Islam has become useful for politicians. It is being presented to the world as an aggressive, militant, even anti-culture religion. Its Promoters are not concerned with Islamic humanism or the liberalism of medieval Arab scholars or Iranian and Indian poets and Sufis. But there are other encouraging signs. Purdah has more or less disappeared, girls are taking up careers and some have become high-ranking officers in the medical corps of the defence forces. Going abroad for higher education has become the norm for young women. What I find odd, though, is how upper-class women, the Begums, have taken to ballroom dancing en masse! I don’t think we realise what a terrible world our generation inherited from our parents. Look at the situation today, in 1956. When a young Muslim man graduates from an Indian university he comes over to Pakistan and becomes a pilot or a member of the civil service. He believes that even if he were to appear for the Competitive Examinations of the Indian Civil Service, he would not be selected. In other words, the demoralised Indian Muslims must continue paying the price for Pakistan, even though most of them had nothing to do with its creation.