For a poor country, a Nobel Prize under its belt is something to be proud of- perhaps its greatest achievement. There is no greater platform for worldwide recognition and appreciation than the Prestigious Nobel Prize, which has become a symbol of success in various fields ranging from science, politics and humanities.
For a poor country, a Nobel Prize under its belt is something to be proud of- perhaps its greatest achievement. There is no greater platform for worldwide recognition and appreciation than the Prestigious Nobel Prize, which has become a symbol of success in various fields ranging from science, politics and humanities. To be in the same list as Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa would normally arise a sense of joy in most people but welcome to Pakistan, a land where we hate our Nobel Prize winners.
As a nation, our priorities are extremely jumbled up. It is not very important to us that a Pakistani physicist contributed a great deal in the research of the Higgs-Boson particle but it does matter which sect he belongs to. Even if that physicist was one of the best in what he did, he did not deserve our appreciation because we disagreed with him on religious grounds. Wonderful. Wasn’t it a great idea to desecrate his grave and remove the world ‘Muslim’? After all, he was the first Nobel Prize winner of Pakistan, the only one at the time and he was to be treated accordingly.
It is ironic to see history repeat itself. This time our victim, our Nobel Prize winner is not a middle-aged male physicist but a teenage girl who was shot in the head by terrorists because she advocated women’s right to an education. You must be thinking, there’s no way we can turn this story into something controversial, after all a young Pakistani girl is shot just for wanting to go to school, is it even possible to demonize this victim? Welcome to Pakistan. Dubbed as a CIA agent, Taliban agent, British agent, NWO agent, freemason agent, ISI agent, Raw agent, Hollywood agent, Mossad agent, in short the agent of all things we deem unattractive, the seventeen-year-old victim of a gunshot in the head, Malala Yousafzai. What was she thinking? That we would love her after she wanted to go to school? After she was shot in the head? Yes we do have our own sisters who go to school in a completely safe environment but how dare she raise her voice in Swat against the Taliban. She, therefore, must be an agent but only her, not our sisters who go to school.
The whole story boils down to one point. Most of the Pakistani’s who get recognized in the western world are despised in Pakistan in one-way or the other. For us, too much mingling with non-Pakistani’s or non-Muslims is just not cool. It doesn’t matter that Pakistan couldn’t care less about Physics or education for women or education in general. What matters to us that we still sing the same songs of our forefathers praising the holy land we call home, even if bloodthirsty terrorists have openly called for our murder and we have already been shot.
Perhaps the reason politicians fool the masses so easily are that they continuously use old rhetoric of patriotism and religiosity to disillusion our citizens further. If you ask any leader about their contribution to the development of their people as a whole, they probably wouldn’t even understand the question and quickly mumble up a sound political, idealistic answer, which they know, is not true. Why do we allow ourselves to be blinded by conspiracy theories and forget who the real heroes are? The scientist who contributed to the collective knowledge of the world is our hero, not the politicians who would sacrifice anything for power. The teenage girl who stood up for all the women in Pakistan is our hero. Congratulations to the youngest Nobel Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai, we are proud of you. And for those who aren’t, please refrain from derogatory comments towards her, she’ just a little girl after all.
