Smokers’ Corner: Jurassic Pak

Late last year, veteran figurehead of the PPP, Aitzaz Ahsan, in a public speech in Larkana, urged his party to revive its socialist tradition to effectively address the economic and social challenges being faced by Pakistan today.

Interestingly, this part of his speech was hardly given any attention in the media. It was as if Ahsan’s plea had not been taken seriously at all. And yet, a little over 40 years ago, when the founder of the PPP, Z.A. Bhutto, and his ideologues, had begun to speak about socialism, religious parties had kicked up a storm, describing the PPP as a party of ‘atheists’ out to destroy the religious fabric of Pakistan’s polity.

Though at the time the PPP was a rapidly rising force, its founders and ideologues still found the need to counterattack the party’s most vehement conservative detractors. They dug out the past of their critics, in which they were ‘anti-Jinnah’ (before the creation of Pakistan), and had now become ‘allies of monopolist capitalists … .’

Are we proud citizens of our country, or animals being tested in a lab?
Then in 1970, the PPP began to describe itself as a party which stood for ‘Islamic Socialism’, suggesting that its economic programme was according to the egalitarian dictates of Islam and had nothing to do with communism.

The party’s founding documents, and its first manifesto (1970), clearly spoke about a program which (it claimed) was inspired by the social democratic model of welfare states in western Europe. The ‘Islamic Socialism’ bit, however, was only nominally touched upon. It was simply a rhetorical gesture, to counter accusations by the religious parties.

Although there were some ideologues within the PPP at the time who defined ‘Islamic Socialism’ as a localised fusion of social democracy, socialist economics, the ‘Quranic concept of egalitarianism’ and Muslim nationalism (of the likes of Jinnah and Iqbal), there was hardly any talk of just how this fusion would be converted into a holistic economic programme.

The reason why the socialist aspect of Ahsan’s speech last year did not enjoy much attention was simply due to the fact that today, Pakistan’s economic, political and social dynamics are far more complex than they were 40 years ago.

Also, ever since the late 1990s, the populist rhetoric which Z.A. Bhutto had used, is(rather ironically), now being mouthed by religious parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), and populist centre-right entities such as Imran Khan’s PTI.

However, the rhetoric of JI and PTI, in this context is not quite the kind which Bhutto unleashed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Rather, the rhetoric of these two parties today is similar to that which Bhutto had begun to weave during the tail-end of his rule (1977), or when his regime was being cornered by a relentless movement by a right-wing grouping of parties, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).

Also, ever since the late 1990s, the populist rhetoric which Z.A. Bhutto had used, is, rather ironically, now being mouthed by religious parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), and populist centre-right entities such as Imran Khan’s PTI.
When Bhutto was facing a movement by the PNA (which was increasingly using the so-called ‘Islamic card’), Bhutto pulled out his own card. The tussle between the two became a race to capture a trend of religious revival and ‘political Islam’ that had begun to emerge in the Muslim world at the time.

Words between the two flew thick and fast: Nizam-i-Mustafa; Khulfa-i-Rashideen; Pakistan being “a lab to conduct Islamic experiments in”, etc.

Iqbal, Jinnah, and even some divine figures of the faith, were regularly quoted. And in the frenzy of it all, no one bothered to check whether the quotes were even authentic or not! Most of them weren’t.

In the end both sides were outmaneuvered and upstaged by a Machiavellian general who imposed military rule. He then adopted all the nice bits from the reactionary-populist rhetoric which had emerged from the PPP and PNA leaders.

For example, during the Zia regime, in school text books, Jinnah was quoted as saying that, “Pakistan was created as a laboratory where Islamic experiments would be conducted”. Both PPP and PNA had claimed the same.

But during the Zia regime, the quote became ‘official’. In text books, Jinnah was claimed to have said this at a rally in Peshawar on Jan 13, 1948.

Jinnah said no such thing. The fact is, records suggest he wasn’t even in Peshawar on Jan 13, 1948. He was in Karachi. Instead, he spoke in Peshawar on April 14, 1948, and the speech that he made there has no reference at all to a “lab”.

Such false quotes attributed to various respectable Muslim figures were frantically aired during the PPP-PNA tussle. Then, throughout the Zia era (1977-89), many such quotes actually became part of official rhetoric and school texts, apparently placed there to justify the imposition of various draconian laws which were erected in the 1980s.

And such rhetoric is still in the air. But in this day and age, which experiments in arrogant social engineering in the names of nationalism and faith have left a polity ravaged by terror, corruption, and a serious identity crisis, the people of Pakistan are yearning for something far simpler and less dramatic, ie an economic system which actually works (for those willing to fully participate in it) and an identity that makes everyone an equal citizen of Pakistan and not ‘better’ due to one’s ethnicity, religion, sect, or sub-sect.

In all this, Pakistan nationalism has also suffered. It was clearly defined by Jinnah. Pakistan was to be a modern Muslim-majority state where the state was to facilitate the making of an enlightened society and polity.

But Jinnah’s demise just a year after Pakistan’s creation meant that instead of evolving into a robust compass for a new nation, this nationalism became a project for opposing demagogues of all shapes and sizes. They wanted to treat the country as their personal labs to form versions of nationalism and faith, many of which were quite alien to the societal and spiritual DNA of the people of this region.

There is no room left for such demagoguery. It should be discouraged and rejected by the polity. Pakistan cannot afford it anymore. People should be proud citizens of a country, not animals in a lab.

Source: Smokers’ Corner: Jurassic Pak
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 17th, 2016

The Indus raga: From Bulleh Ki Jana Mein Kon to Tarrin Paunda

The Indus is one of the oldest and longest rivers in Asia. Though it originated in the Tibetan Plateau in China, much of it flows across Pakistan.

Over the centuries, a wide variety of cultures, languages and religions have sprung up on both sides of the Indus.

Five thousand years from the moment the first major civilisation emerged along the Indus, till the creation of Pakistan in 1947, various religions and cultures have thrived here: Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam. Each of these religions were indigenised.

Even though Islam has become the major faith along the Indus in the last 500 years, the dynamic history of the region has kept cultures largely heterogeneous and varied. A commonality was not attempted on the basis of a homogenous or monolithic idea of faith and culture here.

Rather those preaching Islam in the region — especially from the 12th century onward — absorbed existing cultural traditions that had evolved for thousands of years along the river, and, in turn, expressed them through the more esoteric strands of Islam (Sufism).

Historically, the strand of Sufism which emerged on the banks of Indus (especially in Punjab and all the way across Sindh), consciously eschewed religious orthodoxy and, at times, even rebelled against it.

The poetry and music that emerged from Sufi circles along the river is therefore largely a result of the theological, political and social tensions between Sufis and the orthodox ulema and clerics.

This is still the case, as we shall see while reviewing a series of songs related to the historical Sufi tradition along the Indus.

One of the most well-known poems by a Sufi saint in the region is Bulleh Ki Jana Mein Kon (Bulleh, to me I am unknown).

Penned by the 18th century Sufi saint and poet, Bulleh Shah, for over 200 years, it has been used as a popular deterrent against the ‘orthodox’ ulema who have continued to be critical of the strands of Islam that have developed (over centuries) in cultures on both sides of the Indus.

Bulleh Shah was born in Southern Punjab in 1680 and largely preached there in the Punjabi language.

He wrote mostly in Punjabi because as opposed to Persian (which was the language of the Muslim Mughal court at the time), Punjabi was a 'common man’s language'. He also wrote in Sariki (spoken in South Punjab) and in Sindhi.

The poem is a hurtling lament against religious orthodoxy in which Shah distances himself from the layers of belief that organised religions are wrapped with. Instead, he comes out looking for something which is free of cultural, political and religious prejudices and perceptions.

This is how, he believes, he can discover true humanity and consequently the Almighty. However, in the end, he realises that by rejecting existing theological, political and social labels, all he is left with is the question of who he is.

To him, this nothingness may as well be everything which humans should become (to eschew bigotry and divisions).

The nothingness (in the context of traditional Sufi imagery and concepts) is a seamless, almost inexplicable, void in which the presence of the Almighty can be felt. It has no room for man-made prejudices.

English translation
Bulleh, to me, I am not known

Not a believer inside the mosque,

Nor a pagan of false rites,

Not the pure amongst the impure,

Neither Moses, nor the Pharaoh…

Bulleya! to me, I am not known

Not in the holy Vedas am I,

Nor in opium, neither in wine,

Not in the drunkard’s intoxicated craze,

Neither awake, nor in a sleeping daze,

Bulleya! to me, I am not known

In happiness, nor in sorrow am I

Neither clean, nor a filthy mire,

Not from water, nor from earth,

Neither fire, nor from air is my birth.

Bulleya! To me, I am not known

Not an Arab, nor Punjabi

Neither Hindi, nor Nagauri

Hindu, Turk, nor Peshawari,

Nor do I live in Nadaun

Bulleya! to me, I am not known

Differences of faith, I have not known,

From Adam and Eve, I am not born

I am not the name I assume

Not in stillness, nor on the move

Bulleya! to me, I am not known

I am the first, I am the last

None other have I ever known

I am the wisest of them all

Bulleh! do I stand alone?

Bulleya! I am not known.

Another popular kalam (poem) by Bulleh Shah is Asaan Ishq Namaz Jadoun Neeti Aye (Ever since I resolved to say the prayer of love).

Written in Sariki, it is by far his most pointed indictment of the criticism he received from those accusing him of ‘distorting faith’.

He directly addresses his critics and taunts them for always looking at others and never within their own selves. He also lambasts them for finding spirituality and the Almighty in books, rituals and places of worship, without looking for Him where he really resides i.e. in one’s heart.

He dismisses the clergy as being worthless even when compared to a rooster because at least the rooster does his duty of waking up people (instead of stifling them and encouraging them to remain asleep).

English translation (excerpt)
You may have read thousands of books,

But have you ever read yourself?

Whereas they all run towards mosques and temples,

They never enter their own hearts.

Your fight against Satan is futile;

Because you have to first fight your own desires.

You seek the one in heaven,

But you never try to reach the one who resides with you.

Ever since I have resolved to say the prayer of love,

I have forgotten the mosque and temple.

The roosters are better than the clerics;

For at least they wake friends who are asleep…

A wine-seller is better than a moneylender,

At least he serves a drink to the thirsty.

Oh, Bulleh, make friends with your critics,

Before they beat you up.

Cleric, leave those books alone,

You just have shallow knowledge.

You need to cleanse yourself from the wines of passion,

Your exterior and interior are both stained.

You continue to enter places of worship,

But when will you enter your own heart?

Laal Meri Pat has been around for centuries. It was a poem dedicated to the 13th century Sufi saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.

Lal Shahbaz was born in Afghanistan in 1149 CE. As a young man, he studied religion under various scholars before leaving his home and visiting various countries. He eventually arrived and settled in Sehwan — an ancient city in what is the present-day province of Sindh.

Shahbaz began preaching a highly esoteric strand of Islam here, and almost immediately attracted devotees from the region’s Muslim and Hindu communities.

Shahbaz was a rebel and refused to submit to the dictates of the conservative clergy. He mastered various languages, including Sindhi, Pashto, Turkish, Arabic and Sanskrit.

He was known for his nonchalant and ‘possessed’ mannerisms. He died in Sehwan and was buried there. It is also where his shrine stands.

Amir Khusro (a poet and scholar in the court of India’s 14th century Delhi Sultanate), after being moved by the stories of Lal Shahbaz, wrote a poem celebrating the life of the saint.

18th century Sufi saints, Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah (from Punjab), added some verses to Khusro’s poem. By the 19th century, roving fakirs (spiritual vagabonds) were singing it outside the shrine of Lal Shahbaz.

Sung in Punjabi, the poem/song, though already well-known in Punjab and Sindh, was given a more mainstream make-over in the 1960s by composer, Master Ashiq Hussain.

The words of the song were updated by the tragic poet, Saghar Siddiqui, before it was offered to famous Pakistani vocalist, Noor Jahan to sing.

It was this version of the song which became the most popular; and a modern component of Punjab’s folk music realm. Later, it was covered by various famous singers of both Pakistan and India.

The song is a whirling tribute to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. It is often sung with reckless abandon, as if in a trance, and to the beat of the South Asian Sufi music genre called the dhamal.

The song is a particular favorite of the saint’s women devotees, who mostly belong to the working class and peasant communities of Punjab and Sindh, and find the words and music highly liberating and healing.

English translation
Oh Laal, please keep my matters straight;

Long live Laal!

From Sindh and of Sehwan,

Comes the generous Shahbaz Qalandar …

In every step, I trade the path of Qalandar;

Ali (RA) is in my every breath…

Four of your lamps burn forever,

I've come to burn a fifth one;

Long live Laal!

Oh my mentor, your shrine is high,

Songs are played in sync with the clocks…

Long live Laal!

Ghanan Ghanan(!) is the sound of your drum,

The clocks tick along with it…

Long live Laal…!

14th century poet, Amir Khusro used elements from ancient Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Indian music to create a distinct music genre called the qawaali. The qawaali quickly became attached to the music performed at Sufi shrines in India.

By the 16th century, the qawaali had developed into a bona fide Sufi devotional music form, in which odes to the Almighty and divine Muslim personalities were sung to the beat of rhythmic and hypnotic beats.

Till the mid-20th century, Qawaali remained confined to Sufi shrines in the Punjab and in some other areas of South Asia.

However, from the late 1950s onward, it was introduced to a wider urban audience in Pakistan by qawaali singers (qawaals) such as the Sabri Brothers and Aziz Mian.

One way they did this was by delivering their qawaalis in Urdu. This was also when the Sabri Brothers and Aziz Mian incorporated modern poetry, but which was delivered in the established imagery and ethos of the traditional qawaali.

For example, Aziz Mian would often address modern-day issues through Sufi idioms and concepts first developed in the poetry and songs of ancient Sufi poets of the region.

One such idiom was of the inner conflict a Sufi poet often experienced in his attempt to achieve a unique unity with God. In the process, he annihilates (fana) his ego which keeps a person anchored to the trivialities of everyday life.

The union with God (a metaphor for a clear understanding and awareness of His existence) was explained as an intoxicated state which the Sufi poets likened with the effects of sweet wine.

However, the union in this context was not the end of it. Because after becoming strikingly aware of God’s presence, many Sufi poets would still find Him to be perplexing and unable to be fully grasped by the limited capacities of the human mind.

This is when many poets would stretch their poems and turn them into imagined conversations with the Almighty, exposing their conflicting emotions made up of awe as well as anger; ecstasy as well as desolation.

Aziz Mian mastered this aspect of the qawaali. But his frustration was more to do with his immediate surroundings in which he was often criticised for being violent and too admiring of intoxicants, especially alcohol.

In 1975, when the Sabri Brothers mocked his ‘perpetually intoxicated state’, and style of qawaali, Aziz Mian retaliated by penning a long qawaali which sardonically hit back at his critics.

This was Haye kambakht tu ne pi hi nahi (Oh, unfortunate soul, you never even drank). In it, he begins by proudly owning up to his liking for intoxicants, taunting his opponents that they were criticising something they had never even experienced.

He then moves on by suggesting that those who like delivering lectures on morals and still commit misdeeds were worse than drunkards, and thus were hypocrites.

As the qawaali goes deeper towards a whirling climax, Aziz Mian suggests that he was intoxicated by his love of the Almighty; an intoxication which his detractors can’t even imagine or achieve because they were shallow. He damns them for being myopic and simplistic in their understanding of his words.

One of the most intense examples of a Sufi poem which deals with the conflict and frustration of a man who is left perplexed by God even after reaching the state of ego annihilation was penned by Naz Khialvi — a poet from the city of Toba Tek Singh in the Punjab. He titled the poem Tum aik gorak dhanda ho (You are puzzle).

In the late 1980s, Khialvi gave the poem to the famous qawaal, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who took almost two years to compose it the way he thought it deserved to be delivered.

The poem presents God as a perplexing paradox, putting the poet in a state of both awe as well as frustration because even after understanding some aspects of the Almighty, the poet is baffled by those aspects that go the other way, often replacing (within the seeker) euphoria with bewilderment.

The poet pleads that he has every right to question the paradox because he was completely in love with an entity which draws him closer, but does not allow itself to be fully comprehended.

Tarrin Paunda (Plant) is one of the most haunting songs in the vast reservoir of Sindh’s ancient Sufi music genre. It was first recorded by Allan Fakir (for Radio Pakistan) in the late 1970s.

Allan was the quintessential Sindhi folk singer, who had mastered the art of expressing the poetry of ancient Sufi saints who had settled along the River Indus in the arid province of Sindh.

Tarrin Paunda is often mistaken as being the work of 18th century Sufi saint, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai. But it was actually authored by Shaikh Ayaz.

As a young man, Ayaz was a Marxist who went on to become a close colleague of the ‘father of Sindhi nationalism’, GM Syed (before they fell out in the 1980s).

Ayaz’s most prolific period as a writer and poet was between the early 1960s and late 1970s. And it was in the 1970s that he penned Tarrin Paunda, which was inspired by the mesmerising poetic style of Sufi saint, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai.

The poem is about a man’s hope to one day meet his beloved when his natural surroundings will be in full bloom.

He sings (in Sindhi):

‘When red roses will bloom, then we will meet;

When those birds will return and we will make their sounds, then we will meet;

When the tears will move down the cheeks like pearls, then we will meet;

Those days of parting were a mistake of youth, so we will meet when there are roses in bloom…’

The poem was written by Ayaz to be sung in a hypnotic manner, as if the singer was blissfully caught inside an eternal loop of both hope and despair; love and melancholy.

Allan Fakir achieved that perfectly.

In the north along the River Indus, Sufism did not have the kind of impact that it had in the Punjab and Sindh. But it was still present there in a slightly different and more earthly form.

For example, regarding Sufi music and poetry, poets in Sindh and Punjab saw Indus as a fluid mystical pathway which carried men and women towards an esoteric realm, whereas in the north, or more so, in what is now KP, poets saw the river as a blessed source of nature that replenished the land on which people cultivated their crops, grazed their cattle and moved to and fro as tribes.

That’s why poetry on Pashtun folk culture is often about a beloved land and/or the memory of it by those who had to leave it due to various economic or political reasons.

Some of the most moving poems/songs in this respect were written by roving Pashtun gypsies, one of whom went on to become a singing legend.

Pashtu folk singer, Zarsanga was born in 1946 into a nomadic tribe in Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The tribe’s main vocation was singing, so Zarsanga began to sing at an early age.

She would travel with her tribe all over Pakistan, and even to Afghanistan, where the tribe would settle in the summers. By the time she got married in 1965 at the age of 19, she was already a famous singer among the Pakhtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Most of the songs that she sang were written by the common people of her nomadic tribe. The songs spoke about the joys and tragedies of the lives of Pakhtun gypsies.

The non-Pashto sections of the country discovered her when she began to record songs for Radio Pakistan in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

One such song, ‘Ya Qurban’, was regularly played by the station. It was penned by a fellow gypsy (in the 1960s), and is a longing for the stretch of land on which gypsy tribes moved to and fro, and for those who have travelled far away from these lands and their loved ones.

Source: The Indus raga: From Bulleh Ki Jana Mein Kon to Tarrin Paunda
Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2016

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

Smokers’ Corner: The founder lost

For the past few years I have been researching literature written on the life of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah; and also scholarly works which quote him extensively to substantiate theories about what Pakistan is (or was supposed to be).

The exercise is a pursuit to trace the evolution of the image of a man who passed away just a year after the creation of a country that he had so painstakingly put on the map.

My research in this context has produced multiple Jinnahs; each one echoing the zeitgeist or a particular mood of the period in which he was written into books, essays and speeches.

Most interesting is the fact that between the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and the late 1950s, not much was written on him.

Ever since the 1970s, Jinnah and Iqbal have been placed on the opposite poles of numerous debates on democracy, faith, state and politics. What did they really believe?
The 1950s were a highly mutable period in the history of Pakistan. The country’s founding party, the All-India Muslim League, in its new incarnation as Pakistan Muslim League, was constantly ravaged by infighting, and unable to address the many economic, ethnic and religious challenges that had sprung up when a minority of India became a majority in Pakistan.

My research suggests that, on an intellectual level, problems in this context were hardly ever tackled by evoking Jinnah’s sayings or personality.

Instead, the government and the state depended more on the works of poet and philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal. For example, in 1953, when anti-Ahmadiyya riots in the Punjab spiraled out of control, the government’s response was late but stern. It imposed Martial Law in the province which eventually crushed the riots.

Then, to undermine the men who had instigated the riots, the government published the Urdu translation of a booklet authored by respected Muslim scholar, Dr. Khalifa Abdul Hakim. Called ‘Iqbal and Mullah’, it cited heavily (and selectively) Iqbal’s scathing criticism of clerics.

In 1956, when the indirectly-elected Constituent Assembly of the country passed the country’s first constitution, many of the text’s authors explained the supposed balance between the religious and the worldly in the constitution by citing Iqbal’s ideas of ‘spiritual democracy’.

Again, there was little or no mention of Jinnah. What’s more, Jinnah’s sister who had authored a book on her brother was dissuaded (by the government) to publish it. The book was not published until 1987.

In 1954, the government authorised British writer, Hector Bolitho, to write a biography of Jinnah. But the published version was heavily censored. Entire quotes of Mr Jinnah were removed from the final text while others were altered.

It was as if the state and government of Pakistan in the 1950s had failed to find any use for Jinnah’s thoughts in an era in which the country found itself reeling from multiple political and economic crevices. Perhaps Jinnah’s memory had seemed to be too multicultural in tone and tenor to a state trying to enforce a more monolithic idea of Pakistan?

But this attitude was radically altered by the arrival of the Ayub Khan regime in 1958. He became the first Pakistani ruler to promptly start placing Jinnah’s portrait alongside his own in public rallies.

In his quest to modernise Pakistan, he constantly evoked Jinnah as a progressive Muslim. In April 1962, his government published a hefty book containing Jinnah’s speeches. In it were also quotes and sayings that had been censored out from Bolitho’s 1956 biography of Jinnah.

Ayub pulled out Jinnah from the confines he had been relegated to in the 1950s. His regime presented the founder as a man who wanted a modern Muslim-majority state with a strong economy (based on industrialisation), and a powerful army willing to defend the country’s physical and ideological boundaries.

This image of Jinnah was reinforced in books such as 1965’s Struggle for Pakistan (by IH Qureshi); 1966’s Quaid-i-Azam as Seen by his Contemporaries (a compilation of essays); and in 1969’s Jinnah: Founder of Pakistan published by the Information Ministry.

Ayub’s opponents on the right rejected this image. They suggested that since Jinnah could not formulate a cohesive ideology (due to his demise soon after Pakistan’s creation), the Ulema should take the lead in framing Pakistan’s ideological direction because the country was made in the name of Islam.

Ayub responded by claiming that this was not possible because most Ulema were opposed to Jinnah and that Jinnah did not want a theological state.

Much of the literature on Jinnah in the 1960s advances Ayub’s image of the founder. But this image began to change when Z.A. Bhutto’s left-leaning PPP came to power in December 1971.

Coming in on the back of a manifesto promising “socialist reforms”, one of the first signs of another change in Jinnah’s image emerged in a 1973 press advertisement of the Board of Industrial Management. In it, Jinnah’s portrait appears with a 1945 quote of his in which he emphasises the importance of nationalising important industries.

As by the mid-1970s, Bhutto had begun to place himself somewhere between left-liberalism, nationalism and ‘political Islam’, the brief experiment of weaving a socialist Jinnah quickly gave way to propagating a charismatic and nationalist one.

In 1976, the Bhutto regime formed the Quaid-i-Azam Academy. A plethora of literature on Jinnah appeared. In 1976, 12 books on Jinnah were published alone, with most of them presenting him as a charismatic and populist nationalist, who wanted to construct a strong democratic Muslim country. An image Bhutto also wanted for himself.

Also in 1976, appeared Sharif Al Mujahid’s Ideological Orientation of Pakistan. Published during a period in which the Bhutto regime had moved considerably to the right, the book portrayed Jinnah as a man who worked on building a separate ‘Islamic polity’ as conceived by Iqbal.

Jinnah’s image was changing again. After Bhutto was toppled in a reactionary military coup by Gen Zia in July 1977, the new regime announced the ‘discovery’ of a diary kept by Jinnah. In the diary, Zia claimed, Jinnah had scorned at democracy and wanted a state based on Islamic dictates and a strong army.

The claim was debunked by the surviving contemporaries of Jinnah and the regime went quiet on the issue. Unable to justify its intransigent policies with any of Jinnah’s quotes, the Zia regime ‘advised’ state-owned media to only use those quotes of the founder in which he mentioned faith.

In the 1980s, powerful independent scholarship on Jinnah too began to emerge. It severely tested and debunked Zia’s image of Jinnah. Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan (1982) and Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman (1985), completely turned Zia’s image of Jinnah on its head, presenting the founder more like the modern, enlightened Jinnah first put forward by the Ayub regime.

As a response, the Zia government pulled out Iqbal’s writings on religion. This was ironic because, in the 1950s, the state had used Iqbal to undermine the so-called fundamentalists; in the 1980s, Iqbal began to be posed (by the state) as an anti-thesis to the alternate image of Jinnah which began to appear from independent scholarship.

So whereas Iqbal was used in the 1950s to counter religious radicalism, in the 1980s, he began to be used to counter those debunking Zia’s idea of Pakistan and Jinnah. It was all a matter of cherry-picking (out of context) from Iqbal’s vast works in philosophy and poetry.

Not much has changed since. If one read’s Riaz Ahmad’s book, Iqbal’s letters to Quaid-i-Azam (1976), one finds that both men were on the same page on various subjects. But Iqbal passed away almost a decade before the creation of Pakistan.

Maybe this is why ever since the 1970s, ideologues, politicians, dictators, theologians and intellectuals have (rather convolutedly) placed both men on the opposite poles of numerous debates on democracy, faith, state and politics. They remain as lost as ever.

Source: Smokers’ Corner: The founder lost
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 24th, 2016

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

Khan meets Bhutto

Ever since the rise of Imran Khan’s PTI in 2011, much has been alluded to about how the PTI has evolved into becoming the ‘new PPP.’

An observer is advised not to jump to any knee-jerk conclusions in this regard. At least, not without first understanding the historical contexts in which both the parties emerged.

The PPP was the brainchild of Z.A. Bhutto and a Marxist ideologue, J.A. Rahim. Formed in 1967 to challenge the Ayub Khan regime (of which Bhutto was once a part), the party was conceived as a broad platform to co-opt progressive men and women of all shades.

Author and researcher, Philip E. Jones, who, between 1967 and 1974, stationed himself in Pakistan to conduct a detailed study of the formation and coming to power of the PPP, suggests in his 2003 book, that Bhutto understood the PPP as “a broad coalition of progressive elements”.

Jones suggests that Bhutto’s inspiration in this respect was the manner in which Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had transformed the All India Muslim League (AIML) into a wide-ranging coalition of Muslim nationalists just before the all-important provincial elections in British India in 1945-46.

To emerge as the leading Muslim party in India, Jinnah had encouraged the entry of Muslim nationalists from multiple spheres of politics.

For example, whereas once the League was purely the domain of a section of the Muslim landed elite, by the early 1940s, it had in it bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie Muslim nationalists which included socialists and social democrats on the left, liberal democrats and the landed gentry in the centre, and Islamic scholars on the right who agreed with the League’s programme.

Jones quotes Bhutto lamenting the loss of such a coalition after Jinnah’s demise in 1948. He (Bhutto) then describes the PPP as being an extension of Jinnah’s coalition which in essence was progressive.

The PPP’s ideological make-up was largely authored by intellectuals through literary monthlies such as Nusrat, and papers written by men such as J.A. Rahim.

Nusrat, an Urdu magazine, was being edited by poet and scholar, Hanif Ramay who used it to explain the PPP as a party attempting to merge modern democratic socialism with Muslim nationalism and the “Quranic concepts of egalitarianism”.

At the time of its inception, the PPP was vehemently anti-clergy because it saw the clergy and the religious parties as “agents of feudal lords and monopolist capitalists”.

It posed itself as a left-leaning Muslim nationalist party as opposed to an entirely socialist unit. The last bit is an exaggeration by later chroniclers.

Bhutto had arrived fully matured as a political thinker, but Khan is still a work-in-progress
Imran’s party, formed in 1996, largely emerged as a small one-agenda entity. It was anti-corruption. Khan was a charismatic former captain of the country’s cricket team and a respected philanthropist.

Since he wasn’t as cerebral as Bhutto, there were no intellectuals in his party to navigate its ideological discourse or devise a historical context behind its creation.

PTI emerged purely as a reaction to the political and economic chaos of the 1990s in which the PPP of Benazir Bhutto, and the PML-N of Mian Nawaz Sharif, were central players, along with certain shadowy remnants of the Zia dictatorship.

Khan was a political novice. Much of his youth had been spent as a cricketing star known as much for his partying lifestyle as much as he was for his sporting skills.

Then, sometime in the early 1990s, during an identity crisis of sorts which he suffered after his retirement from cricket, and, more so, due to the death of his mother (from cancer), he began consulting a respected and moderate religious scholar Malik Murtaza.

Khan shaped his party as a political manifestation of a spiritual awakening which he believed he had experienced; and which, supposedly, compelled him to agitate “against corruption and injustice”.

After addressing his spiritual crisis, Khan moved ahead to gain a political education.

Khan’s initial information in this regard was gained from a retired general who had played a prominent role during Gen Zia’s regime in facilitating Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan, and in changing the ideological mindset of the military establishment.

He was Gen Hameed Gul. Gul made Khan understand politics in black and white. To him, Western political and cultural ideas were keeping Muslim countries enslaved and undermining the role of faith in their societies.

But Gul soon had a falling out with Khan when the latter married a British heiress, Jemima Goldsmith.

Then, Khan’s transcendental awakening and his early understanding of politics imparted to him by the likes of Gul, naturally drew him towards the well-evolved ideology of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI).

JI’s influence helped Imran express his ideas through assorted religious idioms. JI had played an important role in reshaping the meaning of Pakistan nationalism during the Zia regime.

Pakistan nationalism, from the rise of Jinnah’s AIML in the 1940s, till about the mid-1970s, had meant to be a South Asian expression of Muslim nationalism. Muslim nationalism had understood Muslims as communities that were one in faith but separated by distinct cultural and geographical boundaries in which they could thrive as separate nations.

But many religious scholars opposed to Jinnah had rejected this nationalism. They felt it negated their faith’s universal appeal and also undermined pan-Islamic aspirations.

From the late 1970s onward, after the weakening of the earlier idea of Pakistan nationalism, religious parties (and then the state) began explaining Pakistan as a ‘bastion of faith’ and a launching pad for the political universalisation of Islam.

This is why from the 1980s onward, many Pakistanis have struggled to explain themselves according to the reality of their geographical and national boundaries.

Instead, most see themselves as theological abstractions related to the coming of some global politico-religious realm!

This has created much confusion about exactly what constitutes Pakistan’s ideology.

Bhutto had arrived fully matured as a political thinker, but Khan is still a work in progress. Just like parties such as the JI have now mostly good words for the man that it helped topple in 1977, Khan too has begun to view Bhutto as some kind of a misunderstood patriot.

So a typical Khan speech now moves left towards the old PPP progressivism, even leaning towards Bhutto’s archetypal populist demagoguery; and then to the right from where Pakistani nationalism begins to be redefined as something militaristic, celestial, and unbounded by geography.

Indeed, Bhutto too had moved towards such a mixed narrative, but only when he was being cornered by a protest movement against him in 1977. This narrative devoured him, and then set the scene for a reactionary dictator, and a future wrought with ideological confusion, and, consequentially, violence.

With the fortunes of the present-day PPP plummeting, Khan and his party matter a lot especially to a whole new generation of Pakistani youth.

Imran is thus well advised to bring in some erudite thinkers into the party who can give the ideological narrative of the PTI a more cohesive direction, as opposed to the one that is a chaotic fusion of the old PPP rhetoric, and flighty idioms of politico-religious ideologues.

A new space is opening up, requiring a more economics-friendly program and an ideology which revitalises and updates Jinnah’s Muslim nationalism, and does not repeat the kind of demagogic and mythical idea of nationhood which has for long retarded our nationalistic evolution and endeavours.

Source: Khan meets Bhutto
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine May 1st, 2016

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

Of highs and lows: How Pakistani cricket changed forever

Cricket is massive in South Asia. And Pakistani cricket teams have played a major role in making it a popular sport in the region — especially due to the kind of mercurial and off-beat talent that the country has produced ever since it began playing international cricket in 1952.

The country’s cricketing history is largely made up of extremes: of sudden highs and dramatic lows.

Experts suggest that Pakistan cricket rarely found a middle ground. This is also why, for a long time, Pakistani cricket teams have been described as being the most unpredictable and erratic in the cricket-playing world.

The highs in this regard often emerged during the tenures of some powerful captains who managed to assemble and unite a motley crew of mercurial but highly-talented players who, unexpectedly, went on to turn the tables on some of the strongest teams.

The Pakistan team, during the tenure of Pakistan’s first Test skipper, A. H. Karadar, was one such squad.

Between 1952 and 1958, it managed to win against almost every Test-playing team, despite the fact that it was made up of raw, inexperienced cricketers, picked by a cricket board that was equally inexperienced and extremely low on resources.

The teams during Imran Khan’s long tenure as captain (across the 1980s and early 1990s) managed to make Pakistan a truly major cricketing power which, in 1992, eventually went on to win the Cricket World Cup.

Then there was the team that evolved after Imran’s departure and was largely captained by Wasim Akram. This one produced some of the most exciting talent generated by Pakistan (especially in the fast-bowling department), and kept Pakistan afloat high in rankings across the 1990s.

But this team was not exactly united. Though studded with some of the most extraordinary talent and skills in international cricket at the time, it often suffered from infighting, players’ rebellions and other more unsavoury controversies, such as match-fixing.

There is also the team which developed under Pakistan’s current Test captain, Misbahul Haq. Haq was appointed captain in 2011 and has gone on to become the country’s most successful Test captain.

Misbah was unique in this respect because he actually tried to develop a team whose style and culture eschewed the Pakistani teams’ reputation of being mercurial and unpredictable.

But as two of Pakistan’s greatest cricketers, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad, stated in their respective autobiographies: Pakistan assembled perhaps its most talented and strongest side ever in the late 1970s. It was captained by Mushtaq Mohammad.

Though Miandad places Mushtaq Mohammad right beside Imran Khan as the best captain he played under, Imran suggests that Mushtaq was lucky to have such a strong combination of players.

Indeed he was, but the team which Mushtaq went on to captain had actually begun to develop from 1974 onward under Intikhab Alam. The difference was that under Intikhab, it failed to click as a winning unit and was often dismissed as being a disorganised group of talented men who just couldn’t develop a winning habit.

Mushtaq managed to change that. When he became captain in 1976, Pakistan had won just three Test matches in the 47 that it had played between 1960 and 1975.

Mushtaq won two in his very first series. But after downing New Zealand 2-0 at home, Mushtaq’s team faced the daunting task of playing back-to-back series against two of the time’s most feared sides: Australia and the West Indies.

Pakistan was to embark on a long tour in which it had to play three Tests in Australia and five in the West Indies. Pakistan had never won a Test in Australia, and it had defeated the West Indies (in the West Indies) just once, and that too in the late 1950s.

Australia and the West Indies had risen to become the world’s top two sides in the mid-1970s. Their main weapons were its bowlers who, at that time, were some of the fastest the world had ever seen.

The pitches in both the regions were mostly quick and bouncy. In those days, both regions also had some of the most boisterous and hostile crowds.

Australia had risen under the captaincy of Ian Chappell who turned the Australian side into an aggressive unit, willing to do anything to undermine the opposition.

This attitude was the substance from which emerged something called ‘sledging’.

It was the act of intimidating one's opponents with curse words and sardonic remarks to distract them and make them lose their focus. The Australians had mastered it.

Ian’s brother Greg Chappell, who took over the captaincy in 1976, continued from where Ian had left. In fact, Greg injected even more aggression in the way the Australians liked to play their cricket: Audibly, aggressive, in-your-face and, most of all, to win and win alone!

The West Indians were a comparatively quieter side. But they too hated to lose. Much of their talking was done through the battery of fast bowlers that they carried: Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Andy Roberts and Colin Croft. Each capable of unleashing deliveries that were over 95 mph, just like Australia’s Jeff Thomson, Dennis Lillee and, to a certain extent, Gary Gilmour.

Video: Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee were two of the fastest bowlers in the world when the Pakistan team went to Australia in November 1976.

Video: The West Indies came packed with an even more fearsome pace attack.

After Mushtaq’s team defeated the New Zealanders on the flat and slow pitches of Pakistan, Mushtaq demanded that the team should receive a pay increase. The Pakistan cricket board, headed by former captain A H. Kardar, refused.

Mushtaq and at least five other players threatened to pull out of the squad. Kardar responded by actually pulling them out. Intikhab was made captain again and replacements were announced for half a dozen more players who had decided to back their captain’s demands.

But since Mushtaq had freshly led Pakistan to a series victory, the local press sided with him until Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto intervened and asked one of his ministers Abdul Hafeez Pirzada to amicably sort out the matter.

Kardar was a member of Bhutto’s left-leaning and populist Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that had come to power in December 1971. But Mushtaq’s brother, former Pakistani batsman and captain Hanif Mohammad, was also a huge supporter of Bhutto. And Bhutto was aware of that. Hanif was also the chief selector.

A.H. Kardar with Z.A. Bhutto at Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium during a 1976 Pakistan vs New Zealand Test match.
A.H. Kardar with Z.A. Bhutto at Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium during a 1976 Pakistan vs New Zealand Test match.
The deadlock between the players and the board was finally broken when the government instructed the board to accept the demands of the players, and give the team a pay raise.

Some critics of the deal suggested that Mushtaq had actually wanted to be dropped because he knew that his team didn’t stand a chance against the hostile Australians and the mighty West Indies.

Nevertheless, Mushtaq and his vice-captain, Asif Iqbal, finally sat with the selectors and picked 18 players for the long tour. The team was to be managed by former Pakistan player, Col. Shujahuddin while former Pakistan wicketkeeper, Imtiaz Ahmad, was named Assistant Manager.

The squad consisted of three openers: The regular pair of Majid Khan and Sadiq Mohammad and the newbie, Mudassar Nazar, who was yet to make his debut.

Rest of the batting was studded with experienced batsmen such as the elegant Zaheer Abbas, the cavalier Asif Iqbal, the solid Mushtaq Mohammad, the mercurial Wasim Raja,and two new-comers: Javed Miandad (who had made his debut in the series against New Zealand) and Haroon Rashid, who had never played in a Test.

The fast bowling department was led by the hot-headed Sarfaraz Nawaz, the quickly improving Imran Khan, and veteran swing bowlers, Asif Masood and Salim Altaf. A teenaged medium-pacer, Sikandar Bakht, too was picked.

Mushtaq and Intikhab Alam were the main spinners in the side, both leg-break-googly bowlers. Accompanying them in the spin department was slow left-arm spinner, Iqbal Qasim, who hadn’t played in a Test.

There were two wicketkeepers: The regular, Wasim Bari, and the less experienced, Taslim Arif.

The 18 players and two officials departed for Australia (via Singapore) on a Pakistan International Airlines’ flight in November 1976.

The Pakistan squad departs for the long tour. Standing from left: Zaheer Abbas, Asif Masood, Intikhab Alam, Salim Altaf, Muddasar Nazar, Wasim Raja, Imran Khan, Col. Shujahuddin (Manager), Imtiaz Ahmad (Assistant Manager), Majid Khan, Asif Iqbal and Mushtaq Mohammad. Sitting from left: Sarfaraz Nawaz, Wasim Bari, Iqbal Qasim, Taslim Arif, Sadiq Mohammad, Javed Miandad and Sikandar Bakht.
The Pakistan squad departs for the long tour. Standing from left: Zaheer Abbas, Asif Masood, Intikhab Alam, Salim Altaf, Muddasar Nazar, Wasim Raja, Imran Khan, Col. Shujahuddin (Manager), Imtiaz Ahmad (Assistant Manager), Majid Khan, Asif Iqbal and Mushtaq Mohammad. Sitting from left: Sarfaraz Nawaz, Wasim Bari, Iqbal Qasim, Taslim Arif, Sadiq Mohammad, Javed Miandad and Sikandar Bakht.
What was expected to end up as a severe thrashing at the hands of the Australians and the West Indians, and a possible end to the careers of the team’s senior players became a historical odyssey that would push Pakistan cricket out of the shadows of disappointments and ridicule, and finally make it a cricketing power to be reckoned with.

After the tour, Pakistan cricket changed forever.


BAPTISED BY FIRE
The Pakistan team arrived in Australia to a hostile reception. The Australian press had dismissed the Pakistani players as being ‘bunnies.’ They were up against an Australian side that had in 1975-76 whipped England 4-1, and the West Indies 5-1.

The Pakistanis also came across a lot of sledging. They got a mouthful of it during the 1st Test at Adelaide.

They were up against Thomson, Lillee and Gilmour — all of whom threatened to reduce Pakistan under the score of 200, had it not been for a gutsy 85 by Zaheer, and 48 by Imran. Pakistan finally managed to post 272, but it could have been far worse.

Earlier, Thomson, who was consistently bowling over 95 mph, and had ripped out two Pakistani wickets, tried to bounce out Zaheer. The ball rose viciously and Zaheer was late on the hook shot. The rising ball hit the edge of his bat and ballooned in the air.

Thomson ran for the catch not knowing that Allan Turner was also coming in for it. Both the players collided. Thomson dislocated his shoulder and had to be carried away from the field.

Thomson and Turner collide.
Thomson and Turner collide.
When the Australians came in to bat, they smashed the Pakistani bowlers all over the park and gained a lead of over 150.

With two and a half days remaining, Pakistan had to bat for a long period of time to save the game. Zaheer, Mushtaq and Javed took the score to 236-4. Zaheer also raised a stylish century, only to get out at 101, hooking Lillee.

Imran, Saleem Altaf, Sarfaraz and Bari went quickly, leaving Pakistan reeling at 379-9 with just 217 ahead, and with more than a day and a half remaining in the Test. Asif Iqbal was still there with number 11 batsman, Iqbal Qasim, who was making his Test debut.

At tea, Mushtaq admonished Zaheer in the dressing room for playing recklessly after completing his century. But what happened next took the Australians by surprise.

Asif Iqbal added 87 precious runs with Qasim who faced 96 deliveries but scored just four. He gave vital support to Asif who went on to score a fighting 152.

The partnership was finally broken in the first session of the fifth day when Qasim was run out, trying to pinch a quick single to get Asif back on strike.

The Australians finally take out Qasim.
The Australians finally take out Qasim.
The Australians were left with a gettable 284 to win in two sessions. But Pakistan made sure that didn’t happen, especially due to some tight bowling by Iqbal Qasim who took four wickets.

The Australians aborted the chase after the fall of their sixth wicket. They needed just 23 to win when the game ended in a tense draw.

The crowd booed the Australians for abandoning the chase. Pakistan had managed to engineer a remarkable escape.

Video: Pakistan dismiss Australian skipper, Greg Chappell, and force Australia to halt their chase. Chappell went, caught Mushtaq, bowled Qasim. (No Audio).

In his autobiography, Mushtaq wrote that after the day’s play, Lillee went into the Pakistan dressing room with a bucket of beer. He walked towards Mushtaq and prodded: Come on, Mushy, let’s you and I have some beers.

Mushtaq was furious: I don’t understand you guys. Out there you insult and abuse us, and now you want to have a beer with my team?

Lillee laughed: What takes place on the field stays on the field. Off it, we’re buddies.

Qasim, Haroon, Mudassar and Sikandar pose with young Australian cricket fans before the 2nd Test in Melbourne.
Qasim, Haroon, Mudassar and Sikandar pose with young Australian cricket fans before the 2nd Test in Melbourne.
Earning a fighting draw had almost felt like a win for Pakistanis and they went brimming with confidence to Melbourne for the 2nd Test.

The wicket at the Melbourne Cricket Stadium used to be one of the fastest in the world until 1975. But when Pakistanis arrived here in January 1977, they were pleased to notice a dry, brown track.

Sarfaraz had gotten himself injured in the nets and was replaced by Asif Masood. Mushtaq lost the toss and Chappell chose to bat. Soon the Pakistani bowling attack was being taken to the cleaners.

Australia posted a mammoth 514. Pakistan responded in kind. Or sort of. Pakistan’s celebrated opening pair of Majid Khan and Sadiq Muhammad quickly posted an opening stand of 113 before Majid fell.

No problem. Zaheer continued with his good form and pushed the score to 241 with Sadiq who made a fluent 105.

But then, as if out of nowhere, Lillee produced two stunning spells of fast bowling, leaving Pakistan collapsing from 241-2 to 333 all out.

The Australians scored 315-8 in their second innings before declaring, giving Pakistan an impossible 499 runs to chase. The only highlight of Pakistan’s bowling was Imran’s five wickets, but which he got at the expense of 122 runs.

Playing for a draw, Pakistan collapsed, scoring just 151 in their second innings. They were devastated again by Lillee (four wickets), and leg-break bowler, Kerry O’Keefe.

Pakistan lost the game by a whopping 348 runs.

Video: Lillee destroys Pakistan at Melbourne

A day before the 3rd Test in Sydney, Mushtaq, and vice-captain, Asif Iqbal, couldn’t make out the nature of the wicket at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It wasn’t exactly a green-top but nor was it like the one in Melbourne.

In the three-day side game against Queensland, the flamboyant Wasim Raja had cracked a hard-hitting century and was expecting to be selected in Sydney.

At night, Mushtaq and Asif Iqbal sat together in Mushtaq’s hotel room to decide the final XI for the third Test. They believed the Sydney track would help the batsmen, and decided to strengthen the batting line-up.

They dropped fast bowler Salim Altaf and replaced him with the debutant middle-order batsman, Haroon Rashid. Asif Masood made way for the returning Sarfaraz.

Mushtaq gave the names of the selected team members to Manager Shujahuddin, who informed Raja that he wasn’t in the side.

A loner, and often a binge drinker, Raja went on a rampage. After getting sloshed, he smashed a mirror in his hotel room and then stumbled into the hotel lobby, cursing Shujahuddin.

Mudassar, Asif Masood, Sadiq, Sarfaraz and Salim Altaf were at the hotel bar on the ground floor when they saw Raja stumbling and cursing his way across the lobby. They at once alerted Mushtaq.

Mushtaq says in his autobiography that Raja accused Shujahuddin for keeping him out of the side until Mushtaq arrived and calmed Raja down. Back home, when Kardar came to know about the incident, he wanted Raja to be sent back to Pakistan. But Mushtaq vetoed the idea.

Mushtaq also adds that Shujahuddin had absolutely nothing to do with Raja not being picked for the 3rd Test. It was purely Mushtaq’s and Asif’s decision.

Though, Mushtaq was tempted to play with Raja after his swashbuckling century against Queensland, Mushtaq and Asif decided that he was too unpredictable and instead went for the inexperienced but more reliable Haroon.

Wasim Raja was almost sent back home for rowdy behaviour before the 3rd Test in Sydney.
Wasim Raja was almost sent back home for rowdy behaviour before the 3rd Test in Sydney.
The next day, the 3rd and final Test of the tour began, with Pakistan one-down in the series. The Australian press had already written the Pakistan team off, but now the local press, which had backed Mushtaq during his tussle with Kardar, wasn’t so sure about him either.

Chappell won the toss and elected to bat. He also thought it would be a batting track, or a wicket which might take a spin in the fourth innings. But it turned out to be quite the opposite.

More than a decade later, Majid Khan informed his biographer that when Pakistan went in to bowl, Mushtaq spotted a juicy patch of green, just short of the good length mark. Before his discovery (which he only shared with his team), he had gone in the game with just two quick bowlers: Imran and Sarfaraz.

Nevertheless, he asked them both to try to keep hitting that spot. The ploy worked. Sarfaraz and Imran shared 42 overs between them in the first innings and cleaned up the Australians for just 211. Imran picked up six wickets and Sarfaraz picked three.

Imran takes a break with Miandad during his marathon spell in the first innings of the 3rd Test.
Imran takes a break with Miandad during his marathon spell in the first innings of the 3rd Test.
But now, the question was how would the Pakistani batsmen face up to the likes of Lillee, Gilmour and the awkward Max Walker on this wicket. Mushtaq believed the spot was still fresh and would promptly be discovered by the Australians as well.

The three tested the Pakistanis with a series of bouncers and lots of sledging, reducing them to 111-4.

Pakistan regrouped when young guns Javed Miandad and Haroon Rashid bravely played around the veteran Asif Iqbal and pushed the score to over 300. Asif notched a valiant 120, hooking, pulling and driving the Australians quicks at will.

Pakistani dressing room applauds Asif’s century. From left: Haroon, Salim Altaf, Wasim Bari (slightly hidden), Majid, Sardraz, Sadiq, Imran and Taslim Arif.
Pakistani dressing room applauds Asif’s century. From left: Haroon, Salim Altaf, Wasim Bari (slightly hidden), Majid, Sardraz, Sadiq, Imran and Taslim Arif.
Frustrated by the doggedness of Pakistan’s middle and lower-order batsmen, Lillee and Gilmour had bowled numerous bouncers and hurled all sorts of abuses at them.

Greg Chappell in his book, "The 100th Summer" writes that one Lillee delivery struck Sarfaraz hard in the ribcage. Sarfaraz threw away his bat, walked up to the leg-umpire and shouted: Are you blind! Can’t you see?

The umpire told him to continue batting. Lillee bowled another vicious bouncer that whizzed past Sarfaraz’s face. "Eat this, bunny!" Lillee snarled.

Sarfaraz again threw away his bat, only to pick it up and hold it upside-down.

One must be reminded that helmets hadn’t been introduced in cricket. Batsmen faced quick bowlers without much protection: Just gloves, pads, the ‘box’ and maybe a thigh-pad. The head, face and chest did not have any protection whatsoever.

The Australians began their second innings 149 runs behind Pakistan’s score. But once again, they struggled against the pace of Imran and the swing of Sarfaraz.

Sarfaraz takes out Gary Cozier in Australia’s second innings.
Sarfaraz takes out Gary Cozier in Australia’s second innings.
After both the pacemen had reduced Australia to 115-8, a gritty partnership began to develop between Rod Marsh and Dennis Lillee.

Taking a leaf out of the Australians’ sledging technique, Mushtaq placed the then 19-year-old and very vocal Javed Miandad at silly point.

Miandad would sing songs from Urdu films to irritate Marsh and Lillee, and kept repeating, "Now he will keel you", whenever Imran or Sarfaraz would send down a bouncer.

After a series of bouncers sent down by Imran, Lillee complained to the umpire and the umpire told Mushtaq that he would take Imran off if he persisted with bowling bouncers.

Mushtaq was furious: How come you didn’t admonish the Australian bowlers when they were bouncing our tail-enders?

But the umpire kept saying he would take Imran off.

Mushtaq loudly asked Imran to stop bowling bouncers. But as Khan walked back to his bowling mark, Mushtaq told him to "aim between the bugger’s eyes".

Marsh and Imran exchange words after Imran sends down another bouncer.
Marsh and Imran exchange words after Imran sends down another bouncer.
Mushtaq argues with the umpire. Imran is standing behind the umpire with hands on his hips. Also seen in the picture is substitute fielder, Wasim Raja.
Mushtaq argues with the umpire. Imran is standing behind the umpire with hands on his hips. Also seen in the picture is substitute fielder, Wasim Raja.
Pakistan finally removed Marsh and then wrapped up the Australians for 180. Khan took the last wicket, bouncing out Lillee who, after trying to fend off a sharp, rising delivery, only managed to lob it high in the air and was caught by Zaheer.

Khan bowled at fierce speeds, capturing another six wickets, with Sarfaraz pitching in with another three. Pakistan needed just 32 to win.

Rare Video: Khan takes the last Australian wicket and his 12th of the match.

Pakistan reached the target with a loss of two wickets. Majid Khan finally finished the game by smashing three fours and then (miss)-hooking Lillee for a six. Not only did Pakistan square the series 1-1, it won its first ever Test on Australian soil. The Australian press was left speechless.

Post-match celebrations 1: Mushtaq and Imran rejoice the victory in the dressing room.
Post-match celebrations 1: Mushtaq and Imran rejoice the victory in the dressing room.
Post-match celebrations 2: Sadiq and Mushtaq cheer the victory with a pint each.
Post-match celebrations 2: Sadiq and Mushtaq cheer the victory with a pint each.
Back home, a bunch of cricketers who before the start of the Australian tour had been portrayed (by the board) as a group of greedy and self-serving men became untouchable heroes.


WAR IN THE CARIBBEAN
Pakistan flew to the West Indies from Australia via the Fiji Islands, and reached the Caribbean in February 1977.

The West Indian team, fans and press were now more than just curious to see a side that had squared a series against the No. 1 team in the world. The West Indies were considered to be the second best team at the time.

But West Indies had a longer line of fast men: Michael Holding, Vanburn Holder, Bernard Julien and the very slippery, Andy Roberts.

When Holding pulled out of the series due to injury, he was replaced by two more quicks: The very fast and very unorthodox, Colin Croft, and the 6ft-8inch giant, Joel Garner.

The legendary West Indian all-rounder and former captain, Garry Sobers, was not impressed by what Pakistan had achieved in Australia.

He predicted that the West Indies, led by Clive Lloyd, would be able to brush the Pakistanis aside.

The fierce Windies’ pace attack.
The fierce Windies’ pace attack.
Even before the 1st Test kicked-off, Pakistan lost the in-form Zaheer who broke his toe while playing football at a beach.

21-year-old Mohsin Khan was subsequently flown in from Pakistan as a replacement, but Zaheer was kept in the touring squad in case he recovered during the five-Test series.

Then, young Miandad fell into depression after losing his father who had passed away in Karachi. He was preparing to fly back home when he was stopped by his mother (on the phone) who insisted that his father would have wanted him to stay with the team.

But the problems didn’t end there. Pakistan almost lost its main wicketkeeper as well — quite literally. Wasim Bari was taking a swim at a beach when a strong tide carried him deeper into the sea. He yelled for help and almost drowned but was thankfully saved by a lifeguard.

The Pakistani touring squad in the West Indies.
The Pakistani touring squad in the West Indies.
After a few side games, the Pakistanis flew out to Barbados for the 1st Test. The wicket at the Kingston Oval was reddish in colour and looked like it would help the fast men.

Mushtaq and Asif decided to beef up the batting. Haroon was played in the injured Zaheer’s position, and Wasim Raja was finally brought in at number 7. Imran, Salim Altaf and Sarfaraz were to lead the pace attack.

Pakistan won the toss and was elected to bat because Mushtaq thought the wicket would crumble in the fourth innings. But Croft and Garner reduced Pakistan to 271-7 despite a quick-fire 88 by Majid.

Then, Raja came into his element and played well with the tail to push the score up to 435. Smashing 12 fours and a six, Raja reached his century and was knocked out at 117.

The West Indians responded in kind, posting 421, just 14 runs behind Pakistan’s score.

By the time, Pakistan began its second innings, the reddish strip seemed to have quickened up a bit and the cracks on it had begun to open.

Croft, Garner and Roberts reduced Pakistan to 158-9, or just 172 runs ahead with almost two days remaining. The West Indians were on their way.

But not quite. Raja and the number 11, Bari, added a blistering 122 runs for the last wicket partnership.

Raja cracked a flamboyant 71, and Bari a streaky but vital 60 as Pakistan were able to post a respectable 291, leaving the West Indies to get 305 in a day and a half. Game on.

At 142-2, it seemed the Windies would be able to reach the target. But Sarfaraz, Imran and Salim Altaf had other ideas. All three then rapidly began to run through the West Indian side with an impressive exhibition of seam bowling.

Pakistan had turned the tables, and were now heading for a possible victory when the 9th West Indian wicket fell at 237.

But dogged resistance from the last wicket pair of Deryck Murray and Croft saved the day for the hosts. The game ended in a tense draw. The great Gary Sobers was made to eat his words. Almost.

Wasim Raja.
Wasim Raja.
The squad travelled to the Port of Spain for the 2nd Test. Here, the wicket was firmer than the one in Barbados.

Sarfaraz got injured and was replaced by Intikhab Alam, the veteran leg-spinner. An out-of-form Miandad was dropped, and the left-arm leggie Iqbal Qasim brought in.

Mushtaq believed the wicket would eventually slow down and begin to take spin. He won the toss and chose to bat first. Wrong decision.

Right from the word go, the West Indian fast men were all over the Pakistanis. Especially Colin Croft who demolished the Pakistan line-up by bagging eight wickets.

Only Wasim Raja stood tall, smashing a rapid 65 with seven fours and two towering sixes of Garner and Croft. The West Indians responded with a telling total of 316, gaining a big lead of 236.

Pakistanis tried to regroup and fight back. Sadiq and Majid posted an opening stand of 123. But from 123-0, Pakistan crumbled to 181-4.

However, as Roberts and Garner seemed to be running through the Pakistan batting, they once again found Raja in the way.

He maneuvered some vital partnerships with the lower order (especially with Imran), and smashed 85, again with seven fours and two sixes.

Pakistan left the Windies a target of 206 to make in a day and a half. They achieved it rather easily on the fifth day of the Test for the loss of four wickets. Pakistan were now one down in the series.

As Pakistanis reached Georgetown for the 3rd Test, Mushtaq contemplated dropping himself from the side. His batting form had dipped and the defeat in the 2nd Test seemed to have hit him hard.

He discussed the matter with his Vice Captain, Asif Iqbal, and Majid Khan. Both advised him to stay put.

Another quick strip awaited the Pakistanis in Georgetown. Zaheer had recovered from his injury and was immediately selected in the playing XI.

West Indies won the toss and without any hesitation, Lloyd invited the Pakistanis to bat first. Roberts, Garner and Croft quickly sent the Pakistanis packing for just 194.

Imran was the highest scorer, striking a defiant 47. But he almost lost his head doing this when a fierce bouncer from Roberts whizzed past his face.



The ball passed me even before I could react. It was the fastest delivery I have ever faced, Imran wrote in his autobiography.
But the wicket slowed down by the time the Windies began their innings. And it showed.

They collected 448 runs and a huge lead of 244. With more than two days remaining in the game and the wicket expected to break, the Pakistan team was facing another defeat.

Pakistan started their second innings well. Sadiq and Majid cruised to take Pakistan to 60 for no loss when a vicious bouncer from Roberts smashed into the right cheekbone of the left-handed Sadiq and he went down like a man shot.

He lost consciousness and was bleeding. He had to be carried away from the ground straight to the hospital.

"I thought he was dead," wrote his brother, Mushtaq, many years later.

Sadiq and Majid were perhaps the most successful opening pair in Tests for Pakistan.
Sadiq and Majid were perhaps the most successful opening pair in Tests for Pakistan.
Zaheer joined Majid and instead of being intimidated by Sadiq’s injury, both launched a counterattack and took the score to 219. Zaheer fell for a solid 80, but Majid continued, playing perhaps one of his most important Test innings.

Mushtaq fell cheaply, but Haroon and the lower order played around Majid until he was finally out for an epic 167 which included 25 fours.

Sadiq had also returned to bat — his cheek in stitches and left eye bloodshot and swollen, he made a valiant 48.

Pakistan posted 540. Not only did they wipe out the lead but gave the West Indies 304 to make in less than a day.

The West Indies were 154-1 when the match ended in a draw. Pakistanis had fought hard to earn it. Mushtaq again contemplated dropping himself for the 4th Test at Queens Park in the Port of Spain. Once again, Majid and Asif advised him to keep playing.

Salim Altaf was dropped and made way for Iqbal Qasim. There was some doubt about Sadiq’s availability, but the swelling on his cheek and eye seemed to have gotten better.

The Queen’s Park seemed to have the kind of reddish strip that the Pakistanis had encountered in the first Test in Bridgetown. It promised to play even and fair.

Lloyd won the toss and sent Pakistan in. Pakistanis were struggling at 51-3 when Mushtaq joined Majid.

Mushtaq was tested with a series of quick bouncers by Croft and Roberts. But on the other end, Majid continued from where he had left in Georgetown.

He pulled, hooked and drove the West Indian fast men with disdain and took the score to 159 with Mushtaq. Majid fell for 92. His innings were spiked with 14 fours and a six.

The Pakistan team stood at 191-5 and was still struggling when Asif got out. But then Mushtaq finally found his form. He played well with the lower-order and made a vital 121, helping the team reach a respectable 341.

Mushtaq then carried his confidence into his bowling and bagged five wickets. He was aided by Imran who bagged four, and West Indies were shot out for 154, giving Pakistan a handy lead of 187.

But the lead seemed a tad too small when the West Indian bowlers reduced the Pakistanis to 95-5 in their second innings.

According to a teammate, Raja was outside the stadium sharing a drink with a few West Indian fans when Mushtaq and Asif were batting.

Raja came back into the dressing room and before he could pad-up, Asif got out. Raja quickly strapped on his pads and gloves, picked up his SS Jumbo bat, and strolled out to join Mushtaq.

Raja’s first scoring shot was a towering straight six off a bewildered Garnar.

On a roll again: Raja smashes a first-ball six off the 6ft 8’ Garnar.
On a roll again: Raja smashes a first-ball six off the 6ft 8’ Garnar.
As Mushtaq grinded his innings, Raja continued to play his shots. He cut, drove, pulled and lofted, all the while being asked by skipper, Mushtaq, to slow down and hang in, but to no avail. Raja was on a roll again.

Mushtaq fell at 211 for a well-crafted 51. He was quickly followed by Raja (70), when, after lofting Garner for a third six, he tried to smash the tall fast bowler over long off but was clean bowled.

Then Pakistan’s tail began to wag when Imran and Sarfaraz commenced to smash the West Indies attack all over the park. The Pakistan team was finally bowled out for 301, gaining a lead of 488 runs. Pakistan now had a day and a half to bowl out the West Indies and square the series.

Soon, Sarfaraz and Mushtaq reduced the Windies to 154-7 with three wickets each. But Pakistan’s advance towards victory was halted by a long and dogged partnership between Murray and Roberts.

They hung on, usurping precious time and taking the game into the last session of the Test match. Desperation began to creep into the Pakistan side.

Mushtaq tried everything but the partnership just could not be broken. The match was moving towards a draw.

Desperate, Mushtaq threw the ball to Raja. Raja began to bowl loopy leg-breaks, trying to draw the dogged Murray out of his crease to drive. He did exactly that and was caught by Sadiq at point. West Indies: 196-8.

New man, West Indies leggie, Inshan Ali, came in to play out time with Roberts. But Ali went almost the same way as Murray did. Caught Sadiq, bowled Raja.

Pakistanis went ballistic. But there was still one wicket remaining. Raja continued to invite the West Indian batsmen to drive. Instead, Roberts lifted Raja for two huge sixes.

Mushtaq asked Raja to continue bowling Roberts well flighted deliveries. "Keep pulling him out his crease…" was his message.

But as Raja bowled the fifth delivery of his third over, Roberts expected another flighted ball. Instead, Raja bowled a quick leg-break. Roberts plunged forward to defend. The ball turned from the middle and moved slightly towards off, taking the edge of Roberts’ bat. It then quickly flew into the waiting hands of Majid Khan at first slip.

It was all over. Pakistan had won the game and squared the series.

From the day they landed in Australia, the Pakistan team had fought hard to successfully defy the odds. They faced hostile fast bowling, quick pitches, an antagonistic press, and taunts of being "bunnies".

Now they were going into the last game of the long tour after squaring the series against the two most feared cricketing sides in the world.

Pakistani players lift their captain after squaring the series. (From left): Iqbal Qasim, Mohsin Khan, Haroon, Sarfaraz, Bari, Miandad, Imran, Mushtaq, Sadiq, Asif, Intikhab, Zaheer, Salim Altaf and Wasim Raja.
Pakistani players lift their captain after squaring the series. (From left): Iqbal Qasim, Mohsin Khan, Haroon, Sarfaraz, Bari, Miandad, Imran, Mushtaq, Sadiq, Asif, Intikhab, Zaheer, Salim Altaf and Wasim Raja.
Some Pakistani players featured in a West Indian newspaper which covered their visit to a Calypso club in Barbados. (From lef): Taslim Arif at a Karaoke; Majid, Taslim and Sikandar.
Some Pakistani players featured in a West Indian newspaper which covered their visit to a Calypso club in Barbados. (From lef): Taslim Arif at a Karaoke; Majid, Taslim and Sikandar.
Pakistani players celebrate their victory by dancing the night away at a club.
Pakistani players celebrate their victory by dancing the night away at a club.
Another fast track awaited Pakistanis in Jamaica. They dropped Qasim and brought in Sikandar Bakht to beef up the pace attack for the 5th and final Test.

Lloyd won the toss and was surprisingly elected to bat. The Windies were soon in danger of being shot out under 200, but the hard-hitting West Indies opener, Gordon Greenidge, posted a quick 100 to help West Indies reach 280. Imran bowled sharply and was rewarded with six wickets.

Rare Video: Imran runs through the West Indian batting line-up in Jamaica.

Pakistan didn’t do any better with the bat. They were shot out for just 198, with only Haroon Rasheed posting a fifty.

The Windies then squeezed the Pakistanis into a corner by making 359 and gaining a huge lead of 441 runs. Batting now to save the game and the series, the Pakistan team faltered and was reduced to 138-5.

Asif Iqbal and Raja then set about to repair the damage. They decided to launch a counter-attack.

Raja was back, slashing and pulling, and Asif drove and cut as both took Pakistan to 253 before Raja fell for 64 trying to loft off-spinner Halford out of the ground.

Imran hung around with Asif who completed his first century of the series. But the centre soon collapsed, and Pakistan were all out for 301, losing the game and the series 2-1.

Years later, while remembering the long tour, Imran Khan wrote:

"(These were the two series in which) we wanted to shake off our sense of inferiority. It represents a watershed moment for Pakistan cricket…"

Source: Of highs and lows: How Pakistani cricket changed forever
Published in Dawn, May 5, 2016.

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

Smokers’ Corner: Bad leaf

A few months ago, I reconnected with a friend of mine who I hadn’t met for over 30 years. He somehow got my cell phone number and invited me to his son’s wedding.

Even though I could not go the wedding, another call by him got us talking about the past.

I had first met him in the small town of Moro in the Naushero Feroze district of Sindh in 1986. I was studying at a college in Karachi at the time and had accompanied a posse of young anti-Zia activists travelling onward to Nawabshah to organise a rally for Benazir Bhutto, who had returned from exile, to challenge Gen Zia’s dictatorship. Benazir had managed to hold a large rally in Lahore and then in Karachi’s Lyari area, before she was arrested and put under house arrest. I was in Moro when she was taken in. We were staying in the backyard of an old shrine of a Sufi saint, where we often met by a group of men who belonged to a small Maoist party, the Awami Tehreek (AT).

AT had played a prominent role in the PPP-led movement against Gen Zia in 1983. The movement had thrown much of Sindh in turmoil. Even though the movement was brutally crushed, AT was preparing to participate in yet another movement called by the multiparty alliance, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD).

How a bunch of leaves left me contemplating about tyranny and insanity
After the rally which we were supposed to help organise was cancelled, we spent much of our time lazing around the courtyard of the shrine, discussing politics.

This is where I met Haroon, a young Sindhi nationalist, who was a couple of years older than me. He had arrived with the AT activists. While exchanging pleasantries with me, he almost immediately noticed that I was perhaps the only non-Sindhi in the group. He said, “You speak Urdu like a Mohajir, but you dance like a Punjabi …”

Taken aback, I asked him what he meant by “I danced like a Punjabi?”

It turned out he had seen me the evening before, participating in the anarchic Sufi folk dance, the dhamaal, at the shrine.

I chuckled and told him I was just having some fun and couldn’t understand how my dance was “Punjabi”. But I did tell him that he was correct about my Urdu accent: “My father is a Punjabi, and my mother is a Mohajir. But I am a true Karachiite …”

Haroon just nodded his head, as if he already knew this. Not that someone had already told him about me, but it seemed he just knew. Instinctively.

He had been in jail in Dadu (a town near Moro) ever since 1984, and had been released (on bail) just a few days before our meeting. He was severely tortured there, and proudly showed us the cuts and wounds he had received on his back, shins and parts of his head during his time in a tiny cell.

As we got talking over tea and cigarettes, I kept asking him what he had meant by “I danced like a Punjabi.” He finally smiled wider than he usually did, and said: “Punjabis do the dhamaal in a particular manner. They are more uninhibited, whereas we Sindhis remain more restrained. But though you were doing the dhamaal in a most free and uninhabited way, you are actually a very reserved person, am I right?”

I had just shrugged my shoulders. He smiled widely again: “But, my Punjabi-Mohajir brother, whenever you go to Multan or Lahore or any city of the Punjab, do notice how their (the Punjabis’) style of dancing is changing. They are now dancing the way Gen Zia wants them to dance.”

I protested, “I was in Lahore when BB (Benazir) arrived from exile. Thousands of Lahoris turned up. Many of them danced exactly the way you saw me dance …”

Haroon was unmoved: “But no other people have experienced the intensity of Zia’s Martial Law the way the Sindhis have.”

Before I could add my bit again, he said the most weird thing. “There is actually a way we can make others feel this intensity …”

From his pocket he took out a small pack. In it were dried leaves: “Do you know what this is?” He asked.

“Of course,” I had replied. “Bhang. I have had it on a couple of occasions,” I added. Bhang is a preparation made from a hallucinogenic plant and is traditionally used in South Asia.

“This is how we make others feel the intensity of Zia’s rule in Sindh,” he explained.

By now I had begun to laugh: “Through bhang?”

“No ordinary bhang,” Haroon had retorted.

Well, that evening our group was treated to Haroon’s bhang. We gladly took it, vigorously mixed with icy water. It took about 50 minutes to kick in, and when it did, my God! All I can say now is that within the next few hours, most of us were convinced we had gone mad.

We would laugh, cry and sulk for no apparent reason, try to hide from the most terrifying hallucinations, and make teary-eyed pleads to Haroon to get us committed to a hospital.

The next morning, after the hallucinatory nightmare was finally over, I told Haroon: “I now understand …”

He just let out a loud laugh and said something in Sindhi, which I was later told had meant: “Tyranny breeds insanity.”

Before the ordeal, when Haroon had told me that this was how they (the Sindhis) made others realise the intensity of Gen Zia’s regime (in Sindh), he wasn’t really making it all up.

The bhang that he had had with him was made from an extraordinary strain of a hallucinogenic plant which had appeared in Sindh in 1981. It was aptly called ‘Martial La’ (Martial Law). It grew in the wild around the forests that surround the towns of Dadu and Moro, or maybe someone had planted it there. It was first introduced into the ‘market’ in 1983 during the peak of the violent MRD movement against Gen Zia.

No one knows who gave it its name (‘Martial La’); but Haroon later told me, it remarkably vanished soon after Gen Zia’s demise in 1988.

Haroon moved to the Middle East in 1991 and I lost contact with him, until late 2015, when I received his call. He worked as a nurse in a hospital in Qatar, and then after completing his MBBS, from a university in Cyprus, he became a physician and settled in Greece. There he married an Iranian lady, had four kids, and was in Pakistan to get one of them married.

I couldn’t go to the wedding (because I was travelling at the time); but I did remind him how he had made me almost lose my mind with ‘Martial La’.

He laughed, “Look at it this way, Paracha. Something good also came from it.”

I asked him what?

“When the next time you do the dhamaal, notice yourself,” he said.

“I haven’t done the dhamaal in ages,”I replied.

“Yes,” he said, “but if you do, you will do it like a Sindhi!” He laughed again.

I laughed too. “Thus spoke a citizen of Greece. What do Greeks know about the dhamaal? Come back to Pakistan, saain.” I taunted him.

Haroon went quiet for a bit. Then in a serious tone, said: “Remember, saain. Tyranny breeds insanity.” This time, he said it in Punjabi.

Source: Smokers’ Corner: Bad leaf
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 8th, 2016

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

The end of corruption in Pakistan: A seismological analysis

Revolution is coming.

One can now safely suggest that the days of the Nawaz Sharif government are as good as over. The truly patriotic people of Pakistan seemed to have had enough. This regime has broken all records of corruption, bad governance, intrigues and bungee-jumping.

As Aristotle once wrote, ‘If a record-breaking bungee-jumper is also a record-breaking corrupt person, then he is a record-breaking bungee-jumper who is a record-breaking corrupt person.’ Deep stuff this.

But who needs imperialistic Greek philosophers when we have our own.

For example, many of our own insightful and devout scholars have written numerous chapters on bungee-jumping. In his book, ‘Men are from Mars, Women do not Exist,’ famous 19th century scholar, Zaheeruddin Rumani (PhD, MBBS, LLB, LOL), is said to have predicted the ascent of an elected (thus corrupt) political party in a future pious Republic in the subcontinent.

Many historians say that Rumani was predicting the rise of the PPP and the PML-N in Pakistan. The historians use the following quote from a book by Rumani to prove this.

Rumani wrote: ‘in the century to come, there shall rise a so-called faithful republic in which elected (thus corrupt) regimes of wrongful mans and womans would openly claim, ‘Eye to eye, eye to eye, my eyes, your eyes …’

So why did we not heed Rumani’s warnings?

Many other faithful scholars kept pleading in their voluminous writings, lectures and chants that we should carefully pay attention to Rumani’s works.

But it is our great misfortune that the low literacy rates among Pakistani voters, and, more so, the fact that hardly any one of them ever bother to take a shower, has left us with millions of illiterate and muddy people voting for corrupt record-breaking bungee-jumpers.

That’s why some gallant men have had to step in on numerous occasions to save Pakistan from becoming a putrid den of corruption and an unblessed land where women go to rallies in saris. And some even dance!

The men are thus forced to look at such women. This puts all kinds of unclean thoughts in their otherwise unsoiled heads.

But not all civilian politicians have been bad. Some where once good. Remember ZA Bhutto when he was good? ‘We will eat grass if we have to build our own bum,’ he once said while having a pepper steak.

But then he became bad and corrupt and had to be hanged. Steaks tend to have that effect. There was no other way. Bad has to go. So he went. Even though some believe he cut a secret deal with Mard-e-Momin Madrd-e-Haq Ziaul Haq Ziaul Haq, who had mercifully toppled his regime.

The presumed deal supposedly saw Mard-e-Momin Mard-e-Haq Ziaul Haq Ziaul Haq allowing Bhutto to fly out to Guatemala and live the rest of his life eating grass. For the sake of the bum.

Well, even though Mard-e-Momin Mard-e-Haq Ziaul Haq Ziaul Haq continued to ask Pakistanis to eat grass, he did it in a much wiser manner.

Once, in 1982, when asked by a Western (Freemason) reporter why he had executed Bhutto if grass was again to become the staple food for all common Pakistanis, Mard-e-Momin Mard-e-Haq Ziaul Haq Ziaul Haq replied that the grass Bhutto was offering was not being grown according to the dictates of our faith.

‘You see,’ explained Zia, ‘Pakistan was created by the great diplomat, swordsman and horse breeder, Ubaid Yamani, an officer in Bin Qasim’s forces that invaded Sindh in the 8th century. Yamani wanted Pakistan to become a truly pious place.’

‘But that doesn’t answer my question,’ the foolish reporter had interrupted; ‘wasn’t the country created by Muhammad Ali Jinnah?’

‘No,’ Zia had replied, ‘Jinnah created Pakistan – not Bakistan. I hope you understand the difference.’

Zia was a crafty cat. Entirely good.

Almost 20 years after Bhutto’s hanging, something even better happened: Local scientists, led by an enthusiastic fan of North Korean opera, Dr. Kim Q. Khan, finally managed to make the nuclear device that Bhutto and then Mard-e-Momin Mard-e-Haq Ziaul Haq Ziaul Haq had worked so hard for. But it was Nawaz who got to explode it.

The rise of Ram Raj in India in the late 1990s and, subsequently, of the Bharatiya Janta Party, saw India conduct five nuclear explosions to alleviate poverty and make India shine from the brilliant glow of the beautiful mushroom cloud. Nawaz responded in kind.

But Nawaz was unable to alleviate poverty, unlike the father of the Indian bum, Dr Parkash Joti (PhD, MBBS, MA, BCom, ROFL). When told about the rising number of poor people in India, Dr Parkash solved the problem with just a single potent statement: ‘Let them eat atom!’

But let’s not get distracted here by talking about India. And anyway, India already achieved its anti-corruption revolution in 2014 when (after eating atoms) its illiterate masses saw the light and did the right thing by electing a genuine savior, Narendra Modi — a passionate and charismatic anti-corruption avatar of the sacred Ganga deity, Amrish Puri.

Unfortunately, we just can’t expect such a thing to happen in Pakistan. We know that our corrupt democratic system and illiterate people will continue to elect corrupt men like Nawaz and Zardari.

Thus, these leaders need to be overthrown by a fervent in-swinging anti-corruption movement which will hit them right in front of the stumps, leaving the umpire no other choice but to give them out, LBW.

The main meeting place of the PPP’s top leadership where the party devises plans to resolve the problems faced by Pakistan’s working-classes.
The main meeting place of the PPP’s top leadership where the party devises plans to resolve the problems faced by Pakistan’s working-classes.
You see, Nawaz Sharif, before being misguided by Indian films, was once an honourable and loyal servant of the wardens of the faith of the pious republic of the emirates of democratic welfare state of Pakistan.

Nawaz should learn from men like Mustafa Kamal - the magnetic, dynamic and alluring leader of the Pak Sar Zameen Party (aka Pakistan Head To Toe Party). Kamal has been brave enough to finally recognise the most devastating specter that is haunting the republic: Altaf Hussain’s speeches.

It is a shame that our corrupt (thus civilian) leaders do not have the guts to stand up to Altaf’s speeches that are impacting the health of trillions of innocent Pakistanis. Banning him was an entirely good thing.

Now, coming back to the dangers being faced by the society from women visiting political rallies in saris. Such women are trained by civil society terrorists, who are on the payroll of the Indo-American textile companies, who are on the payroll of Elvis who is still alive and was last seen on the plains of Panama with bagsful of dollars, pounds, riayals and rupees. And yet we remain quiet?

Don’t we know how major issues like women in saris are retarding our evolution?

Once we get rid of this problem, our economy will drastically pick up; there will be peace and harmony; crime and drug addiction will be eradicated; there will be plenty of food, and jobs (only for males, of course); and there will be an abundance of good wives who will cook delectable food for their husbands, and Pakistan will once and for all become the true bastion of faith.

Many dismiss this as a fantasy. But not great men like Imran Khan (aka Cat Stevens). It is people like him who are the future of the pious republic of the emirates of democratic welfare state of Pakistan Scandinavia Arabia.

So this time let’s not let evil forces destroy our ways and dreams like they did in Afghanistan when they toppled the truly just, morally upright and manly emirates of the Teletubbies.

Another thing promoting corruption, is the military operation against so-called extremists.

Can’t the apologists of the military operation in Pakistan against so-called extremists see that it is turning young men into angry revenge-seeking rebels? It is a lie saying that the so-called extremists have killed over 50,000 civilians. It’s a lie because the number is not 50,000, but 49,997.

So are you too an apologist of the military operation; or of an elected (thus corrupt) member of the system; or someone who still listens to Altaf Hussain’s speeches; or visits rallies in a sari?

Don’t! Join the groundbreaking struggle of true democrats against corrupt bungee-jumpers.

Let’s make Pakistan a true urban middle-class, pious, iPhone, pizza, frantically tweeting republic of democratic emirates of welfare state of Arabia Sacndanavia.

Let’s save Pakistania! See you in London.

Disclaimer: This article is categorised as satire.
Source: The end of corruption in Pakistan: A seismological analysis
Published in Dawn, May 12, 2016.

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

Smokers’ Corner: Whose martyr is it, anyway?

This year, on the first death anniversary of civil rights activist, Sabeen Mahmud, an awkward little battle erupted on Twitter between two sections of her supporters.

I signed in to my timeline, flooded with folk hailing the slain activist as a brave woman who was downed for trying to highlight the plight of the Baloch people.

However, soon, Twitter-handles belonging to this section were being asked by the other section to explain just how they had reached this conclusion when there were men awaiting trial for allegedly assassinating Sabeen — men who were said to be self-confessed sympathisers of ISIS.

This section of Sabeen’s supporters bemoaned that some people were using her name to further their agenda (ie Baloch nationalism). The section being accused of doing so retaliated by saying that those who believed she was cut down by self-professed religious militants were being duped by the state. This section alluded that it was the state which had taken out Sabeen.

The memory of someone slain for something they strongly believed in is best served when the law and the courts are allowed to take their course
Yes, there are men awaiting trial for her murder and, according to both police and media reports, the alleged assassins have already confessed their sympathies for the so-called ISIS. But it is also true that Sabeen was downed almost immediately after she had held an open discussion on the volatile situation in Balochistan.

The truth is, one year after her tragic demise, nothing concrete as such has emerged which can suggest that she was killed (by the state) due to her insistence on holding a talk on Balochistan.

On the other hand, last year, Pakistan’s premier English language monthly, Herald, ran a detailed story on Sabeen’s murder, with a detailed interview of one of the prime suspects being held by the Karachi police. He claimed to have had problems with Sabeen’s pluralistic beliefs.

The Herald story did not pass any judgment, and rightly so, because it is for the courts to establish the facts behind the activist’s unfortunate murder.

It was thus awkward watching her name being thrown to and fro between two groups, both loudly navel-gazing on Twitter about the ‘true cause’ of her brutal demise, and accusing each other of using her name to forward their own ‘agendas.’

There was yet another section involved in this knee-jerk Twitter discourse as well. The one which, without any hesitation, is always willing to exhibit a rather warped and soulless dimension of the human condition by actually rationalising (if not entirely celebrating) nihilistic acts of violence done in the name of faith.

The same thing happened again last week when another civil rights activist, Khurram Zaki, was mercilessly gunned down in Karachi. On Twitter, as Zaki’s demise triggered a wave of anger against certain sectarian outfits, these cries were matched by counterclaims bemoaning that names were being taken without evidence.

Outbursts of emotions, accusations and counter-accusations that erupt on social media due to shocking acts of terror are understandable. Especially in a country where the state has been struggling to keep in check forces of anarchy, [and (more so) where on various occasions the state itself has also been accused of not caring at all.]

But it won’t be an overstatement to suggest that things in this context are changing. The state is now in the process of trying to wriggle out of the quagmires it had uncannily created and then fallen into. Quagmires made for purposes which have now become problems. There is still a long way to go, though.

Outbursts are cathartic. However, therein lie not answers, but further confusion.

The nature of the Twitter discourse on Zaki’s slaying was such that it directly impacted the reporting done on the incident even by some well-known names in Western journalism.

The New York Times (NYT) story on the incident more than alluded that Zaki was taken out because of his continual criticism of certain faith-based outfits; whereas another news outlet of repute, Britain’s The Independent, seemed sure that he was killed due to his views on the recent victory of a British-Pakistani, Sadiq Khan, in London’s mayoral election.

Whereas the NYT story seemed to be a tad too influenced by the outpour of anger and grief on social media, The Independent took and ran with one of Zaki’s last Tweets in which he had suggested that Sadiq Khan had won the election not because he is Muslim, or born to Pakistani parents, but because he is a hardworking man in a system which rewards merit. Quite incredibly, The Independent believed saying this is what got him killed.

So as Zaki’s figurative body was pulled one way by NYT, The Independent pulled it the other way. And again, there were also those who somehow always end up finding fault in the victim.

The memory of someone slain for something they strongly believed in is best served when the law and the courts are allowed to take their course, and when time is given for the answers to emerge. And now, more often than not, answers do emerge. But social media discourses studded with prolonged outbursts and countered by ossifications are certainly not the things from where such answers will ever arise.

The same memory actually gets trivialised by the many bizarre, multipronged duels on social media; especially when such duels begin to inform the mainstream media as well.

All this reminds me of an incident a senior colleague of mine once shared with me. In 1982, when Karachi witnessed one of its first major sectarian riots, the mentioned colleague was covering it as a reporter for an Urdu daily.

When the riot was finally quelled by the military, a group of men belonging to one sect began marching in the streets with the body of a comrade who had been killed in the rioting. They blamed the killing on the opposing sect.

However, some 40 minutes later, a group of men belonging to the other sect arrived. After clashing with the opposite group, they snatched the body away and began to claim that the man actually belonged to their sect and was killed by the group of men who had been carrying his body before them.

According to the senior colleague, the body could not be buried for almost two days. It kept moving from one group to the other, with both claiming that it belonged to their respective sects.

When I asked the colleague whose sect did the body really belong to, he had just shrugged his shoulders and chuckled cynically: “Who knows! Most probably the poor man was not even a Muslim.”

Source: Smokers’ Corner: Whose martyr is it, anyway?
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 15th, 2016

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

Toba Tek Singh II: A post-Manto dream

On the 14 of May, 2014, a most terrible storm in the Arabian Sea caught dozens of fishermen unaware.

Many drowned, as their boats were torn asunder by the sheer magnitude of the waves, the powerful winds and mad rain.

But, there were survivors too.

The winds had carried them to a small island which none of them had noticed before. Now they were on this island, bruised and in shock.

When the storm subsided, the clouds gave way to the sun. The break of light revealed that five men had survived. But there were no boats, at least none intact.

The five men sit on the sandy beach of the island. They are bruised and their clothes are torn.

Man 1 (A teenager): I have never seen a storm like that. I am Rajan. A fisherman from a village near Mumbai, are all of you fishermen too?

Man 2 (Young person in his 20s): You are an Indian?

Rajan: Are you from the same village?

Man 2: No, I am from a fishing village some 50 miles out of Karachi.

Rajan: Pakistani fisherman? Name?

Man 2: Shabeer.

Rajan points at a middle-aged man sitting beside him: This is Joti. We are from the same village. Fisherman also. Indian.

Shabeer surveys the group: Are you all Indian?

Man 3 (in his early 40s): No. I am Khalid. From Makran. I work as a clerk in the city of Gwadar. I was on a launch with a couple of engineers. I am Pakistani. They were Chinese. But now gone.

Man 4 (A bearded 20-something with long hair. He is trying to dry a long blue piece of cloth): I am from Chandigarh.

Rajan: Fisherman?

Man 4: No, not fisherman. I am a college student. I had travelled to Surat on the invitation of a classmate. We hired a boat to go sailing. Got caught up in the storm. Now I am here. Don’t know what happened to my friend. My turban is all wet.

Shabeer: You are Sikh?

Man 4: Yes. Hunar is my name. College student from Chandigarh.

All of them then look up to see an old man sitting on top of a palm tree there. He is shivering and very quiet.

Hunar: Oye, uncle. What about you? Are you feeling cold? The sun has come out. It will warm you. My turban is almost dry.

Old man on the tree, shivering and looking disoriented: I … I … I am not sure what my name is … and … where I am from.

Rajan: Really? Oh ho, I now remember you! You were on my boat. Must be fisherman. Indian. It’ll all come back to you, brother fisher.

Khalid gets up and moves closer to the tree. He looks up at the old man: Hmmm … no, I think he was on the same boat as I. Yes, now I remember. He was! Old man, you are a friend of my uncle’s. I think your name is Qasim. Qasim bhai. Yes, yes that’s who you are. Qasim bhai, fisherman, Pakistan.

Rajan pushes Khalid aside. He too comes close to the tree and looks up at the old man: Aray! Murli chacha! It’s really you! Sorry, I didn’t fully recognise you with all that sand on your face. But I knew you were on my boat. Chacha jee, look closely, it is me, your nephew, Rajan. Fisherman, India.

Shabeer jumps in, pushing Rajan aside: Move! Qasim bhai, come down. We are here for you.

Rajan: Abey, now you know him too?

Khalid: Of course, he does! He is fisherman, Pakistan. He can recognise all fishermen, Pakistan.

Joti begins to climb the tree and then starts to smell the bewildered old man around the neck: Hmmm … old man is definitely fisherman, India. He smells like one. Salty type.

Shabeer also climbs the tree and smells the old man: … Almost salty type.

Rajan: See! Definitely fisherman, India. Same smell. Salty type.

Hunar: Of course, salty type! We all smell salty type because we were in a shipwreck and thrown into the sea.

Khalid begins to smell Hunar: Hmmm … he is right. Smells salty type too.

Khalid then smells his own arm: This also salty type.

Joti smells the old man again: Wait, wait. Hmm. Not salty type. But coconut. Certainly fisherman, India.

Shabeer too smells the old man again: No. No. Beef! Definitely beef. Fry-like. Definitely, fisherman, Pakistan.

Rajan gets hold of Sahbeer’s collar and both fall down to the ground.

Rajan: You rascal, how dare you say this about my Murli chacha! Murli chahcha would die than eat beef!

Khalid: Qasim bhai hates coconut! I have seen it. In fact, he was preparing beef biryani on our boat when the storm struck.

Joti: Rascal, I once saw Murli chacha lynching a man after he caught him eating beef!

Shabeer: You rascal, that man was Uzair bhai, a cousin of mine!

Joti: Aha! So this means you believe us when we say the old man in the tree is Murli chacha, fisherman, India, killer of beef-eater!

Khalid: Abey, you weren’t even on the same boat as the old man. You did not know him. But now you say you saw him lynch Zubair bhai …?

Shabeer: … Uzair bhai.

Khalid: Yes, Uzair bhai.

Joti: Oh, so now you too know Uzair bhai?

Khalid: Of course. He was Shabeer’s uncle …

Shabeer: … cousin.

Khalid: ... Yes, cousin. Very decent man. Very pious. You people lynched him, just because he ate beef? Rascals!

Joti: We didn’t. Murli chacha did.

Khalid: Abey, the guy you call Murli chacha was preparing beef biryani on our boat!

Joti: Don’t you dare say that word, you rascal!

Hunar jumps in between the two men: Friends, friends, please. We are marooned on this island. And all that talk about food has made me hungry. Aren’t you people hungry? We have to eat to survive. I see some trees with fruit on the hills up there.

Rajan: Fruit alone won’t sustain us.

Hunar: That’s true. When I was swept here, I thought I saw a couple of wild boars on the same hill. We can catch one, kill it, and …

Shabeer: Oye Sardar! Boars are ... are … that animal!

Hunar: You mean …

Shabeer: Don’t dare say that word, you rascal!

Hunar: Oye how dare you call me a rascal, you swine!

Shabeer gets hold of Hunar’s collar: I told you not to say that word, you dumb Sikh!

Hunar: Then what do you suppose we eat, you crazy Muslim?

Shabeer: Fish.

Rajan: We need proper meat. A boar would do.

Khalid: What if there are also cows on this Island?

Rajan: Well there aren’t any, are there, you filthy Muslim?

Khalid: How do you know that, you smelly Hindu?

Rajan: We didn’t see any. We just saw wild boars.

Hunar: Not we, I alone saw them.

Rajan: Sardar jee, do not contradict me. You are fisherman, India.

Hunar: I am not fisherman. I am college student.

Rajan: College student, India.

Hunar: … And a proud Sikh.

Rajan: Proud Sikh, India.

Joti: No difference, brothers. Sikhs are a kind of Hindus.

Hunar: No, they are not!

Shabeer: They are kind of Muslims, actually.

Hunar: Shutup, you rascal! I will kill you all right here and have you for lunch.

Khalid: Breakfast. It is still morning.

Hunar: Not in Chandigarh. Time in Chandigarh is some hours ahead from this island.

Rajan: But where is this island?

Shabeer: I am sure it is somewhere close to Pakistan.

Khalid: That is true. If we go up the hill then I am certain we can see Karachi’s shoreline. This island must belong to Pakistan.

Rajan: Abey, look at the fruit hanging from the trees on the hill. It is pineapple. I have heard pineapples do not grow in Pakistan; so this island clearly cannot belong to Pakistan. Pineapples are aplenty in India. This must be an Indian island. Do both of you have valid visas?

Khalid: Oh, now you are visa officer, India?

Rajan: And you are Muslim conquer, Pakistan?

Hunar: Friends, be reasonable. Let’s eat something, already.

Joti: Yes, wild boar.

Hunar: No, those only I can eat.

Joti: What do you mean?

Hunar: I saw them first. They belong to me.

Rajan: But the Island is Indian! We have as much right over them as you.

Khalid runs towards the sea and jumps in: The seawaters here belong to Shabeer and me. The sea here is Pakistani. Only we can fish here.

Hunar: So be it! The boars belong to me; the pineapples to Rajan and Joti; and the sea and the fish in it to Khalid and Shabeer, agreed?

Rajan: But the boars are on the island. And the island is Indian; it belongs to us.

Hunar: Rajan, let me quote a saying on a similar issue by one of our great gurus …

Rajan: No, first let me quote something on a similar issue from the Bhagavad Gita and …

Shabeer: Wait! A quote from our Holy Book would suffice. Let me quote a …

Hunar: You are all illiterate fishermen! What do you know? I am the most knowledgeable. I go to college and have a Twitter handle.

Rajan: Sardar jee, keep your handle where it belongs. Faith is for all. Rich, poor, educated, illiterate.

Khalid: I agree with Rajan. Our God is for all.

Joti: So are our Gods. They belong to all mankind.

Khalid: Not Gods. God.

Joti: Gods.

Khalid: God.

Rajan: Gods.

Khalid stands up in anger and threatens to hit Joti with a rock: Are you questioning my faith?

Joti also stands up with a rock in his hand: Are you mocking mine?

The old man throws a coconut down. Everybody looks up at him.

Hunar: Coconuts won’t do, uncle.

Shabeer: He must be hungry. Nobody asked him what he wants to eat.

Rajan: Hey, old man …

Joti: … old man, India.

Rajan: Yes, old man, India …

Joti: … Murli chacha, fisherman, India.

Rajan: Yes, Murli chacha, fisherman, India. Are you hungry? Do you want us to cook you some wild boar? We own all the boars here.

Hunar: No you don’t! I do. Feed him pineapple.

Shabeer pushes Rajan aside and looks up at the old man: Uzair bhai …

Khlaid: Uzair bhai was lynched. This is Qasim bhai.

Shabeer: Yes, Qasim bhai. How about some beef biryani?

Rajan: There is no beef here, you rascal. This island is Indian.

Shabeer: How do you know?

Rajan: Because of the pineapples!

Hunar: Stop! I am hungry, you illiterate fools! Let’s make up our minds, already! What should we eat?

Rajan: Wild boar.

Hunar: That only I can eat.

Joti: Traitor!

Shabeer: Beef biryani.

Rajan: There is no beef here, rascal!

Khalid: Fish. We own it.

Hunar: Look, look …!

Khalid: What? You saw a cow?

Rajan: Rascal!

Hunar: No, you ignorant men, what is that floating on the sea. The waves are carrying it here. Must be from one of the wrecked boats. What is it?

Everyone looks towards the sea.

Shabeer: Looks like … looks like …

Rajan, Joti, Hunar, Khalid and Shabeer shout together: Daruuuu!

Act 2

All four men drunk, sharing two whisky bottles that had washed on to the shore.

Hunar: (Burp) Yaar, this is very smooth. Whattay booze.

Rajan: (Burp) Yes, Indian, I am sure.

Khalid: Abey … (burp) … fisherman, India, how do you know this? I am sure you never had any daru like this in your life.

Rajan: Abey, poor Pakistani, have you?

Khalid: Yes. Pakistani daru. Just like this one. I am sure had the labels on these bottles not been washed away we would know that …

Joti: What Pakistani daru?

Khalid: Murree.

Joti: Never heard of it.

Shabeer: Of course you haven’t. Too expensive for you.

Rajan: Abey fisherman, Pakistan, all your life you have only had cheap moonshine whisky. How come you haven’t gone blind yet?

Hunar: Friends, why spoil the mood? And look, we didn’t even offer any to uncle up there.

Rajan: Murli chacha makes his own booze at home. I have seen it. It tastes great.

Khalid: Nonsense. Qasim bhai only drinks Murree.

Rajan throws the empty bottle at Khalid:

He is Murli chacha, you filthy cow-killer!

The bottle hits Khalid on the face. He throws the other bottle at Rajan: You rotten vegetable!

The bottle hits Rajan who falls on Hunar who pushes him towards Shabeer. Shabeer begins to punch him. Joti jumps in. A chaotic fight breaks out between all four men.

The tree starts to shake and the old man falls down to the ground. Thud!

He suddenly gets animated: I now remember! I now remember! I remember where I am from! I am from Kashmir!

He gets excited. But when he looks around, all the other men have knocked themselves out. He becomes somber again and climbs back up. He looks down at the unconscious men and mumbles: Rascals.

Source: Toba Tek Singh II: A post-Manto dream
Published in Dawn, May 19, 2016

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

The Pakistan Jinnah would have wanted

Over the decades so much has been written and discussed about exactly what sort of a country the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, envisioned. One of the reasons why this debate is still raging is because its founder passed away just a year after the country’s inception in 1947.

In the decades that followed Jinnah’s demise, numerous theories and claims have been aired by historians, intellectuals, politicians and dictators about what Jinnah wanted Pakistan to evolve into.

One side has insisted that he wanted a progressive Muslim-majority state where the state would devise and then infuse into the society a modern, democratic spirit of Muslim nationalism, but where matters of faith and the state would be kept separate.

The other side suggests that though the founder was largely ‘Westernised’ in habit, he eventually grew into a leader who strived for a separate Muslim country which could then be evolved through legislation into becoming an ‘Islamic state’.

The study of the meeting minutes of Pakistan’s first cabinet, and the ethnic and religious makeup of its members can help us to understand what Jinnah envisioned for the country
Both sides liberally dig out and air assorted quotes attributed to Jinnah in this regard. And the truth is, apart from certain sayings of the founder which have been clearly concocted, many quotes do strengthen the arguments of both sides! This is the other reason why this debate has continued to mushroom without reaching any consensual conclusion.

Nevertheless, the response to the question, ‘what kind of a Pakistan Jinnah was envisioning’, may more convincingly be found well outside complex intellectual debates on the issue and certainly, away from the awkward agitprop battles which, too, continue to rage between the two point of views.

For example, an answer can be extracted by simply studying the make-up and mindset of the country’s first ever federal cabinet. In her book, The Federal Cabinet of Pakistan, professor of history, Naumana Kiran Imran, provides the names of the men who constituted Pakistan’s first federal cabinet.

More interestingly, she uses the archived minutes of meetings of this cabinet to explain what these men were discussing during the very first days of the country.

She informs that Section 17 of Pakistan’s interim Constitution, which was framed and adopted by the country’s first Constituent Assembly, gave the powers of appointing the cabinet to Pakistan’s governor-general, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Thus, the country’s first cabinet (headed by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan) was entirely picked and constituted by Jinnah.

Formed on Aug 15, 1947, the cabinet initially had eight ministers. Names of two of these ministers stand out in the much polarised Pakistan of today: Zafarullah Khan (minister of foreign affairs & commonwealth relations), and Jogendra Nath Mandal (minister of law).

Khan was a member of the Ahmadiyya community which, 27 years later in 1974, and on the demands of the religious parties, was outlawed as a Muslim sect by the populist regime of Z.A. Bhutto.

A highly respected diplomat, Khan has been an often-discussed man by Pakistani historians, not only because he was from the Ahmadiyya community, but also because he was one of Jinnah’s closest colleagues.

In the early 1940s, when Jinnah was trying to form a broad-based collation to bolster the fortunes of the All India Muslim League (AIML), he was asked by some of his potential non-AIML allies to declare the Ahmadis as non-Muslim.

In May 1944, during a press conference in Kashmir, Jinnah said to the gathered pressmen, “who am I to call a person non-Muslim who calls himself a Muslim …”

It is now a well-documented fact that Jinnah insisted on Khan becoming the country’s first foreign minister.

The case of the other stand-out minister in the first cabinet has, however, largely been forgotten. Mandal was a Hindu from Bengal. He belonged to the scheduled caste of Hindus in India and had joined Jinnah’s AIML believing that in Pakistan, his caste would be able to flourish more than they would in an India dominated by higher caste Hindus.

Mandal became a member of the AIML in 1943 and mustered support for the party among East Bengal’s scheduled castes in the important 1945 general, and then the 1946 provincial elections in India.

On Aug 11, 1947, when Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly chose Jinnah as governor-general of the new country, Jinnah asked Mandal to preside over the assembly’s inaugural session.

Renowned scholar, Ayesha Jalal, and historian, Dr Mubarak Ali, have both maintained that Jinnah did this to physically manifest a portion of the speech which he (Jinnah) delivered in that session, and in which he declared: “ … you will find that in course of time [in Pakistan] Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims; not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

Mandal was gradually isolated after Jinnah’s demise in 1948, and in 1950 he wrote a long letter of resignation to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. In it he bemoaned that Jinnah’s vision was being undermined by the politicians and bureaucrats, and that the scheduled caste Hindus who had followed his (Mandal’s) lead to become Pakistanis were not being treated any better than they were in India. Mandal migrated to India in 1950 and died there in 1968.

So what was the country’s first federal cabinet discussing? Prof. Imran, in her book, sifts through the minutes of the cabinet meetings to inform that much was discussed about the importance of giving the governor-general (Jinnah) extraordinary powers; but also set “the ideal of developing Pakistan as a democracy based on the British model”.

Economics, too, was an important subject in the meetings and ideas were discussed to provide Pakistan a sustainable economy through the creation of industry, banks and economic boards. It was, however, well understood by the cabinet that Pakistan was an agrarian economy.

In an October 1947 meeting, cabinet members decided that Pakistan was “not bound for explanations to any other country” regarding its response to Indian accusations (regarding Kashmir). In fact, the Kashmir issue was frequently discussed by the cabinet.

Prof. Imran’s interpretation of these cabinet meetings suggests that the cabinet saw Jinnah as a benevolent figurehead who needed to be sufficiently empowered as the final decision maker.

However, cabinet members also saw Jinnah as a man who had conceived a country built on Muslim nationalism, but one that was to be driven by a pluralistic code of governance and statehood with all of its ethnicities and religious groups made part of the nation-building process.

Ironically, Prof. Imran also mentions that even the very first cabinet had divisions. There was tension between a “Punjabi group” and a “Bengal group”.

The study of the minutes of the meetings of the first cabinet, and the ethnic and religious nature of its members, can be an effective tool to understand exactly what was on the minds of the founders of Pakistan right after the country’s creation.

It can provide an interesting glimpse into the initial contradictions, as well as the nobility of purpose, behind the men who were the first to try making sense of a unique nationalistic emergence in South Asia called Pakistan.

Source: The Pakistan Jinnah would have wanted
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 22nd, 2016

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