| January 23, 2002 | Wednesday | Ziqa'ad 8, 1422 |
A monument gasping for life
Manto lives on
Bharti statement seems singularly irrelevant
AT a seminar held recently in Lahore the subject was ‘What kind of Pakistan do we want?’ Indian leadership had settled the question with regard to India long before independence by deciding in favour of a democratic, federal and secular state.
THE Indian Sports Minister Uma Bharti has once again confirmed India’s determination not to play cricket against Pakistan. This time the reason given is that cross-border terrorism should cease before the Indian cricketers will put bat to ball against the Pakistanis. In the present climate of great tension between the two countries, Bharti’s statement seemed singularly irrelevant.
Jinnah deliberately allowed ambiguity to prevail on the matter as he did not want the demand for Pakistan to be distracted by a debate on the subject. But once Pakistan came into being he made his view clear: Pakistan would be a democratic, secular state, within which there was only one nation, with citizens, regardless of their religion, enjoying equal status and rights.
By consistently disowning the religious parties which advocate a theocratic state, the Pakistani voter, devout Muslim as he is, too has rejected their programme. That over the years the country nevertheless has been turned into a semi-theocracy may, therefore, appear paradoxical but it is not altogether surprising.
Partly, it was a heritage of the communalist politics of pre-partition which gathered momentum under Ziaul Haq who, needing a justification for his usurpation, found it in a self-appointed divine mission to ‘Islamize’ Pakistan. He left behind not only the Hudood ordinance and separate electorates but what is known as the Zia legacy. The ‘legacy’ is a frame of mind as well as a set of anonymous heirs, holding positions of authority in various branches of the establishment. Most of the country’s existing Islamic laws and measures are the result of their thinking and decisions and not of popular demand or of parliamentary debate and discussion.
Thus in order to go forward, the country must go back to the beginning, back to Jinnah and Iqbal. It needs to go back from ‘Islamization’ to Islam, from a fossil-Islam of ritual and power- seeking ulema, to the Islam of brotherhood, tolerance and justice, from Rabbul Muslimeen to Rabbul Alameen, to democracy where laws are made and unmade by parliament and not by a Shariat court dispensing the Divine word.
Gen Musharraf’s speech of Jan 12 and subsequent actions have set the direction. These are measures he had proposed when he took power two years ago but one need not cavil at the fact that they were not vigorously pursued straightaway. Nor should we feel mortified that the government is acting now under the pressure of external events. What matters in the end is that Pakistan is at zero point again and beginning to move in the right direction..
The external and internal components of Gen Musharraf’s programme of redressal are organically interlinked. The very welcome reform of the madressahs must, therefore, take place as part of an overhaul of the educational system as a whole.
The writ of the government must be established and ‘all organizations in Pakistan will function in a regulated manner,’ the president declared. This is a resolution, as well as an avowal, and all credit to him for his candour. This is possibly the hardest part of the job if it means, as it should, that all state organs, including the country’s intelligence agencies, must function within the ambit and limits of the law. The latter’s involvement in domestic politics, thoughtlessly initiated by the democratically-elected Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, cannot be allowed to continue in any way or for any purpose, if democratic institutions are to function properly and take root.
Gen Musharraf has taken or announced a number of important measures designed to strengthen democratic institutions such as empowerment of women, joint electorates, an educational qualification for parliamentary candidates. These are desirable as such and have been widely welcomed by the thinking sections of the population. But there is surely force in the contention that moves of this kind cannot, and should not, be introduced by fiat, but through established constitutional procedures.
True, at present there is no parliament that could adopt the necessary constitutional amendments. However, there is no reason to believe that major political parties would not be amenable to come to an understanding on the matter with the government before the October election. The continuity of Gen Musharraf’s reforms would be best guaranteed and his own position and authority reinforced by an understanding with the major political parties and their accredited leaders.
The external part of the general’s programme deals with Kashmir and the current crisis with India. India is understandably agitated over the attack on its parliament. Gen Musharraf was quick to condemn the attack and right also to curb the Lashkar and Jaish who may or may not have been behind the attack in New Delhi but make no secret of the fact that they back the jihad in Kashmir.
The jihadis fought with zeal and sacrificed lives but they did so at the cost of international sympathy for the Kashmiri cause and deflected the indigenous Kashmiri struggle from its true purpose. Islamizing Kashmir, forcing Kashmiri women to wear veils, is no part of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. In putting a halt to their activities, Pakistan is not going back on its commitment to Kashmir but, on the contrary, putting the issue back in perspective as a struggle for self- determination.
At present, a great deal of diplomacy, ours and that of the major powers, is being deployed simply to persuade India that talks on the issue are in its favour. The bottom line in Kashmir is not that India does not want to give it up but that the Kashmiris want to decide their own future. The end of jihad will show that the Kashmiri movement has its own momentum.
CHINIOT: The Gulzar Manzil, a national heritage, is fast fading into a shadow due to the negligence of the authorities concerned.
Better known as Omar Hayat Palace, the masterpiece owes its existence to the contributions of Shaikh Omar Hayat who got it constructed some 70 years ago. If Mr Hayat put in monetary investment, a local wood craftsman Elahi Bakhsh Pirjah brought on an unparalleled architectural genius to shape it up.
The building was constructed in a decades’s time with an expenditure of Rs400,000. Mr Hayat expired in 1935 just a couple of months before the construction of the palace completed.
History claims Mr Hayat got it built for his only son Gulzar Muhammad whose marriage in 1938 brought an ironic twist of fate in the shape of death. Gulzar was found dead in the palace the next day after marriage. The news of son’s death lofted loads of agony on mother who died remembering him. The mother and the son were buried in the courtyard of the ground floor of the palace.
The relatives of Mr Hayat, later, left the palace calling it a jinx. The servants lived in the palace for a couple of years and then parted with it. Thereafter, some prayer leaders established an orphanage and left it when the top storey collapsed. Qabza groups came next and got shops and houses constructed on the piece of land lying next to it.
A unique blend of Mughal style of construction and matchless carving cuts on the doors, windows and jhirokas reflected a colour of their own.
The roofs, balconies, stairways, terrace and the stucco designs made a perfect interior. The facade of the building was adorned with a fine inlay of bricks, the glare of marble and picturesque shades that helped it rank among the palaces of landlords in the Mughal era. The building was the last of Mughal’s architectural zest.
However, not very far ago the age began to look upon it. Seeing its glory dying in 1989, Athar Tahir, the then Jhang deputy commissioner, took the palace into his custody. He got the encroachments removed and started renovation with an expenditure of Rs1,700,000. A library, cultural centre and a museum were new additions which regained some vigour and it was handed-over to the local Municipal Committee. A rare collection of thousands of books and subscription for seven dailies in it brought a sigh of relief to the learners. It was opened to public by the then Punjab Governor, Mian Azhar.
Just three years ago the municipal committee refused to bear the expenses of the latest achievements and terminated the subscription of newspapers and other reading material.
In 1998, the building was taken over by the auqaf department and that, too, failed to improve its condition. The situation is getting worse by day. The library has recently been closed while the reading room is without its assets. It was only in 1989 when the building was last looked worth renovation.
The palace, at present, is very much out of sorts. The walls have developed cracks and allow rainy water to pour in. The woodwork has lost its colour. If the situation does not soon be tackled with, days are not far when the country will lose yet another historical monument. —BABAR MALIK
SAADAT Hasan Manto’s graph is rapidly rising. He is being studied in more than 22 foreign universities as a writer who provides unusual depth to the study of the northern subcontinent’s middle class morality at a time when the British Raj was about to fold up.
Denigrated by the traditionalists as an ‘obscene writer’ and regarded by the progressives as one who was not a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, Manto did not give a damn to the labelling and continued to pursue his peculiar way of studying, delineating and reading his characters the way he deemed right.
His indifference to criticism worked to his great advantage. All those who regarded him as a ‘social risk’ in his heyday are busy revising their ‘views’ about him. The way the cheap fiction, specializing in churning the blood of deviant youth, has flooded the market with a vehemence that Manto could easily don the mantle of an acceptable priest of common-sense realism. (There is absolutely no common ground between Manto and cheap fiction though, as the latter has nothing to do with aesthetics while the former fulfils all the criteria of aesthetics). The progressive critics are also busy revising their rigid views about him and have moved on to accept him as a rare photographer who has not tampered with the life around him.
Manto didn’t go beyond his commitment to authentic representation and if his short stories or pen-portraits have some unacceptable ‘attitudes’ or ‘features,’ Manto is not to blame for those ‘awful’ and ‘morally bad’ facets but society itself which didn’t condemn its exploitative top crust. Manto had seen through the mess, and he was determined to bring them to light so that a will to fight against the abominable social system which was sustaining, glamourizing and promoting it.
Manto died on January 18, 1955, and it fell to the Idara-i-Zehn-i-Jadeed to remember Manto on his 47th death anniversary in this city which doesn’t figure in Manto’s short stories. His stories are mainly in the background of Lahore and Bombay. Mustansar Husain Tarar’s novel Rakh also came under discussion as it is the first Urdu novel which has Manto as one of its characters.
There was no celebrity on the stage. The idea to commemorate Manto occurred to a few university students and they sent invitations to some senior teachers to come and see what they considered the right way to remember. Manto’s stories Naya Qanoon, Babu Gopi Nath and Hatak were read out and a discussion ensued in which everyone from the audience could participate.
Salman Haqqani, Amtul Majeed and Simi Qambarani were the main participants and the place where Manto was being remembered was Lyari. I believe that some of the Chaals of Bombay Manto has so masterfully described resemble some areas in Lyari. The stinking nullah carrying the filth of the area carried the insufferable ‘stench’ which some of Manto’s stories discuss — not metaphorically alone.
Simi Qambarani’s appreciation of Manto was moving. She said Manto, Ismat Chughtai and Mumtaz Mufti represented the psychological wing which branched off distinguishably from the sociological stem of the Urdu short story dominated by Rajindra Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander and Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi. Manto is one of the greatest short-story writers of Asia.
Dr Leslie Fleming’s study of Manto — though by far the best in English — could not do justice to Manto. It is not right to regard him as a short-story writer who had chosen Maupassant as the role model. Manto, she said, looked down upon hypocrisy in our middle class society which passed for ‘nobility.’ He thought that all downtrodden characters in our midst owed their low status to the exploitative high class establishment which didn’t want to accept that it was the inequitable social system and false ego which had condemned the majority of our society to live on thrown-away crumbs of bread from the dining tables of the aristocracy.
He tried to invest them with all the considerations which Manto’s humanistic outlook could muster. The difference which Manto’s stories have caused was immense. A great deal of literature about the downtrodden ‘women’ reflects the fundamental change in our attitude towards them. Be it progressive or sociological fiction or cinema or the print media, we can notice a great change. The number of girls from respectable families showing willingness to portray the characters of ‘dancing girls’ in our cinema and theatre serves as an effective indicator of the changing attitude in society.
While Bedi’s women are the suffering, enduring and tolerating type, Manto’s women pulsate with indomitable energy, and are assertive and aggressive type. For instance, Manto’s Saugandhi, after being insulted by the wealthy seth, avenges her shame on her friend Madho by disgracing him by being favourably disposed towards her mangy dog. Kulwant Kaur and Mozelle are full of life and it is really a landmark in our fiction that we produced Manto before floating scores of NGOs to look after the denizens of the seamy life — portrayed in books such as Oos Bazaar Mein. But there is something in Manto which needs to be fought and fought strongly.
It is his assertion that Man is evil and beastly. Bedi, on the contrary, thinks quite highly of Man and always sees a ray of sunlight.
Manto’s view of the human nature is neither scientific nor morally defensible. This is, perhaps, the main reason for the progressives’ impatience with Manto’s mindset. Manto has served the cause of humanity in spite of his unpalatable views about human nature. It is only by reading him in the perspective of our society that we can even condone his views about Man only because he sought to serve humanity by inspiring us to shake off the deplorable human nature and turn the tide against it. In a way he wanted to moralize in his stories. Those who despise some of the characters of Manto despise the depravity in human beings and it is about time to see what can be done to make Man better human being.
Manto was an Aligarian. He couldn’t do his graduation there and joined Islamia College, Amritsar, where celebrities such as Sahibzada Mehmood-uz- Zafar, Dr Rashid Jahan, D. M. Taseer, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Imdad Husain were no less than role models for him, but it is strange that he didn’t write on anyone in this galaxy, but he chose to dive deep into the French and Russian fiction. Needless to say that he liked Chekhov and Maupassant. The third major influence on Manto was that of O. Henry.
Our universities should shed off some of their prejudices as Manto has exercised the same influence on our middle class which D. H. Lawrence has on the English middle class.
With the armies of both countries massed on the borders and the skies overcast with war clouds, cricket would be the last thing that would come to mind. Yet, imagine simply the impact of the two countries deciding to resume cricket relations. The tension would evaporate and the war clouds would have rolled by.
The Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board Lt.-General Tauqir Zia has been quick to reiterate Pakistan’s stand; it is ready to play against India at any time and at any place. Clearly, the Indian government attaches a great deal of importance to cricket and has made it a foreign policy plank. This is because there is a cricket madness in India. By not playing cricket against Pakistan, it is being demonstrated how serious are the differences between the two countries!
Both India and Pakistan are members of the ICC and also of the Asian Cricket Council. One would have thought that cricket matters would have been settled at this level and the governments had their hands full in dealing with more urgent problems like food, shelter, clothing, health and education that people of both countries so desperately need.
India’s refusal to play against Pakistan is not hurting Pakistan cricket but is proving to be a major obstacle in the development of Asian cricket. There are four Test playing countries in South East Asia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. If these countries were to stand together, South Asia could become a power-house in international cricket. Alas, it is not to be.
There is no system of relegation, no way in which the Test status of a cricket nation can be withdrawn. So there seems to be no point in questioning the Test credentials of Bangladesh. That it is at the lowest rung of the ladder cannot be denied. But it is not always going to stay there. There is bound to be improvement but this improvement will not come overnight nor will it come by sacking the coach or the captain.
Bangladesh has been losing to teams that are vastly superior to it and I think it is cruel to make fun of it. I remember that Pakistan, despite having beaten India, England, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies in the fifties were still considered the babes of cricket. When Pakistan toured England in 1962, it was outclassed much the way that Bangladesh is being outclassed.
Led by the late Jim Swanton, there was a campaign that Pakistan should not get five-day Test matches on the ground that it was not good enough. Luckily wiser counsels prevailed otherwise a very dangerous precedent would have been set.
I think what Bangladesh should do is to send promising players to play in the domestic tournaments of other South Asian countries. I know that Pakistan would be happy to help.
The players should be inducted in various teams as a ‘guest player’. These ‘guest players’ could also spend some time at the Cricket Academies.
Pakistan won the two-match Test series without raising a sweat and well inside the allotted five days. The quality of the bowling should not detract from the quality of Yousuf Youhana’s double century. This is his second double century in Test cricket and it establishes without doubt that he has the hunger and the stamina to play long innings. So many batsmen throw it away after getting a hundred.
I don’t think the selectors learnt anything new from the Test series. They had it right and they should have no problems in picking the team for the series against the West Indies. There remains a question mark against Wasim Akram. The suggestion is being floated that he should confine his cricket to the One-day Internationals. I do not agree with this.
We can afford to rest him for the Test matches against the West Indies but if New Zealand is coming to Pakistan, we will need our best team. Far from being a push-over, New Zealand in its present form will start as favourites.
I think the time has come for umpires from third countries standing in the One-day Internationals. Far too many mistakes are being made in the triangular in Australia. One of the most glaring was when Mark Boucher drove a full toss straight to Chris Cairns who caught it knee-high, as straight forward a caught and bowled as is imaginable but the umpire gave him not out, probably because Boucher stood his ground.
Boucher should not only have been given his marching orders but the match-referee should have fined him. Apparently no batsman ‘walks’ these days, taking a chance that the umpire may get it wrong. I think too that Trescothick was distinctly unlucky to be given out at Kolkata.
It was a crucial wicket and since it was an Indian umpire who gave him out. England’s supporters are likely to put a “patriotic” construction on it. This is wholly unnecessary for it can sour the rest of the series.
If we can get one ICC umpire for the Test matches, I see no reason why we can’t follow the same principle in the one-day internationals, which in some respects, is considered more important than the Test. This is typical ICC thinking, inconsistent and devoid of logic.