[DAWN] WHEN I insist before my students that they are part of the ’Zia generation’, some of them cringe. But it is true. Ours is a country in which the vast majority of the population -- there are approximately 120 million Paks under the age of 30 -- was born into a society that had been transformed by 11 years of brutal dictatorship.Religion has been instrumentalised by all of Pakistain’s rulers -- even before the inception of the country. But the Zia years marked a politicisation of religion without precedent. The ’Zia generation’ grew up in a heavily ’Islamised’ world in which most progressive traditions were pushed completely to the margins of society.
When the events of 9/11 forced Pak officialdom to publicly renege on its long-term policy of patronising religiously inspired militancy, the societal contradictions to which this policy had given rise were laid bare. Hatred and (structural) violence is today commonplace. Mashal Khan’s brutal lynching at the hands of his fellow students was only the latest example of how pervasive Zia’s legacy is.