Hardly a few days ago, 24 of our jawans were killed by the NATO attack at Salala. After the attack our entire country went into frenzy and there was condemnation and outrage pouring in from every nook and cranny. Our sovereignty was supposedly under attack and there was a huge hue and cry. Pakistan then sent a unified message to NATO and all others involved that ‘enough was enough’. Our national pride and honor was at stake and we would do anything to protect it. This was the dominant theme, and our patriotism was dependent on this perspective.
In Lahore last week, certain front organizations for banned outfits demonstrated their expression of anger towards the incident as well. No holds were barred and these people exercised their right to free speech with plenty of hate speech. Come to think of it, the writ of the armed forces was challenged as well, as these groups vowed to declare their own war against NATO and some other countries. The icing on the cake was the presence of our former Minister of Railways and the Minister of Religious Affairs, at such an auspicious occasion.
It all seems a bit hollow and clichéd when according to the HRCP, 675 daughters of this soil have been murdered in the name honour, by its own sons. And all this I reiterate, was done in the name of ‘honour’. These figures are merely data of the first 9 months of 2011.
Make no mistake, the idea here is not to diminish the sacrifice of our soldiers, but instead it is to draw the attention to the grave irony as the loss at the hands of violence against women in our country is larger than the Salala incident. Yet, we are still to witness evening talk shows shaping the political discourse on this atrocity, nor will we see demonstrations highlighting the absurdity.
The fact is, in a lot of these cases the underlying theme is, ‘sanctity and purity based on religious beliefs.’ Somehow, it is deemed acceptable to kill our own daughters, sisters and mothers to protect ‘honour and purity’, or we are doomed and destined to hell. The burning question here is what is the definition of honour? Why is it that if a lady falters somewhere (assuming if it were true), it becomes an issue of honour? In most cases, if the girl tries to exercise her valid and religious right to choose a mate, she is murdered.
Granted these incidents are individual and carried out by misguided people, but when you add everything together, the numbers are alarmingly disastrous. These numbers are perhaps the ‘official’ statistics. The dark figure is more likely to be much higher as many such incidents go unreported.
The intent here is not to draw a parallel between two diametrically opposite scenarios, even though the underlying theme in both cases is the same. Getting riled up for one instance and turning a blind eye to the other, to me, is sheer hypocrisy. Why our society as a whole is outraged at one individual incident and seemingly silent on multiple incidents of this nature really strikes me as odd. But then again, it is always about an ‘external enemy’ for us Pakistanis while internal enemies always get to slide here and there.
