By Muhammad Omar Iftikhar

Last year as I was watching the Independence Day live transmission on TV, I wondered why we haven’t developed in all these years since independence. I soon I got my answer — all our television channels were telecasting special shows but they weren’t about our veterans who were part of the Pakistan Movement or those experienced senior citizens who were youngsters in August, 1947.

These shows had not even a single grain of intellectual depth or patriotic vigour. They were music shows, dance shows, concerts or anything that has a touch of music and glamour.

Where are the authors, poets, philosophers, thinkers and all those scholars whose words would ignite the fire of patriotism and loyalty within Pakistanis? Where are those national heroes who could be a source of inspiration for all and where are those unsung heroes who gave their lives so we are able to celebrate our sixty-third Independence Day.

I’m afraid there are none, and we have forgotten those who could be there to guide us, to instigate us, to unite us and to bring us on the right track. Music, pop stars and showbiz celebrities have become our culture and our heroes. We are now lost in the wilderness of ignorance.

We shouldn’t just celebrate our day of independence, but we should rejoice in the fact that we are an independent nation, that we are capable to making our own decisions. We are strong enough to withstand all turbulence only if we first learn to stand together. It’s time we shed all our differences, let us forget all ethnic and religious differences.

Enough blood has been spilled; let’s be realistic and it’s time we grew up. Our politicians and our masses should learn from school-going children. Every school is a mini Pakistan where children from all provinces and all ethnic backgrounds are studying together. They study and play together. Why can’t adults ignore these differences and work to make Pakistan a better place.

Being a proud Pakistani I fail to understand why our freedom isn’t freedom anymore. We are free by constitution, but our minds are still slave to the status symbol. We want to be like those in the West,  and in the midst of this pretence we have forgotten who we really are. We have forgotten our values and the reason why our forefathers gave their lives for a separate nation.Our loyalty to Pakistan is now only confined in telecasting music events and to see who bought the biggest flag and who decorated his house with the most number of paper flags.

Every August 14, youngsters remove the silencers of their motorbikes and ride throughout the city, creating nuisance that makes me ask: Why do they have to do this? Why at midnight there is so much aerial firing and firecrackers, why don’t we teach our people the real meaning of freedom?

We don’t give respect to our land and our youth has been going abroad causing a brain drain in Pakistan. When we are born in Pakistan, then we must accept everything that comes with it — all the corruption, pollution, mismanagement, lawlessness and all the political and economic insecurity and instability. The main reasons why we haven’t developed is that there is a lack of corrective action, we don’t accept our mistakes and we put the blame for everything on the government and the system, without asking ourselves what we are doing to improve things. We have never been true to ourselves.

I think Quaid-e-Azam would be watching us from heavens with moist eyes and a heavy heart. He would be thinking why his vision of a prosperous Pakistan is still a vision to be realised. My message to our readers is that we are all representatives of this country, it is our motherland. Let’s make our country worth living in, let’s make Pakistan what it really deserves to be — a shining star. Be a Pakistani forever!