"Havas-e-luqmae-tar khaa gaee lahjay ka jalaal"

The above line from Iftikhar Arif has been buzzing in my mind ever since I read that the government has retracted its original decision to remove the 'Religion' column from passports.

Such yo-yo behaviour is increasingly becoming the norm of the government. It happens in the face of the slightest noise made by those who make a mockery of people's beliefs by using religion as a tradeable commodity.

I wonder how this about-face fits in with the soft image of an enlightened, moderate nation. Will the staff at the Passport Office be able to recognize the names of all of the world's religions, should someone genuinely belong to a lesser known belief system? I asked 5 people in an upper-middle-class restaurant today if they knew who or what a Jain was. (I only mention the socio-economic factor to give you an idea of the probable level of education of the customers). I got 3 "don't knows", one - a young teenager - said "a sort of Buddhist", and one offered a helpful "first-door-on -your-left-in-the-corridor" (though I admit that the place was very noisy.) So that doesn't seem promising.

But, then, will we be forced choose from a predetermined drop-down menu, as it were? Once again, who decides what the offerings on the menu are? What if the religion is not recognized here but is accepted as one elsewhere? I mean Scientologists have been asking for such a recognition in places and may even be granted the status in some country some day. So what happens if a Pakistani adopts the new religion? (I am talking of non-Muslim Pakistani, naturally ... since it's hardly worthwhile for a Muslim to risk a murtid's fate: Best to remain hypocritical. It fits with the mainstream). He now wishes to place that on his passport.

The staff I encounter in the passport office (or in any government office) hardly seem intelligent or educated enough for such a task. Of course, the MMA could be asked to give them a crash course in skewed viewpoints. I can foresee several delightful repeats of the time Bertrand Russell was sent to prison during World War I for opposing the war. The jail warden asked the customary questions of Russell: Name, Age, Place of Residence. Then he inquired, "Religious Affiliation?" ... "Agnostic," Russell replied. The poor man looked up, "How do you spell that?" Russell spelled, "agnostic" for him. The warden wrote the word carefully on the prison admission form, and then sighed, "Oh well! There are a great many sects, but I suppose they all worship the same God."

Anyway, I guess it's too late to hope for another swing of the yo-yo, so the stupid, unreasonable, anti-human_rights column in the passport is probably here to stay. But I hope better sense will prevail by allowing one to write 'Undeclared'? Surely (well, perhaps in this country, not-so-surely) I should have the right to withhold the public declaration of my faith (except when necessary for very specific reasons: marriage, inheritance, legal rights, entry into a place of worship) on the grounds that it could endanger my life or create a bias in the mind of a prospective employer, or, more realistically, in the 'whatever-passes-for-a-mind' of an immigration officer in the US of A.