Independence - bestowal or blunder

Wearied by persistent lawlessness, protracted violence, deep-rooted insecurity, recurring economic instability, shrinking opportunities, and an almost bleak prospect of a scarcely hopeful future. These, as I perceive them, are chief reasons that prompt my parents, time-and-again, to lament:

"We would have been better off in a united India."

I find such remarks intensely vexatious. Yet, before I dismiss them outright, reality intrudes:

Too often I find myself praying, not for scientific breakthroughs or technological advancement, but alas, simply for the uninterrupted provision of basic utilities.

When I widen my lens, the discomfort deepens:

Poverty festers like an open wound; accessible healthcare remains a distant dream for many; affordable, quality education is still more privilege than right; persons with disabilities confront not only physical barriers but systemic neglect; merit frequently bows before influence; justice moves, but sluggishly.

Belonging to the legal profession, this contradiction confronts me daily. While assisting my seniors, I witness the nobility advocacy: articulate arguments, principled stands, the law invoked as a shield for the vulnerable. In those moments, the Courtroom feels almost sacred. Yet, disillusionment soon follows: endless adjournments, procedural lapses, selective application of principles and institutional inefficiencies dilute the essence of justice. The Courtroom – symbol of fairness and certainty – too often becomes theatre of frustration.

It is this internal conflict – between gratitude and grievance, pride and disappointment – that set me upon a quest to unravelling the roots of our national decline.

Turning pages of history, I discovered that many overlook a crucial fact: Quaid-e-Azam did not begin as a champion of partition. For a significant part of his political career, he strove to preserve Hindu-Muslim unity within a constitutional framework, and was even regarded as being 'ambassador of unity'. Only after prolonged constitutional deadlocks, failed power-sharing arrangements and deepening mistrust among major political players did his stance gradually evolve from unity towards partition. A careful reading of history, therefore, reveals a more nuanced portrait: Partition was not his starting point but, in his view, a last constitutional resort after years of unsuccessful attempts to secure equitable safeguards for Muslims within a united India. Thus, independence was not the outcome of reckless ambition but the reluctant conclusion of a prolonged constitutional struggle. It was, in essence, a solution shaped by circumstances rather than preference.

Yet this realisation leads to a more uncomfortable question: what did we do with the independence that was so arduously secured?

Examining our national conduct after securing the status of free citizens from colonial subjects demands honest self-accountability.

While many among us remained absorbed in glorifying the unprecedented endeavours of our founding fathers, others anchored in faith, slipped into complacency: on the pretext that the beloved motherland came into being on the blessed eve of Laylat-al-Qadr, many consoled themselves with the belief that Allah would safeguard His gift without requiring vigilance, sacrifice, or sustained effort from its people.

Suspended between nostalgia and naïve certainty, we overlooked a harder truth: nations are not preserved by sentiment alone, nor by sacred coincidence, but by the continuous moral, intellectual and civic labour of their citizens.

Reflecting further, I attempted to view the matter from a commoner's perspective and to understand the deeper value of sovereignty:

A household, when owned by its inhabitants, can endure flawed decisions. The family may quarrel, err, or even squander opportunities – but the house remains theirs, and they retain the power to repair its cracks. Yet tenants enjoy no such luxury. Their negligence invites immediate correction by the landlord and their disorder rarely goes unpunished.

Similarly, sovereignty offers a nation the difficult privilege of making its own mistakes.

Had we remained merely a dispersed community under the umbrella of united India – perhaps with equally incompetent or self-centred leadership – our political weaknesses might have invited far harsher consequences. Our failures would not simply have been national embarrassments; they might have translated into marginalisation without remedy.

Hence, the blunder, is not the creation of a separate homeland. The blunder lies in the manner in which we have betrayed the spirit of its independence: treated it as an inheritance to be celebrated, rather than a responsibility to be fulfilled.

Sometimes I wonder how we, as a nation, would respond if Quaid-e-Azam was able to foresee the complacency, division and neglect that would gradually seep into the foundations of the motherland. Perhaps he might have lamented:

"I created a separate homeland for my people with hope and trust; yet my nation has betrayed that trust."

If such words were spoken today, would we still denounce independence as a blunder of our forefathers? Or would we finally acknowledge it as a sacred bestowal – that demands discipline, responsibility and collective effort from those who inherit it? The answer, perhaps, lies not in history but in ourselves. Independence was never meant to be a guarantee of success; it was meant to be an opportunity. Whether that opportunity becomes a story of progress or a tale of regret depends not on the decisions of the founders, but on the conduct of the nation that followed them.

To all those who share my parents' viewpoint, I pose the same question: was independence truly a blunder, or has it been betrayed by the very nation it meant to empower?