The Dawn of Freedom By Zahra Mughis

“Greetings! Pakistan Broadcasting Service! We are speaking from Lahore. The night between the thirteenth and the fourteenth of August, year forty seven, it is twelve o’clock. Dawn of Freedom!” The words were exactly the same but the language was our national as well as the Lingua Franca, Urdu; the voice that echoed was of none other than Mustafa Ali Humdani; the words had never fallen on my ears until a few weeks back though. I found a video on the internet which was a recording from an Independence Day transmission on the national television some years ago, perhaps decades. My forefathers left their house in East Punjab and took a train to their home and now my home, Pakistan, after good fifteen odd nights of this declaration of independence. My forefathers took as much pride in nationalizing themselves as Pakistanis as I do myself. The air would have been charged with sentiments of triumph, a victory, there would have been emotions swelling to vent with tears and prayers yet the night was dark and the shadow of which has only grown on us! Was it really a dawn of freedom?

Nations aren’t dirt, they aren’t doctrines of necessity, but people and cultures instead. No generous emperor made a grant to our forefathers, this land wasn’t a gift out of courtesy but a hard earned prize, yes a gift to this generation of mine and the many to come indeed. The struggle for independence is a tale of devotion, steadfastness, faith and belief and more, it is a saga of revulsion, hatred, rage, terror, fright, bloodshed, slaughter, genocide and… sacrifice. The journey thereafter is an account of injustices and doctrines of necessity and self-satisfying righteousness yet a chronicle of ambition, pride, sacrifice and patriotism. The shackles of slavery were cracked broken almost seven decades ago even so, have we liberated? We were conquered subjects of an imperial colonizer before there rose a rebellion lead by an ideology of equality, justice and rights for all and after its triumph in carving out a new state on the face of this planet we are nothing but prisoners of a system of injustice, incompetence, corruption, nepotism, fraud and oppression and the ones ruling our destinies worse than any tyrant emperor are our countrymen whom have been allegedly elected as the representatives of our own will; are they really?

The night before the dawn of August the fourteenth in the year two thousand and fourteen was another night when the air in Lahore echoed with chants of Long Live Pakistan with resolution of earning freedom from the domination of our own people the legitimacy of whose rule is a question itself. Citizens of this very land had their voices run currents through the air protesting against injustice and demanding their rights, much a rebellion lead by an ideology of equality, justice and rights for all. The dawn in Lahore was painted green and white with a red tint which was not much ignorable so the mention is mandatory; waving flags, resonating chants, slogans of the land’s glory and the declaration of support to an ideology. The culmination of the struggle that commenced that morning, in the headship of a man whose persona on the sporting fields and philanthropy would be nothing less than symbolism of heroism in any nation’s history –Imran Khan, is nothing less than a revolution in itself. Who before those hundred and twenty six days questioned the legitimacy of a hiked indirect tax, showed interest in annual budget, realized the importance of a form fourteen or googled the Omer’s law?

The story hereafter shall unfold how, is the decision that resides with solely us, the people of this Land of the Pure. When a nation submits to oppression and the dominance of the elites and aristocrats with vested interests, it is stripped of its freedom and its rights. Freedom is justice, equality, equity, rights, independence and sovereignty; a land without these is nothing but a worthless dominion and a land with these is a free country. When a nation is built it earns freedom. When this nation of ours shall rise to glory and earn its true freedom and stand liberated of the evils ruling it for now and sovereign of all the forces termed external, there shall be a Dawn of Freedom; we shall truly live the Pakistan Dream then.

by webmaster@insaf.pk (tkiadmin)