Another Day, Another Shrapnel

Shall we do something other than sit in our drawing rooms, sipping illegally purchased booze, while the nation spirals slowly into history's cesspool?

A friend and untiring warrior (you can get to his blog from the links on mine) has sent this:

A young Pakistani student belonging to the Christian faith has posed an interesting question through a petition in the Lahore High Court. The question is: Am I, a Pakistani Christian, equal to a fellow citizen who is a Muslim ?

For those of the readers who missed the news item reported by an English daily, this young student belongs to a low income group, is a practicing Christian and extremely bright. She has been competing to get into the King Edwards Medical College, but was beaten on the list by 20 marks, by a Muslim student who got the extra 20 marks for being Hafiz-e-Qur'an. So, this young Christian girl has filed a plea in the Lahore Court declaring that she and the Muslim student had equal marks but the latter got the advantage of religion. The young Christian student claims that "this is discrimination against religious minority students and a violation of fundamental rights granted by the Constitution of Pakistan."

The petition, admitted by the Lahore High Court, demands that either the LHC should rule to abolish the policy or declare that a parallel policy be made to award twenty additional marks to religious minority students on the basis of their religious knowledge.

Fifty-eight years after the creation of the country to ask such a question through the courts is both tragic and hopeful.

If YOU know someone in the growing network of TV and FM channels, please request them to hold a public debate or a panel discussion on how to combat such idiocy. Even if we accept that the President means well, it is not only his reposibility to put things right and turn the country around into the livable place it once hoped to be.

Move your ass, guys. Before yours gets kicked.