06.10.2013

Food for all
Genetically-modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world’s hunger and
malnutrition problems
By Zeeshan Mazhar

The developed world is fast adopting biotechnology in agriculture and the developing world is also trying to catch up. The ever-increasing demand for food and loss in agricultural productivity due to over-cultivation, pest attacks and diseases demand for scientific development of seeds which can take care of these issue.

While countries are opting for genetic modifications in crops, certain anti-biotechnology campaigners in Pakistan are opposing genetically modified (GM) crops on grounds they are not safe and their introduction will create monopoly of big multinationals in agriculture.

They have been alleging that GM crops are ‘untested’ and ‘unsafe’. The fact is that there is no concrete scientific data proving that these crops are not safe for human consumption but there is sufficient scientific data proving that these crops, which are assessed for environmental, food and feed safety by regulatory authorities before being allowed to be grown or sold commercially, are perfectly safe for human consumption.

Regarding their concerns about monopoly of certain seed companies, one can say this debate arises whenever a new technology comes into use and the outdated one has to be discarded. But what happens is that soon after the introduction of a new technology several local and international players enter the market and gives birth to a competitive environment. Why are they going for gene improvement in case of livestock and reluctant when it comes to agricultural production?

All agricultural universities of Pakistan are teaching biotechnology. This means there will be enough expertise soon in the country to challenge monopoly of one or two companies.

There is substantial data available which clearly demonstrates safety and the benefits of the technology to the farmers and environment. Regulators across the world carry out rigorous risk assessment before granting commercial approvals. UN, WHO, FAO, EFSA, Royal Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Medicine, British Medical Association, 25 Nobel laureates (including Norman Borlaug) all concluded that Bt crops are as safe as conventional crops. Billions of meals from genetically modified products are being consumed globally.

Besides, GM food has been safely cultivated and consumed across the world, including tomato, sweet pepper (China), papaya (USA, China), sugarbeet (USA, Canada), corn (16 countries), potato (Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic) and squash (USA). In meeting stringent food safety requirements and standards, biotech foods are among the most thoroughly tested foods available.

No other food crops in history — including foods currently available on grocers’ shelves — have been tested and regulated as thoroughly as have foods developed through biotechnology. After more than 17 years of commercial production and consumption of the foods produced over hundreds of million acres, there are no instances on record where biotech have had negative effect on human health.

In Pakistan, opponents of crop biotechnology often fear that introduction of GM crops would create monopoly of big multinationals. The Bt cotton was first brought in by the farmers through unofficial channels because they thought it was useful for them and the government was too slow in approving the new technology.

Today, there are a number of approved and unapproved varieties of Bt cotton available in the country competing each other in the market. So where is the monopoly fear created by these anti-science lobbies?

The question here is that is it really possible today to fool the farmer? Obviously, it is not. Studies in countries where biotech products have been commercialised have demonstrated that farmers are the major beneficiaries. Technology not beneficial to the farmers can never be successfully marketed anywhere in the world including Pakistan. Farmers always opt for the seeds developed to suit their local agronomic and environmental conditions. They also look out for the fact whether these seeds can bring them substantial benefits in terms of high yields and better crop management.

The government of Pakistan is likely to introduce GM corn shortly. It will have the capability to significantly reduce the losses caused by certain chewing insect pests and weeds and ultimately result in higher production.

In the United States, where 86 per cent of the nation’s corn acreage is planted with biotechnology varieties, average yields in 2010 were roughly 30 per cent higher than the average corn yields prior to 1996 — the year biotech varieties were first planted. In the Philippines, the only Asian country where GM corn has been commercialised, there has been average yield increase of 15 per cent with herbicide tolerant corn while 25 per cent with insect resistant corn.

Above all, genetically-modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world’s hunger and malnutrition problems, and to help protect and preserve the environment by increasing yield and reducing reliance upon chemical pesticides and herbicides. The majority of these benefits continue to increasingly go to farmers in developing countries. The environment is also benefiting as farmers increasingly adopt conservation tillage practices, build their weed management practices around more benign herbicides and replace insecticide use with insect resistant GM crops.

The reduction in pesticide application and the switchover to no-till cropping systems is continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, feeding a world population of 9.1 billion in 2050 will require raising overall food production by 70 per cent (nearly 100 per cent in developing countries).

To meet this challenge, farmers will need to find ways to grow more food more sustainably. Biotechnology has already helped increase food and feed production. For example, biotechnology traits have added 74 million tonnes and 79.7 million tonnes respectively to global production of soybeans and corn since its introduction in 1996. Vitamin A-enriched ‘Golden Rice’, which has been developed by International Rice Research Institute (IRRI-Philippines), is one of the examples of biotech crops that fight malnutrition (Vitamin A deficiency).

Globally, GM crops’ opposition is subsiding day by day as relevant scientific data is convincing more and more anti-biotech campaigners to admit the fact that agricultural biotechnology is safe and should be fully deployed in order to ensure sufficient food for growing population.

World-known British writer and environmentalist Mark Lynas, who helped spur the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, has recently confessed that he was completely wrong to oppose GMOs. In Pakistan too, agricultural scientists have been informing the stakeholders that biotechnology is safe and can be a key to address challenges facing the agriculture sector. University of Agriculture Faisalabad VC Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan had recently said, “GMOs would lead to the new green revolution and termed the GMOs a great and safe intervention that would enhance the productivity to feed the growing population.”

Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and any wrong decision regarding adoption or rejection of any agricultural technology can have an adverse impact on our country. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should take decision on biotechnology, purely on the basis of scientific evidence and ignore the propaganda of certain interest groups.

06.10.2013

The language trinity
Our medium of instruction
policies are determined too often by political and nationalistic exigencies, playing a divisive role and contributing to fragmentation, exclusion, and growing disparities
By Irfan Muzaffar

Our country has always been multilingual due to our uniquely rich cultural landscape. The language one uses changes not just with geography, but also with each passing hour during a typical day of an average Pakistani.

At home you use your mother tongue, whatever it may be. At the work place your language performance is expected to alternate between English and Urdu depending on your educational background, your position within the institutional hierarchy, and who you are talking to. Pakistanis’ social and educational upbringing programmes them when to switch to the most relevant language to get what they want. We, as a people, are expected to be skilled in more than one language.

How has Pakistan’s education policies addressed the problem of medium of instruction in this multilingual context? The short answer is that they have utterly failed to turn this cultural dividend, our multilingual heritage, into an educational opportunity. Our medium of instruction policies have shown utter disregard to pedagogical considerations and are determined too often by political and nationalistic exigencies. These policies have also played a divisive role and contributed to fragmentation, exclusion, and growing disparities.

It all begins at home much before we encounter the effects of education policies at school. In Pakistan, it is not uncommon to find middle class parents exposing their children to a medley of available languages. That’s the sort of language exposure I received from my own parents in early years. I listened to Punjabi, was talked to in Urdu, and less frequently in English. More frequently it was a mix of the three languages. But this wasn’t all. I also came to associate different attitudes with the languages in use. Punjabi was associated with loudness and informality, Urdu with my much sought after bedtime fairy tales and rhymes, and English with cartoon characters and space and time travellers such as those found in Star Trek and The Time Tunnel.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that language was not just about talking and listening and entertainment. It was much more, just like we had a national anthem and a national bird, we also had a national language. Fortunately for me, the national language happened to be the one in which my grand mother gave me my daily doze of fairy tales.

When in school, I also learnt that English was not just about Popeye the Sailor, Star Trek, and The Time Tunnel. I was never explicitly told in those early grades that doing well in English was indispensable to my future success. But there was an unspoken understanding that English was superior/preferred, an understanding constructed at times by being fined for speaking in Urdu. Those of you who have been cadets in the cadet colleges or academies might even recall being asked to frog jump for speaking in ‘vernacular’. In the school, English just came across as much more superior than the so-called national language.

What sort of an odd society it was that first taught me that I had a national language and then fined me to speak in it? To say nothing of the mother tongue, which I did not even remember I had.

There it was then, a language version of the holy trinity — a mother tongue, Urdu, and English. English, being the language of bureaucracy, commerce, science, and technology, was the holiest of all. Urdu, being the national language, was holier. The sanctity of mother tongue was anyone’s guess. It goes without saying that to get the best of this trinity for their children, the parents must choose to send their children to an English medium school — only if they could afford to do so.

While some of our parents could afford to put us on the right side of the language trinity, most Pakistani children had this trinity on their wrong side. Many of my age-mates would never even see a school, and the education of those who’d go to Urdu medium public schools or the low cost private schools would not be prepared to compete with those of us who went to private English medium schools. Little did we realise that more than anything else, it is the language, which most effectively sets up the mutually exclusive social, cultural, and economic zones.

So we have effectively ended up creating categories of persons in our society, differentiated by access to different languages and the ability to speak them. So we effectively ended up creating a range of persons in our society characterised mainly by differences in access they had to different languages. The language trinity could be clearly mapped onto scales of privilege, advantage, and development. Mother tongues and vernaculars were placed on the lower end and Urdu and English on the sophisticated and developed end of these scales. It didn’t matter how well grounded one was in his or her first language, s/he would still be perceived as suffering from development deficit if inadequately skilled in English.

Clearly, we are in a bind on the issue of the demands that language diversity make on education system. At least, in part, it has to do with the lack of willingness of the Pakistani state to fully understand and take on the burden of actually delivering a decent education to all children. Much like any other modern state, Pakistan has always expressed the desire to extend educational opportunity to all children. But in the same breath, it has also said that the state could not finance it and has asked the private sector to pitch in. Among other things, this only strengthened the effects of the language trinity.

The early policies, at least apparently, proposed to turn the first two terms of the trinity around by suggesting a time bound transition to national language. The delegates of the first conference on education held in 1947, while clearly in favour of declaring Urdu as the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, recognised the importance of the mother tongues and of teaching both Urdu and English as a subject. Some attending the conference thought that [Urdu] “should be taught right from the beginning of the school stage so as to increasingly and progressively adopt it as the medium of instruction in the educational system”. But there were also those who argued that “it would be educationally unsound, particularly when the mother tongues were sufficiently developed…the mother tongues could flourish and develop side by side with the lingua franca and one need not throttle the growth of the other” (From the report of the 1947 Conference on Education). The conference ultimately resolved to require the schools to teach Urdu as a compulsory subject in schools and left the question of medium of instruction to be decided by the provincial governments.

The first conference had resolved to gradually replace English with Urdu by developing the latter further and let the provincial governments determine the medium of instruction in elementary schools. By 1951, different regions within Pakistan were accommodating the language trinity in different ways. While the mother tongue had been made the medium of instruction [at least officially] in all primary schools, Urdu remained the medium of instruction in secondary schools in the Punjab, Balochistan, the [then] NWFP and Bahawalpur. In the case of Sindh and East Bengal, the regional language constituted the medium of instruction and Urdu was taught as a compulsory subject.

With regards to English, the report of the education conference held in 1951 observed that it was only in the universities that English remained the medium of instruction and that the ministry of interior was pondering over the question of time frame needed to fully replace it with Urdu and Bengali in the West and East Pakistan. The Urdu Committee appointed by the minister of interior, Mr Fazlur Rehman, had recommended starting using Urdu on an experimental basis side by side with English as a medium of instruction in the Universities of Karachi, Punjab and Peshawar. The results of this experiment were to be reviewed in 1956.

Meanwhile, the market place for English medium education, then largely being given through the missionary schools and a few selected publicly financed institutions, was allowed to flourish as it continued to produce an exclusive elite. Undoubtedly, the quality of education offered at those institutions was much better than the run of the mill public school. Yet it was only a few who could benefit from this higher quality education. The hypocritical policy elites of Pakistan continued to send their own children to these high quality English medium schools while arguing for replacement of English by Urdu for the rest.

The holy trinity of language pervaded our daily lives, while the education policy looked the other way. The height of this hypocrisy was reached with the first education policy issued by the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. His education policy called English medium schools a colonial legacy and called for the abolishment of this nomenclature. Nothing could be more hypocritical than a policy elite selling to the masses at large what it wouldn’t buy in the education market place itself. English continued to be holiest in the language trinity by preserving its place as the language of the military, the bureaucracy, commerce, science, and technology.

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

06.10.2013

Centres of destruction
History suggests that when universities start to act as moral vigilantes, academic standards nosedive
By Tahir Kamran

The widely held presumption that certain madaris are hatcheries of jihadis, target killers and suicide bombers stands punctured after startling revelations about universities in Lahore and Islamabad. Nine al-Qaeda suspects were arrested from a Punjab University hostel, including their handler. Four of them had received jihadi training in Miranshah in North Waziristan, while the other five had expertise in information technology/communication and the making of improvised explosive devises (IEDs).

Obviously, they could not have acquired all the skills they needed from any madrassa, certainly not the diploma in automobile technology and media coordination, with which some of them were equipped. One may surmise that madrassa-graduates may, at best, act as cannon fodder whereas graduates in science and technology from Pakistani universities form the critical mass for the anti-state forces.

On September 3, 2013, an Arab national was apprehended by a premier intelligence agency from a hostel at the Punjab University who had come to Lahore to lead a fidayeen (suicide) mission. He was living in a room allotted to a member of the Islami Jamiat Talba (IJT), whose spokesman denied link with any terrorist organisation. However, anyone having the slightest cognisance of the affairs of the Punjab University knows well that nothing can come to pass without the affirmation of the IJT’s high command.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, one of the al-Qaeda leader, was arrested in March 2004 from the home of a leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami’s women’s wing in Rawalpindi, providing evidence of the latent nexus between the two. If educational institutions are left the mercy of ideological monoliths, such occurrences become a norm and not an aberration. By such means, the largest educational institution in Pakistan has become no more than a conquered estate, to be guarded at all costs against any encroachment by the ‘liberals’. Subjected to the sway of one ideology, the Punjab University is now a hideout for terrorists. This calls for a requiem to a bygone era when the pursuit of knowledge and not terrorism was its emblem.

If this was not enough, in a recent incident one terrorist by the name of Hammad Adil was nabbed from the Sabzi Mandi area in 1-11 Sector, Islamabad. He, in cahoots with Omar Abdullah, Tanveer and Abdul Sattar, admitted to killing Shahbaz Bhatti, the lone Christian Federal Minister in the PPP government, on March 3, 2011. Adil also confessed to the murder of the prosecutor in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, assistance in the suicide attack on the Danish Embassy, burning Nato containers and attack on a general in the Pakistan army. A vehicle laden with 120 kilogrammes of explosives was recovered from his residence in Bara Kahu, in the outskirts of Islamabad.

Worryingly, Hammad Adil went to the Islamic International University (IIU), Islamabad and ‘was convinced to go on jihad during his stay in the hostel’. Similarly, his accomplice Tanveer graduated in Sharia law from IIU. Syed Irtiaz Nabi Gilani, nephew of Asiya Andrabi, the chairperson of the all-women pro-freedom outfit Dukhtran-i-Millat, absconded when police raided his house to arrest him on terrorism-related charges. A huge cache of ammunition and four spy planes were recovered from his house.

Irtiaz too is a science faculty member at IIU. That university, according to senior journalist Khaled Ahmed, was ‘decreed by the Saudi king to consolidate the growing involvement of Pakistan with Hadith-based dogmatic Islam’, and bears the notorious imprint of Abdullah Azzam, the intellectual founder of al-Qaeda, who once served there as a teacher.

Rizwan Omar, an enterprising police officer currently serving in Islamabad, claims that graduates in Sharia-Law from IIU betray a strong subversive streak with reference to the state of Pakistan. If that university is purged of Saudi influence and its curriculum is radically transformed, it can serve the society in a positive way. If not, then institutions like IIU, working to foment someone else’s ideology, are likely to wreak disaster on the beleaguered Pakistanis.

Omar also mentioned the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore and National University of Science and technology (NUST) as imbued with overriding religiosity. The latter was recently in the news for enforcing a strict dress code on its female students. Another institution of higher education in the medical sciences, the Khyber Medical University Peshawar, also tried to emulate NUST, ostensibly to promote ‘Islamic values’.

The Jamaat-i-Islami, a coalition partner of the Tehreek-i-Insaf of Imran Khan in KPK, is said to be a driving force in enacting such a regulation. History suggests that when universities start to act as moral vigilantes, academic standards nosedive. That is exactly what has happened to our universities in the last three decades or so.

In such a situation, expecting our institutions to impart a liberal-humanist education to our coming generation — which Cardinal Newman identified as the main function of a university — remains a distant dream. Similarly, the Humboldtian ideal of creating scientific minds will remain unattainable for our youth. Thus, Tariq Rehman’s despondency over the indifference of Pakistani universities to the prescriptions of Newman and Humboldt makes perfect sense.

Pakistani universities are churning out youngsters equipped with technological know-how but obsessed with wreaking devastation with it. Things can be improved if instruction in science and technology is coupled with a critical understanding of socio-political realities. That will come only through a carefully thought-out curriculum of social and human sciences, made compulsory for all at the under-graduate level.

The writer is a noted Pakistani historian, currently the Iqbal Fellow at the University of Cambridge as professor in the Centre of South Asian Studies

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

An ideological vision
A look at Muslim ‘decline’, the narrative and responses it evoked in the last two and a half centuries, and the profound bearing it had on Muslim politics leading to the creation of Pakistan
By Tahir Kamran

Decline’ as a central theme of North Indian Muslim sensibility is conspicuously reflected in literature from the late 18th century onwards. Pathos and an overall sense of bereavement are succinctly articulated through Urdu poetry. The befitting metaphor of ‘Karbala’ was deployed invariably in genres such as marsiya and also ghazal — to depict the contemporary situation.

Babar Ali Anis and Mirza Salaamat Ali Dabir elevated this particular genre of marsiya almost to a level of perfection in 19th century Awadh. However, the theme of ‘decline’ did not remain confined only to marsiya and it was not only used to narrate the events of Karbala — as is illustrated by Altaf Hussain Hali’s Musaddas written in the same form. It, in fact, transcended any genre or form of expression.

Shehr-i-Ashoob (city of mourning) was yet another leitmotif that was evident in the poetry of maestros like Mir Taqi Mir and Mir Dard. Both of them lamented the sacking of Delhi at the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali and Nadir Shah.

Thus, the tragedy emanating from the objective situation of Muslim ‘decline’ from the 18th century onwards came to be the seminal feature of all literary forms. Akbar Allahabadi’s take on decline was satirical and Iqbal’s was philosophical.

Shuddering over the prospects of being branded ‘jejune’ or ‘simplistic’, for not taking a nuanced view of the Muslim decline in North India, the writer nevertheless asserts that ‘decline’ as a narrative has been significant in the body of literature produced during the last two and half centuries. Even when the era of Urdu prose had set in, by the closing years of the 19th century, ‘decline’ provided an essential context to these newly-formulated literary forms — be the letters of Ghalib or the novels of Deputy Nazir Ahmed like ‘Mirat ul Aroos’ and ‘Taubattun Nusooh’.

‘Decline’ and its attendant sensibility have had a profound bearing on the course of Muslim politics too. It became the salient feature of the Muslim politics in the 20th century. The emergence of the reform movements, with their puritanical agendas, sowed the seeds of socio-political exclusion. The same happened in other communities — Arya Samaj and Sangh Sabha being good illustrations of the puritanical propensities among Hindus and Sikhs respectively.

Since this article is solely concerned with the state of Muslims, it is not necessary to go into the details of these movements. Suffice it to say that the reform movements fostered respective ideologies which they tried to implement through their peculiar educational modes.

These ‘educational/ reformist modes’ can generally be classified as modernist — represented by the Aligarh Movement, and the tradionalist exemplified by the Deobandi variant of Islam. The former advocated emulating the West to wriggle out of the ‘decline’ besetting Muslims, whereas the latter accorded primacy to the foundational texts to regain lost glory. These two modes, as is well known, were mutually exclusive but the common trait between them was ‘exclusion’. Interestingly, both adopted different forms of exclusion.

The modernists, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in the vanguard, excluded themselves politically from the Hindus and exhorted Muslims not to join the Indian National Congress. Camaraderie with British was preferred over solidarity with Hindus, which was a stark change punctuated with the sense of ‘decline’.

The ‘exclusion’ practiced by the tradionalists was directed against fellow Muslims, with denominational differences as the delineating factor. That sort of ‘exclusion’ ushered in an era of takfeer, which contributed significantly in solidifying sectarian identities particularly after Pakistan’s Independence.

Another group of luminaries who did not position themselves clearly, such as Shibli Nomani, Altaf Hussain Hali and Hasrat Mohani, merit a mention here.

As a historiographer, Shibli was a trendsetter. Drawing inspiration from renowned British historian Thomas Carlyle, he wrote numerous biographies of eminent personalities, including ‘Siratul Nab’i, ‘Al Farooq’ and ‘Al Ghazali’. His writings had a profound impact on the historical understanding of the coming generations, while the personalities who were the subject of his historical enquiry reflected his Hanafi denomination. His books give primacy to ‘the personality’ as a driving force of history and were instrumental in casting a shadow of nostalgia on the Muslim laity.

Thus, the notion of a golden past was considerably invigorated, a notion which strengthened the urge to relocate bygone glories into the present.

Having said this, one must be cognizant of the fact that Shibli differentiated between deen and politics. Hali and Hasrat shared the same inclination. Their concern for the ‘declined’ Muslims, though quite tangible in their poetry in particular, could not be translated into their politics. Politically, they did not practice exclusion.

The common perception of Pakistani historians is that the All India Muslim League inherited its ideology from the Aligarh Movement, which eventually led to the formation of a separate state for the Muslims. This is despite the fact that both the founding fathers, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal, did not go to Aligarh for education. Both of them, nevertheless, accorded a lot of importance to that institution. One may assert here that the prescription to deal with the ‘decline’ would be to follow modernist Aligarh and not regressive Deoband. Readiness to accept influences from other cultures and communities holds the key to overturn the decline, a point that Aligarh emphasised through word and deed.

But reverting to politics, the point worth pondering here is the ideological side of the All India Muslim League which was essentially progressive but subsequently transposed with the help of meaningless aphorisms and slogans. Besides progressive ideology, the principal anchoring force for the Muslim League was the personal charisma of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, which held it together and drove it forward.

A different ideological vision, embedded in religion, was conjured up after Jinnah’s demise. Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, a Deobandi alim and founder of Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam, and Abu Alla Maududi, as Vali Nasr asserts in the context of the passage of Objective Resolution, in his book The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution, were the main protagonists of the ideology that the Muslim League was to embrace. This same ideology has now accorded legitimacy to the reactionary elements who don’t regret the decimation of humans, mosques and churches in the name of religion.

The writer is a noted Pakistani historian, currently the Iqbal Fellow at the University of Cambridge as professor in the Centre of South Asian Studies

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

The IMF, the elite and the poor
The persistent failure of successive governments to overcome budgetary deficit has
created a situation where the very economic viability of the state is at stake
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq

With meagre three per cent growth rate, sky-rocketing inflation, continuous energy shortage, devaluating rupee, decline in exports, increase in imports, poor tax collection and above all worsening law and order situation, the present regime, like its predecessors, is bound to fail in curtailing the burgeoning fiscal deficit — mother of all economic ills faced by us. The persistent failure of successive governments — military and civilian alike — to overcome budgetary deficit has created a situation where the very economic viability of the state is at stake. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), without effective enforcement, will not be able to achieve the target of Rs2475 billion — resultantly the government will not be able to cap fiscal deficit at 5.8 per cent of the GDP as agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Everybody is criticising the IMF’s conditions under recently concluded $6.7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF), but no one is ready to admit that fault lies with us. Pakistan, entrapped in debt prison due to its own wrongdoing, approached the IMF and not vice versa. Pakistan, as a beggar, cannot be a chooser as well. IMF has clearly asked the government to restrict fiscal deficit to Rs1463 billion — 5.8 per cent of GDP.

The document signed with the IMF shows that it has allowed the government to maintain deficit of 1.7 per cent in the first quarter, 1.8 per cent in the second, 1.3 per cent in the third and just 1 per cent in the fourth quarter. Many experts are of the view that these ratios would not work and in the end the deficit will be as high as Rs1950 billion, if not more. The question is whether 5.8 per cent ceiling is too “sacrosanct” to be achieved by the government in all circumstances? The reply is obvious: IMF will relax it as in the past!

Let us stop blaming the IMF and others for our own faults. The rich and influential in Pakistan are not taxed according to their capacity to pay. Adding insult to injury, they enjoy many benefits and luxuries at the expense of the taxpayers’ money. Just take a look at the huge golf clubs in the cantonment areas — these are not meant for the ordinary lot. The civil-military elite and “influential persons” of the city enjoy these superb facilities and that too at subsidised rates. These facilities, funded from public money, are meant for the rich and mighty for their personal comforts and luxuries. If they want to avail such luxuries, they should pay from their own pockets and not burden the already depleted national exchequer. Although these facilities are on public lands, they are meant exclusively for the elite — top civil and military officials.

Members of militro-judicial-civil-political complex have palatial bungalows, guest houses, luxury cars, domestic servants, cooks, gardens, watchmen and what not. All these are funded from taxpayers’ money. The “official” guest houses are maintained with public money but subsidised rates are enjoyed by public servants, their families and friends, and definitely not by any member of the public.

The security provided at the GORs shows that lives of the “sahibs” [officers] are more precious than ordinary mortals. Government properties comprising the governor’s houses, golf clubs, guest houses, wedding halls, even bakeries and commercial markets in cantonments are not meant for official business yet taxes are not levied on them on the pretext that these belong to the state. The poor are dying of starvation, their children are undernourished but our ruling elite, despite having cognizance, is not ready to mend its ways. These privileged classes are not only avoiding taxes but also enjoying luxuries created from money generated through taxes, much of which is regressive in nature and levied on the poor ruthlessly, sparing the rich from proper direct taxation.

Indirect taxes are pushing more and more people below the poverty line — out of total population of 185 million their number is now 70 million. In the face of this stark reality, pleading for more regressive taxation is criminal. The need of the hour is to make taxes equitable — a levy of income tax with progressive rates on all sources of income, including agricultural, if total income exceeds Rs500,000. There should be no exemption, not even to the president, governors, prime minister, ministers, judges and generals. The perquisites and benefits in kind given by the state to its employees and officeholders should be monetized and taxed.

In the first three months of the current fiscal year (July 2013-June 2014), the FBR showed collection of Rs481 billion — the target was Rs509 billion — “amid allegations of blocking refunds and taking money in advance to paint a rosy picture before the IMF”. The real dilemma of the FBR is that it is not ready to tax the rich and mighty, rather persistently squeezes the last drop of blood from the existing taxpayers — besides relying heavily on regressive taxes.

We cannot overcome budgetary gap unless the government stops extending tax exemptions and benefits to the privileged classes and powerful businessmen. Even after signing agreement with the IMF not to issue concessionary Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs), the government promptly did so on October 4, 2013 causing loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer. Tax exemption and concessions are the main source of loss to national exchequer — if we add leakages due to corruption and inefficiency the total figure will not be less than Rs600 billion. Unless these concessions are withdrawn, tax gap is bridged and wasteful expenditure is drastically cut, we will never overcome fiscal deficit but will continue to sink in this debt quicksand.

Presently, about 70 per cent collection by the FBR is from imports and exports, contracts and “extraordinary” profits by petroleum companies and banks. Importers, contractors, retailers and even service providers are, in fact, passing on their tax burden to consumers and clients, courtesy presumptive tax regime introduced in income tax law in 1991-92 and widened manifold since then. This erratic taxation, at the expense of equity and poor people, is nothing but fiscal highhandedness. Despite resorting to all kinds of negative tactics, illogical policies and unjust withholding taxes, the FBR has failed to improve the tax-GDP ratio, which fell to 8.5 per cent in fiscal year 2012-13 from 9.1 per cent in the preceding year.

The burden of a number of presumptive taxes levied under the income tax law (which are nothing but crude forms of indirect taxes) has been shifted from income earners to consumers and clients. These presumptive taxes have not only distorted the whole tax system, destroyed economic growth and made the consumer/client the ultimate sufferers, but these despotic, short-term, myopic and figure-oriented measures have even failed to bridge the fiscal deficit, which is estimated to soar to Rs1800 billion this year.

The men in power say that 67 years of problems cannot be resolved in a few months or even during the 5 years’ term for which they have been elected. They plead helplessness before powerful civil-military bureaucracy.

Successive governments have been announcing unprecedented concessions for the privileged classes. Even the politicians admit massive tax evasion and their criminal culpability in the existing scenario. There exists an unholy alliance between corrupt politicians and tax bureaucrats. Through legal loopholes — for example section 111(4) of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 — tax bureaucrats serve their political masters and plunderers of national wealth.

If the present government is sincere to overcome fiscal deficit it should pass asset-seizure legislation and confiscate all ill-gotten and untaxed assets. In the presence of such a law, resource mobilisation and tax compliance will not be a problem anymore.

The writers, tax lawyers and partners in Huzaima & Ikram (Tax and Pakistan), are Adjunct Professors at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

The warming world
Reports on climate say summer in Pakistan will expand to eight months and winter will squeeze to one month in the coming years
By Haroon Akram Gill

They claim that they are working for sustainable development, but it is obvious that the so-called development is harming the earth in such a way that there is a doubt that generations to come would be able to live on the earth. And unfortunately, our children would not have any alternative planet to live as Mercury which is the coolest planet after earth has 167C average temperature.

According to a report, the earth’s temperature is rising rapidly and it’s due to heavy carbon emissions. The standard carbon rate should be 350ppm but it has crossed 400ppm globally. An authentic report tells that at present 90 million tons carbon dioxide is being emitted daily into the air. The amount of energy evolving in the air due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is 400,000 times of that evolved due to the American atomic assault on Hiroshima, Japan. The report also says that India and China are responsible for two third of this heavy emission as their industry is rapidly growing and half of the world population is living in this part of the world as well.

This heavy energy emission is not only warming the globe but the arctic ice is also melting and raising the sea level. This rise is a permanent danger to the coastal areas and cities globally. According to another report, 10 major coastal cities including Dhaka and Mumbai from South Asian region are endangered to be ruined by sea water till 2070. Dhaka is encountered with another problem that its soil has been salted and is becoming unfertilized rapidly due to sea level rise.

Earth’s temperature has risen rapidly in last decade, particularly. It has been recorded as the hottest decade ever. In Asia, the highest temperature had been recorded in 2010 as 53C and it was in Mohenjo Daro, Sindh, Pakistan. This rapidly increasing temperature is evaporating the moisture of earth and its water level is decreasing day by day. Green fields are turning into deserts with heavy droughts.

In Pakistan, there is a dramatic decrease in water level. Vast area of Thar has been deserted and other areas are also threatened. This drought is a threat to human life as it can cause food insecurity. Droughts have threatened many countries including America, Russia, Turkey, France, South Korea and Switzerland. According to a report, almost the whole world would be affected by droughts till 2090. These droughts are giving birth to food insecurity at large.

Almost every part of the world is food insecure with the exception of North & South America, Australia and some European countries. People in Africa, Middle East and Asia are badly hit by this particular problem. Food prices have been increased thrice in list three years. A major reason of this food insecurity is that farmers have not made them compatible with the changing climate.

Increasing temperature is affecting the crops as well. Due to climate change, timings have also changed for cultivation and harvesting. But due to lack of education and proper training, the farmers are stuck with the conventional timings and patterns which is resulting in low yields and food insecurity.

Scientists say that one degree rise in temperature enhances the water evaporation capacity by 7 times. These water vapours do not only increase the wind pressure heavily but their presence causes massive climate effects also. It results in heavy rainfall, storms and flash floods.

Pakistan is among the most vulnerable countries affected by such climate crisis; this might be because we are the neighbouring country of the two countries that are among the top three responsible entities of heavy carbon emissions. Pakistan has a least participation in carbon emissions, according to Energy and Ecology report. Extreme weather events are occurring here rapidly than any other part of the world.

Although America, China, Canada, India, Argentine, Philippine and other parts of the world have faced heavy rainfall, flooding and storms, due to better planning and resources the damage is lesser and the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction is fast. In those countries, people are also being educated and informed on the issue as well.

According to an official report by National Disaster Management Authority Pakistan more than four million people had been affected by heavy rainfall in 2012. In 2013, Pakistan has once again faced huge damages due to unexpected heavy rains and flooding. Official sources report that 1.5 million people and 7841 villages have been affected till mid September, 2013 and the water has ruined crops on 1,457,299 hectors.

According to American Climate Institute, Pakistan is among the top five most vulnerable countries being affected by climate crisis. That report also says that in the coming years, summer in Pakistan will expand to eight months and winter will squeeze to one month. These dramatic climate changes will change the whole scenario of the region. Another institute “German Watch” working on climate change reveals that Pakistan faces a damage of almost 21.5 billion rupees annually due to climate crisis and the damage has reached to 5.42 per cent of GDP which is higher than any other country in this list.

These figures are horrible, but the fact which is more horrible is that we do not have any proper planning to cope with the issue despite having a Climate Change Ministry and a National Climate Change Policy. Unfortunately, we do not have this policy implemented at any level.

Dr Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the lead author of Pakistan’s National Climate Change Policy, believes the policy is more than comprehensive. Even if implemented 40 per cent properly, it can take care of expected floods in the future. Additional water storages on the main rivers have been recommended in the policy to absorb the floodwater. Just by enhancing the capacity of large dams these kinds of floods could be avoided, he adds. But unfortunately, the only thing our new government has done regarding climate is to reduce the status of Climate Change Ministry to a division and cut the budget for climate change.

The writer is a certified climate leader and has been trained by Al Gore, former US vice-president and activist on climate crisis

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

Our unsung heroines
Lady health workers and vaccinators are not only playing a leading role in preventing thousands of child deaths but are also a frontline force against polio
By Arshad Mahmood

Our frontline health workers including Lady Health Workers (LHWs), Community Midwives (CMWs) and Vaccinators are the real heroes in Pakistan’s fight to prevent child and maternal mortality in the country to be able to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 & 5. MDG 4 is about two third reduction in child mortality and MDG 5 is about three quarters reduction in maternal mortality ratio by 2015.

The progress towards achieving MDGs remains a challenge and an elusive dream for Pakistan where 352,400 children under-5 die of preventable causes every year. The national under-5 mortality rate is 87 per 1000 live births and the maternal mortality rate is at an alarming 276 deaths per 100,000 live births. There is a need to accelerate the efforts to achieve MDGs 4&5.

The LHWs and vaccinators are not only playing a leading role in preventing thousands of preventable child deaths but are also our frontline force against the ongoing fight in the country for the eradication of polio. Unfortunately, however, in the recent past we not only witnessed targeting of the LHWs and vaccinators by the terrorists but also a cold shoulder by the government towards resolving their issues.

The last approved PC-1 of LHW Programme has targeted the expansion of LHWs from existing number to 130,000 by 2015 with a focus on expansion to marginalised and disadvantageous uncovered areas. The 18th Amendment has brought the programme to a standstill owing to lack of funds. Lately, through judicial intervention, the LHWs have been regularised throughout the country and their rewards have also been increased. However, we still see LHWs on the streets demanding documentation of their regularisation and implementation of the decision in letter and spirit by the federal and provincial governments.

Lack of frontline health workers such as LHWs and Community Midwives is one of the major reasons of Pakistan’s slow progress towards achieving MDG 4 & 5 as currently there are 97,639 LHWs and 3,843 Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) in the country covering only 60 per cent of the population against the proposed target to increase this number to 130,000 by 2015. Following the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s intervention, the previous government regularised the services of LHWs, LHSs and other staff of the Family Planning & Primary Healthcare Programme with the federal government’s full funding for this programme up to 7th NFC Award (FY-2015) as already decided by the Council of Common Interests.

While regularising the LHWs, the previous federal government included a stringent condition; the posts that may become vacant as a result of resignation, losing jobs or otherwise shall stand abolished for the purpose of federal funding and new recruitment w.e.f. 1-7-2011 will be financed by the provincial governments. Likewise, any new creation of posts/appointments or future need will be financed by the provinces from their own budget/resources. This condition resulted in decrease in the number of LHWs instead of increasing their number i.e. in Punjab the number of LHWs decreased from 49,000 to 47,300.

The incumbent federal government should intervene and reverse this decision by allowing the provincial governments to fill the vacant position — 1,700 positions in Punjab to be filled immediately. The federal government should coordinate with the provinces and support them in recruiting more LHWs and make budgetary allocations for necessary supplies to reach the uncovered areas and help Pakistan progress towards achieving MDGs 4 & 5. Similarly, the provincial governments should also take responsibility and start allocating resources for increase in the number of LHWs, CMWs and vaccinators in the respective provinces to be able to reach out to 100 per cent population and achieve mother and child health related targets.

According to the findings of research studies by Professor Dr. Zulfiqar A Bhutta and others, in many countries, community health workers are now offering a wide range of services to communities in different types of challenged settings. Their services include conducting deliveries, conducting counseling and health education, immunization, management of childhood illnesses at community level such as diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia and malnutrition. The community health workers’ services have led to decrease in child and maternal mortality in different countries.

The successive governments since 1993 have relied on LHW Programme for the delivery of health services to the far flung areas. The key policy instruments of development in Pakistan over this time period have included LHW Programme as a primary area of investment for meeting health challenges. Besides, non-governmental initiatives such bilateral projects, UN initiatives for child health etc have also heavily relied on LHW Programme for delivery of services targeting the achievement of MDGs.

The menu of services of LHWs include 20 key tasks related to maternal, newborn and child healthcare and the health indicators in LHW covered areas are significantly better than the national averages. Research has proved that the coverage of some key interventions for maternal and child health such as fully immunized children, knowledge of mothers about preparation of ORS, antenatal consultations, measures of exclusive breastfeeding have improved in LHW covered areas.

There are issues around LHWs coverage, remuneration and operational aspects of their programme. It is imperative that LHWs coverage is expanded to un-served rural poor populations and urban slums and that will be possible only if their number is increased and all the current vacant positions are filled immediately. Similarly, it is important to ensure that they are provided with the required stock of medicines and equipment, their terms of reference are reviewed and routine immunization is formally incorporated. The monitoring mechanisms should be strengthened as well to ensure effective utilisation of this vital human resource.

It is crucial that the provincial governments take a leadership role, with the support of the federal government, and strengthen the programme at the provincial levels. The programme should be structured in such a way that the staff is satisfied and are able to concentrate on performing their job which is critical for Pakistan’s progress.

The writer is a development practitioner and child rights activist and tweets @amahmood72

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

A worried Baloch
“I would like to see the Ireland-type solution in Balochistan, not the Sri Lankan solution,” said
Dr Abdul Malik Baloch during Faiz Mela in London
By Ahmar Mustikhan

“We have to deliver in the first year,” Dr Abdul Malik Baloch said, adding “sweet talk won’t satisfy the people.”

Dr Baloch is the first-ever commoner to become the chief minister of the area-wise largest Balochistan province since the troubled area gained provincial status after the end of one unit. However, his dream to turn Balochistan into one of the most educated regions of Pakistan, faces multiple challenges: haughty officials of the security establishment, jealous tribal chieftains, heavily armed insurgents and religious extremists, and highly corrupt bureaucracy.

Concern was written large on the face of the medic from Mekran, even before the earthquake of September 24 killed over 400, injured more than a thousand and left 25,000 people homeless in a poor but insurgency-torn Awaran district of Balochistan. He was the most worried Baloch on earth.

Dr Baloch was in London, along with Senator Hasil Bizenjo. The two were invited to the UK capital as the main speakers at the Faiz Mela, organised by the Faiz Cultural Foundation and sponsored by the Jang Group of Newspapers.

However, the political degradation in Balochistan against the backdrop of unmitigated militancy and accompanying suffering of the people was evident at the Faiz Mela. In the past, the Baloch showed up in large numbers at such events as the Pakistani progressives were considered to be the best allies of the Baloch in their long drawn struggle marked by blood and tears over six decades. However, the Baloch intellectuals in London were conspicuous by their absence at the Faiz Mela, indicating of high level of Baloch estrangement with Pakistan.

“Our coalition has been named the government of four bald men as it includes myself, Hasil Bizenjo, Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,” Dr Baloch said in a lighter vein. In spite of having more members in the Balochistan parliament, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif agreed to give Dr Baloch the chief minister’s slot in a province where traditionally tribal leaders and their close family members have held sway.

Dr Baloch’s elevation to the position marks the healthy transition of the middle class in positions of political prominence, much to the chagrin of the parasitical sardars or feudal despots of Balochistan. “It is apparent the middle class will now call the political shots,” said Dr Haider Baloch, a former health minister from Turbat, who is now a Briton.

But an even bigger achievement for Dr Baloch is the go-ahead given to him by the All Parties Conference, along with the consent of the omnipotent military GHQ — the main power in Balochistan — to initiate talks with the Baloch militants. This marks a softening of the military stance, but the Baloch militants have adopted a hardline position and have rejected the idea of talks. This shows the political immaturity of Baloch militants, many of whom are egotistical sons of feudal lords. Generally, it is the government that refuses to talk to the militants, like in the case of Turkey and Kurds.

“I like to see the Ireland-type solution in Balochistan, not the Sri Lankan solution,” he reiterates his political line of action. In his private discussions, Dr Baloch made public confessions of the political mistakes he committed in the past. “We sided with Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, not with Mir Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo, after the National Awami Party split in 1977,” Dr Malik Baloch said. The youth at that time, including Dr Baloch, rejected Bizenjo’s politics and adopted the Marri line of militant struggle. However, this line of action failed to stand the test of time. “We decided to go into mainstream politics ten years later, adopting Bizenjo’s stance of 1977, when the Balochistan National Youth Movement was launched in December 1987.”

At the Jang forum in London, Dr Baloch appealed to the powers-that-be for an end to the extrajudicial killing of Baloch youths. He advocates following the due course of law and putting the suspects in jail. “Jail ended a solid party like the National Awami Party,” he recalled.

At least 400 Baloch have fallen prey to militant bullets in the last decade. Dr Baloch himself survived at least two assassination attempts on his life carried out by the Baloch Republican Army, which is led by Geneva-based Brahumdagh Bugti. Dr Baloch’s party, the National Party, has lost at least six active workers to attacks by the BRA and the Baloch Liberation Front, which is led by a 20-year junior medic fellow from Bolan Medical College in Quetta, Dr Allah Nazar Baloch.

Abdul Haleem Tareen, a London-based Balochistan notable, met Dr Baloch during his London visit but complained that he was kept away from Balochistan natives. Tareen shared some of the concerns of Dr Baloch. “This is the first time in Baloch political history that the Baloch have turned their guns on each other. Brothers and cousins are at each other’s throat,” Tareen said.

The Baloch have lost some of their best youths to militancy, Dr Baloch said. He called for a national debate among the Baloch over what they got and what they lost during more than 12 years of strife.

Dr Baloch and Hasil Bizenjo refused to accept any protocol during their five-day stay in London. Instead of staying at the luxury Dorchester Hotel, usual residence for Pakistan dignitaries, the two stayed at the middle class Hilton London Metropole Hotel. The hotel lobby became the meeting place, where any Pakistani could walk in and talk to the chief minister.

As if the political tremors were not enough, an earthquake struck Balochistan, forcing Dr Baloch to cut his visit short and camp in Awaran, a hotbed of the insurgent movement.

The writer, who was in London to attend the Faiz Mela, is a senior Baloch journalist based in Washington DC area. He can be reached at ahmar_scribe@yahoo.com

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

A fiasco called local government elections
The way to a smooth political process is a well-functioning local
government system in urban and rural domains
By Dr Noman Ahmed

At the moment, a tug of war is taking place between the provincial governments and the echelons of superior judiciary. The provincial governments are being reminded by the Supreme Court to fulfil their constitutional responsibility — of holding elections to the respective local bodies as per proviso of Article 140A of the Constitution.

The provincial governments have not been able to meet the deadline set by the superior court. The matter is closely observed by the top judges who cited displeasure on the delaying tactics adopted by provincial administrations.

The political parties, with a few exceptions, consider local governments as an institutional residue of military dictatorships. They also do not wish to create fresh cadres of legitimate leadership which can develop populist associations with vote banks. However, this is myopic thinking. If parties wish to genuinely take the leadership development to the masses, local governments are the best option. This can at least offer an option against hereditary claims to control of political power. There are many examples pertinent to ordinary councillors, women/labour councillors, union council nazims, town/tehsil/taluka level leaders and district level representatives who were able to win offices purely on merit — and later proved their popularity through re-election.

These dedicated public representatives made determined effort to address pressing problems related to education, health, social welfare and area management. Some of them were even devoid of any political affiliation and had to face the wrath of both right and left wing parties. The two elections during 2001 and 2005 were reasonable tests for their performance evaluation, malfunctioning of electoral process notwithstanding.

Political culture cannot be nurtured without a practice in voting on party basis.

Ordinary people have ordinary problems that warrant solutions at the lowest level — not in headquarters of mighty organisations. Besides, people need an efficient service delivery mechanism and complaint redressal system for routines such as attestation, verification and certification. Local institutions and their elected members are normally forthcoming in such tasks. Small-scale development schemes, maintenance and repair projects are also important works that require immediate attention. If the decision-making apparatus is centralised in the person of chief ministers of provinces, little progress can be estimated. Expectation from bureaucrats alone to be sympathetic to the local issues may not be realistic.

A well-functioning local government system in urban and rural domains has to be strengthened after removing the various handicaps that it has faced. Problems identified during the past several years include poor quality of human resource, paucity of operational budgets, weak mechanism of monitoring, absence of effective audit and accounts procedures, financial dependence on the provincial/federal government, lack of control over police force, tutelage exercised by federal/provincial institutions and inability to generate development finance for local scale works.

The city of Karachi is being cleansed through a planned operation. But every operation needs post-surgical care. The relationship of local-scale policing and maintenance of peace and harmony among the ranks of various interest groups can be facilitated through an efficient local government. While the provincial status of the police department may remain intact, some local autonomy can be negotiated among the politicians and civil society to carve out a workable solution.

For the residents of Karachi, who have been held hostage to target killings and turf wars which has taken no more than 6000 lives between 2003 and 2012, local bodies are even more important. So, a political solution in the form of a local governance formula could be an effective answer.

The political parties should evolve a fresh strategy by using elected local governments to serve their clearly pronounced manifestoes. Capacity building in the local service delivery, notification and creation of bodies such as public safety commissions, citizen community boards or finance commissions, municipal services and taxes to generate local revenue are some basic steps. There are many institutional arms, think tanks and non-governmental organisations that have garnered enough experience to transform the political objectives into a proper workable blue print for the future form of local government. The new local governments should bring peace and harmony to the province, not generate further divisions in the already divided ranks in the society.

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

13.10.2013

The history of Bahawalpur state
Since the Nawabs of Bahawalpur were not ‘kings’ in the
normative sense of the word, being of the Abbasid
lineage allowed them to see themselves as a part of the ‘Caliph’ style of rulership,
deriving their primary legitimacy from religious sanction
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash

Recently, South Punjab and the erstwhile Bahawalpur state have been in the news. The ‘Seraiki suba’ movement had gained so much currency this year that seemed that a new province might be carved out of the Punjab, till the general elections fizzled out the movement. A lot of the claims of the separate province movement are based on historical claims of the ‘separateness’ of the Seraiki people — in terms of language, customs, governance — from the rest of the Punjab.

While it is impossible to assess all the claims of the movement in this space presently, I want to trace the foundation of Bahawalpur state here, which until recently was the ‘Seraiki’ bridgehead. My choice of Bahawalpur is important since it was the only Seraiki speaking province/state in recent memory, and because it was in fact the merger of Bahawalpur in the Punjab at the dissolution of the One Unit in 1970, which sparked the separate Seraiki suba movement in earnest. In the context of Pakistan, Bahawalpur is further significant since it was the only princely state in Pakistan which had some regal claims and airs.

The Nawabs of Bahawalpur, the Abbasi Daudputras, were very conscious of their status and claimed descent from the family of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. For the Nawabs of Bahawalpur, this claim brought a certain degree of legitimacy and religious authority to their rule, especially in a Muslim majority state. This claim was similar to the foundation myths of some Hindu princes who claimed descent from Hindu deities. The Muslim rulers of states like Hyderabad or Bhopal did not claim legitimacy from descent from Muslim caliphs, as such an assertion would have gained them little praise from a Hindu majority population.

The myth of their descent from the Abbasid caliphs formed a major part of the regal claim of the Bahawalpur Nawabs and was widely disseminated by courtiers and sympathetic writers. The first history of Bahawalpur written in English in 1848 traced in detail the origins of the Nawabs, but in the end gave two rather different accounts of their ancestry. The first was the typical story of the descent from the Abbasid caliphs.

In The History of Bahawalpur, the author, Shahamet Ali, traces the fortunes of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad from the conquest of Sindh by the Umayyads in the seventh century to the caliphate’s demise at the hands of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Then Shahamet Ali carefully recounts the direct descent of the Abbasid caliphs and their subsequent move to Egypt. He notes: ‘…that there were fifty two Califs of the house of Abbas, that thirty seven ruled over Bagdad, and that the period of their combined reign extended to a somewhat less period than 524 years. The other branch consisted of fifteen individuals; one of them was Sultan Ahmed, son of Sultan Tahir, who on the fall of the Abbaside dynasty at Bagdad, emigrated to Egypt, where he was received by the government with open arms, and at once proclaimed the ruler of the country in Hijra 659 [1260 AD].’

Shahamet Ali then continues to show how the Abbasids arrived in the Indian subcontinent by stating:‘For five generations, the succession was maintained in Egypt in the direct line, commencing with Sultan Ahmed; but the last Sultan, Ahmed, having first given up his throne in favour of his heir, set out on a expedition to Sindh at the head of a body of 12,000 horses, chiefly consisting of the Abbas race. He made Mekran the point of invasion.’

Ali further narrates that after peacefully acquiring territory in Mekran, Ahmed began to be known by the title of ‘Ameer’. The Abbasids then moved eastwards during the chiefship of Cheenee Khan, who had achieved high office under the governorship of Prince Morad [son of Emperor Akbar] and acquired a jagir in Sindh, with the additional responsibility of collecting taxes from the whole province of Sindh.

Shahamet Ali’s meticulous account describes the generations that followed, arguing that the name ‘Daudputra’ came from the Daud Khan-II, one of the descendants of Cheenee Khan. He notes: ‘[Daud Khan] had many children, and lived to an age of more than two hundred years. It is from the circumstances of his extraordinary age, that he is called the “Great Grandfather;” and from him is derived the name Daudputras...’

Proceeding to the reign of Nadir Shah, Ali notes the tripartite division of the province of Sindh with ‘Shikarpur, Surkana, Sewistan, and Kachee, as far as the town of Choter, were given to the Daudputras.’ It is from this first grant of land that the later descendants of the family consolidated their power, first under Nadir Shah and then under Ahmed Shah Durrani in the eighteenth century.

As the Durrani Empire crumbled at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rulers of Bahawalpur achieved de-facto independence of their suzerain in Kabul. The subsequent rise of Sikh power under Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore led the rulers of Bahawalpur to make several overtures to the East India Company for relations, but these were rebuffed until a treaty was signed in 1833 whereby Bahawalpur accepted the paramountcy of the Company.

This first extant ‘History of Bahawalpur’ is a very curious work. Even though it primarily attests the official myth of the descent of the ruling house of Bahawalpur from the Abbasid caliphs, it still introduces a different account of their origins — an account which claims that they were nothing more than mere working class progeny. In the ‘Supplementary Account of the Daudputras,’ at the end of the main text it states: ‘The Daudputras, especially that branch of the tribe of which Bahawal Khan is the head, claim descent from Hazrat Abbas, the uncle of Prophet Muhammad. Their real origin is to be traced to a very different source. Their progenitor, Daood, was the resident of Shikarpur of the class called Juhalas, or weavers. He is said to have five sons, Arab, Abbas, Hussun, Hasib and Casim; from the four first are descended the Arbanee, Abbassee, Husseinee and Hisbanee Daudputras.’

There is no author cited for the text, perhaps because dissenting from the official version of the origin of the ruling family might have proved dangerous. The fact that the book was published in London, rather than in India, also suggests that it might not have indeed been possible to include such a ‘supplementary account’ if the book were published in India; only in distant England could it have been inserted at the end of a book affirming the official version. This notwithstanding, it is noteworthy that in the main text the author began with the first Muslim conquest of parts of Sindh and Multan, since this was a critical marker in the self-perception of the ruling family of Bahawalpur.

The Nawabs of Bahawalpur distinguished themselves from other Muslim rulers of India since their origins lay with the foundations of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, from the family of the uncle of the Muslim prophet. The detailed generational account of the Abbasids from their move from Baghdad to Egypt and beyond, and the succession chart from Muhammad’s uncle Abbas to the current [in 1848] Nawab Bahawal Khan III at the end of the book, illustrated the importance of this myth for the ruling family of Bahawalpur for it gave them a claim to nobility, even holiness, and provided a major legitimising factor to the mainly Muslim population of the state.

The notion that the Daudputras were descendants of the Abbasid caliphs was central in their imagination of themselves as rulers. Since the Nawabs of Bahawalpur were not ‘kings’ in the normative sense of the word, being of the Abbasid lineage allowed them to see themselves as a part of the ‘Caliph’ style of rulership, deriving their primary legitimacy from religious sanction. The assumption of the title ‘Ameer’ by the Nawab in 1947, was a part of this perception and followed directly from the title of the Muslim caliphs, that of ‘Ameer al-Momineen,’ i.e. leader/commander of the faithful. Thus, the Nawabs of Bahawalpur, lacking kingly titles, were still ‘leaders/commanders’ of the people, just like the Muslim caliphs, who were not mere rulers but vicegerents of God on earth.

Nawab Sadiq Mohammad Khan Abbasi-V, who reigned from 1907 until the state was merged with West Pakistan, even imitated the Muslim caliphs by secretly going around his state in disguise. As noted in a post-merger history of the state: ‘…he keeps himself well informed about whatever happens in his State. To find out facts about the agitation in which his Hindu subjects were involved, he went to Bahawalpur from Dera Nawab Sahib during one cold night disguised as an ordinary camel driver.’ This incident clearly hearkened back to the caliphs of the early Muslim period where they would often go around their states like common men to ascertain conditions. Nawab Mohammad Khan Abbasi-V certainly wanted to be seen as one descended from that noble lineage.

The above story of descent of the Bahawalpur Nawabs is interesting since it explains the continued importance of the family, and the different nature of Bahawalpur state, which many people in the region still remember as a ‘better’ time. Foundational myths are important, whether true or otherwise, since they bestow legitimacy, create respect, and are long lasting. In the case of Bahawalpur, the foundational myth of the Nawabs linked them to the great Muslims Abbasid Caliphate which not only bestowed on them the right to rule and legitimacy, but also a religious duty to govern.

As we think about reorganising the Punjab, it is important to be at least aware of the history of the different regions which make up this diverse country. Identities are multilayered and take centuries to crystalise, but are still important parts one’s life. Therefore, let us cherish and learn from them.

The writer is the Chairperson of the Department of History, Forman Christian College, and tweets at @BangashYK. He can be contacted at:yaqoob.bangash@gmail.com

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"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)