A Polite Reply
Former Mr.Pakistan, Mr.Karachi and Mr.Sindh Atif Anwer won Arnold Classic “over 100 kg class” title in Australia. PAK MMA Team congratulates Mr. Atif on having this honor.
I would like to start by saying congratulations to Atif Anwer. He has indeed made us proud and in winning such a grandiose competition has given us all hope in this country. We salute you sir, bodybuilding is indeed a great art!
I write this as a polite reply to: ‘How long will our talent have to keep sponsoring itself?’ an article by Shaziya Kazmi:
http://www.dawn.com/news/1171051/how-long-will-our-talent-have-to-keep-sponsoring-itself
This article is a brilliant read. I’d like to thank Shaziya for raising a concern that bothers all of us. It is a shame that our government hardly recognizes any other sport other than cricket and to some extent perhaps hockey. However, I do have a concern that presents itself that I’d like to raise.
To ask the government for help I guess is what got me uncomfortable. Now, I understand that Shaziya was trying to raise a legitimate concern that is our right – access to our tax money to help improve our society through sport, namely. But my problem is that our governments, for the past few decades arguably, are just too unreliable to expect so much of them.
I think we can all agree with the state of affairs of our country that our governments are supposed to be taking care of. Things like education, healthcare and even decent infrastructure that are their domain has not really been taken care of as much as it could have been. The amount wasted in one sector could have easily been enough to support the other, and of course corruption is rampant.
Now this reminder was not to put all of us in shame or a state of hopelessness. We perhaps should learn now that we cannot rely on the government for anything yet when it comes to our sports. Yes, maybe it is in the government’s capacity even now to help in the sports division and we should not falter from constantly nudging them to do so. However, I expect nothing of them until they get their major responsibilities in order. We must develop the sports ourselves. Of course that is needed if we want our respective sports to survive at all currently but there is a point I wish to make very clear, the purpose of writing this article at all.
We must do it ourselves so that we know we CAN do it. We must do it ourselves to know that even though the odds stack against us, we can push on. We must do it for the youths who wish only to improve themselves and without us would have no other avenue to do so. We must do it because when everyone else says that we are wasting our time and will get nowhere, to show that they are wrong. Nothing should get us down or stop us. Remember in the PGC ’15 in February, when the electricity went out? Well, we didn’t stop the fight because we couldn’t see. We got our mobile phone lights on instantly.
I guess what I want to remind us all who have any affiliation with any sport is this: do not expect anything from anyone else but yourselves. We are a nation susceptible to laziness and eager for handouts. But as sportsmen, we should be disciplining ourselves for the opposite. We should be showing others that one cannot lie in wait for greatness to come, and that one doesn’t achieve greatness by holding out one’s hand for ‘recompense’ from society. Allah says in The Holy Quran:
“Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (13:11)
There is no doubt we come across hard times, all the time. Because of this we falter, we seek assistance, we give up. I write this article to tell you that even though you feel society owes you something, which very well might be the case, don’t expect it to deliver. The government may owe us much, but because it doesn’t give our right, we should not slow down. We must still stand for not just ourselves, but for those around us. After all there’s one thing that Shaziya wrote that I 100% agree with, and must be reiterated:
We don’t need the state, the state needs us.
This article has been written by the owner of Coretex – Zubair Asghar. The views expressed in the article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of PAK MMA Team. Anyone interested in writing articles for PAK MMA can send their article at info@pak-mma.com