A Nation Destroyed for the Mullahs, by the Mullahs

After the Pahalgam attack, a writer and artist friend of mine remarked:

"India did what Pakistan once only dreamed of—bombing terrorists who pose as Mullahs."

I asked him, "Which Pakistan?"

He replied without pause, "The Pakistan that Lahore once was…"

Back in 1929, Lahore was the cradle of a dream. It was there that the historic call for Poorna Swaraj—complete independence—was made, a defining moment in India's freedom struggle. Lahore, then, was a city of poets, intellectuals, revolutionaries, and cultural icons. It breathed ambition and art. The dream of a free nation took shape in its libraries, cafés, and student circles.

That dream now chokes under the weight of fanaticism.

Post-partition, Lahore became the site of brutal communal riots. The spirit of the city—once elegant and inclusive—was suffocated by waves of xenophobic, Islamic fundamentalism. The dreamers, the reformers, and the liberals vanished, silenced by theocratic ideologues and power-hungry military men masquerading as saviours of Islam.

In the course of history, Pakistan failed three times.

First, it failed when Jinnah couldn't convince the Muslim League to adopt his vision of a liberal Muslim-majority state. His death left a vacuum quickly filled by hardliners who wanted theocracy, not democracy.

Second, it failed when it alienated its own people—treating refugees from Partition as Mohajirs, repressing Baloch aspirations, and neglecting or ruling over the Pashtuns with suspicion and violence. It fractured from within.

The third and perhaps most fatal blow came under General Zia. Backed by Western powers, he institutionalised religious extremism, turning Pakistan into a theocratic state where terror and gun culture became tools of governance. The Pakistan of culture, civility, and romance died then. The Lahore of Ghalib, Bhagat Singh, and Iqbal were finally buried.

What remains today is a state swinging between failed democracy and authoritarian religious (Military) rule. It is no longer governed by the people. It is ruled by the Mullahs, for the Mullahs, and in service of the Mullahs—a primitive, failed Islamic dungeon. On its streets, you'll find more bigoted xenophobes than empowered citizens. Freedom breathes only in the compounds of the military elite or the homes of corrupt politicians. The rest live under fear, dependency, or silence.

My friend, a liberal soul married to a non-Muslim, once dreamed of moving to India, if only to breathe the air of freedom. Now, he says that dream is fading. He sees in today's India the same shadows he once saw creep over Pakistan in the late 1970s—the rise of majoritarianism, cultural policing, and the slow corrosion of pluralism.

"They haven't yet killed the Lahore in me," he says. "But, with the passing of people like me, a nation will breath its last liberal breath and freedom".

Tragic!