A double celebration

Christians around the world celebrate Dec 25 as birthday of Christ-child while Pakistanis as the birth-date of Jinnah

The 2.2 billion Christians around the world celebrate December 25 as the birthday of the Christ-child. The population of Pakistan, Christians included, celebrate December 25 as the birth-date of the man who grew up to found the nation. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born on December 25, 1876, and his vision for Pakistan was one in which men and women of all faiths would live and work side by side in harmony. The reality diverges considerably from the dream.

Christians in Pakistan are a minority under threat wherever they live or work. Never a year passes without there being one or more incidents in which Christian communities are attacked, homes and livelihoods destroyed, lives lost. Some of the Christian churches run an ‘underground railway’ that helps families deemed to be at risk to leave Pakistan. It is not a free service; they have to sell everything to fund their departure from the mother country. Those with nothing to sell have no option but to stick it out as best they can.

They are not alone in their persecution and marginalisation. The Sikh and Hindu populations are likewise under threat and have their own escape routes. In recent years, the once-vibrant minority populations in Balochistan have been leaving en masse, as have members of the Ahmadi community which has the additional burden of being discriminated against constitutionally. It is not just minority communities that continue to face violence and discrimination. Many Muslims are also marginalised, with sectarian strife taking scores of lives each passing year, with the latest example of sectarian violence being the Parachinar atrocity in which 22 died and scores were injured.

With the advance of extreme ideologies in the broad population, extremism has become the new normal, shifted to a centrist position on the spectrum of social deviance and thus skewing the national paradigm. The founder of the nation would recoil from what has become of his life’s work as the Capital Development Authority recently brought opprobrium to itself for a crude attempt to decant poor Christians from their temporary shelters. He would recoil from events at the Hafeez Centre in Lahore where a rare attempt by state agencies to intervene against discriminatory practices ended with the tables turned — the traders demonstrated in defence of their ‘right’ to display posters that forbade Ahmadis from entering their shops or buying their wares.

Despite this bleak background, Christians will today throng the churches, sing joyful carols, exchange gifts and sit together for a traditional Christmas dinner, the menu for which will vary from continent to continent, culture to culture, but which is imbued with the same spirit of warmth and celebration everywhere. There is a universality about the Christmas spirit that even in Pakistan appears able to transcend divisions of faith, and Christmas trees and decorations have been on sale in markets for a month or more — an indicator that intolerance has not come to completely own the sociocultural agenda.

Looking ahead to the New Year, there is little that can be flagged as good news for the minorities of Pakistan. Christians languish in jails across the country, accused of offences associated with alleged blasphemy. The survivors of the Peshawar church bombing in September 2013 are mostly still awaiting the compensation that was promised to them. The Lahore church bombings that took place in March this year also remind us of the reach and barbarity of banned organisations that carry out such attacks.

The man who did more than any other to bring Pakistan to statehood would never have envisioned such a fate for minorities and other marginalised groups in the country. Today as we celebrate his birthday, let us also remember that tolerance is a virtue worthy of cultivation, and we wish a happy Christmas to those who celebrate it — everywhere.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2015.

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