Let’s hope!
The writer is doing MPhil in Political Science. He can be reached at humzafarooq786@gmail.com
‘Tomorrow’, an offing that everyone is queasy about. What happens when we think of tomorrow? All of us get worried. I use the words ‘offing’ and ‘queasy’ because tomorrow is as far as the depth of an ocean yet it is just ‘tomorrow’; and we always have nausea, a strange feeling that if we might see a good tomorrow or not. The distance that each and everyone one of us is trying to achieve towards tomorrow is mostly covered by one element — the element upon which we all cling, and it is called ‘hope’. This hope has conquered today’s man to some unlimited extent. Man has found hope an antidote to the nausea for tomorrow, as it gives him a hankering for odds that no one wishes to face. Thus, this hope is the key to the door that has opened a ‘today’ upon us with all the unrest around and perhaps it will also decide an unpredictable tomorrow for us that we have never imagined. So, where does this hope take us today? Does it have anything to do with politics? Can this hope give us the tomorrow we desire?
Well, hope has everything to do with a man’s life. Since Pakistan is an independent state, a republic, I believe that has everything to do with its citizens. Citizens that are appointed to designated positions, citizens that hold the country’s fate, and citizens that steer the society to a fallacy of the future with their claims. All are the victims of their hopes.
Do you want to blame someone? Let’s start with the former premier Imran Khan and you’ll end up naming Nawaz Sharif or the Army Chief. Or let’s start with the Army and you’ll end up naming Imran Khan or maybe the judiciary. Start from any point and you’ll end up at another point where everyone else also has a valid point to prove.
Who’s right then? So many questions, so many ambiguities, so many hopes. Bring up a name in your mind — Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the Army Chief, the Chief Justice of Pakistan. Everyone’s interest is in a ‘Brownian Motion’ — moving within a box where national interest in centred and infused with the hopes of society to have a better tomorrow; and when bombarded with a particular particle of interest of our state actors or a name you choose or you make up your mind to support, you get a new hope. Why are people out there to protest? Why is there a see-saw situation in the pillars of the state? Why are politicians at war with institutions or maybe vice versa? The answer is again: ‘hope’. First, there is a populous hope of a better Pakistan and then there is a personal hope for Pakistan.
All this is a very theoretical or philosophical approach to explain why this is happening to Pakistan but is also important to understand that everyone is at a stake of hope, even Pakistan as a state itself. So, is there any other solution? Yes. Albeit solutions might mostly seem unachievable, stop relying on hopes and start acting upon them with a rational pragmatic approach to take us out of the current turmoil. Also, this is not for those who belong to the commons of society because they need to cling on to hope to live, but for those who hope to keep the state of Pakistan within the bubble of their particular interests. But, would they wish to do this? Well, let’s hope!
Published in The Express Tribune, June 12th, 2023.
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