This is the country that puts religion on its passport.[DAWN] Who would have thought that an agriculture university situated in the leafy, quiet and serene environs of Tando Jam, just outside Hyderabad, Sindh, is doling out degrees with the religion of the holder mentioned on the uppermost section of the document?
Can someone explain what could be the logic behind such obvious chauvinism? This is a country where 98 per cent of the population adheres to one religion. Why then should there be any reason to wear our faith on our sleeve? And this too in a province where most of the Paks practising the Hindu faith reside. As if attacking their places of worship and kidnapping and forcibly converting their girls were not enough, we also want to stamp their religion on their academic degrees? Unlike our Christian brothers and sisters who sometimes take up Moslem names ‐ not that it saves them from any form of discrimination ‐ Paks of Hindu faith usually don’t even do that and their names are sure giveaways for any type of bias that the society wants to mete out to them. It becomes all the more pertinent to ask, why then this need to put a scholar’s religion on her degree? Why?
Pakistain enjoys a unique feature. It is perhaps the first country in human history to have been created on the basis of a religious identity. The other such example is Israel. Surrounded by even more real, imagined or provoked-into-enmity foes than Pakistain, does the ’Zionist entity’ go to the extent of putting religion on the degrees its academic institutions give out? At least an internet-based search did not throw up anything to suggest that. What about Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
? There has been a systematic attempt by certain quarters in our country to emulate the kingdom in as many ways as possible. Does Saudi Arabia put religion on the certificates it bestows upon students successfully completing their degree courses? Again, at least a web search does not suggest so. The same goes for Iran, which does not display religion on academic degrees.
Why should this hang around our necks like an albatross? One does not want to judge anyone too harshly. Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that the Tando Jam University is guilty only of neglect and not of premeditated malice. Maybe it’s just an oversight, the oft-cited ’holy manal error’ that has gone under the radar so far. If that be the case, it should not be so difficult to correct the mistake and erase this embarrassment for the land whose inhabitants are the heirs of Bhitai and Sachal. After all, it is the riot of colour in the patchwork of rilli that makes it beautiful.