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Our homeland is on the river side of Torghar district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Urban or plains people may not arrive at the correct meaning of “riverside” in this case and say that between Shangla and Mansehra there is also a high mountain that is black in color. If you look at it from Google Earth, it is the only mountain in the entire area that is black in color. It is a fertile and green mountain like other mountains in this region, but it’s rocks are deep black and the soil is also black. Accordingly, it is called Torghar, which means “black mountain”. On the left side of this mountain is its southern slope, while on the right side is the valley in which the river Indus flows. Both these sides of the mountain are Torghar district, but if the people of one side want to meet the people of the other side, they have to travel a long way and circumambulate this mountain. The kind of roads that you see on the mountains of Kashmir, Murree, Swat, Chitral, etc., that have crossed the mountain at a very high altitude, there is not a single one on this mountain. As if these two sides of this district are practically cut off from each other.
The situation of facilities on both sides of this same district has been exactly the same as in West and East Pakistan. Or which may be between Lahore and any backward district of Balochistan. The reason for this is that initially, this area was a part of the Hazara district. Since only its southern part was within reach of Mansehra and Abbottabad, all facilities including roads, schools, colleges, hospitals and electricity were available here. For the so-called democratic leaders of this country, it is a point of drowning in the water that the dirt road was built for the first time in the entire valley on the river side of Torghar during the reign of General Ziaul Haq by the then Governor General Fazal Haq in 1985. This road was supposed to be paved regularly, but after the martyrdom of General Zia, both Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif kept this project closed. Obviously, this road was also given the status of “Zia’s Remnants”. The fate of this ill-fated road woke up when the next dictator came to power in the country. Thus, during the reign of General Musharraf, this road tasted the taste of tar for the first time.
If you are thinking that you have seen the full face of the injustice of our democratic members in relation to this area, then the movie is still pending, my friend. What we are now going through to tell you about indifference and callousness will become clear to you. Tarbela Dam has been constructed on the Indus river flowing on the north side of Torghar district. The lake of this dam reaches sixty to seventy kilometers in this valley in peak time. As if the lands submerged in this dam belong to the northern valley of Torghar. When this dam was completed, the electricity generated by it reached the coast of Karachi only in the 70s. But do you know when the first electric lamp was lit in this unfortunate valley? Illuminated in 2004. And this supply of electricity was also made possible by our fourth dictator General Musharraf. As if bulbs, electric fans, refrigerators, TVs, and other electronic items arrived in this valley for the first time in 2004. Here, during the reign of General Fazal Haq, three rooms were built in different places. It was thought that they had something to do with the road project, but long after the project was closed, it was discovered that these were the first primary schools in the area. These empty rooms were used for the livestock of the influential people of the respective villages. During the period of General Musharraf, it was found that teachers have been appointed for these schools. But his form was seen only occasionally. While the principal word is yet to be included in Tor Ghar’s dictionary. If you climb the dictionary, this entity will also appear one day.
At one time, Torghar and Butgram were part of the Mansehra district. Then this district was divided into two parts to form Batgram district. A serious joke was played on us that only 25 km from Torghar was the headquarters of district Batgram. But instead of being made a part of Batgram district, we were made a part of Mansehra, located at a distance of one hundred and ten kilometers. As if when we had to go to our district headquarters, we would pass through the center of the district headquarters of Batgram district, which is only twenty-five kilometers away, and reach our district headquarters by traveling another 80 kilometers. But may God reward Baba Haider Zaman for raising the movement of Hazara province during the period of Yusuf Raza Gilani. Torghar is a 100% Pashtun area. And also the area whose riverside valley is called “Homeland of Yousafzai Tribe”. All four sub-branches of the Yousafzai tribe settled here for centuries. So the Hazara province movement was an alarm bell for us. This movement was started at a time when the provincial government was of ANP. So our people immediately informed this government that we are Pashtuns and part of us is from Mansehra district which is the stronghold of Hindi-speaking people. So we should be separated from this district immediately. Otherwise, if Hazara province becomes a serious matter, our status in this imaginary province will be nothing more than a minority. The Chief Minister of that time, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, tried to do this and luckily, Mr. Zardari was the President of Pakistan who was aware of the problems of small provinces and small nations. So, almost overnight in 2011, we were separated from Mansehra district and given a permanent identity as Torghar district.
Huh! We made a mistake. We should have thanked the rioters of Swat before Baba Hyder Zaman but did not remember. Thanks to them, our area was not running since the establishment of Pakistan. Since the government did not bother to build a road there, it was an inaccessible area. Laws, judges, police stations, and jails did not exist there. Even after the road was paved during the Musharraf era, there was no police, police station etc. In other words, this area was different. So when the operation started in Swat, rioters came here to take shelter. Thus, the government thought that the status of this area must be changed. Soon, law enforcement was established by arranging the police here. And after the formation of the district, the situation started to improve. So we are very sure that if Baba Hyder Zaman and Swat miscreants were not active, we would still be invisible today. So we are grateful to both these forces.
Now let’s come to the point that this detailed background was necessary to explain. From this whole background, you must have guessed that during the developed period, this riverside of Torghar district has been almost in the stone age. The situation of education in this very backward area was that until ten or fifteen years ago, one of the responsibilities of the Maulvi Sahib of every village was to read the letter to him and then write the reply letter. . But there is news about this area which you may not have heard even once in 75 years. You must have never heard the news that “Indus River has caused havoc in Torghar”.
In summer and especially in monsoon, its roar dominates the entire valley. And believe it, the one who sees it is really mesmerized by it. If it does not harm humans in this district, there is only one reason. And that is the “ignorance” of the people of this district because they are ignorant, but they have been living on the banks of the river for centuries, so their awareness is that it is not right to take part in the river in summer. This is the result of their ignorance that there is not a single village or building in the entire valley that the river can reach even in the worst flood situation. The village is located at least 1000 meters above the river. But we think this situation will change after fifteen or twenty years. Because now education is coming here. We always discuss the positive effects of education. If we had discussed its negative effects like Rousseau, then we would have written a paper of the type that education has brought less benefit and more harm to man.
So we clearly see that when our education in this area will have its full impact, then people will think why not promote tourism in this area? When they start it will be the first priority to set up a row of hotels and restaurants right on the banks of the river. So that tourists can go down to the river just ten steps away from their room. If the Swat River, which is much lower than the Indus River, has wreaked havoc, it is only because knowledge of Swat had reached our region much earlier. It is the result of education that there is a lot of illegal encroachment on the river Swat. Were it not for these encroachments, the situation in the Swat River would have been the same in today’s history as it is in our district of the Indus River. As soon as it leaves our district, it enters the districts which are educated, so it wreaks havoc there too.
Lilla will now say that illegal encroachments are not the result of education but corruption. You cannot deny the fact that corruption on a catastrophic scale is possible only through the power of education. Otherwise, the people of our district are neither angels nor saints. They also do corruption. But the corruption of ignorance has the same status in front of the mega-corruption of education as it does in front of the river of drops. The main point to understand is that man is a very deadly creature in his psychological structure. Mankind has not been able to discover anything other than a law to keep it under control. If the law is not enforced, education will make it more destructive. It will be more difficult to contain the destruction it will cause to the strength of education. You see that the American nation is the most educated nation in the world. Since the United States is not under the control of any international law, but the international laws are under its control, the result is that it has shed the most human blood in the last 200 years. So, for a society free from the rule of law, education has no meaning except destruction.