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Christmas Cognition: |
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writes Anwar Abbas
Is there any other way of paying tribute to Christ and the Quaid, who were both born on Dec 25?
December 25 marks the birth anniversary of the Quaid-i-Azam, the founder of Pakistan. The entire nation will celebrate and pay rich tribute to the Father of the Nation. They will renew their pledge to carry on his mission but it will be a rare person who will be able to recall what was said or resolved the previous day.
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Christmas approaches once again, signifying not merely the end of another year, but what has been for 20 centuries, a time of joy and festivities and thinking of the Prince of Peace. Not just for the Christians but for many other peace-loving people all over the globe. For the Pakistanis, Dec 25 each year is an occasion for celebration, twice over. And yet today the heart does not respond to joy. Is it, I wonder, the hardening of the arteries or the failure of social sensibility? I look into my heart deeply and frankly. It is happening to me and many others like me. Social sensitivity has perhaps become a little sharper. Life is beginning to lose its savour not because one is unable to savour it, but because there is a good deal that is positively unsavoury in it. No decent person can put up with it tamely. One thought that the travails through which we are passing are but the birth pangs of a new social order. That, perhaps, deep below the surface there are rumblings and stirrings of a revolution which will bring better life within the reach of the common man who has lived, in most ages, a life of deprivation. The progress of science and technology gave support to this hope and there were instances of the quickening of the social conscience and of political, social and legislative measures, which aimed at this objective. Perhaps that is still the case. Perhaps in cosmic time things will right themselves. But we neither live in cosmic time nor have cosmic patience and, therefore, feel depressed. Gone is the naive optimism of the generation of H. G. Wells who believed that progress in science and technology would solve most of the world's problems; that international organizations would herald an era of peace in which man will, at last, discover himself as a gentleman; that culture and civilization would spread almost automatically... What a pleasant - but foolish - dream it has turned out to be! Undoubtedly, science and technology have solved many of mankind's most obstinate problems in the field of production, travel, health, knowledge for constructive and destructive purposes. But the fruits of this progress have not been shared at all fairly by the world, which continues to be divided, both nationally and within each nation into the privileged and much larger underprivileged groups. For many of whom all the discoveries and inventions on which we pride ourselves today might as well have never been made. Society and its self-styled leaders have failed in civilizing man into an agent of peace. Beneath the polished exterior, one often finds the beast of the jungle that begins to snarl, at least in a collective setting, whenever the old prejudices are set into motion. You feel quite helpless in the face of the massive, brutal, irrational forces. What will the protest of one person or even a large number of persons matter in this all-pervasive crisis? We do not know, but is there any other way open to men and women of decency, conscience and good will to live at peace and honour with themselves, except to raise the voice of protest and indignation and to declare, whatever the risk, that we do not propose to be annihilated at the behest of irresponsible and unscrupulous persons? That is why we honour those who protest against injustice and violence even when the protest may apparently take 'foolish' forms. Provided the protest is not only against wrongdoings by others but as emphatically against ourselves, whenever our own group, community, country or race is at fault: "Speak the truth even if it is against yourself," says the Holy Quran.
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