UNTIL Bhutto messed up things in 1977 - incidentally, doing a thorough job of the messing up - and gave an opening to the killjoys of the nation to seize the political high ground (an advantage these righteous armies have never vacated), Pakistan enjoyed just the right tension between the opposite pulls of sin and salvation.

In the most happily-constituted Muslim societies this tension always existed, indeed contributing in no small measure to the diversity and extent of their achievements. When Europe lay in the grip of mediaevalism and the torch of learning and knowledge was held aloft by Muslim scholars, this life-enhancing tension found full expression in the world of Islam.

The good Muslim scrupulously fulfilled his religious obligations. He kept himself clean - a stage of civilization which the peoples of Europe arrived at several centuries later. He offered his prayers, kept the fast, gave alms to the poor and, if the opportunity beckoned, made the pilgrimage to Makkah. Withal, a simple religion, its early appeal owing as much to the sharpness of the Islamic sword as to the startling simplicity of its canon. Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity - all so complicated by comparison. But let's not get into these invidious distinctions.

Fulfilling religious obligations, however, was only one aspect of the life of the good Muslim. He also had an eye for the finer things of life: verse, story-telling, abstract speculation. To commemorate his faith, he built handsome mosques; to celebrate life he laid gardens and erected fountains. And through it all, even though aware of the strictures of his faith, he was not above being touched by the madness which comes from paying homage to the deity of the vine. The Muslim of that period enriched human civilization. In part if not wholly, was it not because he himself lived life to the full?

The best Urdu poetry is also full of this creative tension as evidenced by the contrasting images of mosque and tavern (viz. Ghalib's famous verse, 'In the mosque's shadow let wine be brought' - this being a rough translation) and the clashing metaphors of shaikh (he who preaches) and saqi (he who pours the wine). Why is this tension creative? Because, as philosophers have preached from Heraclitus to Hegel, there would be no unity in the world if there were not opposites to combine: "It is the opposite which is good for us." (Heraclitus) In Urdu poetry, unless I am grossly mistaken, wine and the cup are symbols of rebellion, of going against the accepted norm. Where would be the charm of Ghalib's verse if this tension between the permitted and the forbidden was missing?

This is the problem with Pakistan today: not so much military rule, or the Grand Democratic Alliance or even the country's mounting debts as the killjoy place it has become - all sermons and preaching and no idea of fun, much less the idea of illicit fun which in any clime acts as a spur to the imagination. Discourse in all its forms in the Islamic Republic has become admonitory: do this, do that. Of course, there are other problems which assail our country but it does not help when to these problems is added the cross of a monumental boredom.

Other places endeavour to manufacture happiness, even if the happiness so produced is tinselly and short-lived. We have become adept at producing unhappiness: a state of mind which has nothing to do with material deprivation and everything with a disease of the spirit. Small wonder then if even well-heeled Pakistanis look the way they do: dissatisfied, depressed and perpetually insecure. Forget the poor; the Pakistani rich are more insecure, a fact attested to by the insatiable greed of the good and the great. (The corruption of the Sharifs and Zardaris has always stumped me for this reason. So much money, to what purpose?)

Do Pakistanis deserve this? They are not a sickly people and given half the chance are able to enjoy life as much as anyone else. (Uncharitable souls, seeing Pakistanis in their cups or on the dance floor, might even say that their capacity for enjoyment is more than most.) Do Pakistanis deserve the constant onslaught of piety to which they have been subjected these past 25 years?

Every Islamic society in history, or indeed any other society for that matter, has its killjoy puritans, who believe that the conscious pursuit of misery is an essential pre-requisite for attaining life everlasting. In a healthy society such elements are ignored or kept safely to the sidelines. Not in Pakistan where their nuisance value has found recognition in a spurious morality.

Apart from external security which we need not go into here, what are the foremost functions of the state? Maintaining law and order, collecting revenue, delivering essential services, providing equal opportunities, etc. These temporal functions the state is less and less able to discharge with any semblance of efficiency. So what does it do? It assumes a spiritual role for itself and becomes the arbiter of the nation's morals. Not, let it be noted, the nation's public morals which have become corrupted beyond redemption but only the private morals of its citizens.Nor is this all. As if the people of Pakistan need constant reminders of the gratuitous misery to which they are exposed, consider the person chosen by the Fates as the Chief Magistrate of the Republic. Not that he is unworthy of his high office. Only this that the piety he exudes is of the kind with which the people of Pakistan have been assaulted since Zia-ul-Haq's time. So is it any surprising if the sum of national depression should register an increase every time he appears on television?

As I have said above, there are other great problems awaiting the nation's attention: amending the Constitution, giving the army a permanent role in politics (as if the army needs any permission in this regard), grooming a new leadership (grim prospect this), reviving the economy, filling our begging bowl, and so on. But before tackling this thick agenda, the people of Pakistan might be given a break. They are not likely to see inflation come down any time soon or the job situation improve in a hurry. But at least they could be spared the sermons and speeches. And the dry climate which is responsible for so much of the moaning and whining to be heard in the country.

So what is the conclusion? Probably only this that the excessive salvation which has held the field since 1977 when Bhutto, boxed into a corner, messed up everything needs to be balanced now with a bit of loosening up. Pakistanis have been uptight for too long. They need to cheer up a bit and cultivate (although this is not easy) a bit of happiness. I suspect that a good deal of the gloom and doom to be heard in the country has to do with the monotony of life in Pakistan. Pakistanis get a kick out of being depressed. But are they to blame when they can get a kick out of nothing else? Let us also remember that whether in Pakistan or elsewhere it is not sinners who bemoan the state of the world. Sinners generally are more relaxed about these things. It is evangelists and reformers who think that the world is coming to an end.

The late Jam Sadiq Ali had it about it right. Long after his political sins are forgotten, the social reforms he undertook in Sindh will be remembered. How did he succeed where others have not even tried? For the sake of the nation's well-being, his methods deserve a close examination.