Wizards of Id

Educated people be*com*ing cold-blood*ed te*rr*or*ists. App**are*ntly ‘decent’ men turning into vicious killers. Self-claimed scholars of faith harbouring fantasies of mass murder. And equally decent men justifying such murders.

The world has been increasingly seeing the emergence of such folk. Why is this so, and are such people inherently evil?

A little-known independent film, Land of the Blind (2006), looks at the creation of one such character. The film is a subtle political satire starring the veteran Hollywood actor, Donald Sutherland, and famous British actor, Ralph Fiennes.

Though the film is largely a satirical dig at the politics of dictatorships, one of its most interesting aspects is its portrayal of a character called John Thorne (played by Sutherland).

The film takes place in a fictional country with a largely Caucasian population (with Christian names). But the look of the city in which the film’s plot unfolds has architectural and cultural elements that are a fusion of 20th century South Amer*ican and Middle-Eastern settings.

The country is being ruled by a corrupt and oppre*ssive tyrant called Maximillian II.

Maximillian II lets his secret police run the regime, be*cause he is always busy relishing his love of producing over-budgeted action films and catering to the decadent demands of his wife.

It’s an oppressive regime that does not allow any criticism and dissent against its policies. It regularly tortures, murders and jails dissenters. The country’s economy has also been suffering due to Maximillian’s corruption, resulting in the rise of poverty levels and crime.

Joe (played by Fiennes) is a guard at a prison that has filthy little cells in which political prisoners are held for torture and execution. One of the cells holds John Thorne, an anti-government activist and scholar.

He is often beaten and tortured by the guards, but he still continues to denounce Maximillian’s regime. His denouncements are punctuated by quotes of famous philosophers and sages. This begins to draw Joe towards him.

A cinematic satire on totalitarianism and how absolute power corrupts absolutely provides food for thought
Joe leads a regular working-class life and is almost entirely apolitical. But his fascination with Thorne continues to grow. He finds himself awakened to the plight of his country and the nature of the regime views roused by his talks with Thorne.

One day, Maximillian decides to release Thorne, hoping he would fade away as just another cranky activist. On the other hand, Joe is promoted and becomes a member of the elite guard stationed at Maximillian’s palace.

After spending some months at the palace, Joe is shocked by Maximillian’s decadent behaviour. Thorne’s scholarly words and revolutionary slogans ring in his head and he decides to help Thorne topple Maximillian.

A plot is hatched by the two in which Joe secretly lets Thorne and some of his followers into the palace. The idea is to remove and jail Maximillian and hold an election.


Convinced that Throne would usher in a more just set-up in the country, Joe is taken aback when Thorne and his men shoot and kill Maximillian and his wife.

Thorne explains that the killings were a necessity. After taking over the government, he declares Joe to be a ‘national hero’. Joe, however, withdraws.

But he can’t help notice how the empathetic activist that he had grown so fond of, has now turned into a monster.

Thorne never holds the election. Instead, he unleashes a reign of torture, arrests and killings against his opponents and orders the separation of children from parents (so the children could be correctly indoctrinated); he bans films and the import of foreign medicines; and sets up ‘re-education camps’ where men and women are sent to memorise the thoughts and words of Thorne. He also orders the women to cover themselves up in public.

Joe is distraught. He confronts Thorne who tells Joe that he was only implementing policies based on the principles and ideals on which the country was created and that this was the best way to keep it safe from men like Maximillian.

Joe is repulsed by Thorne’s explanation and tells him that he was even worse than Maximillian! Thorne laughs off Joe’s accusation, calling him a naïve man. He then calmly orders his arrest. Joe is thrown in jail, tortured and then forced into a re-education camp. But he refuses to support Thorne and is thus left there to rot.

The film is a cinematic satire on totalitarianism, political expediency and state-imposed morality, but it also suggests that many men (such as Thorne), though greatly affected by injustices in society, personalise the effects of the flawed system to such an extent that instead of becoming a clear anti-thesis of the oppressive system, they eventually adopt its traits and then justify this adoption by giving the same system their own twist.

Thorne, when he was in jail, was a man affected by the manner in which the common people were suffering in a system imposed by a tyrant. But when he came to power, he behaved as if he alone had suffered during Maximillian’s regime.

So, after drawing his immediate revenge against the regime by assassinating Maximillian and his family, he still felt that the humiliation that he suffered in Maximillian’s jails was not completely avenged. Thus, he turned against society itself which, he believed, was equally responsible for his past sufferings.

Of course, this is not how he saw it. By imposing a totalitarian set-up based on archaic and myopic forms of morality and order, he instead believed that he was gifting the people a more just and moral order compared to Maximillian’s decadent and corrupt set-up.

The film also takes a satirical jibe at the hypocrisy that is inherent in such self-righteous thinking and behaviour. Because at the end of the film, Thorne is assassinated in the royal bathtub in which he is enjoying a bubble bath — with his mistress.

Source: Wizards of Id
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine November 22nd, 2015

After the 17-year-itch: The historic 1978 Indo-Pak cricket series

Pakistan and India haven’t played a Test series for almost eight years now. As always, the reasons have been largely political.

Before the current stalemate, there was a 10-year-break (in the 1990s). When Pakistan toured India in 1999, the two cricket-crazy nations hadn’t met in a Test series since 1989.

However, the longest gap between a Test series involving these two countries lasted for almost 17 years!

There was no series between Pakistan and India from 1961 till 1978. Both the countries had played three 5-Test-rubbers from 1952 till 1961, but none for the next 17 years.

India was set to tour Pakistan sometime in the mid-1960s, but the 1965 War between the two South Asian countries scrapped any possibility of an immediate future series.

Such a possibility was further dampened when the two nations once again went to war in 1971.

In 1975, the cricket boards of the two countries began to discuss the revival of cricketing ties and it was tentatively decided that both the nations would prepare to organise a full Test series soon.

But, the Indian board did not fully commit itself, mainly due to the political turmoil that had engulfed India at the time. In 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an emergency in the country.

Talks between the two boards picked up again in late 1976 and it was decided that the Indian cricket squad will be touring Pakistan in the near future because during the last series (17 years ago), it was the Pakistan team that had toured India.

However, the situation took another turn when political unrest now erupted in Pakistan.

Whereas some stability had returned to India when Indira lifted the emergency and held fresh elections (in which she was ousted), in July 1977 a military coup toppled the populist government of Z A. Bhutto in Pakistan.

Nevertheless, the new regime went ahead with the plan to host the Indian cricket squad.

In early 1978, the two boards finally penned down the dates during which the tour would take place: From September 27 till November 19 (1978).

The agreement was big news. And when the Indian squad arrived in Lahore, there were a number of foreign correspondents present at the Lahore airport, assigned to cover the series for various international newspapers.

Before the 1978 series, Pakistan and India had played each other in 15 Tests (all between 1952 and 1961). India had won two, Pakistan one, and the rest were all drawn.

The Indian squad was led by the classic slow left-arm leg spinner, BS Bedi. Bedi had been leading India since late 1975 and had in his squad a number of leading spinners: The unorthodox leg-break/googly man, BS Chandrasekhar; the highly experienced off-spinner, EAS Prasana; and another effective off-break bowler, S. Venkataraghavan.

These three (along with Bedi) had taken over 700 Test wickets between them and were considered to be the best spinners in the game at the time.

The Indian squad’s batting too was a strength, led by the plucky Sunil Gavaskar and his brother-in-law, GR Vishwanath. The Indians were thus depending squarely on their famous battery of spinners and on the squad’s long and dogged batting line-up.

The only apparent weakness in the team was its fast bowlers.

Madan Lal was experienced and K. Gharvri had been rapidly improving, but both were no more than medium-pacers whose job it was to wear out the new ball so the spinners could come into play.

However, in the squad was also one 19-year-old Kapil Dev. Quicker than Lal and Ghavri, he would, of course, go on to become a world-class seamer in the 1980s.

The Pakistan team on the other hand was in a quandary. This was the era when Australian media tycoon, Kerry Packer, had signed up a number of international players for an exclusive series of games (in Australia).

The international cricket body, the ICC, had refused to recognise the legitimacy of Packer’s ‘World Series Cricket’ (WSC), and had prompted the cricket boards to ban the players who had signed up to play in the WSC.

For example, Australia lost almost its entire squad, so much so that it had to recall the retired 40-something former batsman, Bobby Simpson, to lead a brand new squad for two series!

The then mighty West Indies too, lost a number of its leading players, and England banned five of its players (including former captain, Tony Grieg).

Five Pakistani players who had joined the WSC had also been banned. These included, Mushtaq Mohammad, Asif Iqbal, Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas and Imran Khan.

No New Zealand or Indian players were part of the WSC and Sri Lanka had yet to gain Test status. In the absence of the banned players, the Pakistan team had looked extremely weak.

Mushtaq, who was made captain in 1976, had successfully led the team in three series before he was banned in mid-1977.

Wicketkeeper Wasim Bari replaced him as skipper but struggled to draw a home series against England in late 1977. He then went on to badly lose against the same opponents in England (mid-1978).

Conscious of the fact that the Indian squad was just too strong for an under par Pakistan, the government gave the cricket board the green signal to allow the return of the banned players.

The outcasts were suddenly given a hero’s welcome.

The reception that the Indian squad received on its arrival too was a hearty one.

Hundreds of Pakistani cricket fans turned up to greet the Indians and dozens followed the players all the way to their hotel.

Bedi and Pakistan skipper, Mushtaq, also appeared in a popular TV show, Studio 9. Both stole the show with their candid talk and wit.

After a few warm-up games in Karachi and Peshawar, the Indians arrived at Quetta’s Ayub Stadium to play the first of the three scheduled ODI matches. The small stadium was packed to capacity.

Scoring a little over four runs an over, the Indians notched up 170 in their allotted 40 overs. All-rounder M. Amarnath struck a fine 51.

Pakistan fumbled in chasing the modest total and fell short by just 4 runs to give India the match. Majid Khan top scored with 50.

The second ODI took place at Sialkot’s Jinnah Stadium. On a lively green-top track, Pakistani seamers, Sarfraz Nawaz, Salim Altaf, Sikandar Bakht and the promising Hassan Jamil, shot out the Indians for just 79.

Bowling all-rounder, Hassan Jamil, was most impressive, viciously swinging and seaming the ball both in the air and off the wicket to grab three for 18. Imran Khan was left out of the playing eleven due to injury.

Pakistan chased down the tiny target in 16 overs and at the loss of just two wickets. Zaheer was ruthless, smashing 48 at a strike rate of over 100.

The ODI series was now squared with the decider to be played in Sahiwal, but after the 2nd Test.

The three-Test series kicked off in Faisalabad at the newly constructed Iqbal Stadium.

Though, the outfield was lush green, the pitch was gray. There was not even a hint of grass on it.

The Indians played three spinners and just one regular seamer (Kapil Dev). The new ball was shared by Dev and batting all-rounder, M. Amarnath, who bowled gentle medium-pace. The bulk of the bowling was done by Bedi, Parsana and Chandra.

Pakistan, on the other hand, picked three fast men (Imran, Sarfarz and Sikandar) and one spinner, the left-arm leggie, Iqbal Qasim.

Qasim was supported by batting all-rounder, Mushtaq Mohammad’s right-arm leg-breaks. And the bulk of the team’s bowling attack was to be carried by the quick bowlers.

Winning the toss and batting first, Pakistan amassed a mammoth 503.

Zaheer and Javed Miandad smashed big centuries. Mushtaq declared the innings at the tail end of the second day after Pakistan lost its eighth wicket.

India responded with a slow, grinding 462 that included a century by Vishvanath. Though the wicket remained to play flat, Pakistan did not do so well in the fielding department. It dropped at least six catches.

What’s more, Imran, after failing to extract any pace from the docile wicket, kicked and cursed the pitch during one of his many overs.

Out of frustration he (along with Sarfraz), began to bowl a torrent of short-pitched deliveries, but to no effect.

Asif Iqbal cracked a century and Zaheer made 96 in the second innings, but the game ended in a dull draw.

The pitch remained flat throughout the five days of the match. It was vehemently criticised by Imran during a post-match interview that he gave to PTV in the below video.

Both the teams flew into Lahore for the 2nd Test (at the Qaddafi Stadium). Mushtaq’s two main fast bowlers (Imran and Sarfraz) implored him to get a quicker pitch made for the match.

Mushtaq impressed upon the board that since Pakistan’s bowling strength lay largely on the shoulders of its fast bowlers, a more sporting wicket needed to be prepared in Lahore.

The board agreed and ordered the ground’s man to lay a quicker track.

When streams of spectators began to pour into the stadium at the start of the 2nd Test, they noticed that the pitch bore almost the same colour as that of the outfield. It was green and promised a lot of bounce and movement to the quick bowlers.

The author of Majid Khan’s biography quotes him as saying that Mushtaq was one of the best judges of a cricket pitch.

Before accompanying Bedi to the middle of the pitch for the toss, Mushtaq told his Vice-Captain, Asif Iqbal, that it was imperative that he won the toss and bowled first because he didn’t think the apparent liveliness in the pitch would last long.

The toss went Mushtaq’s way and he immediately put India to bat. The Indian playing eleven remained unchanged, but Pakistan made two changes.

It dropped the out-of-form opener Sadiq Mohammad and brought in Mudassar Nazar. In the bowling department, Mushtaq pulled in veteran swing bowler Salim Altaf in place of Sikander Bakht.

The Pakistani quicks had a field day on a lively pitch. They bowled out India for just 199. Imran and Sarfaraz picked up four wickets each. Only Dalip Vengsarkar hung around for a resolute 76.

M. Amernath was hit on the side of his face by a vicious Imran Khan bouncer (see video below). He was carried away on a stretcher for medical treatment.

As predicted by Mushtaq, the pitch began to ease up at the end of the first day. By the second day, Pakistan batsmen had begun to pile up the runs, scoring a huge 539.

The famed Indian spinners were treated with disdain, especially by Zaheer who amassed 234, which included 29 fours and 2 sixes. He was supported by night watchman, Wasim Bari, who cracked a rapid 85, and skipper Mushtaq chipped in with a quick 67. Pakistan gained a healthy lead of 340 runs.

With the wicket becoming increasingly docile, the strong Indian batting line-up responded well, refusing to cave in.

India’s first four batsmen all managed to go past 50, occupying the crease to make sure that the game would end in a draw.

India were 407 for five, half-way through the final day of the match and the stubborn Vishwanath was still there at 83. The Indians just needed to bat through another session and a half to save the game.

Mushtaq now threw the ball to the occasional medium-pacer, Mudassar Nazar. Nazar struck gold right away, going through the dogged defense of Vishwanath, with an in-cutter bowled from the edge of the crease.

Pakistan had found the opening they were looking for.

Wicketkeeper-batsman Syed Kirmani launched a counterattack. He wagged well with the tail to push the score to 465 with less than an hour and a half left in the game. Imran finally cleaned up the number eleven batsman, Chandra, and Pakistan was left to make 125 in about 25 overs.

Sensing that the Pakistani batsmen would be going for the target, the crowds began to swell in the stands.

Bedi kept an extremely defensive field and the bowlers were asked to bowl a negative line. Majid and Mudassar walked in to open the innings.

Kapil began by bowling tall bouncers and leg-side deliveries, but Majid finally got hold of him and began chasing his deliveries, tapping them to the boundary.

At one point, Majid got so angry with Kapil (and the umpire), that he pulled out the leg stump from his hand and gestured that it should be placed way down the leg side! He was warned by the umpire.

Majid and Mudassar kept the runs flowing as the sun began to go down behind the stadium. Mudassar was bowled by Dev when the score was 57.

Amarnath then finally took out a rampaging Majid, caught and bowled. Pakistan still needed another 36 runs in a possible seven overs. The light was fading and the crowd was getting jittery.

But then, so were the Indians, especially when Zaheer and Asif Iqbal began to play their shots with ease.

Pakistan finally reached the target with Zaheer hitting the first ball of the 21st over for a tall six over long on. Pakistan galloped home with at least seven overs to spare. In the era of limited ODI games and no T20 cricket, this indeed was quick going.

Pakistan had beaten India in a Test after 26 years. Their last victory had come in 1952 (under Kardar).

The government got so excited by the victory that it announced a holiday!

The Test series so far had been played in good sporting spirit. But after Pakistan’s dramatic win in Lahore, the gloves began to come off.

The slide started during the 3rd ODI at the Zafar Ali Stadium in Sahiwal.

The ODI series was locked at 1-1 and both the teams had planned to go all out to win it. The wicket had some grass and looked bowler-friendly. India won the toss and put Pakistan to bat.

Pakistan played aggressively and reached 205 for seven in its allotted 40 overs. Asif smashed a quick-fire 67. He was particularly severe on Kapil Dev.

India began aggressively as well. They had lost only two wickets when the score reached 180 in the 35th over. They just needed 25 in five overs and had eight wickets in hand.

They were cruising towards the target, with A. Gaeakwad tearing into the Pakistani bowlers.

Mushtaq brought back his two main quick bowlers, Imran and Sarfraz. Sarfaraz had already been sledging the Indian batsmen, cursing them (in Punjabi), and now he began to bowl tall bouncers.

The wide rule in those days wasn’t as well-defined or tight as it is today, so the umpires remained unmoved as one bouncer after the other began sailing over the Indian batsmen’s heads.

Imran began bowling short-pitch stuff as well. Though, he mostly aimed his bouncers at the bodies of the batsmen, many of his deliveries too lifted and shot way over their heads. The bouncer barrage succeeded in holding back India’s run chase.

Gaekwad finally gestured to the umpires. The umpires had a word with Mushtaq and asked him to tell his bowlers not to bowl ‘a negative line.’

Mushtaq responded by suggesting that his bowlers were bowling an ‘aggressive line’ and were well within their rights to do so.

When Sarfraz’s fourth delivery of the 37th over too, flew over Gaekwad’s head, Indian captain Bedi came out of the dressing room to have a word with Mushtaq.

It is not clear what transpired during the ensuing argument between the two captains, but it did make Bedi call back his batsmen.

Mushtaq went inside the Indian dressing room and tried to get Bedi to send his batsmen back in. But Bedi did not budge, accusing Mushtaq of allowing his bowlers to bowl relentless bouncers and for exhibiting bad sportsmanship.

He also complained about the ‘abusive language’ that Sarfraz and Javed Miandad had used against the Indian players on the field.

After Bedi refused to send back his batsmen, the umpires awarded the game to Pakistan.

Both the Indian and Pakistani media criticised the Pakistan team for soiling the series, even though some also added that Bedi had overreacted. No one mentioned the umpires.

The dust seemed to have settled a bit when the Indians reached Karachi to play the last Test of the series.

After the Sahiwal game, India had played two side matches (in Bhawalpur and Hyderabad).

The last Test took place at Karachi’s National Stadium. The wicket was brown and seemed flat.

According to Imran Khan, the board had decided to make a placid wicket to secure a series win for Pakistan and that this time Mushtaq did not insist for a levier track.

Talking to Sunil Gavaskar (during a 1987 TV show), Khan said that after looking at the track he was sure the game would end in a dull draw.

He said: ‘I was sure (the pitch) would only produce a draw, so I thought I was free to party! And I did party hard with my friends in my hotel room …’

Khan was correct in his reading of the pitch, and the game indeed was heading for a draw until Mushtaq’s decision to go all-out for a near-impossible win in the last session of the Test turned the match on its head.

India dropped Parsana and brought in left-arm swing bowler, K. Ghavri. Pakistan left out Salim Altaf and recalled the lanky medium-pacer, Sikandar Bakht.

India batted first and struck a respectable 344. They should have made more on the docile track, but some sustained tight bowling by Imran and Sarfaraz held the Indian batting back a bit, even though they couldn’t stop Gavaskar from notching his second century of the series.

Pakistan in its first innings was in trouble at 187 for five.

For the first time in the series the enigmatic Indian leg-break bowler, Chandrasekhar, was proving difficult to handle.

But, just when the Indians believed they had Pakistan on the ropes, Javed and Mushtaq steadied the innings with a big partnership. Both had taken the score to 341 when Mushtaq fell for a well-played 78.

Miandad upped the tempo and reached his century with a straight six over the bowler’s head. Pakistan’s tail wagged strongly and helped the side gain a valuable 137 runs lead.

The Indians began strongly in their second innings. They were 132 for two at the end of the fourth day. The wicket was still placid.

On the fifth day, Mushtaq asked his fast bowlers to put in a bit more effort, and shortly after lunch, India slipped from being 132 for one to 173 for six.

But, the stubborn Gavaskar was still there, playing out time. He found a resolute partner in Gharvri and both began to frustrate the Pakistani bowlers.

Sarfaraz and Miandad began their sledging routine. Sarfaraz let out a volley of abuse at Gavaskar.

At one point, Gavaskar walked up to Mushtaq and asked him to stop his fast bowler from passing remarks against India.

He said he didn’t have a problem with Sarfaraz hurling abuses at him, but he will not take any abusive language directed at his country.

But Sarfaraz carried on, directing choice Punjabi words at the plucky little batsman.

Miandad was constantly placed near the batsmen by Mushtaq and (according to Gavaskar), Javed would whistle, sing Indian and Pakistani film songs and ‘instruct him (Gavaskar) on how to bat’ to distract him.

Pakistan finally plucked Gavaskar (after he had scored yet another century). He chased an around-the-wicket out-swinger delivered by Sarfaraz and India were 246 for seven.

But time was running out. Kapil Dev joined Ghavri and both saw India survive till tea.

India was 160 runs ahead and still had three wickets in hand. Pakistan just had 30 minutes and then the last 20 overs to take the remaining wickets and chase a target. A draw was still a stronger possibility.

But the situation changed quickly when right after tea, Imran and Sarfaraz grabbed India’s last three scalps in quick succession. Now Pakistan needed 164 runs in a possible 25 overs.

In his autobiography, Mushtaq writes that although he wanted to go for a win, he was cautioned by Zaheer who told him that they should not take the risk of going after ‘the impossible target’ and instead, play for a draw and secure a series win.

Mushtaq consulted with Asif and Majid and both agreed that since the wicket was still playing straight, Pakistan should go for a win.

Asif was promoted to open the innings with Majid. The crowds roared when the Pakistan openers emerged.

Majid fell early. Pakistan was way behind the required run rate when Javed joined Asif.

Both took charge by mainly disturbing the composure of the Indian fielders by sprinting some near-impossible runs. Ones were converted into twos and twos were turned into threes.

But India struck by ousting Asif for a quickly compiled 44. Pakistan still needed 46 runs in just five overs.

Zaheer was expected to be the next man in but Mushtaq gambled and sent in Imran. Imran had struck a hard-hitting 32 in the first innings.

Khan was not a sprinter like Javed and he almost got run-out trying to steal a quick run. He was visibly angry, asking Javed to call clearly.

But just when it seemed India might be able to pull back Pakistan’s charge, Imran exploded, hitting Bedi for two huge sixes.

Pakistan eventually galloped to victory with just an over and a half remaining. The stands erupted with wild celebrations.

A series that was expected to produce dull draws, had swung Pakistan’s way in the most theatrical manner.

Source: After the 17-year-itch: The historic 1978 Indo-Pak cricket series
Published in Dawn, November 27, 2015

__________________
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

A steady but intense debate is taking place all over social, print and electronic media in Pakistan. The trigger has been the worrisome condition of the state and polity of the country that have been facing a serious existentialist crisis ever since extremist militancy began to reach unprecedented propositions from the early 2000s.

The debate is squarely based on the following question: What role (rather, how much of a role) should faith be playing in the matters of the state, governance and society in a country like Pakistan that came into being as a Muslim-majority entity?

This question (and the debate that it usually triggers), is certainly not a new phenomenon. It has cropped up before. But the urgency that it seems to have gathered today had been missing for over three decades now.

This urgency is largely the result of some extraordinary policies that the state and the government finally decided to enact from early 2014 to curb the once seemingly uncontrollable menace of extremist violence and bigotry that Pakistan has been in the grip of, especially after 2006.

Sixty-eight years on and we continue to brawl over the validity of the Pakistan ideology
The decision of the Pakistan armed forces (under General Raheel Sharif) to exhibit certain overt maneuvers to tackle the mentioned menace; and the (albeit hesitant) anti-extremist actions of the current PML-N regime, have opened up the debate, giving it the kind of fluency that it had been lacking for decades.

In a nutshell, one section in the debate insists that whatever that was concocted in the name of a national ideology (after Jinnah’s demise in 1948; or more so, after the late 1970s), is largely to be blamed for popularising an idea of nationhood engineered through the state’s many experiments that seeded a non-organic ideology.

They believe such an ideology characteristically mutated into becoming a dogma that has contributed the most to whatever that has gone down in the country in the way of faith-based violence and the ever-increasing episodes of bigotry.

The other section disagrees. It suggests that it is the opposing section that is to be blamed because it undermined the true raison d’etre of Pakistan’s creation by imposing ‘alien / Western concepts’ of governance and nationhood and (in the process) stalled the infusion of divine laws and culture in a country that came into being in the name of faith.

As the debate rages on and the military establishment, the state and government of Pakistan now find themselves urgently trying to carve out a much clearer middle-ground between the two poles, it should be remembered that this debate is not a sudden occurrence that emerged from a manic vacuum.

A similar debate had raged in the country almost four decades ago (in the 1960s). The question that triggered that debate was quite similar to the one that is prompting the current one.

The only difference is that the 1960s were a more tolerant period in which an intellectually superior debate was likely to thrive and in which various well-known scholarly figureheads from both sides of the divide participated.

The debate had erupted with the coinage of the term, ‘Pakistan Ideology’.

As author and historian, Ayesha Jalal, has often observed, the term ‘Pakistan Ideology’ was nowhere in the speeches during the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Nor was its Urdu expression ‘Nazriya-i-Pakistan’.

When the 1962 Constitution of Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s regime highlighted its understanding of Pakistani nationhood to mean being a Muslim (as opposed to a theological) state where a modernist and reformist spirit of Islam would guide the country’s politics and society, the religious parties opposed it.

It was at this point that the term Nazriya-i-Pakistan first emerged. It is largely believed that the expression was first used by the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) who suggested that Pakistan’s ideology should be squarely based on policies constructed through the dictates of the faith, striving to turn Pakistan into a theological entity.

The debate about exactly what kind of a vision drove Jinnah to demand a separate Muslim country in South Asia, and what should constitute Pakistani culture and nationhood peaked in the late 1960s when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto formed the left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party (PPP); and when Sindhi, Baloch, Pushtun and Bengali nationalists accelerated their agitation for provincial autonomy.

After witnessing the ascendency of leftist parties in Pakistan in the late 1960s and the growing agitation by ethnic nationalists, JI’s founder and prolific Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, declared that socialism was an anti-religious ideology.

Prominent progressive intell*ectuals such as Hanif Ramay and poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz responded by emphasising that Pakistani nationhood and culture were multi-ethnic and multicultural and best served by democracy and socialism.

Maududi struck back by explaining leftist and liberal Pakistani political organisations and cultural outfits as ‘Trojan horses’ who had infiltrated Pakistani society and government to ‘damage the country’s faith-based fabric.’

Responding to Maududi’s outburst, the popular Urdu literary magazine, Nusrat (that had been founded by Hanif Ramay) began to run a series of essays explaining ‘Maududiat’.

Though the term had been first coined by Maududi’s opponents in another religious outfit, the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), which had accused Maududi of trying to construct a separate sect, Nusrat and eventually the PPP used the term to define Maududi’s philosophy as being opportunistic because he had originally opposed the creation of Pakistan but was now using the politics of the same country to safeguard his ‘economic (industrialist) and foreign (Western / capitalist) allies (from socialism).’

Maududi bounced back and accused the leftists of being on the strings of the Soviet Union. The JI began publishing Maududi’s new Nazriya-i-Pakistan thesis along with his earlier writings.

Author and journalist, Safdar Mir, claimed that JI had omitted republishing the essays that Maududi had written before Pakistan’s creation and in which he had lambasted the Pakistan Movement because (according to Maududi) Muslim Nationalism was contrary to the universality of Islam.

Mir sardonically lay into Maududi’s thesis by reproducing the contents of the missing essays. On the other end, famous lawyer, A.K. Brohi (who, ironically, was part of the anti-JI Ayub regime before its fall in 1969) and popular novelist, Naseem Hijazi, sided with Maududi and denounced the period’s leftist forces for being ‘anti-religion’ and ‘anti-Pakistan’.

The debate abated after the 1970 election. But the separation of East Pakistan (1971), the economic failure of the first PPP regime (1971-77), the emergence of a reactionary dictatorship (1977-88) and the fall-out (in Pakistan) of the Afghan Civil War, retarded the debate.

Decades later it has returned; or rather, it has returned to become a proper polemical entity again as opposed to being a one-sided narrative which began explaining opposing ideas (of what constitutes Pakistani Nationhood and ideology), as a threat to the country’s existence.

Thus, one section of the debate is now claiming that such an existentialist threat actually emerged due to the myopic egoism of the post-’77 narrative, while the other section is suggesting that this happened because what the narrative suggested was never properly implemented.

It is still too early to determine which way the debate would turn. But the way it has opened up once again after years of becoming extremely narrow and mutated, the changing conducts of the military establishment and the government in this context should encourage the debate by drawing in more scholarly-sound men and women from both sides of the divide. Because so far, unlike the one in 1960s, this debate is still being largely moderated and defined by somewhat ill-informed and ‘ahistorical’ opinions (especially on the electronic and social medias).

After all, it is the synthesis emerging from such a debate that can surely provide the key to any positive outcome of a country and polity in turmoil.

Source: Smokers’ Corner: Once upon a debate
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 29th, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Exposed! What Nawaz and Modi really talked about in Paris

Source: Exposed! What Nawaz and Modi really talked about in Paris
Published in Dawn, Dec 01, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Pakistan’s contrary years (1971-1977): A cultural history of the Bhutto era

Modern cultural historians have usually defined the 1970s as being one of the most implosive decades of the 20th century.

Their fascination with the 1970s has continued to this day — they describe the era as a period in modern history in which various contemporary ideologies of the left and the right fought their most decisive battles.

The 1970s were no different in Pakistan as well.

Flamboyant and edgy, here too, the prominent veneer of freewheeling cultural brashness and populism of the decade finally mutated and triggered social profligacy and economic downturns that (by the late 1970s) eventually gave way (around the world) to the emergence of starker forces of the ‘New Right’. Who, in turn, would go on to redefine global politics and society from the 1980s onwards.

The cultural and political flamboyance of the 1970s eventually collapsed on itself.

Incidentally (and rather aptly), the 1970s in Pakistan were dominated by one of the country’s most enigmatic, flamboyant and contradictory politicians ever: ZA Bhutto.

On December 9 and 17 of 1970, Pakistan held its very first elections on the basis of adult franchise.

Political parties had been campaigning for the event ever since January 1970, and Z A Bhutto’s left-wing/populist Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and Mujibur Rehman’s Bengali nationalist party, the Awami League (AL), were drawing the largest crowds in West and former East Pakistan respectively.

This did not seem to deter General Yahya Khan’s military regime. Yahya had been handed over power by the Ayub Khan dictatorship in 1969, after Ayub resigned due to pressure implied by a widespread students and workers movement.

Yahya did not trust either of the two parties (PPP and AL). But even though Yahya’s intelligence agencies had predicted a ‘slim victory’ for Mujib’s AL in East Pakistan, the same agencies had almost entirely rubbished the idea of Bhutto’s PPP ever sweeping the polls in West Pakistan.

Hopeful that the elections would at best generate a hung verdict (that would be in the interest of the military regime), Yahya, nevertheless, decided to not only support various conservative factions of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), but it also gave a nod of approval to some right-wing religious parties that had been at odds with Ayub’s supposedly ‘secular’ regime.

During the PPP election campaign, new-found youthful, middle-class infatuations such as radical politics and revolutionary posturing connected with the street-smart vibes of the pro-Bhutto working-class milieu.

One of the most prominent connecting points in this context was Sindh and Punjab’s rural and semi-urban ‘shrine culture.’

The shrine culture, pertaining to the devotional, recreational, and economic activity around the shrines of Sufi saints, had been around in the region for over a thousand years.

Till about the late 1960s, urban middle-class Pakistan was either only nominally connected to this culture or many from the class had simply dismissed it as being the realm of the uneducated.

However, just like the hippies of the West (in the 1960s) — who had chosen various exotic and esoteric Eastern religions and spiritual beliefs to demonstrate their disapproval of the ‘soullessness’ of the Western capitalist system; and of the ‘exploitative ways of organised religion’ (mainly Christianity), young, middle-class rebels of urban Pakistan too, increasingly looked upon Sufism and the shrine culture as a way to make a social, cultural and political connect with the ‘downtrodden’ and the dispossessed.

Such a connect became more interesting when liberal and radical leftist youth supporting the PPP came into direct contact with the boisterous masses of rural peasants, small shop owners and the urban working classes at PPP’s election rallies.

The latter group brought with it the music, the emotionalism and the devotional sense of loyalty of the shrine culture.

The cultural synthesis emerging from such a fusion of ideas was a major reason behind Bhutto’s image graduating in leaps, and he was now perceived by his supporters as being the embodiment of a modern Sufi saint!


When the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) began showing clips of various election rallies, standing out in vibrancy and uniqueness were the PPP gatherings.

Though dominated by Bhutto’s animated populist oratory, these rallies also became famous for almost always turning into the kind of boisterous and musical fanfares witnessed outside the many shrines of Sufi saints across the country.

The country’s middle-class youth had blossomed in the mid-1960s as Pakistan’s reflection of the era’s youthful romance with leftist ideals.

But it was yet to be fully impacted by the ‘counterculture’ of the hippies making the rounds in the United States and Europe at the time.

That started to change in 1970 — and fast. Though the beginnings of the hippie phenomenon in the West can be placed in San Francisco in 1966, middle-class Pakistan’s knowledge of the phenomenon (till about early 1968) was at best superficial.

But when Pakistan became an intermediate destination of the famous ‘Hippie Trail’ — an overland route that thousands of traveling hippies (from Europe and the United States) started to take on their journeys towards India and Nepal — cities such as Peshawar, Swat, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan became important hippie destinations.

After entering Iran (from Turkey), the Trail curved into Afghanistan, from where the hippies entered Pakistan (through the Khyber Pass in NWFP).

They traveled down to Rawalpindi and then to Lahore from where they entered India (by bus or train).

Many hippies also traveled all the way down to Karachi to visit the city’s sprawling beaches.

Popular destinations for these traveling hippies in Pakistan were the various large Sufi shrines in Lahore and Karachi.

About the same time, the middle-class Pakistani youth had also started to frequent shrines more often, especially on Thursday nights when numerous shrines held musical events dedicated to the traditional Sufi devotional music, the ‘Qawaali.’

It was at the shrines of Lahore; on the beaches of Karachi; and at the bus stands of Peshawar, where young Pakistanis came into direct contact with the passing hippies.

And as portrayed by the flashy (and flowery) attire of TV personality, Zia Mohiuddin, in 1970’s famous PTV ‘stage show’, The Zia Mohiuddin Show, the so-called ‘radical chic’ and ‘hippie attire’ developing in the West started to also catch the fancy of young urban Pakistanis.

By the early 1970s, young men’s hair, that had remained somewhat short till even the late 1960s, started to grow longer (along with the side-burns), and women’s kameez (shirts), became shorter.

Sure of triggering a political and cultural revolution in Pakistan, young West and East Pakistanis joined a large number of their countrymen as they turned out to vote in the country’s first ‘real elections’ in 1970.

These elections, though held under a military dictatorship, are still hailed by a majority of Pakistani political commentators as being the most free and fair ever held in the country.

The results were stunning.

Bhutto’s PPP (in West Pakistan) and Mujib’s Awami League (in East Pakistan), almost completely eclipsed the old guard of Pakistani politics.

Also swept aside by the populist tide of both the PPP and the Awami League were various religious parties.

In fact, the only religious party to perform well was the progressive faction of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-H), which did well in the semi-rural and rural areas of NWFP and had originally wanted to get into a political alliance with the PPP.

The results of the elections were certainly a shock to the regime of Yahya Khan and the so-called ‘establishmentarian’ parties.

Winning around 160 seats in the National Assembly (out of a total 300), Mujib’s Awami League should have been invited to form Pakistan’s first ever popularly elected government. But since Mujib and his party were squarely made up of Bengali nationalists, Yahya hesitated.

Next in line to form the government was Bhutto’s PPP, which had won 81 seats.

What happened next is a thorny and controversial issue in the country’s political history.

Some political commentators have blamed Yahya for pitching Bhutto’s ego against that of Mujaib’s, while others accuse Bhutto of manipulating Yahya for keeping Mujib out in the cold.

Pakistanis have yet to decide upon a convincing closure on the issue.

Charged by the election results but frustrated by West Pakistan’s apparent reluctance to hand over power to the Bengali-dominated majority in the Parliament, militant Bengali nationalist groups started to violently agitate against the military regime of Yahya Khan.

As the drastic situation in East Pakistan rapidly turned into becoming a full-fledged Civil War, scores of refugees from East Pakistan crossed into the Indian state of West Bengal, drawing India into the conflict.

The turmoil soon mutated into an all-out war (in December 1971). But unlike the 1965 Pakistan-India war that had resulted in a stalemate, this time the Pakistani troops lost out.

Mujib was released from a West Pakistan jail to travel back to East Pakistan (via London), and take charge of the newly created Bangladesh and Bhutto took over the reins of what now simply became the Republic of Pakistan.

Bhutto reiterated his party’s commitment to introduce sweeping socialist reforms and give the country a proper constitution.

If one even skims through the economic stats of Pakistan between 1972 and 1974, the Bhutto regime (till then) did a rather remarkable job, considering that he had inherited an economy ravaged by an exhaustive war.

It is also true that during the first few years of the Bhutto regime, the nation’s mood had successfully transformed, as the country looked forward to a better Pakistan.

Of course, political skirmishes between Bhutto and the opposition parties continued making the news, but by and large, Pakistanis had decided to settle down and do whatever they could do to restore their pride after the East Pakistan debacle.

For example, on the youth front, university and college students, most of whom had been in an agitation mode ever since the late 1960s, returned to the campuses, willing and ready to conduct their politics through annual student union elections.

In fact, regarding campus politics, the Bhutto era (1972-76), is remembered to be one of the most stable, in which regular student union elections kept the students in a more democratic frame of mind.

More so, the political and social changes taking place in post-1971 Pakistan can clearly be gauged by observing the shifts and pulls witnessed in various universities and colleges in Pakistan during the Bhutto era.

For example, even though leftists were still a force on campuses, they lost the unity that they had exhibited in the late 1960s (during the anti-Ayub Movement). The country’s leading left-wing student outfit, the National Students Federation (NSF), broke into various factions.

By 1973, there were at least five NSF factions operating on Pakistan’s university and college campuses. Their influence was further diluted by the emergence of the PPP’s own student-wing, the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), and by the advent of various leftist-ethnic student groups such as the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO), and the Pashtun Students Federation (PkSF).

In response to the fragmentation of leftist groups, many progressive student leaders (in Karachi) formed the more moderate Liberal Students Organisation.

This fragmentation of the left on campuses was reflective of the (albeit quiet) sense of ambiguity growing within urban middle-class Pakistan.

The feeling seemed like a numbing hangover from years of playing a driven and confrontational political and cultural role in the late 1960s that had quite literally changed the map of the country (Ayub’s fall, the 1970 election, and ultimately the East Pakistan debacle).

Large sections of this class suddenly became apolitical, deciding to simply call themselves ‘liberal’ while the other half — especially in the wake of populist politics and Bhutto’s socialist reforms — tried to find a place for themselves in the changing political and cultural milieu by tentatively extending their support to politico-religious parties that had been swept aside by progressive and leftist forces during the anti-Ayub movement, and then during the 1970 election.

The latter tendency was also reflected in the time’s student politics. As progressive votes (during student union elections) started to split between various NSF factions, PSF and the liberals, the biggest beneficiary of the split was Jamat-i-Islami’s student-wing, the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT).

Remaining well organised and united, the IJT became a powerful electoral force on campuses in the 1970s — especially after 1973, when some of Bhutto’s economic policies and his confrontational style of politics started to alienate the country’s urban middle-classes.

In fact, as the opposition parties got bogged down by the PPP’s overwhelming majority in the Parliament and its burgeoning street power, the only worthwhile middle-class opposition faced by the Bhutto government came from the IJT.

However, there are still those among former student leaders of the left who claim that the IJT’s rise was actually encouraged by the Bhutto regime!

Bhutto faced desertions from what was once his natural constituency (the students), when between 1973 and 1974, he launched a purge in the PPP, expelling a number of the party’s leading leftist ideologues.

Leftist student groups (except the PSF) became opponents of the regime and some of the student leaders of the time suggest that to neutralise the opposition to his regime coming from far-left groups, Bhutto ‘allowed’ the rise of the IJT on campuses.

However, what such theories fail to take into account is that from the late 1960s, there was a two-fold growth in the number of students from conservative small towns and villages joining universities and colleges in the country’s main urban centres.

Such students became natural constituents of groups like the IJT.

Also, whereas the left groups had begun to split, the IJT remained united.

But the shift in the ideological mood of student politics did not in any way affect the populist cultural activity for which the Bhutto regime is fondly remembered.

The Pakistani society maintained a liberal aura.

Night-clubs, bars, horse racing, and cinemas continued to thrive and mushroom, and religiosity largely remained a private matter, even though the government and state of Pakistan started using religious symbolism more often than before — especially as a way to drown out an emerging post-1971 notion (among some sections) suggesting that Jinnah’s ‘Two Nation Theory’ that had given birth to Pakistan had collapsed after the separation of East Pakistan.

Pakistan’s tourism industry also witnessed an unprecedented boom during the Bhutto era, and the country’s Urdu film scene reached a commercial peak, a feat it would struggle to repeat in the future.

By now, flamboyant fashions that had been rapidly taking shape in the West — ‘bellbottoms,’ colorful shirts, long hair, heavy neck chains, platform shoes — arrived in full force and were enthusiastically embraced by urban middle-class youth.

Even though Western fashion and countercultural antics became all the rage among the urban young men and women, the youth’s desire to have a spiritual and cultural connect with the masses (discovered in the late 1960s) through the shrine culture too remained afoot.

Along with beer-serving roadside cafes in Karachi and Lahore, shrines too became a favorite haunt for students, and well known theatre artistes and painters.

For the Pakistan film industry, the culturally radiant times of the Bhutto regime produced a commercial bonanza as the industry managed to generate dozens of ‘super hits’ between 1970 and 1977.

To accommodate the large number of films being produced (mainly in Lahore), the number of cinemas also increased across the country, with the largest one (and the only cinema in Pakistan at the time to have a 70mm screen), appearing in 1976 in Karachi and appropriately called Prince Cinema.

A study of the Pakistani cinema of the 1970s in comparison to the Indian cinema of the period makes for an interesting case of contextual contrasts.

Both the industries at the time were generating films of similar production quality but (after 1973), when Indian Prime Minister Inidra Gandhi’s ‘heavy handed’ policies and the rising incidents of corruption in her government triggered a full-fledged protest movement (the ‘JP Movement’) against her, Indian films became more socio-political in context, throwing up Bollywood’s version of the ‘angry young man,’ epitomised by actor Amitabh Bachan’s brooding roles in various Salim-Javed scripted films.

Nothing of the sort happened in the Pakistani films of the time.

In comparison to India, which eventually went into a convulsive political turmoil when Indira declared a state of emergency in 1975, Pakistan’s economy remained comparatively stable and its politics were firmly in the hands of a Prime Minister who was hardly ever challenged by a disunited and fragmented opposition.

Even an armed insurgency by various nationalist Baloch groups in the mountains of the arid province of Balochistan (1973-77), remained somewhat in the background in the major cities of Pakistan.

So what were Pakistani films about during the 1970s — a time when the local film industry had hit a commercial and creative peak?

One of the major themes in the Pakistani cinema of the 1970s that managed to attract large urban middle-class audiences was class conflict explored within a romantic affair between a man and a woman; and the ‘Women’s Lib’ movement raging in the West at the time and its effects on the Pakistani society.

Thus, the Pakistani film heroines started appearing in roles reflecting a more independent and outspoken streak to the point of rebelling against their conservative parents by getting involved (and then marrying) middle or lower middle-class men.

1974’s ‘Samaj’ and 1977’s ‘Aaina’ are stark examples.

‘Samaj’ squarely blames the inflexibility of the conservative society at large for the quixotic rebellion of young couples going astray, and ‘Aaina’ offers a similar statement in which a trendy and rich young woman (played by Shabnam), falls in love with a lower-middle-class, albeit educated man (played by Nadeem), and after defying her disapproving father, marries the man.

The father eventually comes around to finally approving the union, but keeps offering gifts to her daughter (furniture, TV, air-conditioner, etc.)

This leaves the not-so-rich hero feeling as if his young wife’s father is mocking his lowly financial status. In between, the couple have a child (a son), but soon he is without a mother when the woman walks out, accusing the husband of being close-minded (if not downright paranoid).

Though, till now, the film is sympathetic to the whole idea of a modern young Pakistani woman using her own mind and will in social and domestic affairs, the sympathy turns into a question when we see her walking out on her man and that too without the son.

The question now was, whether such a display of independence (especially by women), may also end up making them behave selfishly?

After a lot of histrionics, in which we see the proud proud husband trying to raise the stranded child without a mother, and the mother gradually coming down from her contemporary pedestal of independence (thanks to maternal instincts now kicking in more often than before), the couple is finally reunited.

However, the film maintains its attack on social conservatism (especially the kind that stems from financial wealth), when it is revealed that the woman’s father had been trying to sabotage the marriage all along.

The revelation inspired the exhibition of an unprecedented scene never before dared in a Pakistani film. When the heroine realises how her father had destroyed her marriage and kept her away from her son, she lands a tight slap on the father’s chubby cheeks.

It was a daring statement by the director, Nazrul Islam. No South Asian film till that point had dared to incapacitate the sacred concept of fatherhood to such an extent.

The slap also expressed the modern, young Pakistani youth’s more aggressive retaliation against social conservatism, even though the heroin had to become a married woman and a young mother to be able to make such a drastic move.

‘Aaina’ was a massive hit. Opening in various cinemas in March 1977, the film ran for a staggering 400 weeks! It played for the last time at Karachi’s Scala Cinema in 1982 — a full four years after it was first released.

The other reason behind Aaina’s impressive performance at the box-office was its soundtrack. It was studded with catchy/moody songs composed by Robin Ghosh (Shabnam’s husband).

The first signs of the emergence of local hippies had started to appear in Pakistan in the early 1970s.

A report in a 1974 issue of The Herald suggested that the usage of hashish among young Pakistanis and college and university students had grown dramatically.

Interestingly, though, even till the late 1960s, hashish (among the middle-classes) was looked down upon as an intoxicant of the poor and the fakirs, by 1974 (according to the report), it had become increasingly popular on campuses.

But, whereas, (by 1974) in the West, the hippie and the counterculture movement had started to be ravaged by the rise in the use of deadly drugs such as heroin, in Pakistan, heroin was almost an unknown entity in the 1970s.

In fact, the first official case of heroin addiction in Pakistan was registered in 1979 (at Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital), many years after the drug had already become a serious problem within the youth cultures of the West.

The ‘swinging’ dynamics of 1970s’ romance with various social aspects of liberalism (in Pakistan) generated a rather crackling cultural aura when it came together with Bhutto’s populism.

However, at the same time, this fusion set in motion an anxious discourse (especially among the urban petty-bourgeoisie), who began to question the limits of the emerging liberal trends within the country’s middle-class youth.

This discourse too is clearly present in many of the time’s Pakistani films, most of which were scripted and directed by people with strong petty-bourgeois backgrounds.

The first shot in this context in Pakistani cinema was fired by 1974’s ‘Miss Hippie.’

The so-called ‘social revolution’ that the hippie counterculture eventually achieved in the West was largely seen as a cultural threat (by filmmakers) in both India and Pakistan.

The overall message of ‘Miss Hippie’ suggests that a patriarchal society is superior, and thus, when a patriarch fails, especially due to his liking for certain ‘decadent’ western abominations, the whole family/nation collapses.

That’s what happens to veteran actor Santosh in ‘Miss Hippie.’ He is a rich man with a taste for whisky and partying at nightclubs. He is thus a bad example for his impressionable young daughter (played by Shabnam) who too becomes a drunkard and a frequent ‘keelub’ (Urdu slang for nightclub) visitor.

Scolded by her hapless mother (played by Sabiha), Shabnam runs away from home, only to be picked up by a friendly ‘love guru.’ The guru is leading a group of hash-smoking and shake-shacking hippies.

Of course, this means an attack on the pure traditions of the ‘mashriqi mu’ashira’ (eastern culture); a threat that gets worse when we find out that the guru also runs a drug smuggling ring.

Enter Nadeem, playing an undercover cop who infiltrates the junkie-hippie group to report on how hippies plan to ‘contaminate innocent young Pakistanis’ with hashish and free sex.

Of course, true to form, the film passionately puts forth the breathtaking idea that it is the adoption of alien culture that is harming Pakistan, whereas ‘local culture’ (as interpreted by the urban petty-bourgeoisies), is its savior.

In the end, Nadeem destroys the sinister hippie group and rescues Shabnam from the clutches of drugs, decadence and assorted displays of nation-breaking obscenity.

‘Miss Hippie’ came with a funky soundtrack too, liberally laced with sonic allusions to the early 1970s’ ‘glam-rock’ (Garry Glitter, Marc Bolan, etc.).

The film also flaunted some of the most outrageous moments of the time’s ‘chic attire’ and overblown sense of fashion with Shabnam exhibiting a chunky metallic ‘Peace’ sign, platform boots, and bellbottoms with flares almost as wide as a Yosemite Park camping tent!

Taking the same route also was 1975’s mega-hit, ‘Muhabbat Zindagi Hai’. The film follows a modern young woman (actress Mumtaz) frequenting nightclubs and other such places of unparalleled wickedness, and having no respect for her own sacrosanct culture.

In comes actor Waheed Murad, playing an England-returned Pakistani who is also the fiancé of the independent-minded (and thus sleazy?) Mumtaz.

Waheed, however, is the epitome of eastern virtue and is shocked to see what has become of his old sweetheart. He decides to enter the ‘club life’ to have a shot at slowly making Mumtaz realise the follies of western culture. (Wonder what on earth he was doing in England?)

However, when he finally succeeds in making Mumtaz see the light, he himself falls prey to the manipulative ways of the club, as if it wasn’t a nightclub but a cult of brainwashed zombie alcoholics!

The reformed Mumtaz at once switches from wearing jeans to adorning shalwar-kameez, and from spouting free-for-all-English (“Eeeevverrrybaady, let’s enjeeayaayysss!”), she suddenly starts speaking in top-notch rhetorical Urdu.

The message of the film reeks of the convoluted formula upon which most of Pakistan’s ‘social films’ of the era were made in the 1970s; smugly suggesting that the Pakistani culture is sacred, whereas the western culture is like quicksand, sucking you in towards addictive immoralities such as booze, drugs, dance and rape! Of course, booze, drugs, dance and rape are all what westerners did all day long in the 1970s.

Though populist-liberalism was at its crest in the Pakistani society of the 1970s, films like ‘Ms. Hippie’ and ‘Mohabbat Zindagi Hai’ were portraying an undercurrent of anxiety boiling beneath the many liberal pretensions of urban society.

This anxiety (mostly affecting the middle and lower-middle-class sections), reflected a concern that saw society getting carried away by the liberal tides of the time and in the process, eroding the comforting economics and sociology of the ‘joint family system’ which, many feared, was gradually being replaced by ‘Western’ notions of social and domestic independence.

The liberal zeitgeist was also blamed (mainly by the more conservative sections of the urban middle-classes), for encouraging the youth to undermine the ‘importance of faith’ in the Pakistani society.

But such concerns and fears remained largely hidden underneath the bombastic antics of the populist-liberalism of much of Bhutto’s regime and era, and only surfaced onto the mainstream either through certain ‘social films’ — that, nonetheless, remained highly flamboyant in look — or through the concerned rhetoric of religious outfits.

However, the Bhutto regime’s take in this context too was rather ambiguous. Because in spite of the fact that the cultural policies of the government clearly encouraged and plumped the liberal aura of the period, some of the regime’s political maneuvers actually ended up strengthening the emerging anti-liberal narratives.

For example, after the 1971 breakup of Pakistan and the war with India, educational discourse of nation-building in Pakistan became much more introverted.

The shock and horror of the defeat in East Pakistan led to the refrigeration of the country’s ideological boundaries, making them narrower than before.

As author Rubina Saigol has noticed, a militaristic nationalism, which saw enemies on every border, was constituted.

This nationalism was not so much for progress or development as much as against Pakistan’s myriad enemies now presumed to be lurking behind every door.

Saigol goes on to explain that this new nationalism required a re-ordering of the past. Those unacceptable to the newly formed national self, had to be expunged. The pages of time had to be cleansed of the enemy’s presence.

Such narratives would eventually become integrated into larger state policies under Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, but one can also suggest that these early reactive maneuvers by the Bhutto regime — though also undertaken to neutralise the regime’s right-wing opponents — actually gave weight to the same opponents’ anti-liberal narratives which they would then, ironically, use in their first widespread movement against the regime in 1977.

The ambiguity of the regime in this context was also apparent on the state-owned PTV.

Though the 1970s are remembered as the ‘Golden Age of Television’ in Pakistan, in which the institution generated a series of high quality drama serials and music programming, many of the popular serials also addressed the same anxieties highlighted by certain ‘social films’ of the era.

Many of these serials either insinuated the Bhutto government’s populist-socialist overtones (Sonay Ki Chirya; Khuda Ki Basti); or were an apolitical celebration of various liberal notions of the time (‘Kiran Kehani’; Zair Zabar Pesh).

But there were also plays that indirectly addressed the dichotomy that emerged when the government-sponsored populist-liberalism clashed head-on with the new reactive historical narratives being built by the state after 1971.

The frontline player in this respect was intellectual and popular playwright, Ashfaq Ahmed.

A serial based on his teleplays called ‘Aik Mohabbat, Soh Afsanay’ (1975-76), celebrated the liberal signs of the times and the sense of freedom being exhibited by the middle-class youth; but the bottom-line of almost each and every play of his in the series was always a plea to balance modern notions of liberalism with the country’s traditional religious lineage.

Though on the surface the above may reflect a plea for moderation, the problem was, nobody was quite sure exactly what this traditional religious lineage constituted anymore.

Pakistan was (and is), a diverse population of various ethnicities, Islamic sects and sub-sects, so much so, that one’s ethnic roots start mattering more than the generalised concoction of a singular brand of faith — as proven by the Bengali nationalist movement in former East Pakistan.

Ashfaq’s balancing pleas emerged from his ‘Sufi’ bent, and since for a while he was a supporter of Bhutto’s socialist initiatives, Ashfaq had to rip into the ‘hypocrisies of the modern bourgeoisie’ before advising a balance between modern materialism and traditional spiritualism.

The above example is clearly visible in one of his most popular TV plays, ‘Dada Didada’ (1975), directed by Muhammad Nisar Hussain.

It is a story of a loving and liberal grandfather and his favorite young grandson who (with his long hair, charming personality and liberal ideas), is the stereotypical 1970s middle-class Pakistani youth.

The grandfather (Dada), also loves to drink (mostly whisky), and the family is happy radiating within the comfort of their liberal bourgeois cocoon, until the grandson falls seriously sick.

The vulnerability of the ‘liberal’ belief system is then ‘exposed’ when the doctors fail to cure the grandson and the family (especially the dotting grandfather) starts to crumble.

Ashfaq alludes that the glue that was keeping the family happy and together (liberalism and materialism), was of superficial quality because it had detached the family from its traditional spiritual moorings.

In a scene inspired by Mughal Emperor Babar’s sacrificial undertaking — in which, to save his son Humayun’s life, Babar is said to have given up alcohol — the grandfather prays to the Almighty that his life be given to the grandson and for this he is ready to give up drinking.

The grandfather then smashes all of his bottles and enters the grandson’s bedroom where the young man lies dying. There the old man starts to walk in circles around the young man’s bed until he stops and sits on the edge of the bed.

The next thing we see is the young man opening his eyes. He is cured. But in a tragic twist, when he approaches the grandfather, the old man is no more.

Ashfaq Ahmed’s TV plays of the era were a lot more literary and intellectual compared to the hyperbolic tenor of the time’s ‘social films;’ but the question is, was Ahmad also critiquing Bhutto’s populism, blaming it for encouraging the disengagement between Pakistani youth and faith?

The Bhutto regime saw Ashfaq as critiquing bourgeois-capitalist values, whereas Ashfaq was sure he was simply ordaining ‘Sufism’ in the ideologically vulnerable mindsets of modern young people.

The bulk of what emerged as art during the Bhutto regime remained celebratory, rejoicing it as soft expressions of the government’s populist overtones. But the dichotomy such a process was generating was unmistakable.

Perhaps it was the year 1975 in which one can place this process (and resultant dichotomy) reaching a peak; a year in which the success of ‘social films’ such as ‘Mohabbat Zindagi Hai’ (with its conservative undercurrent), was matched by the mammoth success of the notorious ‘Dulhan Aik Raat Ki’.

British and American ‘Adult films’ had become a hugely successful outing for young middle-class Pakistanis and couples, and by 1974-75, cinemas (especially in Karachi) that had signs saying ‘For Adults Only,’ were doing roaring business.

Karachi’s Rio Cinema and Palace Cinema became known for running such films. These films were mainly American romantic farces in which nudity scenes and voluptuous content were allowed to be shown by the censors, thus the tag: ‘For Adults Only’.

Inspired by the period’s ‘Adult Film’ phenomenon, director Mumtaz Ali Khan helmed Pakistan’s first Urdu film that was ‘For Adults Only.’

It was appropriately called ‘Dulhun Aik Raat Ki’ (Bride for one night). Staring the ‘Charles Bronson of Pakistani (and Pashtun) cinema,’ Badar Munir, the film was a raunchy meat fest of quivering female bodies and swinging muscular men.

The film was unapologetic in its gaudy, blood-splattered settings and amorality, spinning a story of unabashed hedonism, decadence and revenge, consequently giving birth to the prototype of the Pakistani cinema’s angry-young-man.

Where Amitabh’s role in this context was street-smart, brooding and ideologically charged, Munir’s role was that of a man steeped in the rugged and earthy myths of Social Darwinism, honour and revenge.

The character would eventually be perfected by Punjabi film actor, Sultan Rahi, in many Punjabi films of the 1980s, a majority of them based squarely on the formula first discovered by ‘Dulhan Aik Raat Ki.’

On the one end, the unabashed amorality of films such as ‘Dulhan Aik Raat Ki’ and, on the other end, the hit status of reactive ‘social films’ such as ‘Mohabbat Zindaggi Hai,’ clearly demonstrates the contrary nature of society and government in Pakistan under Bhutto.

Pakistan’s post-1971 liberal setting and energy had perhaps begun to exhaust itself.

There was a rise in ‘ghoondagardi’ (scoundrel behavior) in the streets and campuses of urban Pakistan, where flamboyantly dressed young men fought pitched battles with hockey sticks, chains, knuckle-dusters and bare fists, sometimes over ideology and sometimes over women.

Then, by 1976, the fruits of Bhutto’s socialist reforms (especially nationalisation), started to go soft, exposing the weakness in the ways of the regime’s reformist and populist economy.

But confident of being reelected as Prime Minister, Bhutto announced new parliamentary elections in early 1977.

Though by now aware of the urban middle-classes’ growing disenchantment with his regime, Bhutto was sure of his popularity among the urban working classes and the peasants and small farmers of rural Pakistan.

However, it was the urban middle-classes who had the most influence in the private print media and in student politics.

The once pro-Bhutto left (in urban Pakistan and on campuses) who had started to raise the tone of their grumbling against Bhutto’s ‘autocratic’ ways and his ‘betrayal of PPP’s original socialist agenda,’ and the conservative sections of the same class who had remained subdued during much of Bhutto’s regime, suddenly found themself gathered on the same platform.

This platform came in the shape of a 9-party political alliance between the country’s various politico-religious parties (led by Jamat-e-Islami), and some small anti-Bhutto secular groups (such as Asghar Khan’s Thereek-e-Istaqlal). The alliance was given a simple name: The Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).

Subsequently, PPP’s manifesto for the 1977 elections was a far cry from its manifesto for the 1970 elections.

To begin with, the word ‘Socialism’ now played only an obligatory role in the document.

Though still calling itself an ‘egalitarian’ and ‘poor-friendly’ party, the term faith now took up more space in the party’s manifesto and rhetoric than before. The political and social milieu of Pakistan had certainly started its gradual shift towards the right.

PNA’s manifesto however, not only attacked the ‘economic and political fall-outs of the regime’s socialist policies,’ its leaders vocally denounced the Bhutto regime for ‘spreading obscenity’ and ‘drunkenness’ among the youth.

The PNA aggressively stated its goal to replace Bhutto’s policies with those based on what it called, ‘Nizam-e-Mustapha’ (Sharia).

Thus, it was ironic that the PNA also included some overtly secular and leftist groups, though they were much smaller than the alliance’s religious outfits.

The bottom-line, however, was that the PNA was first and foremost a desperate alliance of various anti-Bhutto/anti-PPP parties and politicians who managed to capture the paradigm shift taking place in the ideological make-up of the urban middle-class and petty-bourgeoisie of the country.

The left-to-right shift is apparent in certain examples emerging in the country’s cultural milieu as it stood in late 1976.

The private print media started to run regular pieces by conservative columnists, and at times (especially the popular Urdu newspapers), published rumors (mostly about Bhutto’s supposed sexual and alcoholic escapades), as news items.

Certain Urdu magazines were suddenly ripe with exaggerated versions of ‘lecherous behavior’ driven by ‘immoral alcoholic frenzy’ that these magazines claimed were taking place in nightclubs, beaches and on campuses.

A paradigm shift in urban middle-class Pakistan’s ideological and political make-up was certainly afoot and economics had a lot to do with this shift.

Soon after 1974, the Bhutto era was replete with difficulties and challenges, particularly in terms of economy.

The period’s economic trends were hardly conducive for any third world economy to grow and prosper. A number of events that took place outside the control of the government were largely responsible for the poor performance of the economy after 1974.

Devastating floods in 1976 and an international recession between 1975 and 1977 due to the OPEC’s unprecedented hikes in oil prices severely depressed the demand for Pakistani exports, affecting industrial output.

Unlike the Ayub regime, the Bhutto government (and the state), did not play the role of sugar-daddy to the industrialists, and consequently, the gap between Bhutto’s economics of socialist reformism and the interests of the industrialists grew even wider.

By 1976, the industrialist and business classes started to pose themselves as being the economic muscle of Pakistan’s bourgeois and petty-bourgeois professional classes, so it was not surprising to see large and medium level traders, businessmen and industrialists putting all their weight behind the PNA.

The Bhutto government’s own ambiguity regarding its stand on socialism and its understanding of faith too contributed to the rhetorical attacks that he received from the PNA’s leadership.

For example, when in 1967, PPP ideologues, inspired by Nasser’s ‘Arab Socialism,’ had devised ‘Islamic Socialism’ as a ‘third way’ between Western capitalism and Soviet communism, Bhutto (in 1974) decided to demonstrate this on an international level.

He held an impressive International Islamic Conference in Lahore, where a number of heads of states of various Muslim countries were invited.

Though the speeches made at the well-attended conference described modern Muslim regimes and societies as being progressive, the tone of these speeches gradually became jingoistic while attacking Israel and the United States.

The conference also captured the imagination of the common Pakistanis who saw the proceedings on PTV.

The speeches made by Libyan head of state, Col. Qaddafi, and PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, received the biggest applause and were repeatedly aired by the state-owned channel.

The razzmatazz of the conference also saw PTV commemorate the event by producing several songs dedicated to the theme of ‘Muslim unity.’

One of the most popular songs in this respect was Mehdi Zaheer’s impassionate ‘Hum Mustaphavi.’

Though many of the ‘national songs’ aired by PTV and Radio Pakistan during the Bhutto era had socialist overtones and sang passionate praises of the country’s working classes, ‘Mustaphavi’ became the first Pakistani national song that used faith and Muslim as central catch phrases.

In Pakistan’s context, however — a country containing various distinct ethnicities, Muslim sects and sub-sects — this song was invoking a singular notion of Muslim nationhood.

Even while the Islamic Conference was taking place, and PTV was airing grand songs on Muslim unity, Pakistan was facing an insurgency in Balochistan by disgruntled Baloch, and had already witnessed vicious language riots between the Sindhis and the Urdu-speaking ‘Mohajirs’ (Muslim refugees from India) in Karachi (in 1972-73).

What’s more, the same year that the Islamic Conference took place (1974), the Bhutto regime decided to concede to the demands of the politico-religious parties and declared the Ahmadiyya community as non-Muslim.

In spite of the fact that the PPP clearly started to undermine its socialist credentials in its 1977 election manifesto, the party’s opponents in the PNA during their election rallies continued to attack Bhutto and its regime as being ’un-Islamic’ ‘oppressive’ and ‘obscene.’

In a number of rallies, PNA leaders asked their supporters not to vote for a Prime Minister who drinks alcohol.

In response, during a PPP election rally in Karachi (January 1977), Bhutto shouted to his listeners: ‘Yes, I drink. But I do not drink the people’s blood!’ (Haan mein peeta houn, laiken logoun ka khoon nahi peeta …!).

In this dramatic declaration, Bhutto was alluding to the industrialists who were said to be backing the PNA. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that PNA rallies were almost as big as those of the PPP, with the majority of the urban middle-classes now clearly supporting the PNA.

In March 1977, the people of Pakistan once again went to the polls (the first time after the historic 1970 elections). Initial results showed the PPP sweeping the National Assembly elections. However, the PNA leadership accused the regime of mass rigging.

Even though Bhutto agreed that there had been some incidents of rigging, the PNA boycotted the Provincial Elections, and announced a series of protests.

Just as left-wing student organisations had triggered the anti-Ayub movement in the late 1960s, the movement against Bhutto was set off by the right-wing student outfits, followed by their mother parties.

Most of the country’s campuses that had been bastions of leftist politics till about 1974, now erupted to the call of the right-wing groups.

PNA protests were mostly driven by students, small traders and shopkeepers. The bourgeois and the petty-bourgeois youth, who had overwhelmingly supported the PPP’s socialist maneuvers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, had now turned right, looking for the imposition ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa’.

The young protesters, upset by a recession and accompanying inflation, also attacked bars, nightclubs, wine shops and cinemas, denouncing them as symbols of the ‘depraved Bhutto regime.’

PNA leadership maintained that not only had the Bhutto regime’s socialism undermined Islamic culture and law, it had also failed to offer equality and relief to the poor.

The PNA leaders insisted that only ‘Nizam-e-Mustapha’ could guarantee justice and economic wellbeing to the poor — even though, ironically, the PNA alliance and movement was being financed by anti-Bhutto industrialists and, as some political commentators claimed, by the Jimmy Carter government in Washington.

Fearing a toppling and, more so, a military coup by the Army, Bhutto decided to hold talks with PNA leaders and if need be, hold fresh elections.

For this, he also agreed to close down nightclubs and bars and outlaw gambling at horse racing, and make Friday a weekly holiday instead of Sunday.

But just as a compromise between Bhutto and the PNA was in sight, Bhutto’s own hand-picked General, Ziaul Haq, toppled the regime in a military coup and imposed Martial Law on 5th July, 1977.


As they had done the late 1960s (against the Ayub regime), Pakistan’s urban classes had once again triggered a drastic change that was not necessarily constructive.

Even though this time, the country would not break-up, society as Pakistanis had known for many years, would, however, begin to change in the most unprecedented manner, even to the extent of its socio-political and cultural evolution facing a deep strain of socio-political retardation which it is still to recover from.

Source: Pakistan’s contrary years (1971-1977): A cultural history of the Bhutto era
Published in Dawn, Dec 05, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Smokers’ Corner: Men in the high castle

The partition of India in 1947 is largely understood as a division between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority of the region; and how two mainstream political parties played a direct role in launching India and Pakistan as two distinct countries.

The parties were Jinnah’s All India Muslim League and Nehru’s Indian National Congress. Interestingly, though the separation between the Hindu and Muslim communities in this context came about on the basis of the political-religious tensions between the two populations, the mentioned parties were being overwhelmingly navigated by modernists.

Yet, almost three decades after its inception, Pakistan gradually stumbled and slipped into the pit of religious extremism, and today, India too seems to be going the same way.

Historians have continued to point out that both Hindu and Muslim extremism in the region is mostly the outcome of what emerged from within the highly charged scenario in which the League and the Congress conducted vicious propaganda campaigns against each other between the mid-1930s and late 1940s.

Hindu and Muslim fanaticism in the region is rooted in the extreme rhetoric inspired by fringe groups on both sides of the divide
Indeed, the debate between the two parties, especially in the 1940s, did often take some extremely ugly turns. Congress began accusing the League of being communal and then used anti-Jinnah ulema to undermine the League’s Muslim credentials; whereas the League alleged that the Congress was an entirely Hindu nationalist party, vying to enact a Hindu-majority country.

There is, however, every likelihood that the top leadership of both the parties was never extreme. Much of the extreme rhetoric that arose in the debate was largely instigated (and inspired) by certain fringe groups on both sides of the divide.

In his excellent book, The Politics of Self-Expression, Marcus Daechsel argues that though such groups existed on the fringes of mid-20th-century Indian politics, their ideas had begun to take hold in some sections of the region’s Hindu and Muslim middle-classes.

These middle-class segments, when they began participating in mainstream politics (through the League and the Congress), brought with them rhetoric that bordered on the extreme.

Such rhetoric became more pronounced during the tense 1946 election whose results largely facilitated the exit of the British Colonialists and the consequent creation of a separate Muslim country, Pakistan.

Though not all, but some prominent roots of Hindu and Muslim extremism in the region can be found in these fringe groups.

For example, it can be safely suggested that one of the earliest expressions of what today is being flexed as Hindu nationalism in India, first emerged in 1894 in Ananda Math, a novel by Bankim Chandra.

He was perhaps the first to equate Indian nationalism with ‘love of Mother India’. He treated the notion as a Hindu deity. Marcus Daechsel explains this as being ‘Hindu proto-nationalism.’

Parts and tone of the novel went on to inspire a Hindu reformist outfit called the Arya Samaj. The Samaj appeared to supposedly reform Hinduism by denouncing many of its established rituals because the Samaj thought such rituals were weakening the Hindus as a nation.

Also important for the Samaj was to highlight the ‘superiority’ of the strand of nationalist Hinduism that it was constructing. It tried to do this by holding publicised debates with Muslim clerics and Christian priests and then publish (what according to the Samaj) were ‘inferior logic of Islam and Christianity’.

The Samaj also glorified and promoted ‘Hindu history’ rooted in the ‘golden age of the Vedas’ or a period before the 11th century Muslim invasions of India.

Such ideas were further evolved by V.D. Savarkar in his 1923 book, Hindutva: What is a Hindu? A lawyer by profession, Savarkar suggested that a continuous rejuvenation of Hinduism actually required external enemies who ‘remain forever outside of the organic Hindu whole.’

Thus, he saw no space for even the most patriotic Indian Muslim or Christian to declare their unity with their Hindu counterparts because they were needed not as Indian compatriots, but as enemies!

Savarkar’s notion that Hindus needed to deliberately create religious enemies and conflict with the region’s Muslims and Christians (to strengthen Hindu identity), directly inspired the creation of militaristic Hindu nationalist organisations such as the RSS (and later, the Shiv Sena).

On the other end, similar militaristic tendencies also emerged on the fringes of India’s Muslim milieu.

In the mid-1930s, the Cambridge-educated Alama Mashriqi formed the Khaksar.

Mashriqi was highly impressed by the paramilitary outfits formed in Germany by the Nazis (just as his militant Hindu counterparts had been).

Like Savarkar, Mashriqi too thrived on conflict and believed that a ferocious battle for the survival of the fittest was required for the Muslims to triumph. So his Khaksar deliberately provoked conflicts with the British, the Hindus and even those Muslims whom Mashriqi believed were weak-willed.

Mashriqi even went to the extent of denouncing the whole concept of the family, claiming that love for a family needs to be sacrificed because it weakens the soul and usurps a man’s will to fight for his beliefs. He also denounced those Muslim scholars who were trying to bring Islamic doctrines in line with modern requirements.

The Khaksar managed to gather thousands of young Muslim middle-class supporters. But by the time the moderate Muslim League evolved into becoming a large mainstream party, the Khaksar began to lose its influence.

Some members of the Khaksar who had joined the League in the mid-1940s were largely responsible for applying militant polemical rhetoric during the League’s 1946 electoral contest against the Congress in the Punjab.

Though Mashriqi detested the League, he did migrate to Pakistan and died here in 1963.

The same fringe that had produced the Khaksar, also produced three ultra-radical members of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation. Though the outfit was the student-wing of the League, these three men urged a more militant effort.

The young men were Ibrahim Chisti, Abdus Sattar Niazi and Mian M. Shafi. Chisti and Niazi were both studying to become religious scholars, whereas Shafi was a left-leaning nationalist.

In 1940 they authored a pamphlet titled The Pakistan Scheme. In it they urged Muslim leadership to shun constitutional politics and infuse a strict internal discipline in India’s Muslim community.

Like their militant Hindu counterparts, these men too were riding on the pseudo-science called ‘Social Darwinism’ which is an ideological distortion of biological Darwinism.

Also, just as the Hindu nationalists had been impressed by Nazism and driven by their half-baked absorption of the ideas of German philosopher, Fredrick Nietzsche, the three pamphleteers too saw strict discipline of a people to mean the regimented militarisation of a community.

Their pamphlet claimed that such discipline would produce a Muslim ‘ubermensch’ (the Nietzschean ‘over-man’). The three called him the ‘Khuda Mard’ — a man driven purely by his will to unite the Muslims (to reconquer India and then the world)!

So even though militaristic and so-called Nietzschean expressions of both Hindu and Muslim fringe groups did seep into the mainstream in the 1940s, at least the Muslim outfits who had originated these ideas, faded away after the creation of Pakistan.

But some of these ideas did return 30 years later in Pakistan (through new mouthpieces) after the country went through two wars, the separation of its Eastern wing and, especially, after it plunged into the Afghan conflict of the 1980s.

Meanwhile in India, most of the pre-partition militant Hindu outfits did not dissipate. Instead they remained latent and tucked underneath the flimsy carpet of Nehruvian secularism, before finally beginning to show again once the carpet began to wear thin (from the late 1980s onwards).

Source: Smokers’ Corner: Men in the high castle
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 6th, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Understanding Karachi and the 2015 local elections

The Karachi context: cities within a city

Karachi confuses people – sometimes even those who live in it.

The capital of Pakistan’s Sindh province, it is the country’s largest city – a colossal, ever-expanding metropolis with a population of above 20 million (and growing).

It is also the country’s most ethnically diverse city. But over the last three decades, this diversity largely consists of bulky groups of homogenous ethnic populations that mostly reside in their own areas of influence and majority, only interacting and intermingling with other ethnic groups in the city’s more neutral points of economic and recreational activity.

That’s why Karachi may also give the impression of being a city holding various small cities — cities within a city.

Apart from this aspect of its clustered ethnic diversity, the city also hosts a number of people belonging to various Muslim sects and sub-sects. There are also quite a few Christians (both Catholic and Protestant), Hindus and Zoroastrians here.

Many pockets in the city are exclusively dedicated to housing only the Shia sect and various Sunni sub-sects. Even Hindu and Christian populations are sometimes settled in and around tiny areas where they are in a majority, further reflecting the city’s clustered diversity.

The survival and economic viability of the more neutral spaces depends on these spaces remaining largely detached from matters of ethnic and sectarian/sub-sectarian claims and biases.

Such spaces include areas that hold the city’s various private multinational and state organisations, bazaars, factories, shopping malls and major recreational spots.

Whereas the clustered areas have often witnessed ethnic and sectarian strife and violence mainly due to one cluster of the ethnic/sectarian/sub-sectarian population accusing the other of encroaching upon their area, the neutral points and zones have remained somewhat conflict-free.

The neutral points have enjoyed a relatively strife-free environment due to them being multicultural and also because here is where the writ of the state and government is most present and appreciated.

However, since all this has helped the neutral zones to generate much of the economic capital that the city generates, these neutral spaces have become a natural target of crimes such as robberies, muggings, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, etc.

The criminals in this respect usually emerge from the clustered areas that have become extremely congested, stagnant and cut-off from most of the state and government institutions, and ravaged by decades of ethnic and sectarian violence.

Though the ethnic, sectarian/intra-sectarian, economic and political interests of the clustered areas are ‘protected’ by various legal, as well as some banned political outfits in their own areas of influence, all these outfits compete with each other for their respective economic interests in the neutral zones because here is where much of the money is.

Though highly complex, large and chaotic, Karachi has always remained to be perhaps the most socially liberal city in the country.

This is mainly due to the fact that the kind of staggering ethnic and sectarian, sub-sectarian and religious diversity that it enjoys, this combination does not allow any one ethnic or religious group to dominate such a vast and diverse city.

This is why the city’s largest political outfit, the Mohajir-ethnic Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), has constantly evolved a strategy that not only promises to safeguard the political and economic interests of the Mohajir (Urdu-speaking) majority of the city; the party has consciously put forward a front absorbed from the kind of urban social liberalism that Karachi’s diverse make-up has weaved, especially the inherent social liberalism of the Mohajir community which the MQM has merged with the group’s once disjointed political psyche.

The election

Karachi hasn’t sprung a lot of electoral surprises ever since the 1988 general election. The liberal Mohajir-nationalist party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), has been sweeping the polls in this vast, complex metropolis for over 25 years now.

However, during this year’s local bodies’ election in the city, a surprise did spring up.

But, it had nothing to do with MQM, as such, because the party once again swept an election in the city.

The bulk of the party’s seats were again won in urban middle and lower-middle class areas dominated by the Mohajir community.

Here the party also received a majority of votes from Karachi’s Shias (‘Twelvers’), the Ismailis (‘Agha Khanis’), Christians and Hindus.

Interestingly, till the early 1990s, the Shia votes and those of the ‘minorities’ in Karachi used to go to the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), but these votes have been increasingly casted in favour of the MQM for the past decade or so.

It is believed that a large section of the city’s Shia, Ismaili and Christian vote-bank had shifted in favour of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in the 2013 general election, but almost the entire vote-bank of this nature returned to the MQM during the 2015 local election.

The main surprise in this year’s local bodies’ election in Karachi is largely associated with the PTI.

In the 2013 general election, though the MQM won a majority of seats in Karachi, Imran Khan’s center-right Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had suddenly emerged as the second largest political outfit in the chaotic metropolis.

Though PTI won just one National Assembly and three Provincial Assembly seats from Karachi, the number of votes that the party received was a lot larger compared to the votes received by the city’s two other established parties, the left-liberal Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and the right-wing/religious Jamat-i-Islami (JI).

On almost every seat contested in 2013 by the MQM, the PTI had come second, sometimes too close for comfort for various MQM electoral starlets.

The PTI had gained from votes casted by disgruntled PPP and MQM voters and also by the votes of the city’s large Pashto-speaking community which, till 2008, had largely voted either for the left-wing Pakhtun nationalist, Awami National Party (ANP), or various religious groups.

Another major factor for the PTI’s spontaneous electoral expansion in Karachi were the large number of first-time voters who turned up to vote for the party in 2013.

A majority of these came from Karachi’s affluent areas and were a mixture of middle- and upper-middle class Mohajirs, Punjabis, Pakhtuns and even some Sindhis.

However, just two years after extemporaneously emerging as Karachi’s second largest political party, the PTI suffered an equally sudden and awkward fall when it came 5th in this December’s local elections in the sprawling city.

This, despite the fact that it was contesting in alliance with the JI.

The PTI’s main 2013 voters (the affluent first-timers) did not come out, maybe repulsed by the chaotic state that the party finds itself in today and also perhaps due to the party’s strategy to get into an electoral alliance with the JI.

Interestingly, various JI voters went on record too, bemoaning their party’s alliance with the PTI which, though, is right-of-center and allied with the JI in KP’s provincial government, it is not as much towards the right as the JI has traditionally been.

The MQM belligerently regained the ground that it had ceded to the PTI during the 2013 election by winning a whopping 268 seats (out of a total of 450 local bodies seats in the city); whereas the PTI-JI alliance could win a combined number of just 35 seats, with the PTI winning only 19 and the JI, a dismal 16.

It seems both the parties had devised their election strategy based not on the complex ground realties of the city, but on the largely ill-informed perceptions of Karachi that are often aired by a majority of populist TV analysts.

Another surprise was the way the left-leaning PPP, which was severely marginalised in Karachi during the 2013 general election, made a comeback of sorts in the city during this year’s local elections.

The PPP had continued to maintain its status of being the city’s second largest electoral group ever since the late 1980s, but it had fallen to a dismal 4th position (in the number of votes received) in the city during the 2013 general election.

During this year’s local elections in the metropolis, however, the PPP managed to reemerge as Karachi’s second largest political party, winning 62 seats.

It had already won a huge majority in the local elections held in the rest of the Sindh province, so it was important for the party to exhibit some sort of a revival in the province’s burgeoning capital, Karachi.

Much of its votes came from the city’s Baloch and Sindhi dominated working-class areas.

Most interestingly, in UC30, a local bodies’ constituency, which is part of the large NA250 National Assembly constituency, the PPP almost defeated the joint PTI-JI candidate.

The PPP had come 5th in NA250 during the 2013 election. The constituency was won by the PTI by a handsome margin.

But this year in UC30 which, though, did not consist of the NA250’s most affluent area (DHA), it still contained various other affluent zones, such as Bath Island, Clifton Khakashan and Park Lane.

Yet, the margin of victory of the PTI-JI candidate was slim. Detailed record of the polling here suggests that the PPP received a bulk of the votes from low-income areas of UC30 that have sprung up here and mostly house those serving as maids, cooks and drivers in the homes of the area’s more affluent residents.

The record also suggests that the PPP was winning UC30 until the JI managed to pull in a last-minute surge from the area’s more conservative sections.

Another surprise in the mentioned elections is one that has astonishingly not been commented upon much by analysts.

It has to do with the performance of the moderate center-right Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in Karachi.

The PML-N had swept the 2013 general election and then raced ahead in Punjab’s local elections held this year between November and December.

Even though the PML-N has a majority in the National Assembly and in the Punjab and Balochistan Provincial Assemblies, it has remained weak in Sindh and its capital Karachi.

However, in this year’s local polls in interior Sindh, the PML-N managed to bag 87 seats, coming in 4th, behind the Sindh-centric Muslim League faction, the PML-F (102), MQM (122) and the PPP (1,698) – out of a total 2,382 seats.

In the local polls in Sindh’s capital, Karachi, when most of the attention of the media was focused on MQM’s sweep, the PPP’s comeback, and on the PTI-JI alliance’s sudden fall, the PML-N had slipped in to win 35 seats here, quietly becoming the third largest party in the city.

A bulk of the disgruntled PTI voters from the Pakhtun, Hindko and Punjabi communities of the city opted to vote for the PML-N.

The party also won seats in PPP’s traditional stronghold, Lyari, which is dominated by working-class Baloch and lower-middle-class Katchi community. It is likely that most of the Katchi votes here went to the PML-N.

The PML-N also seems to have gained from the relatively better law and order situation in Karachi in the last one year.

This is due to the widespread operation against clandestine criminal groups in the city. The operation was initiated by the military and the PML-N government at the centre. It was endorsed by the PPP provincial set-up in Sindh.

The left-wing Pakhtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) that till 2008 had been representing the bulk of Karachi’s large Pakhtun-speaking population continued its downward momentum in the city when it could bag just 2 seats!

It had lost most of its votes to the PTI in 2013, this time these votes largely went to the PML-N and to the PPP.

Source: Understanding Karachi and the 2015 local elections
Published in Dawn, Dec 11, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Smokers’ Corner: Four stages of Hamza Alavi

In 1965 a lengthy paper titled, ‘Peasants and Revolution,’ caused a considerable storm in the international academic circles associated with the left. The paper was authored by Pakistani social scientist and historian, Hamza Alavi.

The paper was published during a period when China’s Communist set up was about to implode in the shape of Mao Tse-Tung’s ‘Cultural Revolution;’ and when Mao’s thesis (through which he had constructed China’s 1949 revolution), had begun to inspire peasant-based revolutionary movements in various developing countries.

Mao’s thesis (aka ‘Maoism’) had attempted to include peasants as the main forces of a communist revolution in countries that did not meet the conditions set by classic Marxism. The condition required that such countries must first have a developed bourgeoisie (middle-class) and an equally developed urban proletariat (working class). The economic conflict between the two was predicted by Marx to produce a revolution that would lead to a dynamic state of perpetual communism.

Alavi, a Marxist intellectual as well as a vehement Pakistani nationalist, argued that in agricultural economies and developing countries (especially Pakistan and India), the ‘middle peasantry’ should be treated as the main militant element of a socialist movement. He suggested that it was this section of the peasant class who were natural allies of the urban working classes, as opposed to the poorer peasants.

Another reiteration that Jinnah had envisaged a different Pakistan than what it has become
Mao, who had largely used poor peasants as his foot soldiers during the 1949 communist revolution in China, did not agree with Alavi.

Mao critiqued Alavi’s proposition by observing that the middle peasantry had a lot to lose from indulging in a make-or-break revolutionary movement, whereas the poor peasants do not because they were less burdened by economic interests and ties, and, thus, were freer to play a more assertive role in a revolution.

Alavi propagated the flip side. In his paper he suggested that just like men from urban working classes who can always find employment and were thus not afraid to lose a job due to their involvement in a revolutionary movement, this is the same aspect that makes the middle peasantry an important revolutionary player. This was because unlike the poor peasants, the middle peasants can survive the onslaught of opposing forces (because they were more resourceful), whereas the poor peasants, for fear of losing whatever little they had, prefer to remain subdued during a movement.

Alavi’s paper was widely debated by scholars and contemporary theorists of the left around the world. The paper propelled Alavi’s status in the international arena of scholarly Marxism.

In Pakistan, the armed peasant movement initiated by the Mazdoor Kisaan Party (MKP) in Charsadda (between 1968 and 1974) was partially based on Alavi’s observations.

Alavi was born into a well-to-do business family in Karachi. He got an economics degree from a university in Poona (in pre-partition India), before returning to Karachi after the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

He was a passionate supporter of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and played a key role in helping the government set up the State Bank of Pakistan. He was still in his 20s when, instead of continuing his high profile career in the bank, he opted to accompany his wife to East Africa where both set up a farm.

It was here that Alavi began to study the political and economic dynamics of the peasants. In the late ‘50s he moved to the UK to study at the London School of Economics.

Alavi returned to Pakistan in 1960 as editor of the left-leaning Pakistan Times. But he quit and flew back to the UK after the newspaper was taken over by the military regime of Ayub Khan.

After establishing his scholarly credentials with his vastly influential paper on the middle peasantry’s role in revolution, Alavi delivered his second most important thesis in 1972: ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies.’

This paper too highlights his highly original thinking. In addressing the reasons behind the frequent occurrence of military coups in post-colonial countries in Asia, Africa and South America, Alavi suggested that most post-colonial countries (such as Pakistan) already had an ‘overdeveloped military’ even at the time of their inception.

According to Alavi, though at the time of their creation, the new countries lacked economic resources and political institutions, they inherited established militaries from the receding colonial powers.

Thus, when such countries struggled to develop civilian political institutions, their militaries were the only organised state entities to resolve issues triggered by political conflicts between underdeveloped civilian bodies. This singularity politicized the military and retarted the process needed to make civilian institutions reach maturity.

Alavi settled in the UK, becoming a professor of sociology, first at Leeds University and then at the Manchester University. He wrote scathing critiques of the reactionary dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq (1977-88) in various academic journals. By then, along with Iqbal Ahmad, Alavi had become one of the most sited Pakistani scholars in the West.

In 1987, two years after deadly ethnic riots erupted in Karachi, Alavi emerged with his third most significant paper Nationhood and Nationalities in Pakistan.

To get to the bottom of ethnic turmoil in Pakistan, Alavi observed that the movement to create Pakistan had a larger economic motive rather than a purely religious one. Alavi noted that bulk of the movement was driven by India’s Muslim ‘salaried classes’ who were competing for government jobs against their Hindu counterparts from the same class.

He informs that the salaried Muslims believed that this overwhelming competition will be eliminated with the creation of Pakistan. However, he continues by suggesting that this sense of severe competition was not resolved with the creation of Pakistan. Instead it was carried over and took the shape of competition between the salaried classes of different ethnic groups. This, according to Alavi, created ethnic tensions and turmoil in Pakistan.

In 1997, Alavi turned his attention on the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan. In his fourth most significant thesis, The Contradictions of the Khilafat Movement, Alavi analysed the Khilafat Movement (1919-1926) in depth. He suggested that it was the emergence of this movement that enhanced the political role of the Muslim clergy in South Asia.

Alavi writes that though the movement pretended to be an anti-imperialist entity, its main aim was to promote a communalist understanding of politics among Indian Muslims. He adds that, ‘it was no small irony that the Khilafat Movement was supported by Gandhi and opposed by Jinnah …’

Until his demise in 2003, Alavi continued to insist that Jinnah had envisaged a very different Pakistan from what it eventually became after his death. On being a Marxist, he once told renowned historian, Dr Mubarak Ali, that Marxism works best as a tool to analyse history, economics and politics, but does not hold quite so well as a political ideology.

Source:Smokers’ Corner: Four stages of Hamza Alavi
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 13th, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

2015’s Person-nut-ality of the Year: Vote now!

It’s that time of the year again (Thursday, December 17, 12:17 pm, 19°C, Wind W at 5 km/h, 46 per cent Humidity). The time when you get to vote (without an ID card) the Person-nut-ality of the Year.

Here are our top 5 picks for person-nut-alities for the year 2015. You can vote for just one of them. Happy polling, y’all.

The Certificate Man

The Certificate Man (TCM) was most busy in 2015 — giving out certificates of patriotism, morality and piety to whomever he (and he alone) believed was a true patriot and truly virtuous.

The certificates were usually handed over to deserving men and women on TV shows, Twitter and Facebook.

But, he also had another bunch of certificates to give. Certificates certifying that a man or a woman — that he (and he alone) thought — was a traitor, impious and a threat to the nation’s moral and ideological fibre.

Being a true patriot himself — even though he lived and earned his living in another country — TCM focused more on those he (and he alone) alleged were treacherous and impious.

He mostly handed his certificates of treachery to journalists, actors, actresses, politicians, cricketers and 16-year-old school girls shot in the face by extremists.

He was largely busy in 2015 certifying the betrayal of the teenage school girl from Swat who, after surviving an assassination attempt by extremists, departed for the UK where she went under the knife of surgeons.

She recovered from her wounds and scars, and then went on to win a Nobel Prize – only the second Pakistani to receive the honour.

TCM was livid. He immediately handed a certificate of treachery to the girl for betraying the sentiments of her people by talking about promoting peace and girls’ education, instead of raising the issue of a lady compatriot rotting in a US jail on terrorism charges.

He issued a certificate of patriotic gallantry and gallant piety to the lady loitering in jail, calling her Mother Rambo. He got a lot of retweets and FB ‘likes’ for this.

Then, after issuing a certificate of imperialism and hypocrisy to the US, TCM travelled to the US to receive his Green Card.

The Enraged Dandy

The Enraged Dandy (TED) believes he or she is the best thing to happen to modern ‘leftist’ activism after Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and (for some odd reason), Jerry Seinfeld.

The men among TED spent this year as they usually do, and that is, by repeatedly signing off their arguments by quoting that same Voltaire quote over and over again:

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.”

When that didn’t work, they began quoting Rumi. Something about sprit, soul, sky, sea, chicken and egg. They could have just said, ‘Omelettes,’ and been done with it.

The women among TED spent the year exhibiting their radical feminist sentiments, even to the extent of insisting that dahi hoti hai, instead of dahi hota hai. This was the great feminist debate of the year 2015.

Both genders of TED seemed rather confused in 2015. For example, last year they had passionately criticised the military and the government for not launching an operation against extremist outfits.

When the operation was finally launched, TED accused the military and the government for sending the arrested militants to the gallows. They thought it was barbaric to send them to the gallows. But when the authorities didn’t arrest a nut spouting hatred in Islamabad, they criticised the military and the government for not arresting him … and sending him to the gallows.

On Twitter, when finally a perplexed man asked what on earth they exactly want, they responded by saying: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” They then blocked him.

Nevertheless, there, indeed were many days in 2015 when TED stood up for some noble causes. However, 16 December was not that day.

On that day, as if on cue, they decided to bring up the 1971 East Pakistan debacle. It’s another thing that till they went to college, none of them even knew that Bangladesh was once East Pakistan and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. But no worries, as long as talking about the debacle made them sound ‘anti-establishment’ — just like Jerry Seinfeld.

When confronted by those who saw through the facade, TED was profound in their response: “You ISI stooges, dahi hota nahi, hoti hai!”

The Football Guy

Bombs exploded around him, wars raged, buildings collapsed and floods swept away whole cities and villages, but The Football Guy (TFG) made sure to continue telling us about the fate of Manchester United vs. Arsenal matches; or how brilliant Messi really was; and what a great season some guy called John Von Zent Boobla Platini was having.

All this hoopla, all year round, did make some boring mortals wonder, exactly how many premier football tournaments there are in a year. As far as FG was concerned, 1,277.

If there are four seasons in a calendar year on Earth — Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn — football seems to have 11. And then some.

But as far as TFG is concerned, the more the merrier — even though he hasn’t ever actually played the game himself. No, playing one on X-Box doesn’t count.

TFG, nevertheless, is a nice guy, who is just a tad too myopic about life in general and passionate about watching football and equally passionate about telling us all how passionate he is about watching football.

I say, vote for him (so you can continue to know about the all-important career of John Von Zent Boobla Platini in all the 1,277 premier league football tournaments in 2016).

The Knee-Jerk Guy

The Knee-Jerk Guy (TKJG) loves to shoot off his mouth about things he has no clue about. He is an overtly verbose reaction personified.

This year too, he was at it, exhibiting his remarkable talents of profoundly knee-jerking his way through life.

He followed a simple formula: If something was appreciated in the West, he just had to denounce it (but by using western platforms and technology); if something was appreciated in his own country, he just had to tell you that yours was the wrong way of appreciating it, and his was the right way; if something was denounced in the west, he defended it.

If something was denounced in his own country, he became reflective about it, telling us to empathise about what made that something so denounce-worthy; if something was called obscene, he would join in — but as long as he wasn’t involved in it. If he was, then that obscenity became ‘just showbiz.’

He insisted that he was not afraid to speak his mind. And, he most probably said this while pointing at one of his knees.

The Troll

The Troll has been an always-present entity for years now. This year he asked us to let him write his own profile and performance in 2015.

That’s exactly what we did. Here is what he emailed to us:

‘Salam cancerous traitors!!!!! Year 2015 BC was very successful for me. I continue troll traitors, agents, infidels, unnormal gender people, fattys, blackies, big mouth womans, giving them shut ups calls for benefit of great pious republic and peace. I got 154 K new followers on Twiters, millions mores on facebooks, big hits, likes, retweets, and salute from true patriots for good job and disposition of mind bent on destruction of liberal fascists and praying for peace. I launched rocket of thousands and thousands of hashtag trends that bring revolution and change status coo of corrupt peeples and politicians especially unnormal gender people and loud mouth womans who talk manly things but can’t make cup of tea LOLZ ROFL!!!!!!!! I plans to continue mission on 2016 BC and unload hatred and abuse for good cause of patriotism, revolution and normal gender people. And peace.’

Vote now!

Source: 2015’s Person-nut-ality of the Year: Vote now!
Published in Dawn, Dec 11, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !

Jhulay Lal’s full circle

During a trip to India in early 1984 (my first and last), I was a second-year student at a college in Karachi. My fellow travellers on that trip were three friends, all of them Sindhi-speaking. We had travelled to Mumbai (then called Bombay) for a vacation.

We stayed in low-rent hotels in Mumbai, Poona and Goa, even though one of my Sindhi friends had some distant relatives in Mumbai.

But it turned out that the relatives were not relatives at all. To begin with, they were Hindu. They had been neighbours of the friend’s family in Sukkur before the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and had migrated to India in March 1948.

We visited their home (an apartment) during the tail-end of our trip. In their drawing room was a huge painting of a bearded man sitting on a lotus flower in the middle of a river surrounded by a school of fish that seemed to be swimming in a circle around him.

I asked the family about the image. They told me that the man was Jhulay Lal who was the patron saint of Sindhi Hindus. I was told every Sindhi home in India had a picture of him.

Two years later, I was travelling across the interior Sindh with another group of friends. We were all members of a progressive student outfit at our college.

Our plan was to drive up to the town of Dadu and try meeting Sindhi scholar, GM Syed, who was reported to be under house arrest there. Though I was opposed to Syed’s political aspect of Sindhi nationalism, I was, nevertheless, a great admirer of his more scholarly work, especially of his book Religion and Reality in which he had painstakingly charted the centuries-old evolution of Sufism in the Sindh region.

I believe he did mention Jhulay Lal in passing in his book, but I wasn’t sure because I had read it in 1983 during my first year in college. No, it wasn’t part of the curriculum.

Our group of student activists was unable to meet Syed. He was not in Dadu. On our way back to Karachi, we stopped at a rickety eatery in a village in the Sanghar District. As we entered the place for a cup of tea and some cigarettes, the first thing I noticed on a mud wall was a poster. It was of Jhulay Lal!

Paracha unearths some astounding facts about the revered saint’s life
I had forgotten about him. But it was the same image I had first come across in a Mumbai home. A man with a flowing white beard, sitting on a lotus flower in the middle of a river and surrounded by a couple of silver fish.

But there was one difference. In the image of his that I had seen in Mumbai, he was holding a rosary whose beads had tiny inscriptions carved in the Sanskrit language. But in the poster at the eatery, he was holding and reading the Muslim Holy Book.

Intrigued, I asked a Sindhi friend of mine in the group, who the man was. ‘Arey Paracha Sain, tum ko nahi pata? Yeh Baba Shaikh Tahir hai …’ (You don’t know? He is Baba Shaikh Tahir).

I told him that I had seen an image of him in the home of a Sindhi Hindu family in India and that they had called him Jhulay Lal. The friend began to laugh at my confusion. He excused the others in the group and drove me some 50km away from the village to a small, dusty town called Udero Lal.

In this town, he took me to a beautiful and spacious white shrine with prominent domes. Here is where Shaikh Tahir was buried, I was told. He then made me meet one of the keepers of the shrine. The keeper was a Sindhi and could not speak any Urdu. But somehow he could speak Punjabi fluently!

He told me that the shrine was constructed in the 17th century, 1684 CE to be precise, according to Din Mohammad Vai’s Tazkirah-i-Mashahir-i-Sindh.

The keeper claimed that Shaikh Tahir was born a Hindu but converted to Islam as a teen. His Hindu name was Udero Lal. The shrine is frequented by Muslims as well as Hindus of Sindh and the group of keepers that look after the shrine, also includes Hindus.

Another fascinating aspect of the shrine was a slight room that held a steadily burning flame. The flame has been kept burning by generations of keepers for over 400 years now. The keeper I was talking to, didn’t know exactly why.

The keeper informed me: ‘Udero Lal was an upright man with a strong strain of inner spirituality. It was because of him that the Hindus of Sindh were different because they did not practice the caste system …’

This seems to be correct. Famous 19th century British traveller, Richard Francis Burton, in his writings that he authored during his long stay in Sindh in the mid-1800s, wrote: ‘Hinduism in Sindh is mixed and has adopted many aspects of Islam and Sikhism. The Hindus (of Sindh) often become followers of Muslim saints here …’

Impressed by Lal’s spiritual disposition and work against the caste system, a Muslim Sufi saint from Multan is said to have converted him to Islam. ‘This is when Udero Lal became Sheikh Tahir,’ the keeper had told me.

He said despite this, Hindus of the area continued to revere him, and so did thousands of Lal’s Muslim devotees.

On our way back to Sanghar, I asked my friend, why Sheikh Tahir continues to sit on a lotus flower in the middle of a river in all of his images. The friend had responded by saying that Hindus of Sindh believed that he had emerged from the River Indus. He added that the Muslims began to believe the same when they saw palla fish (indigenous to Indus), circling a small shrine of Lal that is located on an island in the middle of the river near the city of Bhakkar (in South Punjab).

Interestingly, in Bhakkar, Jhulay Lal is called Khwaja Khizar. In 1991 while editing an article written (on the Bhakkar shrine) by a French anthropologist for the English weekly magazine I used to work for, I learned that indeed, schools of palla did go in circles around the tiny island. But he added that this was due to the mating and feeding cycles of the fish. So, in a way, ancient Muslims and Hindus of the region were explaining a purely natural and scientific phenomenon through mystical imagery.

Jhulay Lal is not as major a Sufi saint in Sindh as are the great Shah Latif and the mighty Lal Shahbaz. Yet, it was Jhulay Lal who ended up on the walls of Sindhi-speakers in India. I’ve always wondered why.

This inquiry of mine finally came to a full circle when I got the answer only two years ago in the Michel Boivin and Matthew Cook edited book, Interpreting the Sindh World.

In an essay (for the book) on the saint, L. Parwani suggests that when hundreds of Sindhi Hindus migrated to India during Partition in 1947, they felt spiritually alienated in India because they could not relate to the forms of Hinduism practiced there.

Parwani informs that after noticing this, one Professor Ram Panjwani, a Sindhi educationist, began a hectic movement among the Sindhi Hindus in India to revitalise Jhulay Lal as their main deity. He succeeded, and to this day most Sindhi Hindus in India revere a saint that their elders had brought from Sindh.

Source:Jhulay Lal’s full circle
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine December 20th, 2015

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The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion !