Dearest Ali Jinnah,
This morning, I woke up and read the headline which struck me with awe. For a while, I did not know how I could process the news so I looked up in the sky and tried to speak to god whom, I do not exactly believe in.
If he does exist, I think he is a big fan of irony.
Over the years, I have been accused of being an atheist and what not, and it sometimes troubles me to see people look past my knowledge of our collective god’s universe.
They seem to be more interested in matters that are personal in nature but disregard my work which could benefit them all, as a whole.
When I read about your Two-Nation Theory, I couldn’t help but laugh. Not out of mockery but out of pity.
Pakistan is a young nation, probably not even a year old. I am disappointed that you could not see beyond religious connotations.
As a student of science, I see no potential for progress within a people who grow up in religious biases.
What you are trying so hard to give to the world, the people are not ready to receive yet. It is a new idea of liberty but they will soon question you in the years to come that why could you not simply propose a simpler idea? One which did not concern their personal god.
They call me all sort of things simply because I refuse to use god as a personal tool. I believe him to be the one who is for nature and that nature is for him.
We are not separate from nature so it would be wrong to believe that we have something personal to expect from him.
Your people right now see you as a saviour but in a few years’ time, they will start to call you all sort of things, as well.
A radical.. an extremist.. a confused, religiously misguided man, you are likely to become in their eyes.
The problem is, you are more far-sighted than the people you are fighting for.
I have nothing personal against you or your journey, but I worry that the vision you have presented to your people, it might consume them completely.
It is not enough motivation for a nation to grow intellectually, if you only chant about their freedom in terms of praying freely in mosques, temples or churches.
During this decade, I have also left behind my country to settle here in the United States.
I am not a nationalist, so we may differ, but I heard that you had also left your country.
Anyways, the Germans preached a doctrine which I do not agree with but I feared that their personal war with god might strip me away of my connection to the universe.
If I remained within the walls of Hitler– led Germany, I would have been killed just like many of our brilliant men who never got to live outside their heads and the world remained untouched by their brilliance.
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I do not fear death but I refuse to intermingle with the religiously confused. I believe that it was their personal war with god which they are dragging the entire world into.
Here, in the USA, everyone seems to be living under the illusion of freedom and it is kind of nice. It makes you feel liberated. From their little kids to the older ones, dying men, they chant freedom as if it was their birth-right.
No one questions me about my faith, nor do I question them of theirs. The early Americans were different but they have long discarded their idea of a universal faith and it is so that they are today a free nation in every sense of the word.
The road that you have taken, where your people follow you blindly, they will soon see beyond this and it will hit them when it will be too late.
A state that has no definition of a shared god can never share its successes, fears and failures.
Today, Pakistan is one of few countries in the entire world that came into being in the name of religion; and that fills many with fear.
You are a man who sees not just with eyes, so I am sure you know why they are fearful. They fear the power of misguided people. It could burn the world down and you know it!
I just fear that you may lose an entire breed of good men. Men who have a thirst of knowledge and progress that runs through their veins.
I also fear that they would question one another’s personal god and disregard the one that created them all in image of his own.
You are a good man but you wouldn’t live long enough to see it happen. The people who chant the name of one religion right now, will divide that very religion and it will suffocate the souls of all great men of science, art and even basic theology.
There is so much in my mind but I must cut it short here. I congratulate you on your successful venture.
I am sure your personal god entrusted you with a bigger mission that even I cannot see.
Hopefully, you will remind your people one last time before you leave, that progress is not limited to those who follow a particular faith, but it is also in the hands of the ones that spell god wrong but everything else right.
I hope to meet you up, we may share a cup of tea and I would encourage you to change my mind.
Yours sincerely,
Albert.
(This a fictional piece. The writer is a student of MA-English in National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad. She has created an imaginative correspondence between two great men of human history)
Still not read completely.
But i hope it wil b the rarest piece from the author of the authors.
Well done!