Pakistan dazzles man with its diversity, distinct and conspicuous in every aspect, from topography to the climatic conditions, from people to languages and from traits to culture and civilization.
Its topography encompasses the highest snow-covered peaks of the world, beautiful valleys, lush green plains, vast deserts, rampaging rivers and eye-catching lakes. But the striking part is its mountains that continue to rise annually at an average growth of five centimeters! It can be said, however, that in Pakistan, everything grows, but at varying degrees.
Pakistan has a brimming history full of beauty and struggle in the making of a mankind and modern Islamic civilization. Having the distinctive credit of intersecting — uniquely the single-most credit acknowledged globally, whereby — three dominant chains of mountain ranges outside the polar latitudes to form the Pakistani rendezvous.
It is the land of 146 million people with a diversity of races especially in the north — with origins ascribed by some to places as distant as China and modern Yugoslavia. Each has its own culture, dialect and even languages.
But all with the exception of the Kalash — and the minority Christians, Sikh, Hindu & Parsis — are united in their creed, the Islamic faith and the institution it inspires. The distinct majorities of today’s four provinces — Punjabis in the Punjab, Sindhis in Sindh, Baluchis in Balochistan and Pakhtun in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are well known.
The staggering order of Mohenjodaro that attained sudden perfection so soon after the giant strides of Mehr Gahr, had risen, flourished and finally died 1,500 years before Alexander the Great, arrived to debate philosophy with the naked ascetics of Taxila’s renowned university. And the Macedonian ruler himself a 300-year-old memory when traders brought glass from imperial Rome to new Taxila.
The visiting Christian Apostle Thomas wondered at the exhaustive mule trains that staggered in, overloaded with purest silk from China at the end of their frightful journey on the rooftop of the world.
Their route through the Himalayan and Karakoram foothills took them past rocks engraved with edicts from kings enjoining tolerance and respect for the beliefs of others.
With trade flourishing it not only crowned virtually every hilltop or Taxila with monasteries and stupas but also brought the Pakistan caravan many of its most remarkable treasures.
Outstanding too in this proud parade, are the achievements of the Mogul: Their mosque, palaces, fortification, movements, and gardens, the way they used mosaics, glazes, frescos, pietra dura, calligraphy and their exquisite miniature paintings.
This land’s frontiers could almost have been designed by nature to accommodate one nation, what was needed that people of this varied but homogeneous land should be drawn together and given a sense of national and spiritual unity.
And this was done by one man, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the country, who said: “We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral code, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation”.
Pakistan stood the test of time during the last five decades and some of the events like the Afghan war etc. reflect a character and an underlying strength in Pakistan which might otherwise be lost in the kaleidoscope of images that crowd into any portrait of this ever old, ever new land where laughing children still go to school on the back of a clip-clop tonga, sharp-eyed Pathan soldier guard a snow stark frontier, dark-eyed boys with flashing smiles take buffalo to water in a Sindh canal, nomads guide sheep across the corner of a Balochistan desert, Makran coast fishermen wash their nets, and tourist revel in the Arabian Sea.
Everywhere crowd practice their faith and scholars, poets and philosophers propound their theories. On Fridays the faithful attend the prayers in village mosques, that can hold a few score, and at city mosques built for tens of thousands.
Mountain as glorious as Rakaposhi presides over panoramas of incredible beauty and glaciers as storming as Baltoro defy experienced mountaineers. Trekkers stand speechless before the glory of Baltistan Lake and tourists stand mute in the eye-catching evenings nights of Rohi (Cholistan). Further south, farmers irrigate fields, men mine salt and coal, city folk in shalwar-kameez enter offices and craftsmen seek perfection in the making of pottery, work and silk fabric.