KARACHI:
The ability to coordinate and cooperate with others to tackle shared challenges is a valuable skill. Higher education institutes play a vital role in developing this crucial skill among future leaders by encouraging greater collaboration through student bodies, group projects and several other events. Across the country, many universities draw a sizable number of non-Muslim students each year.
This is an opportunity for the country to present itself as a multicultural, tolerant, and inclusive society that offers equal opportunities to everyone. This can be achieved by encouraging student bodies to arrange annual inter-faith conferences and celebrate religious festivals to foster greater harmony. This will promote tolerance and allow students to create bonds irrespective of religious and cultural differences. This is especially important in Pakistan because minorities are often marginalised and subjected to discrimination and other forms of abuse.
The Higher Education Commission’s recent notification to all universities asking them to refrain from arranging events like the Holi festival was widely debated in the mass media eventually compelling them to withdraw the decision. The directive came in the wake of the Holi festival celebrated with great fervour at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. The event gained global appreciation. Pakistan’s founding father, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, emphasised equal treatment and religious freedom for all minorities. The country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, assured complete liberty and freedom to non-Muslim dissenting voices at the time of passage of the Objective Resolution in 1949. Therefore, the government should ensure that public and private bodies avoid issuing such notifications in the future to avoid earning a bad repute globally and guarantee equal rights and freedom for everyone.
Asad Aziz
Khushab
Published in The Express Tribune, June 27th, 2023.
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