Once upon a time in this fair land of ours there was a reason for harsh introspection and violent self-criticism. Dissent in the Republic if not completely suppressed was barely tolerated. Official dogma went by the name of the ideology of Pakistan - usually a list of whatever suited the rulers of the day - and any deviation from it entailed the charge of anti-national activity.

Such a state of affairs induced self-loathing. It also encouraged a romantic disavowal of the present, a theme running through a lot of Urdu poetry.

In their attitude to dissent or freedom of expression there was little to choose between the military dictator Ayub or the civilian autocrat Bhutto. Under Yahya the bonds of political expression were loosened a bit but this only meant you could criticise other politicians, never the military.

Pakistan started to emerge from this bleak ideological landscape towards the latter part of General Ziaul Haq's dictatorship when military rule gave way to quasi-democracy (with Junejo as prime minister). More newspapers appeared on the scene and there was an all-round effort to test the limits of the permissible. Throughout the subsequent decade of democracy--when by turns Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif imparted novel meanings to the concept of governance--the frontiers of free expression kept expanding.

By the time of General Pervez Musharraf's coup d'etat in October 1999, the expression of dissent in sections of the press had become a well-established tradition. Musharraf could have interfered with it but did not. Perhaps because of something in himself--say, a capacity for tolerance. Or perhaps because he liked what he saw.

For whatever reason, much of the press unabashedly welcomed his coup and poured scorn on his political predecessors. For once, press and strongman found themselves on the same wavelength. It would have been folly to disrupt a coincidence of such perfect convenience.

This is the chronology but it doesn't explain the tendency to crippling self-laceration which is a hallmark of Pakistani self-criticism. When we criticize some aspect of a particular, we tend to criticize not just the particular but the general scheme of things. It's like pointing to someone's long nose and saying not merely that the nose is disproportionate but that the person in question was born the wrong way. Pakistanis tend to go back to the beginning. Which is a good thing but not very helpful if you remain stuck at the beginning.

In established democracies the day-to-day workings of government constitute the staple of criticism. But it is usually not the fashion to question the bases of those societies.

Not so in Pakistan. Towards the end of the Zia era the freedom of expression we now take for granted was very much in its adolescence. As such it was employed vigorously, vigour and passion being two of the prerogatives of youth.

In the twilight of the Zia era all of us were infantile democrats. We thought that if only we attained the shores of democracy, everything would turn out all right. Earlier, when elections were not held in Pakistan--our first general election coming only in 1970--Pakistanis saw their country's salvation in the holding of elections. We are all a bit wiser now, having learnt the hard way that simple nostrums are no answer to long-standing problems.

Anyhow, in the zeal to question conventional wisdom, and mock the half-truths comprising 'the ideology of Pakistan', trashing everything to do with Pakistan was turned into a prestigious art form.

Needless to say, there is much that is wrong with us. It is also true that at the highest levels of government we have shown a remarkable talent over the years for making a complicated mess of perfectly ordinary situations. Yet, for all its faults, and for all the funny war paint daubed on the national visage as a result of our adventures in Afghanistan, Pakistan is not the irrational, much less the failed, republic its inspired detractors sometimes make it out to be.

For starters, despite its semi-democracy and General Musharraf's penchant for wearing his uniform--alas, in season and out--Pakistan is among the two or three freest countries in the Muslim world today. In terms of being able to say what one likes, in terms of ideological pluralism, it is way ahead of much of the Islamic fraternity.

The midnight knock or state terror were not cliches in the Ayub, Bhutto or Zia eras. And in 1971, lest we forget, our record as a state in what was then East Pakistan was appalling. But it's an indication of the journey travelled that old-style repression is, on the whole, a thing of the past. Compare this to the police atmosphere holding sway in most other Muslim countries and this would appear to be no small blessing.

Sure, there is much that ails us. The police are guilty of excesses all the time. Our courts could be better as indeed our social services. Health and education we have neglected at the altar of national security. Too many babies are born in the Islamic Republic and there are not as many women in the workplace as there should be.

Furthermore, we babble a bit too much about religion, using debate on religion as a cloak to disguise many of our shortcomings in the material sphere. Too many beards running amok and filling the airwaves have given us a bad image. And since the Americans discovered Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden our cause has not been helped by the memory of our closeness to the Taliban. But despite the tilt to zealotry traceable to the Zia years, at heart and in its core ours was and remains a tolerant society.

Yet you would be hard put to discover any of this from the regular trashing of everything Pakistani which on the rebound from unadulterated authoritarianism we have turned into a fine art. Fly-by-night foreigners promoting a skewed image of the country is one thing. That can be corrected. But when Pakistanis themselves turn into the most unforgiving critics of their own society, the perception fostered is hard to erase.

Reading some of the opinion pieces in the Pakistani press, one would think this was a country where every second village damsel is condemned to gang rape by a village council and where slaughtering women in the name of honour is a routine happening in much of the countryside.

To be sure, such tragedies do occur but they do everywhere. Haven't schoolboys been known to whip out guns and go on a slaughtering rampage in the United States? What's so good about the American prison system? If I had to make the choice, I'd choose a Pakistani prison over an American one any time. If nothing else, I'd be saving myself from homosexual rape.

The only difference is that when something particularly bizarre or cruel occurs in a rich country, it counts as a sociological aberration worthy of close observation and analysis. In a country like Pakistan it is taken as representative of the societal norm.

Would it be out of place to note the incestuous relationship between funding and image? The funding for the human rights and NGO industry in Pakistan--both having become a veritable industry-- comes from western donors. While it may be wrong to suggest that the source of the funding dictates the need to pander to donor prejudices, the impression is unmistakable that much of what gets reported in the name of human rights makes Pakistan into a more dismal and benighted place than it actually is.

Which is not to say we gloss over our shortcomings or hide them in a romantic mist. There is no room for complacency here. At the same time, we do ourselves no service by forgetting that we have left our adolescence behind and could do with a more mature approach to self-criticism.

Low self-esteem is not a good thing and self-laceration and masochism are not the most attractive of national virtues.