Quaid's vision

December 25th is a day of resoluteness in our national milieu. On this day, a great selfless man through his diligent struggle bestowed the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent with an independent homeland by freeing them from the tutelage of colonialism. He fought on the principles of rule of law and never deviated from it even in adversity. His constitutional battle, as he was a lawyer par excellence, was unparalleled in a society that was divisive and jaundiced on the lines of communalism.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was not just a beacon of hope for the Muslims of South Asia, he left behind a legacy of devotion and thoughtfulness for all those who aspire for the cherished principles of liberty and emancipation. His message to the nation, unfortunately, is in limbo. We have not been able to abide by his trinity of Unity, Faith and Discipline. Though he lived for a year after creating a homeland for Muslims, called Pakistan, he was visionary in pinning out cannons of statehood as he advocated prejudice-free governance, no recourse of religion in state affairs, and a preamble of separation of powers among state institutions.

Jinnah wanted to see a merit-based society wherein the executive is subordinate to the will of the masses; a military focused on the horizons of external security; and a bureaucracy accountable to the core. Had we taken a cue from his narrative, we would not have been in a shambles. Moreover, Jinnah had the acumen to preach a synopsis of co-existence to the newly-liberated nation-state in his August 11, 1947 speech to the Constituent Assembly that will always remain the preamble of nationhood's unison.

Jinnah foresaw what our society is experiencing today in the form of degeneration, and advised supremacy of the masses by restricting officialdom to their duty-bound chores. The best tribute to the Father of the Nation is to pledge that the nation will strictly follow his trinity, and work tirelessly to rebuild Pakistan as a modern welfare state, where there is no room for extra-legal experiments in governance and societal otherness.