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Syed Mahmood’s Campaign Report published in our last issue comes as a stunning eye opener. It breeds optimism and hope. It is also a pointer to certain disquieting trends in the community.

With a modest budget of $ 57,000 - contrasting with the more than half a million dollars at the disposal of his main opponent to run his campaign - Syed was able to win 23,365 votes, approximating 22.2 per cent of the total. He finished ahead of three contestants and only the incumbent, Fortney Pete Stark, polled more votes than Syed. Not a bad going.

His candidature was endorsed and supported by the ruling Republican Party. The GOP decision provides a fresh proof that there is room in the American political system for people of all shades and opinion, of all colors and creeds, who have the desired leadership qualities to represent an electoral group. One expects that after Syed, other members of the community would venture forth and make a bid for a debut in Congress. With greater community participation who knows we could have members of the community airing our concerns and views about various issues at Capitol Hill.

Syed’s participation in the November 5 elections makes one point amply clear: He could have done better if the Pakistan-American community had been more actively involved in his campaign and had not stood nonchalantly at the sidelines. The event exposes the fractious nature of the Pakistani Americans and furnishes irrefutable proof of their glaring failing to support an American of Pakistan origin whose candidature had been formally endorsed by the ruling Republican Party. Even those who clamor for constitutional righteousness at Islamabad looked the other way when it came to supporting a candidate of their own.

Given the fact that the lot of the Pakistanis living in the US and Pakistan is closely intertwined, one wonders if the Pakistani Americans are prepared to face the challenge posed by the powerful Indian caucus in Washington. Which brings us to the all-important issue of assessing the strength of the Pakistani-American community - an exercise done in these columns before. First, the complexion of the Pakistan community in the United States. There are those who make it to the new world in search of a better life - those who work in dingy factories or corporate ventures and are content with sputtering a few incoherent words of American English, a sub-standard, pedestrian form of language in such workplaces with funny usages, and worse, funnier accents and pronunciations, to qualify for a vehicle of scholarship of higher learning.

One must unreservedly thank the US academic and high-tech advances and their corporate spin-offs that make up for the misplaced stress on syllables which is jarring and more than a trifling annoyance on one’s ears. Such Pakistanis, or Pakistani Americans as they pride on being called, have two obsessions: to loathe everything that is Pakistani and to praise anything that is American. The razzle-dazzle of posh American malls impresses them, rather than the inspirational vision of America’s founding fathers which find a vivid manifestation in the dynamism of Cornell, Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Brown, Dartmouth, Woodworth, Columbia and Harvard. They miss the finer values and essential features of this great country, features that accord the United States of America the enviable status of being the world’s only super power deserving the best superlatives for its strivings in challenging fields.

Then there are those Pakistani Americans who have obtained higher education and struck gold in an entrepreneurial undertaking - wealth quite disproportionate to their academic or personal attainments - and who have generously and laudably contributed to community causes. Yet their corporate-tinged outlook lacks the perspicacity of the visionaries of Aligarh where the two-nation theory took shape and led to the creation of Pakistan, or the bright minds of Hyderabad where Urdu, a cultural entity of pre- and post- independence Muslims, was religiously accorded the status of medium of instruction to strengthen the Muslim identity. English did not suffer in that great seat of culture and learning, where the quintessence of both, testifies to the richness of the past and a commitment to the future.

And if individual vision is to be cited, the name of Dr. I H. Usmani spontaneously comes to mind who as early as the 1960s drew the blueprints of a nuclear power program for Pakistan. Thanks to his foresight and the establishment of centers of excellence like the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) - described as ‘best of both the worlds’ by TIME magazine - Pakistan succeeded in joining the exclusive nuclear club, and, more recently, in warding off Indian military adventurism.

Another visionary who deserves to be mentioned here is Professor Abdus Salam who not only won the coveted Nobel Prize but, more importantly, set up the UN International Center of Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and acted as a one-man multinational corporation busily transferring intellectual technology to the less developed countries of the world. “Salam’s strength is that he believes that miracles are possible provided one goes out and helps them on their way,” Nigel Calder said of the eminent Pakistani in 1967. It is a pity we don’t have someone quite like him in the community of Pakistani Americans though there are many who are many times richer than him. The inference is obvious: richness of imagination and vision impacts the social scene rather than opulence and abundance of money.

And that explains why the singular obligation of the affluent business class of Pakistani Americans to the community is restricted to the construction of buildings. But do bricks and mortar create institutes pulsating with the creative impulse? And can schools established by the rich for the children of the rich be anything other than a self-defeating exercise? How many Pakistanis can afford to send their children to the Islamic schools set up by the community’s philanthropists?

One may ponder the serious question: Are the more affluent among us conscious of the obligation thrust upon the community in the post-9/11 period? The Muslims took, and continue to take, a terrible bashing at the hands of the media because their own press was too fragile, nay, almost non-existent. Has anyone - any one - done anything to support the fledgling Pakistani and Muslim media? Barring exceptions, our papers continue to be mere rags and TV programs a theatrical portrayal of our strivings. A sorry spectacle resulting from the indifference of the community’s well-to-do ignoramuses.

Finally, there is the younger generation - the ABCDs (American Born Confused Desis) aping the Amisha Patel-Hirthik Roshan duo and merrily humming “Dil mera milnae ko beqarar hae, Kaho na piyar hae, Kaho na …” as they dash on the criss-crossing freeways to and fro schools. The more extrovert among them dote on Jennifer Lopez and Jay Leno or fancy the characters of Practice and Charm. Earning grades and counting units, they seem to drift listlessly while yearning for an intellectually stimulating environment that could lend meaning to the newly found Pakistani-American identity with a wholesome Pakistani imprint.

In his address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on May 26, 1950, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first prime minister, paid a glowing tribute to the American nation: “... I have been surprised at the capacity of the Americans to question themselves and their own actions. This is a new and most refreshing symptom of greatness in the modern age…” Pakistani Americans should imbibe this trait and march forward. They have the potential and promise to reach new heights. A dynamic community, they can surely make their mark in the United States of America in more ways than one.