I joined LCGG in 1961 along with my brother Jehanzeb and I must say that those were probably the most memorable years of my life. What Ayaz Amir writes is interesting but here is my question. Would things be any different in Pakistan if there was no Lawrence College or Aitchison College? I mean none of the people who have ruled Pakistan since it’s inception i.e, from Liaqat Ali Khan, Ghulam Mohammed, Iskandar Mirza, Gen. Ayub Khan, Gen. Yahya Khan, ZA Bhutto, Maulvi Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir, Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, Asif Ali Zardari, Yusuf Raza Gillani and so on were Gallians or Aitchisonians. The real problem of Pakistan’s downward slide lies with the ‘cultural and ritualistic baggage’ in this part of the world. Because of this ‘heavy weight’ most inhabitants here are tethered to strange beliefs inclusive of submissive behavior and self-pity. This is a complex region of Hindu rituals intertwined with Islamic teachings. People here actually visit mazars, graveyards and other place where the dead are buried and cry and bang their heads for favors from the dead. I am not questioning someone’s beliefs but just stating facts. People here place more emphasis on ‘form’ and less on ‘function’. People here think that if you pray long enough and appease the right ‘dead or alive’ people through offerings and prayers, your troubles will go away. Basically, the idea of prayers for solving problems has been etched in citizen’s minds from their very childhood. The idea of ‘work, invention and innovation’ to solve problems is quite foreign to people of this region as it is not taught. This explains why in the past 500 years, not a single thing that we use today has been invented here. Yes, not a single thing – from tooth brush, eyeglasses, tooth paste, bicycle, clothing looms, electricity, light bulbs, watches, clocks, gasoline engines, printing press steam engines, airplanes, jets, rockets, sub-marines, cars, motorbikes, telegraph, telephones, wireless and cell-phones, photography, computers, printers, electric fans, refrigerators, washing machines, fertilizers, pesticides, aspirin, coca-cola, pepsi-cola, television, movies, digital cameras, solar cells, radar, guns, anticeptic, antibiotics, modern medicine, and hundred’s of other things that we use in our daily lives –all were invented where people worked as hard as they prayed – in other words, there was more emphasis on function and less on form. So, what I am saying is that if Lawrence College or Aitchison College had not even existed, nothing would have been different. Pakistan would have been in the same mess as we are now in. But I surely would have missed out on the wonderful memories that LCGG gave me.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 06:04:56 +0000
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