| February 18, 2002 | Monday | Zilhaj 5, 1422 |
Million dollar questions
The Mother of all Lies
Why do we need national anthems that no one understands?
Of right and responsibility
Versified autobiography launched
Danny Pearl in our midst
Sufferings galore
THERE was some protest, though not loud, on the increase in fees by the University of Balochistan. The vice-chancellor, Justice M. A. Rashid, had announced the increase at a news conference here. It will be effective from the next academic session of the university. The rise is 300 to 400 per cent.
PAKISTAN’s national anthem was written by Hafeez Jalandhari and musically composed by Ahmed G. Chagla. It was one of several entries that were invited from poets and musicians as part of a competition that culminated in its choice as the national anthem in 1954. Who were the other poets who took part in the competition and what was their reaction when they were rejected?
WHEN the idea of republic, as a substitute for rejected monarchy was evolving, somebody had said: “let’s put the republic everywhere.” We hear so much of ‘devolution’ these days. The basic idea is, or ought to be, to enfranchise the individual, and the community as the collection of enfranchised individuals. Those who think of enfranchisement or empowerment as a windfall of rights and rights alone have got it all wrong.
DEMONSTRATIONS, sit-ins and hunger strikes by the low-paid employees of public sector organizations have become a common feature here. These employees do not want any extra benefits from their institutions or the government but they are angry because they have not been paid their hard-earned wages. The government is either indifferent to the plight of its own employees or ill-organized enough to run the day-to-day affairs.
The reason given was that higher education, coupled with quality education, must be ‘selective,’ ending the previous practice that every graduate got the right to get admission to the University of Balochistan.
“Higher education is not a privileged claimed by any student,” the VC said. His contention was strongly supported by some senior journalists on the plea that only research scholars and academicians should be allowed to get higher or specialized education and casual students be discouraged from entering into the university.
In the past, every student used to get government scholarship once admitted to any educational institution, from high school to college and the university. The main expenditure on education was on government stipend to every student till it was discontinued during the last decade. However, the deserving students are provided stipend by different organizations, including the government of Balochistan. But it is confined to outstanding students or position-holders in the examinations.
At the news conference, the vice-chancellor pledged to introduce some discipline, resume the academic sessions in time and hold annual examinations on schedule saving, thereby, the precious time and energy of both the teachers and the taught. He laid greater emphasis on restoring sanctity of the campus, discouraging professional student leaders playing any role in disturbing the academic peace at will or at the behest of outsiders, politicians or administrators.
The academic council has fixed 160 working days with a commitment from the university authorities, mainly the teachers and the respective heads of the departments, to complete the course within the stipulated period so that examinations are held on schedule. For this, the vice-chancellor is seeking cooperation from all sections of society, mainly from the press.
There was trouble on the campus and in some other colleges following appointment of a retired army officer as pro-vice- chancellor looking after the administration. Student organizations and political parties protested against this appointment. Even the chancellor, the governor of Balochistan, was criticized for sending a retired army officer to the highest seat of learning in the province. Although the retired army officer resigned and left the post for personal reasons, there was some hue and cry over this again when the VC was holding his news conference. “ When we all accept an army officer as the president and head of state, why should anyone object to a retired army officer working as pro-vice-chancellor,” Justice M. A. Rashid, a highly respected retired judge of the Balochistan High Court, said angrily. This retort brought some calm allowing the newsmen to discuss the other important problems of academic nature.
Pollution of academic atmosphere remained a common feature in Balochistan. Both the politicians and bureaucrats disturbed the academic peace at will in order to use students in achieving their designs. Some “very obedient” students who served the bureaucrats were rewarded handsomely to this date, promoting them as leader of political parties, members of the assemblies and holding of public offices for services rendered seen and unseen. Some others were given government jobs and placed in strategic position.
The main reason was that the University of Balochistan or some other colleges were subservient to the dictates of administrators who ruled supreme and not to the vice chancellors or college principals. They were so powerful that they forced the appointments of incompetent people as lecturers after assisting them to secure positions which they never deserved.
The University of Balochistan is facing the big task of purging the campus of unqualified lecturers and teachers or those who have failed to improve their academic experience despite warnings. It was through such elements that the administrators ruled the student leaders and organizations, ordering closure of the campus, instigating the students to agitate on trivial issues.
It pertains to the actual autonomy of the university. The government is under moral and political obligation to stop its functionaries from disturbing the academic peace for any reason. The government and its functionaries should not achieve its political objectives by using the students or by polluting the academic atmosphere on the campus.
Once there is no government interference, no student will get any undue support, protection or encouragement and no one will dare to disturb the peace. Political mobilization needs a lot of resources which only a government possesses, according to an observer of the Balochistan scene. Political parties have no, or very limited, resources to back their student wings.
“If the message is loud and clear that one will be punished or sent behind the bars if one violates the university laws, no one will dare disturb the public peace or pollute the academic atmosphere,” he remarks.
WHY has the US, the self-proclaimed facilitator in the Indo- Pakistan stand-off, so far not asked India to withdraw its troops from the borders as a pre-condition to resumption of talks between Islamabad and New Delhi? What is the job of a facilitator if not to facilitate talks between two hostile neighbours? And how does the US expect the two countries to start talking with their troops standing eyeball-to-eyeball on their respective borders? Doesn’t all this talk of bilateral talks without making them conditional to the withdrawal of troops from the borders sound more like a decoy? One knows what India wants to achieve by massing its troops on Pakistan’s borders. But what does the US which is all praise for President General Pervez Musharraf’s commitment to the international war against terrorism want to achieve by encouraging India to keep its troops deployed in a state of alert on the borders of a country which has been described as a US friend, an important partner of the coalition and whose land is being used by the US troops to launch operations in Afghanistan?
And why has the US made a mockery of our requests for help in our economic revival efforts with a package of ‘peanuts’ after having declared time and again how obliged it is to Pakistan for all its help in the war against terrorism? Haven’t President Bush’s economic advisors told him that dole no matter how generous has never succeeded in helping Pakistan stand on its own economic feet. It was the American dole which got reflected in the so-called fantastic growth rates of the 1960s and it was again its dole that got reflected in the equally remarkable growth rates of the 1980s. These two high growth period do not reflect any improvement in the fundamentals of our economy otherwise the country would not have faced imminent default after the stoppage of the dole unilaterally by the donors first in 1965 and then in 1990. Does not the US know that it was this stoppage of the dole that led to Pakistan seeking three debt rescheduling rounds one after the other first in early 1970s and now between 1998 and 2001?
And here are some questions for President Musharraf as well. By ‘genuine democracy’ does he mean a system where the norms of democracy are made applicable to all the 140 million people of this country except him? If he thinks he is indispensable for his institution and his country why should Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto be blamed for becoming life presidents of their respective political parties and also for not holding fair and free elections within their parties? Why does he think he would need no more than five years to consolidate his reforms and introduce those he has not yet introduced? What would he do if at the end of the first five years he came to the conclusion that he would need five more years. Ask for five more years for himself without having to go through the process of elections? And if even after the second round of five years, he came to the realization that his reforms would be trashed once he left the power what would he do? Ask for a perpetual tenure? Does he know that if God had thought He could reform all his creatures for all times to come by sending in a reformer with immortality bestowed on him he would have done that?
No doubt Gen Musharraf in his three years of rule has created a lot of vested interests within the country and outside. In the country all those who have found a place in his power team and even the 12 men would like him to stay in power for all times to come for obvious reasons. So, these ‘wise men’ would certainly be terrorising him with their dire scenarios of what would happen once he gave up power and went back to the barracks. And those outside the country, like the Americans who had him by the scruff of the neck and got him to do everything which they had wanted him to do would certainly like to keep him where he is for all times to come. So, they must be supporting his idea of continuing in power without having to go through the process of elections. But then Musharraf should take time out from his busy schedule and read the Ayub Khan chapters in the book The American Papers compiled by Roedad Khan to find out what the Americans did to our first military dictator once they lost interest in him. And then, does he know what kind of relationship General Zia had enjoyed with Washington just before he met with an accident in the air? So, what Musharraf should understand is, once the chips are down, both his domestic supporters and foreign champions would simply disappear leaving him to face the harsh vagaries of fate all alone.
If the Pakistani generals had learnt from their past mistakes both on the battle field and in the political arena the country would not have found itself in the mess that it has slid into over the years. It would be presumptuous on the part of a civilian scribe to list here the mistakes the Generals committed on the battle field. But their mistakes in the political arena can be picked up even by a primary school student. And there were only two glaring mistake that the Generals committed in the political arena but the effect these two has been simply disastrous for Pakistan and has brought it the bad name of failed state. One of this mistakes was not going back to the barracks when it was time to do so and waiting in the corridors of Islamabad to be ousted either by a military debacle at the hands of our Enemy No.1 or by some quirk of fate. The other mistake was not letting the people of Pakistan vote a government out even once in their 54 years of so-called independence. Pakistanis have perhaps voted as many as five governments into power in the last 31 years. But all of these governments were dismissed by the civil-military bureaucracy on one pretext or the other. This has made the people in the country lose confidence in their vote and in their political judgment. That is why perhaps there is so much skepticism among even the educated in this country about democracy and politicians. There is no country in the world where politicians are not held in open contempt. And there are perhaps no democracies, even the most developed ones which have succeeded in eliminating corruption completely from within. Still, this has not caused people in democratic countries to prefer the military generals over politicians as rulers.—Onlooker
LAST week, I had to apologize to a former teacher I used to have at the Government College, Lahore. I have never been able to satisfy myself, though, as to why I had to do so. Anyway, I did it out of the goodness of my heart. But my piece on February 11, really does take the cake for sheer foolhardiness.
My Notebook was headlined, “Laila and Majnu’s mother”. Now how on earth could Laila’s mother have given birth to her daughter’s suitor? The headline should in reality have read, “Majnu and Laila’s mother”. Only then the lines that followed could have made some sense. But then, I supposed, anyone who has written as much as I have during the last twenty years or so should be allowed a faux pas or two once in a while.
THERE was this single-column report in Dawn on February 12. It was headlined: “Musharraf arrives in Washington today”. In the days of the National Press Trust newspapers, it would have been a front-page headline: “Tumultuous welcome awaits Musharraf”. That goes to show what we are beginning to learn and to take things in our stride.
MR Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, was said to have alleged that Aftab Ansari, a suspected terrorist responsible for the attack on the American Centre in Kolkata, had a Pakistani passport. An official spokesman said in Islamabad the other day that charging Ansari with holding a Pakistani passport or an Indian doing the same would no longer be received with “any credence by the world community, nor, indeed in India itself”. Mr Ansari holding a Pakistani passport is too pat but then the Indian media can do funny things, contradicting itself as it does every other day. Only on February 11, Mr Vajpayee had threatened to resign. He even named Mr Lal Kishan Advani and Mr Murli Manohar Joshi as his likely successors. “After Sonia (Gandhi), the Congress has no other leader whereas the BJP has Advani and Joshi”. His remarks were said to be “politically significant” which they might or might not have been. For the time being, it would be advisable for us to take Mr Vajpayee at his face value and not to read too much in his statements which are becoming increasingly confusing.
Only recently, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had said in a newspaper interview that Mr Vajpayee had assured him that the Kashmir dispute would be settled in 1999 and that the settlement would be acceptable to the people of Kashmir. (Khaleej Times, February 11).
And here is the Mother of all Lies. The story has been taken from our daily featurette, “Dawn 50 years Ago Today.” It reads:
“Prime Minister Pandit Nehru said on February 12 (1952) that India wanted the Kashmir dispute to be settled peacefully without leaving any trail of bitterness.
“He added that even in regard to the one-third of the state now under Pakistan control, ‘we are not going to take military measures to recover it.’ ...
“India, he said, ‘does not propose to impose any solution by the bayonet (or) the gun. It is the people who will decide.” ...
So, you see, Nehru had said fifty years ago: “It is the people who will decide”. He might have gone on to say: Yes, it is the people who will decide but it will be for India to decide what the people of Kashmir will decide.”
Some people say that after 17 years of futile attempts to tell the Kashmiris what to do, he was obliged to send Sheikh Abdullah to Islamabad for talks with President Ayub Khan. But the Sheikh was still here when Mr Nehru died (a natural death?) and Abdullah returned to India in May, 1964, never ever to return here for talks. Since 1964, then, we have been waiting. Will the long wait be unending with the likes of L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Jaswant Singh and George Fernandes around? Years ago, Khushwant Singh had said of him:
“There is a lot more to George Fernandes than a swashbuckling comprador of Indian politics. He is a highly civilized man (ask the Kashmiris), an aesthete (again, ask the Kashmiris) widely read (yes, he knew everything except that what he reads does not go beyond his eyes), a compelling orator .... He may never become the pillar of the administration but he will always remain a force to reckon with.”
K K AZIZ who wrote a book on his father, Abdul Aziz Falak-paims, Woh Hawadis Ashna, some time ago, presented a paper at the Calamus Foundation-Leo Baeck College at the Ismaili Centre, London, on October 12, 1995.
Had Prof Khurshid Kamal Aziz, to give him his full name, the benefit of a looking glass into which he could look into the shape of things to come four years later?
Anyhow, K K gave us his version of the pir-murid relationship in the lecture he delivered seven years ago. He said that someone asked Nizamuddin Aulia the following question:
“If there were two persons, one of whom performed all his religious duties but acknowledged no pir and the other one was equally punctilious in his religious life and was also the disciple of a pir, which one of the two was a better Muslim? The Shaikh’s reply was straightforward: “He who was devoted to his pir.” K K says that two principles were established .... First in theory, the saint claimed unchallenged authority and the populace in general acknowledged this authority and credited him with having blessed the political ruler into existence. Again, the saints and the kings pulled together happily. This harmonious relationship was a child of shared interests. The ruler needed, or pretended to need, the good wishes and the baraka of the saint; and he confirmed his own legitimacy in the eyes of the people who were more willing to accept a Sultan approved by their pir. The saint needed the ruler even more and for two reasons: he desired official patronage, land for his khanqah, and gifts and grants for his shrine, and he wanted to increase his hold on the people and his own prestige by demonstrating that he enjoyed royal support.
In this way, says K K, a tripartite concodat was worked out on the basis of an intricate but well-understood network of relationships among the king, the saint and the people. The fact that the last figure in this equation, the people, mattered even in that age of royal autocracy, when nobody had heard the word ‘democracy’, is very significant. The people performed two functions directly ... The first two were to show their devotion to the pir (which included bringing him offerings) and their loyalty to the king. The second was to popularise the piri-muridi connection, which gave life a quasig-religious relationship.
This last function had long-term effects on society and religion. It persuaded the people to believe in ritual. Visiting the tomb of a holy man became an act of virtue. Begging at the shrine for the dead saint’s blessings became a habit. Supplicating the buried saint to intercede with God for them became a ritual. Dependence on a human agency, living or dead, ousted or weakened the faith in God. Revealed truth was brought down to the level of iconolatary. The inculcation of these customs in the name of religion created among the people a grotesque view of their faith. It also kept them away from learning the true message of the Quran.
... In short, says K K, the sultan-saint axis guaranteed an illiterate population, a religiously ignorant mass of Muslims, a politically subservient people, and a population devoted more to a saint or his descendant than to the Quran.
I will return to the K K paper some other time but I got the text as a gift from A H Kardar, the former Pakistan captain who died here some years ago. I’ll always cherish his memory. Here indeed was a man.
More importantly, who were the judges? How many Pakistanis know the meaning of their national anthem? Are they numerically more than those who know the words of, and understand better, the other composition of Hafeez Jalandhari made immortal by Malika Pukhraj —- Abhi to main jawaan hoon? My guess is that a few more people would find themselves better appreciating the song sung by the Malika. In any case, personally, I find Habib Wali Mohammad,s musical eulogy to his motherland far more spontaneous and easier to understand.
Comparatively, the ratio of Indians who really know the stated meaning of their national anthem — Jana Gana Mana — must be significantly lower than that of Pakistanis vis-a-vis their anthem. Also, ever since its adoption as India’s anthem in 1950 and even before that, Rabindranath Tagore’s composition has been the subject of relentless controversy. For many years before independence the Congress party used to regard the equally Sanskritized and difficult to understand (even if decidedly more musical) composition by Bankimchandra Chattopdhyaya — Vande Mataram — as the virtual anthem. According to one story, Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, a renowned singer of his time, used to open Congress party sessions with his rendering of Vande Mataram.
In 1923 the Congress session was held at Kakinada, which is now in Andhra Pradesh. As usual Paluskar was invited to it. He rose to sing Vande Mataram. Maulana Mohammad Ali was the president of the Congress that year.
One story goes thus: When Vishnu Digambar rose to sing Vande Mataram in conformity with tradition, Maulana Mohammad Ali raised an objection on the ground that music was taboo to his religion. The leaders assembled were bewildered.
Vishnu Digambar was incensed, and hit back: “This is a national forum, not the platform of any single community. This is no mosque to object to music. There is no justification for a ban on music here. When the president could put up with the music in the presidential procession, why does he object to it here?’ Having silenced the Congress president, without waiting for his reply, he proceeded to sing Vande Mataram and completed it. That controversy runs along communal contours even today.
Of late there have been other, perhaps more vehement, objections to India’s national anthem, and these have come from devout nationalists. “It is common belief that this poem was composed by Tagore in 1911 in praise of George V, the King of England when he visited that year,” argues R. Rangaswamy Iyengar of Bangalore in a letter published recently by a local newspaper. Tagore had probably never anticipated that his poem Jana Gana Mana which he wrote for a specific occasion would become independent India’s national anthem!
According to Mr Iyengar, there are serious historical and geographical discrepancies in the Indian anthem that need to be set right. “The province Sindhu (Sind) was in British India when Tagore wrote the poem. But when we incorporated the great poem, Pakistan was a different nation and this Sindhu belonged to Pakistan only,” Mr Iyengar wrote. “How this foreign land, Sindhu, remained in our national anthem is something amazing. On the contrary, Jammu and Kashmir which is an integral part of India (sic), does not find a place in our anthem. Some of the states of east, west and north India are exclusively described like Punjab, Sindhu, Gujarata, Maratha, Utkala, Wanga while all the four regions are but under one despicable southern word Dravida. It is actually a word of contempt in certain parts. Instead Dakshina is a better word.”
Similarly, when Tagore’s other poem — Amaar Sonar Bangla, a melodious composition in praise of his beautiful land of Bengal — was adopted by Bangladesh as its national anthem, there were those who felt that because the poem was written about an undivided Bengal its new context did not do justice to Tagore’s dreamy utopia of pre-partition Bengal. And, I am told by no less a person than the eminent scholar of Bangladesh Prof Kabir Choudhary that, it was Tagore who inspired the beautiful Sinhala composition by Ananda Samarakoon — Namo Namo Mata — that went on to become the national anthem of Sri Lanka. However, it remains a point to ponder as to how much of the emotive appeal of the Sri Lankan anthem, evidently the most musical of all the South Asian national songs, is shared by the island nation’s minority Tamils.
Jingoism moulded into a musical idiom is not the preserve of South Asian countries alone. There is a fascinating account of the American experience with an older, more agreeable version of the country’s national anthem. In a commentary on the rising tide of militarism in his country, the former head of the American Communist Party Howard Fast speaks of a truly wondrous national anthem before it was discarded for a more martial version.
In an essay captioned Our unsingable anthem, the former communist guru describes what simple and beautiful words used to make up the American anthem:
Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains’ majesty above the fruited plain.
America, America, God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.
As Fast says that national anthem gave America “a sense of the country we lived in, a feeling of warmth and love and respect.” Probably an apt enough description although most Americans who are only familiar with “The Star Spangled Banner” as their anthem would probably miss the point that Fast is making. Or perhaps not. Let’s see the facts for ourselves.
Before March 3, 1931, when an act of Congress replaced it with “The Star Spangled Banner,” Americans were taught and believed that “America the Beautiful” was their national anthem, although at times it alternated with “America,” the first line of which was: “My country, ‘tis of thee,” sung to the tune of “God Save the King.” This latter song was understandably an anathema in New York City with its huge Irish population.
“The Star Spangled Banner” was composed on Sept 14, 1814, by Francis Scott Key, who was on board a British warship that was bombarding Fort McHenry outside Baltimore.
According to Fast, Key was on a diplomatic mission, which deprived him of liquor - he usually was said to have been drunk 24 hours a day - and in his hour of sobriety he paraphrased a British drinking song, called “Anacreon in Heaven.” (Anacreon was the Greek god of wine.) He was said to have admitted that nobody could actually carry the melody while sobre.
“Not only is the melody an awful burden to foist on a nation, but the words are meaningless today,” says Fast.
Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
“In the world we live in today, what possible sense does it make? The argument goes that it is hallowed, but who hallowed it?”
When World War I broke out, Woodrow Wilson was president. He had a very opinionated wife who felt she was an authority on music as well as everything else. When it became evident that, sooner or later, the United States would have to enter the war, she declared to her husband that “America the Beautiful” was too peaceable and non-military to serve as the national anthem of a country about to embark on a bloody war.
In 1916, her husband bowed to her wishes and issued a presidential order that all army and navy bands were to cease playing “America the Beautiful” and play instead “The Star Spangled Banner.”
People in the world of music objected vehemently that it made no sense to force on people a song that was almost unsingable. But Mrs Wilson was not to be deterred, and it might just be that her husband’s ear for music was not the best. I have no knowledge on that score.
Howard Fast wrote his above plaint “in the forelorn hope that I may live to see a day when the national anthem is a song of hope and vision and brotherhood, rather than the parody of a barroom ballad that it is today.”
Let’s hope for the sake of Fast’s well-reasoned affirmation that America will indeed one day heed the call of its elders to “crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.”
As for our own clutch of anthems buffeting the region with narrow jingoism, may we too be inspired by the ideals of shared brotherhood rather than by some sectarian, even plagiarized, words of faltering glory?
Enfranchisement is as much about responsibility as it may be about rights. For most of us, rights and responsibility are opposites. But if both have to have any meaning, these two are to be seen as inseparable so much so that it is not easy to see where one ends and the other begins. Thus, despite ‘Devolution,’ we remain unable to make this asset yield any purpose, political or social.
To say that we wallow in a sea of pervasive corruption is to make an understatement about a fact of life that we fail to see — because it is just too obvious. We have left corruption to be taken care of by Accountability Courts. We have left crime to be taken care of by the police. And all of us know that neither the courts nor the police can combat these evils unless the community/society feel equally involved.
These evils are everywhere in the country. They boil down to lust for money. We in Karachi have more of these because there is more of money here. Most of us know who have been, and continue to be, downright corrupt. At least some of those who have been playing with billions are well known, well placed and still live well, many next door to us.
Has any one of us thought of anything like a social boycott of the proven wrongdoers? We socialize with the notorious corrupt without batting an eyelid. In doing so, are we not cheerfully co- existing (indeed cohabiting) with the corrupt? If a community is tolerant of corruption, what police and what accountability system would eliminate it?
The other day an Army Monitoring Team, working on a KESC drive to collect electricity dues, was mistreated in a certain Karachi locality. The AMT beat a retreat and the KESC switched off the entire community. The ‘innocents,’ that is those who claimed to have been regular with their KESC bills, complained they were wrongly disconnected. This sounds valid. But how valid is this really?
It should be safe to assume that the defaulters would be a minority and those paying their dues on time in a large majority. Is there is no social and moral obligation on the part of the entire community to play a corrective part in this sort of situation? Why the ‘innocents’ should be impotent? They have the right, also the responsibility, to monitor wrongdoing and exercise moral authority as a corrective.
The pity is that in our scheme of things the vast majority is correct and yet silent. Why should the upright be the sulking silent millions? How many of us in Karachi see this stark irony? If the average honest and clean citizen is not active and articulate, nothing would ever get better. Our ancient forefathers exercised that moral authority through the discipline that was known as “huqqa pani bund.” It meant cessation of social relationship with anyone seen to have committed an unacceptable transgression. They did not go to the king or the king’s men. They did not wait for the police force. Social boycott was their sovereign remedy. That is what is putting the republic everywhere.
Only when the community feels it is empowered would ‘devolution’ deliver the promised sovereignty of the people. This is not urging the people to take the law into their hands. What is suggested is that the citizens should distinguish at their individual level between clean and unclean, correct and incorrect and be social activists on the side of what is right. That would in effect put the republic everywhere.
If a hundred people indulge in tomfoolery and a thousand correct people feel unable to do anything on their own, they are disenfranchised and disempowered of their own accord. There are areas in this city where the KESC field workers dare not enter to set things right — that is to combat the vice of illicit connections, pilfering power.
What is the answer? Police action? Military operation? International intervention? Or social action by the community itself? If power thefts are to be tolerated by society, then society shall have a decrepit power supply apparatus. Period. That would be the direct and inescapable consequence of the impotence within the community’s own chemistry. What the KESC can do is to switch off supply for all — of the wrongdoers, and with them, their innocent but inert neighbours.
This KESC incident is a tiny sample from a whole nation unable to act as a society that is alive to its own responsibility. Those who shirk the moral duty to reject the unacceptable shall be doomed to live with it. Here the right to act is the responsibility to right the wrongs.
KARACHI: Aena der Aena, the versified autobiography of noted poet Hemayat Ali Shaer, was launched on Saturday at Pakistan Arts Council.
Dr Farman Fatehpuri, who presided over the proceedings, said Shaer’s long verse was a historical narrative and also a biography of his contemporary writers. In that way Shaer was a great poet, and his poetry real, genuine and truthful. He introduced ‘Salasi,’ the shortest form of poetry, and composed long poems as well which proved the dexterity of his innovative mind, Dr Farman said, adding that his verse, Harf Harf Roshni, was not only addressed to his children but to the entire new generation.
There was a long line of prominent writers who had come to evaluate Shaer’s verse and pay their complements to a noted contemporary poet, also a writer who has contributed to culture and art in different ways. A broadcaster, a researcher, a teacher, a film maker, a compere at the television and a poet much sought after in mushairas in and outside the country, Shaer was acknowledged by everyone as a ‘representative of our time.’
Dr Mohammed Ali Siddiqui said Aena... was first of its kind written at a time when cultural values were disintegrating. Shaer had given a graphic and a very fascinating account of Aurangabad before the fall of Hyderabad Deccan and narrated the early years of Pakistan, when a hunt for easy wealth was rampant. Being a progressive poet, Shaer had made his experience of life as our own, Siddiqui said.
Prof Saher Ansari said Aena... was first complete versified autobiography in Urdu. He had very ably described his childhood years, the formative period of his life and the conflict of thoughts his mind in young age was engaged with. Dr Peerzada Qasim paid generous complements to his senior poet describing him as ‘a pathfinder’ and his book a very important document of the time. He recalled Shaer’s long poem Bengal Say Korea Tak written on the need of universal peace, and may other verses and admired him as a very genuine and truthful person and poet.
Other speakers included N. D. Khan, a known political leader, who had great admiration for Shaer, and he said a poet’s autobiography was invariably the biography of his age because poets represented their people.
S. H. Hashmi, Vice President of Arts Council, and Saifur Rahman Grami praised Shaer, and the later expressed his gratitude on being the host on such an auspicious occasion.
Jazib Qureshi read out a paper on Aena... and analyzed critically its qualities pointing out the lines where he differed. His article carried some biographical accounts of Shaer’s life. Earlier, an article of similar nature was read out by Raana Iqbal which covered most parts of Shaer’s life and works.
The last to speak was Shaer himself, paying thanks to the guests. He recited a few verses on persistent request from the audience. Elderly poet Raghib Moradabadi recited verses written for the occasion, congratulating Shaer for his valuable contribution to literature.
The ceremony, which lasted till late in the evening, was well attended. —HASAN ABIDI
POLICE on Saturday claimed to have arrested the main suspect in the case of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s disappearance from a busy neighbourhood in the city. The same day his wife, Mariane Pearl, six months pregnant with the couple’s first child published an appeal, printed in this newspaper’s correspondence columns, asking her husband’s captors to release him.
Karachi police have in their custody Omar Saeed Sheikh, a graduate of the London School of Economics, who is alleged to have planned this most sordid of episodes. On Thursday Mr Sheikh boasted in front of an anti-terrorism court that as far as he knew Daniel Pearl was dead. However, police officials, the Pakistan government and Mr Pearl’s employer, The Wall Street Journal, have discounted this claim, primarily on the grounds that Mr Sheikh has given conflicting statements to interrogators and he might be now saying this just to throw off investigators. The man arrested on Saturday is said to be the person whom Omar Sheikh met last and who, investigators suspect, was holding the American journalist.
However, according to a story in the Washington Post, Omar Sheikh actually gave himself up on February 5 and news of his ‘capture’ was delayed to coincide with General Pervez Musharraf’s visit to Washington. Mr Sheikh, the Post said, boasted to his interrogators that he knew powerful and influential people implying that his surrender had a lot to do with the possibility that in the due course of time he would out again.
A British paper, The Indendepent, managed to get interesting information on this man Omar Saeed Sheikh. The son of a wealthy Pakistani businessman, Mr Sheikh was born in December 1973 in London and went to a public school where he did reasonably well to gain admssion into the LSE where he studied mathematics and statistics. According to the newspaper, he was a “brilliant” chess player, who competed in the world arm-wrestling championships, and wrote “smooth and expressive” English. However, Mr Sheikh is also said to have a terrible temper and a compulsive habit of showing off. Mr Sheikh’s father moved to Pakistan in 1987 but after a few years moved back to Wanstead, an east London suburb. Here, the paper says quoting one of his fellow students, Mr Sheikh claimed that he was the boxing champion of Pakistan and had hijacked buses. “Most people avoided talking to him unless they were prepared for a long opinionated diatribe,” the student said.
After leaving university, Mr Sheikh travelled to Bosnia in 1993 and then went to Indian-occupied Kashmir the next year where he kidnapped four Western tourists. However, they were later released unharmed. One of them later said that Mr Sheikh had said during the ordeal that he “would only kidnap people who he considered intelligent and wanted to spend time with”. Then he landed up in Delhi’s infamous Tihar jail from where he was released as part of an exchange deal when an Indian airliner was hijacked and taken to Kandahar in December 1999.
To cut a long story short, Mr Sheikh is up to his old antics and he has admitted so before the anti-terrorism court in Karachi. Daniel Pearl, and we all hope is alive, is being hidden somewhere in Karachi. My heart goes out to his wife, Mariane, because she must be going through a living hell. I hope that his captors have the sense to realize that they will gain absolutely nothing by keeping him longer than they have, and probably risk permanently damaging whatever cause that they espouse.
Karachi has really changed quite a lot in the past few years and a good gauge of that probably is the way Valentine’s Day is celebrated. For a change, this is a festival not celebrated (a la khabarnama) with the ‘traditional zeal and fervour’ but with the sort of youthful spirit and zest that many of us generally lack. This year — maybe because of General Musharraf’s speech — the day moved more decisively into the public realm. Several city hotels placed large ads in newspapers detailing their plans for the day, which in one case explicitly mentioned ‘dancing’. Several restaurants also joined in the celebrations, which by the way were not confined to Defence, KDA and Clifton as some might think.
True, that a decade ago one would not have even noticed the arrival of February 14, unless you were in one of the more upmarket schools maybe, but now it’s a citywide — perhaps countrywide — phenomenon and actually quite big business. Gift shops, bookstores and eating places do particularly well, with many book stores stocking Valentine’s Day cards in sometimes as great numbers as Eid cards.
Compare this what the Shiv Sena thugs did on Valentine’s Day in Bombay. Back in power after the recent municipal elections, Sena supremo (read fascist) Bal Thackeray said that people would not be allowed to celebrate Valentine’s Day. His exact remarks were: “We do not need westerners to teach us how to love.” And the world calls us fundos!
This was the title of a documentary on the state of illegal immigrants in Karachi shown on Indus Vision last week. The programme was simply a distortion of the facts on the ground, which were deliberately manipulated to arrive at a very questionable conclusion: That Karachi’s 400,000 Afghans and 2 million Bengalis are responsible for the alarming rise in crime in the city.
Phony academics and research analysts were brought forth who callously laboured the point and insisted that this was the real truth. The documentary was a shame for all those who have their hearts in the right place, because it unabashedly went on to sound like a racist of sorts, even bordering on the schizophrenic. The voice-over declared: “These foreigners are intruders and illegal occupants of valuable Pakistani land over which they have no right whatsoever.”
The tell-tale images of the katchi abadis and shantytowns along the Lyari river showed the viewers what filthy stretch of ‘valuable Pakistani land’ these foreigners had occupied, belying the intended message of hate the programme sought to put forward. How can anyone in their right mind hate 2.4 million utterly dispossessed and suffering people whose children run naked in the city’s grime-filled streets?
It is a shame that an independent satellite channel should take upon itself to malign a group of hapless people with such impunity. Elsewhere in the world human rights groups would have censured the channel for this kind of coverage.
An ill-mannered woman sits within the stately environs of an elite Karachi school on the outskirts of DHA interviewing kids barely over two years old, and their parents. At stake is the child’s admission. The parents are grilled about the birth of their child with remarks like: “We avoid taking in children born through Caesarean section because that can pose problems for the child later on.”
The rest of the interview is made up of a standard, though abominable, set of questions that border on the vulgar considering the age of the child being interviewed. Many children haven’t really learnt to talk at that age, and they are even expected to speak in English.
It is partly the fault of parents who insist that their children get into schools that charge an arm and a leg but are actually the farthest thing from a decent education. What can be worse than deliberately keeping out children on highly questionable bases? Since such schools are a commercial venture for all practical purposes, the admission policy should only be based on a first-come-first-served basis.
That said, commercialization of education is indeed a crime in a country where most children do not have access to school, let alone English-medium education. — BY KARACHIAN
Over 3,000 municipal employees — belonging to the three taluka councils of the Hyderabad city, Latifabad and Qasimabad — have not received their salaries for December 2001 and January 2002, though their union leaders have been agitating tirelessly for the payment.
Some workers who had been on hunger strike for over a week have now called it off on the assurance by city Naib Nazim Abdul Qadeer Naghar that they will soon be paid.
Salaries to the municipal employees have never been paid on time since deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif had, in his great wisdom, abolished the octroi duty and export tax because of rampant corruption in their recovery. But the corruption did not end, rather the goose that was laying golden eggs for the municipalities and the district councils was killed.
The federal government undertook to release funds for the municipalities by charging 2.5 per cent additional GST. This “charity” is released to the provincial governments which pass it on to the local councils. However, the anomaly is that these funds are seldom, if ever, released by the federal government on time, which leads to demonstrations and hunger strikes.
Moreover, this amount is hardly enough for the salaries of the employees. Nothing is left for development works or for paying the arrears of the retired employees, such as their pension or gratuity.
At a press conference on Feb 4, city Nazim Moeen Shaikh appealed to the government to release Rs19 million immediately as the city taluka was in financial crisis and had no money even to pay the employees. He said that after ending the octroi duty the government had fixed the share of the city taluka at Rs16.9 million but regretted that after deduction at source the council was being given Rs12.6 million only.
After the new pay-scale, Rs19 million was needed for salaries. Also, the council needs tens of thousands of rupees to buy petrol for its refuse vans and for other sundry expenses. According to the tehsil Nazim, the council incurs a deficit of Rs6 million every month. To overcome this, it will have to increase local taxes by about 200 per cent, which no elected council can afford to do for fear of inviting the wrath of the people.
The only option for the government is to restore the octroi duty and export tax because it has miserably failed to manage funds for the local councils on time. Eliminating corrupt practices in the recovery of the octroi duty and export tax should pose no problem provided there is sincerity of purpose. Coupled with this, the local councils will also have to pull up their socks and streamline the tax recovery procedure.
For instance, the city taluka has collected only 50 per cent of taxes and rents of properties, which is Rs32.5 million in total. This is sheer inefficiency on the part of the taxation staff. Then there is the case of former SRTC employees who have been agitating for the last two years for the payment of their dues.
The Sindh government had signed an agreement on Dec 6, 1999, with the employees’ representatives that all their dues would be cleared by Dec 6, 2000, with a condition attached to the agreement that if the dues were not cleared by the deadline, the government would also pay 15 per cent mark-up on the outstanding dues. Now the government is trying to wriggle out of this agreement and persuading the employees to forgo the 15 per cent mark-up and some other dues which has led to fresh demonstrations and hunger strikes by the former employees.
The Zila council has also adopted a resolution calling upon the Sindh government and the SRTC administration to clear the outstanding dues of the employees. It was agonizing to see the former employees sitting outside the press club here to draw attention to their plight. They called off the hunger strike when Zila Nazim Dr Makhdoom Rafiquzzaman sent his special emissary, Syed Hussain Shah Bukhari, to the employees with the promise that their dues would be paid before Eid-ul-Azha.
There are sufferings galore. Former employees of the Zeal Pak Cement Factory who had been sent packing under the golden handshake scheme are, too, waiting for the payment of their dues. Power supply to their residential quarters has been cut off for the last one year and the cheques issued to them have been dishonoured.
Abdul Jabbar Rehmani, coordinator of the Fundamental Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has been pursuing the case of the former Zeal Pak employees, has lately asked the federal government to take legal action against the factory management and the general secretary of the so-called CBA union for defrauding the employees. These employees were relieved under a written agreement but the golden handshake cheques issued to them were dishonoured by the bank.
Mr Rehmani also accused the management and the CBA of embezzling or misusing the workers’ provident funds. According to him, the houses allotted to the workers as quid pro quo for their outstanding dues are also the property of Sindh Industrial Trading Estate. The commission and the workers have knocked at every door but they are still waiting for justice.
The chowkidars of foodgrain godowns too have a tale to tell — a pathetic one indeed. They are being paid Rs920 a month because their services have not been regularized, though some of them have worked in the department for 10 years. They too have been on hunger strike for the last so many days.
The primary teachers too had to stage a demonstration against delay in the payment of their salaries. They complain that they usually get their salaries after 15th of each month instead of in the first week of every month. To say the least about this is that it is because of gross inefficiency of the clerical staff of the city, SDEO and DEO.
However, to arrest the overall situation from deteriorating further, the Zila Nazim should assume the responsibility of forming a bridge between the people and the government. The Khushhal Pakistan Programme, let it be said, becomes irrelevant if the public sector employees are not paid their wages on time.