Pakistan Day

Hello,

On March 23rd each year, it's Pakistan Day. This is the day when the Lahore Resolution was passed in 1947, paving the way for the creation of Pakistan as the first Islamic republic in the world. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the enigmatic leader who led the way to creating a separate homeland for the minority Muslims in largely majority Hindus India.

To commemorate this event, the Pakistan Association in Dubai screened the movie Jinnah for free, and I took my bean bag to enjoy the movie in the open air, amid some delicious kebab rolls and Krispy Kreme donuts. Not too many people showed up, but it turned out to be a pleasant evening.

Sitting amidst the lighted candles, and portraits of Jinnah all over, the mood was set right for the event. Jinnah is a very well made movie, and the only one made on the leader of Pakistan. While he is highly regarded as a great leader in Pakistan, there are also a lot of criticisms for the way he lived his life. He married a Parsi wife, who later became a Muslim; he wore suits most of the time; he lived a purely Western lifestyle, his own daughter was estranged from him and didn't believe in his idea of a the creation of Pakistan. However, the biggest criticism of Jinnah is that he was a secular Muslim, if one can be called that.

Did Pakistan came into creation because it was an issue of religion? Or was it an issue of human rights? Jinnah is accused of being a humanist in the movie and he refuses to label himself this way. Some even argue that Pakistan should not have been created in the first place, hence avoiding the mass killings that took place as a result of the creation of a new nation. Should Pakistan have been created in the first place? Was Jinnah deliberately killed as he was being transported to the hospital? Did Lord Mountbatten and Gandhi deceive Jinnah? There are lots of such questions that could only be answered in a scholarly and open debate, which is very rare since a lot of Pakistanis would not want to get out the comfort zone and confront the reality of the situation.

The saddest thing is that Jinnah said in one his last speech that he has a vision to see Pakistan become one of the greatest nations of the world. Sadly, Pakistan has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, and makes me wonder whether Pakistan is a failed country. There can massive debates on these very topics, but at the end of the day, I am a Pakistani, and I am very proud of it, and while I can get very patriotic about it, I am also reminded that while I am a Pakistani my religious identity is more important to me.

Someone once said to me that placing your cultural identity over your religious identity may not be a good idea, because of the end of the day, its not where you are from that matters but what your faith is.

Happy Pakistan Day to all my Pakistani friends!

Mansur