A Failed State

Mahwash Badar, a Pakistani woman, in an article published on 12.5.2014, writes : " Jinnah made a mistake and I am ashamed of being a Pakistani. I am ashamed that I belong to a country that kills human rights lawyers and sitting Governors, and issues death threats to University Professors. I am ashamed that we cannot protect our women and children, and we cannot protect our men from the evil that is extremism and fundamentalism.

Last year a polio worker was killed in Peshawar, and another shot dead in Khyber agency. Several were kidnapped in Bara. In January this year gunmen killed 5 health workers taking part in a polio vaccination drive in Karachi. The highest refusal rates for polio vaccination were recorded in Karachi, because the people there have 'little faith in public healthcare'. In North Waziristan, the Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan ( TTP) has forbidden vaccination since several years.

Everything that is reported about Pakistan is about death, destruction, squabbling politicians, ailing children, extremists blowing up things, and a struggling economy.

I raise my eyes to our neighbouring country, India. What would have happened if we were united? Maybe we would be polio free too. We share with our Indian brothers not only our DNA. Our food, language, clothes, lifestyles, etc are more like them than the Arabs we so badly want to mimic and ape. 
Pakistan is a fledgling and failed state ".

As regards my own views about Pakistan, see my article "The truth about Pakistan", which is available online. I have mentioned there that Pakistan is a fake, artificial country mischievously created by the British to keep Hindus and Muslims fighting with each other so that India (in which I include Pakistan) may not emerge as a modern, powerful industrial state (like China), which alone can abolish poverty, unemployment, lack of healthcare and good education, and other social and economic evils widespread in our sub continent today.

Apart from the fact that the two nation theory (that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations) was bogus and mischievously created by the British and their agents ( Jinnah, etc), another important problem arises when an Islamic state is created in our subcontinent : Which Islam is the true Islam, Sunni or Shia, Bareilvi or Deobandi, etc, etc.

I submit that in view of the tremendous diversity in our sub continent only a secular state is feasible here. Secularism does not mean that one cannot practise his religion. Secularism means that religion is a private affair, unconnected with the state which will have no religion.