been living and working in Pakistan since well before the state was even created in 1947. In fact, the first Catholic missionaries arrived in the land which now forms Pakistan in the 1840s when St. Francis’ School was established in Lahore as part of an orphanage. Protestant missionaries also followed suit and the first Presbyterian mission was established in Lahore in December 1849, which laid the foundation of the first English school in the region, and which later became the Forman Christian College.

The order to which Sr. Berchmans belongs to, the Religious of Jesus and Mary, came to Sialkot in February 1856 to establish their first convent -- the first school dedicated to the teaching of girls, irrespective of caste or creed in this part of South Asia. Their revolutionary work -- in that day and age opening a school for girls was indeed revolutionary -- continued with the establishment of convents in Lahore and Murree in 1876, followed by other cities, marking them as pioneers in the field of women education in the region.

Till the time when local Christians started to become nuns and priests in the 1960s and 1970s, all these religious orders comprised foreigners who had devoted their life to Christ’s service. Hailing from lands as far away as Ireland, the UK, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Spain and other countries, their aim was not simply to convert people to Christianity but also serve the communities they lived in.

Seeing Christ in the poor and needy, the aged and the infirm, the illiterate and the helpless, the life of these ‘missionaries’ was to help these communities in every way they could because that is what Christ commanded them to do. It did not matter if no one converted -- in fact, they stopped actively seeking conversion after a while -- but what mattered was that the lives -- physical, mental and spiritual -- of these communities transform and develop for the better.

It was this radical and evangelical calling of the missionaries which enabled them to leave their comfort zones and move to places which challenged them in so many ways. Their dedication to their cause -- the service of humanity -- be it through teaching, medicine, shelter, or simply companionship, led them to not just help these communities but become part of them, by living with them, experiencing and walking in life with them, sharing both their joys and sorrows. Thus most of these missionaries spent their whole life in the communities they came to serve. Most spent so much of their time in the local community that they lost touch with their homeland, and considered their adopted homeland as their primary abode, where they wanted to live and die.

Following the long line of pioneering missionaries, Sr. Berchmans, who was born in 1930 in Ireland, and joined the Religious of Jesus and Mary in 1951, came to Pakistan in 1953, as a young twenty something nun, full of passion and zeal to serve. In the ensuing sixty-five years, she has shown nothing but dedication to the cause of education, uplift and dialogue in Pakistan, a country she literally grew old with. Over the years she has served in the various convents run by her order, teaching, counselling and forming generations of women.

The list of students she has taught certainly reads like a who’s who of women in Pakistan, counting among them Pakistan and the Muslim world’s first female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, human rights champions Asma Jahangir and Hina Jillani, journalist Jugnu Mohsin, Minister Shireen Mazari, Oscar laureate Sharmeen Obeid Chinoy, astrophysicist Nergis Mavalavala, and a whole host of other luminaries. The role and impact of the work of these missionaries on the life and development of these people certainly cannot be underestimated, and must be acknowledged and celebrated.

Despite the critical involvement of these missionaries in the development of local communities throughout what is now Pakistan, and indeed the progress of the country itself, it is a real pity that these people are still considered ‘foreign’. I personally know several nuns and priests who despite having lived in Pakistan since its creation (one priest I knew came to Pakistan in August 1947!), still have to suffer a rather rigid visa regime, and constant suspicion. They usually get a one-year visa with two entries, which means that they cannot easily travel in and out of Pakistan if they want, and that every year they have to re-apply to live in the country where they have spent most of their lives, via a process of several forms, high fees, and long and cumbersome bureaucratic processes.

This not only creates unnecessary nuisance and hurdles in their daily lives, but also disheartens them, as they never really feel they are being accepted as part of the country they have loved and lived in. As one old nun who was born in British India to English parents, said, "It is as if Pakistan doesn’t want us any longer." To which she added, "But I do not know where to go either. I was even born here. I have not lived in any other country!"

Pakistan needs to not only stop treating these missionaries as ‘foreign’ but also immediately give them full citizenship. If we cannot accept people who have lived, worked and served in our country for decades, then we must not only be ashamed, but also rethink on what basis we have set up our nation and polity.

When Pakistan was created a large number of people migrated to it. Being a Muslim majority country, the hope was that the ‘mohajirs’ would be treated in an exemplary manner by the ‘ansar’ who already lived in Pakistan, harking back to the creation of the first Muslim community in Medina. The hope was that whoever comes to Pakistan and calls it home, should become part of the body politic of the country and be treated on par with everyone else without any discrimination.

However, the reality, as we have seen, was much different. With time, we not only unfairly treated those who had left their hearth and home for the ‘promised land’ of Pakistan, we went so far as to force them into an ethnicity, which then voiced itself through dissident politics.

But the time has come that we accept all those who live, work and serve in Pakistan as Pakistanis, no matter what religion, race, or background they come from. If they call Pakistan home, they should be called Pakistanis with all the rights and privileges which come as being an equal citizen of this country. There are perhaps only a few dozen of so-called ‘foreign’ missionaries left in Pakistan and all of them have spent most of their lives serving in the country, especially in communities which had long been marginalised. It is time that the government recognise and honour them as Pakistanis and makes them full citizens of the country since they are certainly our ‘real citizens.’