Just as I was about to click, a rickshaw got in front of the sign. I motioned the rickshay wala to move to a side if possible and in his innocence, he sat up front and made a seriously cute pose. After I had taken the picture, he asked me if I could show it to him. Unfortunately, the signal went green and I had to go. But dear rickshay walay stylo bhai , I am posting this picture here in the hopes that it gets viral and you can see it someday.

It seems as if every hour is a rush hour in Lahore these days. At around noon today, I got stuck in traffic near Barkat market with a friend. We were waiting for the signal to go green when I noticed this eloquent display of a emotions at the back of a car. I was discussing the possibility that the driver may be the desi version of Schwarzenegger, threatening the evil drivers of Lahore, promising a return in case  they refuse to follow the course set by him.

When suddenly another explanation crossed my mind according to which, “I Will Back” was perfectly grammatical. This was when the car started backing up…

and I insist that 2.3 miles is not that long a distance….

So I present to you below my “eid gift to the nation”. It’s a quick hack which retrieves the latest headlines from a news feed and appends the phrase above at the end. I was rather surprised at how simply we can generate sarcasm. From a linguistic point of view,  that’s rather neat considering humour generation isn’t really a forte well explored yet.

Disclaimer: This is purely an academic exercise. The news text is modified by the computer and does not reflect my personal opinion.
Update: I’m changing the script a bit for the 65th Independence Day. Will change it back for Eid, I promise

(you can take a look at where he lived in Cambridge here)

The idea is to make the script generic enough to handle new hashtags and words whenever they come up.  So the URL http://chaoticity.com/replacemoviewith/?q=Samosa&h=ReplaceMovieTitlesWithSamosa will replace a random noun (or another word) with Samosa and the hashtag #ReplaceMovieTitlesWithSamosa would be added to the tweet text. You can try this tool by clicking on the image below.

Tweet away!

According to statistics, more than 44% of the migrants and temporary workers from Pakistan reside in GCC countries. Since these countries do not allow permanent citizenship, UK and US are the only remaining countries which host a majority of the Pakistani expats, i.e. around 24%. Some of these Pakistanis hold a dual citizenship as well.

One argument given by many proponents of allowing the dual nationals to hold public offices is that any dual national is as much a citizen of Pakistan as any other Pakistani. “Why don’t you trust the dual nationals?”, they ask. Let’s try to examine what this trust requires in terms of official oaths and allegiances which some countries demand from their citizens. I’ll focus on the oaths of UK and US only but the argument presented here can be extended to other countries well.

The oath of allegiance required for being a US citizen starts off with this text:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; …

It is quite clear that any Pakistani national who recites this oath would have to renounce his allegiances to Pakistan (I assume here of course that a good person won’t lie under oath, would he?).

The UK counterpart oath contains:

… on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors according to law.

In the accompanying pledge, the new citizen is required to declare their “ loyalty to the United Kingdom”. While the UK version is much milder and does not demand the refutation of any prior fidelity, both oaths force us to ask some fundamental questions. What does the word ‘allegiance’ mean? What is ‘loyalty’? How are these ideas interpreted by the dual nationals who may represent the Pakistani citizens?

Although answers to these critical questions may require a deep dive in the murky waters of semantics, etymology or even philosophy, there is very little chance in the today’s world that anyone can hold similar but conflict-free allegiances towards two different countries. There have been many incidents in the recent past where policy decisions of Pakistan were not in line with those of US or UK. It would also be naïve to assume that we cannot expect such political bifurcations to occur in the future.

Realistically speaking, we cannot claim that Pakistan has really been free of foreign influences since its inception. With the advent of media providing real time news at a click — be it on the mouse or the TV remote — it is very difficult for any country or even any individual to live without any direct or indirect influence from a decision taken outside their local boundaries. The world is affecting things around us and to keep our eyes closed is no longer an option. This has forced many people into an honest introspection about their identity and allegiances in the context of multiple nation states. More and more dual nationals have to face such questions every year as they line up to take these oaths at citizenship ceremonies. It is no doubt more difficult to answer them if you are a public representative in one of your countries of citizenship.

According to the constitution of Pakistan, the oath taken by a member of parliament states that they will “bear true faith and allegiance to Pakistan”. Although not holding a dual nationality does not imply that a representative will have this allegiance, its presence does, however, point towards the highly probable consequence that the people of Pakistan may end up electing an individual who needs to clearly explain his ideological stance. Taking a more logical approach, there are two binary variables are at play here. Assuming that the definitions of allegiance and loyalty are quite near in the concept space, there are only four possible outcomes.

1. The individual is loyal to neither Pakistan nor the other country.

2. The individual is not loyal to Pakistan but is loyal to the other country.

3. The individual is loyal to Pakistan and not the other country.

4. The individual is loyal to Pakistan as well the other country.

The first two options are against the Pakistani oath. The latter two are against the oaths of the other country. Assuming that the people of Pakistan do not want any such individual to represent them who is confused about his own oaths, it can get rather difficult to find a way out of this. If there is, however, an interpretation which allows for a resolution of this fundamental conflict or determines a priority of loyalties when two conflicting ones are at play, the public has a right to know about it.