Pick up any social media platform if you are in Pakistan and scroll through its feed. The majority of the newsfeed one comes across is littered with heartbreaking information about crime happening out and about its major urban centres and in fact, throughout the country. The new newspaper for many millennials and Gen Z today to generate infotainment is; Facebook about 30%, Youtube 26%, Instagram/TikTok about 18% and a relatively more professional platform Twitter/X about only 12%. It cannot be commendable to depend on infotainment medium for accurate journalism to prevail truly, but despite the concern raised, it is in fact, the majorly relayed resource for our future leaders and youth. What they intake daily has therefore raised massively a searing thought among most 18-25 year olds if the country really is independent after 79 years of British exiting our territories. The most recent mocking take I saw was a post on one such platform contemplating the very reality;
‘Ye bhi you hosakta hai 1947 mein angrezo ko hum se azadi mili ho’ -(Could it have been possible that in 1947 that the British actually got independence from us)- creating a jarring impression of the how barbaric the Pakistani society has become today. Pause here reader, how ill informed and narrow minded of me to vaguely put this on the pakistani ‘society’ – when its the leaders (if we have any politically), political parties, law and enforcement authorities/agencies, elite, upper class, middle and lower middle class who ALL comprise the society. But when we take a quick look of the crimes and heart retching reality that has transgressed in the previous 60 days alone, one cannot but involuntarily shed a tear of the state we have been driven to or numbed down to as civilians. In fact the very word civilians is also dystopian to describe a Pakistani, even more so a Karachiite. Home to nearly 260 million people (As per 2025 stats), the country is trying to raise a soft image by inviting tourists, but the very people that constitute its real demographic are lost in their identity and footing as a result of the unsaid totalitarian authority that lurks in the shadows of anyone who dares to question its existence or power. In the book ‘1984’-by George Orwell, he paints an antagonist Big Brother who is an ever present, all seeing entity that has such powers to play judge to the inhabitants of Ingsoc, the world in which the protagonist of the story lives and he narrates that nobody has seen the Big Brother but all in the Inner Circle or Party, are people who religiously follow his political idea. They promise a freer new world order idea to the Proles (the common men) and then authorise elimination of anyone who dares to even have any contrary or nuanced thought insemination in their minds, because to know was to be cursed.
Just count in your mind the number of times you have been asked to recall examples of people who have questioned the authorities in Pakistan and what fate they have been led to. From the protestors in Kashmir, who tried to make themselves earn media coverage and marched uptil Rawalkot to make a peaceful presence in the capital, to Lady Mazari trying to make a thought provoking statement online and both getting caught up in the aftermath of being conveniently labelled as anti Pakistani- this is not an individual nor mass targeted campaign of authorities. It is the systematic throat gagging behaviour of the powerful to make sure that they must never be even thought to be challenged, lest the youth may rise up like they have been in the South Asia and South East Asian territories like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and most recently India. Revolution is contagious and can and may spread to the new-found voices emerging in the Pakistani student forces from multiple universities and colleges, but if the age old justice (or injustice) enablers deem them to become uncouth, they have time and again proven how murder, rape, abduction can all be pardoned in broad daylight with synthesized court orders using minor technicalities as major breakthroughs to pin cases against the imploring bench only, making humanity question its very existence as a mere namesake among us. Numerous examples of the same are strewn across media platform like;
The viral story of a Hindu man Premo Kolhi from Umerkot who bravely protected the body of Dr. Shahnawaz Kunbhar, a Muslim physician, was killed by the Sindh police in an extrajudicial “fake encounter” following a highly contentious blasphemy accusation in September 2024; Dr. Mahmood, a physician belonging to the heavily persecuted Ahmadiyya community, was shot and killed in Sargodha amid rising targeted violence against religious minorities in May 2025; Mahrang Baloch, prominent human rights activist, a leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, was detained by police during a peaceful Quetta sit in protest in Mar. 2025 because she was a vocal campaigner against enforced disappearances in Pakistan in March 2025; mob lynching of 23-year-old university student Mohammad Mashal Khan, which took place at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, a price he paid for having progressive ideas and a mind that challenged dogmatism in 2016.
I am approximately a week away from the 79th independence day of Pakistan, and I sit to collect my thoughts of whether we are even independent of everything that we had initially set out to free ourselves from, or did the goons only became brown skinned and harder over the course of half a century and more, did we make Pakistan and loose the Pakistaniyat, the real essence of nationhood, or have authorities partaken to become a dictator state than a nation state which was principally intended. If a few hundred thousand rupees ticket can earn one independence and safety, it can make sense as to why approximately 762,499 Pakistanis left the country for employment abroad, according to official records from the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE). This total includes a significant number of educated youth and skilled professionals, continuing a major brain drain trend driven by local economic and political pressures. But those who can’t or what of those who don’t, by choice, like Mir Raza, the IBA graduate who rose to fame at the age of 25, entrprenuer/owner of Wafflix in Karachi, abducted and tortured to death, exhumed twice for correction in body post mortem, cause of death-still undecided, or suicide ruled. If the British thought we were barbaric, why did our leaders try so hard to prove otherwise, because the tactics may have changed or become sophisticated, but the need is to cleanse the mind or entitlement, eliteness, authoritarianism and narcissistic dictatorial law enforcement still grimly and most definitely remains. Giving agency to nepotism has put a dent on our political and justice system, making our nation a pathologically dimwitted and ill fated to foresee over and over the same type of examples until we are numb to feel any sensation of remorse nor rebellion.
Amidst the 4566 registered cafes across Pakistan, the youth sips overpriced coffee and may discuss overhyped egalitarianism, only to step out in the streets to bear the scorching sun as a result of changing climate, which is another overlooked genre of Pakistani government. What they also bear alongside is the bar of expectations from millennials that if we encourage them enough, then they may revolutionize themselves, and of course they will, as History has proven time and again, if anyone takes action, it’s the most delusional ones, because they firmly believe in an idea, others find delusion in that moment, take Rahmat Ali talking about PAKISTAN as early as 1933. The same youth today has learned a new kind of love, to love the country, and hate the system existing, so that down a few years time, the generation after them, the Gen Alpha need not doubt on every 14th august, whether they are independent or not.
