IT is indeed sad. The first stone has been cast and the house of cards has started to crumble. If Faiz were alive today he would have repeated this line from his poem, Subh-i-Azaadi: Woh intezaar tha jiska, yeh woh seher to nahin. Translation: Tis not the dawn of which we dreamed.

All the same, the new government did make an attempt for a new beginning. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leadership has repeated its vow ad nauseum of setting up a model welfare state like the Madina of yore. However, the facts on the ground depict otherwise.

Let us remember our Quaid Mohammad Ali Jinnah. He was sent to England to study law and chose the law school on whose entrance was a list of the world’s greatest law givers. This list was headed by none other than our Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon him). The rest is history.

In Pakistan’s first cabinet which consisted of seven members, the Quaid appointed an Ahmedi as foreign minister, while a scheduled caste Hindu was the law minister. Can there be any greater well-wisher of Pakistan’s interests than the Quaid?

As a septuagenarian citizen, my question to the nation: how much longer will we remain hostage to misguided zealots?

Aijazuddin
Karachi

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2018