| March 11, 2002 | Monday | Zilhaj 26, 1422 |
Names are history’s index
Looking for dolphins
Bund police needed to check dacoits
In the supreme national interest!
How to abolish communal riots in India
How the Pari Mahal was destroyed
THERE was a time when we were upfront with our fellow human beings. If you were a slave, a slight variant of some other equally industrious beast of burden, your job was to serve Rome or its other geographical equivalent elsewhere in the world till your dying day.
THERE are moments when we just throw up our hands in despair, not knowing why this must be a city of heartbreaks. If an opinion poll is held, a vast majority would vote for the proposition that nothing goes right in this gigantic habitation. Somehow, becoming a city escapes Karachi. It has everything that makes a big, bustling and (possibly) a happy place, except the soul that elevates a place to be a city.
THE northern districts of Sindh have long been known for activities of dacoits. Until recently Sukkur, Ghotki, Khairpur, Jacobabad, Shikarpur and Larkana were badly affected by unabated incidents of kidnapping for ransom and highway robberies. But with the change of police command in Sukkur range, following the attack on a police party in which seven policemen had lost their lives, the law and order situation seems to have improved greatly.
ALMOST 195 years ago, on Rabi-us-Sani 9, AH 1232 to be exact, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, dressed in his finest robes and seated on his finest horse, one of over a thousand, left the gates of the Lahore Fort and headed towards Shahalami Gate. He told his ministers jokingly that he was going to meet a pari — a fairy.
This was the simple honest message that formed the core of ancient slave-master relationships. The slaves knew what their lot was and they shaped their capacity to love and hate in the company of a sundry other vestigial emotions, all within the perimeter of the basic message, that the slave was a slave for life.
There was nothing hidden, nothing hypocritical in the arrangement. There was no fine print in this. And yet this was not a passive arrangement. There are no passive arrangements in a jungle. There is the instinct to fight or deceive the predator. For the Roman senators there was always a Spartacus lurking round the corner, to challenge the imperial authority against what he or she perceived to be an oppressive system.
At some point after this, during the rise of feudal societies a divine force was invented to justify the rule of the Zillay Ilaahi, Shadow of God on earth. Elaborate rituals were developed to oppress and enslave people, all in the name of a divine force.
India’s Vedic Brahmins were past-masters at this mumbo-jumbo. They not only performed havans or grand prayers around agni, the fire-god, for their own salvation but prayed for the entire cosmos, literally, thereby praying for their slaves, the dasyus, today’s dalits, who lived in it. The Brahmins had the monopoly over knowledge, and so no one else was allowed to read or interpret, much less write the Vedas.
In secular India, the grand havans was relegated to a higher level of sentient existence. To govern the lives of ordinary mortals jostling for equality, liberty, fraternity and since 1975, due to a mystifying clerical error, also for socialism and secularism, a new ritual was invented to keep their faith riveted to the promise of a sugar-candy mountain that was to be the fruit of their relentless toil and seemingly endless patience.
On Feb 28, 2002, at the precise hour and the very minute when, in the full knowledge of the country, a knowledge purveyed by the as yet untamed media, thousands of trained, motivated and organized hordes were on the prowl, lynching their fellow human beings with sadistic felicity and burning their homes, prayer halls and shops as part of a xenophobic tryst with a new, purer, Aryanized country —- it was at that precise time that the state of India, the mighty India of nuclear bomb fame, was busy performing its annual grand havan for the welfare of the larger nation.
That annual ritual or the havan was the annual budget. It has been around for some time now, a kind of 21st century annually updated Vedic hymn that vainly seeks the common good of the people in its vicinity and beyond. It could be seen as a new kind of obscurantism to address the demands of adult suffrage. There was a time in the heady days of the dream-vendor called Pandit Nehru when the poor identified with the havan/budget. Now the rich do.
The reason was simple. Nehru’s daughter alienated the Brahmin’s crucial ancillary lobbies. By nationalizing the banks she alienated the Baniya, the ancient trader class, and by suspending the princely privy purses, a British legacy of yore, she angered the Rajput, the sword-arm of any Brahminical dispensation. So you could hear the Vedic-like shlokas, the music of it all, as 545 deputies, barring any chance absentee, sat glued to the verses that flowed from the divine mouth of Yashwant Sinha.
Fiscal deficit swahaa, interest rates swahaa, oil pool deficit swahaa, concessions to the textiles industry to cope with the arriving end of a helpful multi-fibre agreement swahaa, and so on. Just as the neo-fascist ideologues of Mumbai’s Shiv Sena became the mutated products of the city’s defunct left- leaning girni kaamgar union, representing mercilessly locked-out textiles workers, the rightward shift in the rest of India is reaching its completion. What else can you make of the doting presence of the left-wing deputies at Sinha’s grand ritual, his fifth in a row, when Gujarat was burning?
Couldn’t the Congress, the Samajwadis, the communists and Prime Minister Vajpayee’s own non-BJP allies have walked out to see what was happening outside? Three hours they wasted in the parliament performing the havan.
All of them, not just the fanatical Hindu right, are culpable in the crime in Gujarat. A systematic pogrom of helpless Muslims and their steadily diminishing liberal Hindu allies was going on at full throttle with state connivance. Budgets have been stalled before in parliament for much smaller causes. Imagine the powerful impact of the gesture, had a secular deputy got up, and politely excused himself from the proceedings of the havan, telling the speaker that he would read Mr Sinha’s budget speech later, but he had to go now to help douse the fires raging across Gujarat.
But no one did that and thereby lie some clues to the journey from the ancient Roman democratic state to the modern Indian democracy or its other modern equivalents. During hoary tenure of the Greco-Roman democracies there was never any need to manipulate emotions of the slaves, to raise their hopes to cynically dash them to smithereens. Slaves didn’t elect the senators. They didn’t elect anything.
And yet, in a way in Gujarat, the state of India behaved slightly better than the Western world did when Hutus killed the Tutsis in hundreds of thousands during the Rwanda genocide. In India quite often you can tell the religious or ethnic affinity of an individual by the clothes, language, etc, that he or she may sport. Hutus and Tutsis spoke the same language and shared common religions and to be sure they both shared the same genetic code. Yet they could sniff each other out for a bloody carnage. Such was the power of their hatred.
Interestingly, in the Gujarat massacre the key targets of the fanatical mobs of Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the fascist Bajrang Dal were the liberal people, Hindus and Muslims who cannot be distinguished easily. Ehsan Jafri, the former member of parliament, was also a former Communist Party member who believed in and worked for Hindus and Muslims to leave their respective ghettos and prejudices behind to live together. He was killed after being identified through the electoral roll sheet. That at least is a unique contribution to the world by Indian democracy.
Although Napoleon had called England a nation of shop- keepers, there was something still rather Brahminical about British colonialism. Perhaps Macaulay or the Brahminical Kiplingesque romance, a proselytizing spirit, highlighted this aspect. In contrast, the more recent American imperialism is colonialism’s upstart, Baniya version.
There is no Macaulay or Kipling or the White Man’s burden in America’s global nexus, only room for free-market allies where they can be found, and subversion of societies where they have to be created.
The truth is that the baton of 5,000 years of supposed Hindu civilization (the word Hindu is just about 1,200 years old) has passed from the priestly class of Brahmins to the far less cerebrally inclined Baniya. And if the Baniya has acquired the demeanour of a Brahmin, the sociologists will help you understand the phenomenon quite well — they know this behaviour as Sankritization. And thereby hangs another tale of immediate relevance to our narrative.
Look carefully around yourself. From Pakistan to Nepal, from Bangladesh to Bhutan. Who is the one Indian all of India’s neighbours are most wary of? It is the Baniya. Was it not the Baniya in Pakistan, the Jamaat’s shopkeeper mass base who tried to foist Nizam-i-Mustafa in Pakistan.
Likewise it is the Baniya of Hindustan who is spearheading the campaign for a Hindu Rashtra, not the Brahmin, as is widely understood. Remember that standing tall just behind Lal Krishan Advani during his blood-spilling chariot journey, the rath yatra to Ayodhya, was Narendra Modi, then an obscurantist Baniya preacher in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Gujarat-based seminary of fascism, today’s chief minister of the state.
When Maulana Maudoodi and Guru Golawakar expressed their agreement on the future of the Indian Muslim as a second-class citizen in the arriving Hindu Rashtra, neither of them was thinking of completely exterminating the minorities. But suspending the civic rights of minorities, as the two worthies prescribed, is not permissible under India’s present Constitution. The Gujarat pogroms could be the first step towards removing this obstacle.
The ascent of the Baniya may also explain the obsession with the new kind of havan of the Indian political class, from the left to the right.
Three days before she was jailed for defying India’s judiciary, perceived to be increasingly authoritarian and pro- rich, acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy walked with a few hundred journalists in New Delhi to protest the communal flare-up in Gujarat. Frail and unpretentious, she nevertheless has an amazing reserve of grit and stamina, a personality whose presence is always a source of succour to the underdog from almost any walk of life. I am just reproducing the hand-written text of her defiant note when she was handed the sentence by the Supreme Court for her one-day imprisonment in a strange contempt case. Arundhati wrote:
I stand by what I said. And I am prepared to suffer the consequences.
The dignity of the court will be upheld by the quality of their judgments. The quality of their judgments will be assessed by the people of this country.
The message is clear. Any citizen who dares to criticize the court order does so at his or her peril.
The judgment only confirms what I said in my affidavit. It is a sad realization for me, because I feel the Supreme Court of India is an important institution and the citizens of India have high expectations from it.
In any competition for the biggest steel-and-concrete jungle in Asia, Karachi would take the cake. We have more, and loftier, multi-storeyed giants than anywhere in the subcontinent. Right now, in I. I. Chundrigar Road one is rising feverishly to become the ‘tallest’ of the tall. This only means more and more of the same — only some tall, some taller. Nowhere is that sense of belonging. Neither the people feel they belong to the places, nor the places embrace the people.
In our culture, the bond with the place of birth used to be almost umbilical. People proudly carried the name of their home city or home village as part of their name and fame. You cannot imagine of Jigar without the ‘Moradabadi’, or Majeed without the ‘Lahori’, or the greatest of them all, Hafiz without ‘Shirazi’.
What is a city, or even a dwelling, without a tradition? That is, without the footprints of generations, harking back to unforgettable experiences and encounters — ecstatic as well as agonizing, thrilling as well as chastening. The millions crawling all over the place by themselves do not a city make. What would Lahore be without Bhatigate; or Peshawar without Kissakhawani?
Admittedly, as compared with Lahore or Peshawar or Thatta, Karachi is a mere minor. It does not have an immense lot to brag or dream about. This only emphasizes the need to preserve every bit of inheritance and legacy that we have. Because we do not have an abundance, we ought to be keenly jealous in guarding and preserving our relatively modest baggage.
Due notice must of course be taken of the efforts, still so few and far between, that have lately been made by some thoughtful people. A number of buildings and landmarks have been identified for their value as the city’s inheritance. Some solid work has been done. Let us start building on this beginning.
It takes some courage, perhaps, to be honest in telling the genuine from the counterfeit. Every bit of heritage counts. In the life of a truly self-conscious city, there has to be what one might call the city’s self-esteem. People do at times succumb to smaller instincts — due mostly to a misreading of the value of their inherited assets.
One example should do. We turned the ‘Ram Bagh’ into ‘Aram Bagh’. That must have been in a fit of some irrational rage. That happened when we were very, very young and possibly driven by anger. Socrates tells us it is not given to man to be angry and wise at the same time. We were angry then, hence liable to err. We are mature now, or ought to be. Let us not make the same mistake twice.
Now an educated effort is being made to preserve the city’s heritage in terms of stately structures, sites, landmarks, gardens, roads and the like. In our preoccupation with the most impressive we are likely to ignore the meaningfulness of the modest.
This city’s streets and lanes bear some names that are imperishable part of our history and heritage. These names have been written by the ‘finger’ that defines destiny. Personal likes, or petty impulses, cannot possibly erase what has been etched out on the slate of history.
We have taken some indefensible liberties. There is some consolation that the Hindu Gymkhana retains its true name and is home to a good cause.
Playing funny games with the names of places, of parks and streets and lanes cannot possibly blot out names that are the index to our history. We are now a grown-up, and must ensure that we behave as people of an adult culture.
By dynamiting two thousand-year-old rock carvings, the Taliban have insulted their history, destroying themselves in the insane pursuit of inane shadows.
Leave history alone to tell its authentic tale in Karachi. We must take the rough with the smooth, because facts of historical experience cannot be wished away.
There is something petty about the idea of changing names of streets and lanes. It is like the stupid King Canute ordering back the waves of the ocean. It is unwise to erase or to rewrite chapters of history.
We ought to respect and preserve in its authentic originality what little of our inheritance we have in this city. Great cities are built, run and preserved by people of high minds and large hearts. In New Delhi, Aurangzeb Road is what it was. So is Bahadur Shah Road. Only it is ‘Marg’ for ‘Road’. Please refrain from falsifying history. Truth will remain sacred, even if it be bitter to some immature tastes.
IT all began with the prospect of a rather boring Sunday staring me in my face. Since work on other days is so hectic, I had decided on a policy of not doing anything at all on a Sunday, and by that I mean doing absolutely nothing. Other than, of course, watching TV. But then again, how much television can you watch? Quite a lot if your me and have access, like most people in Phases V and VI have, to the Paramount Comedy Channel. But there’s a limit to even doing that.
So, off it was to a friend’s place. He was in town visiting from Saudi Arabia, where he had recently moved to from Dubai. Now as we all know, social life in Riyadh, for a single unmarried guy is not going to be all that rocking. My friend’s saving grace is that he happens to live in a compound which has its own sports facilities, stores and since the residents are all expats it’s not that bad. But Karachi, he says, seems much better than Riyadh (and more on that, i.e. the city’s quite happening social life, later).
The weather was superb with clear skies and very good visibility, and so I thought why not show my friend — he said he had never been on this route — the part of Karachi’s coast that most people do not get to see, i.e. not Hawke’s Bay, Sandspit or Seaview but something much better. And this can be seen if you take the drive that takes you past the Carlton Hotel and the Area 51 bowling alley, past the DHA Golf Club, along Korangi Creek, then right along the shore of the sea, and a long U turn towards the far end of Seaview and Darakshan. This means that if you were to drive down Khayaban-i-Hafiz, follow the road, make a left and head towards the Carlton and keep following the curving road for a good 10 or so kilometres you would end up on the other side, right near the Village.
Well, a lot of development has taken place in this area over the years. We drove by the bowling alley and to our left we could see Korangi Creek and a long stretch of mangroves. The sea is quite different here in that there are no waves, its more like an inlet, a quite bay or a lagoon perhaps. The road then veers right and you come to the DHA Golf Club from where you have to take a right and then a left turn. Further down this road is a place known to many younger people as Devil’s Point. From there we made a right turn and after a few kilometres decided to park our car on the left at look at the panoramic view before us.
To the extreme right, in the far distance we could see the rocks of probably Manora Island. Right in front, on the horizon, was the outline of an island, and before it was a long sand bar. A stream of small ships was progressing from that island to destinations on our side of the sea. We could a flock of sea gulls slowly descending on the surface of the water, and just then I spotted what seemed to be a stream of water blowing up from apparently a blowhole. We couldn’t really believe what we were seeing because who would ever think that on a simple drive in Defence Phase 8 and beyond you would end up seeing whales. Well, they weren’t whales but they were something all right. Soon enough, my friend and I were amazed to see at least two dolphins come out halfway through the water and then dive back in. It happened in a flash so we weren’t exactly sure what we’d seen. But then it happened again, and again, and again. We had stumbled on a school of dolphins moving in the direction of the creek, apparently coming in from the open ocean.
The next day at work I asked Dr A A Quraishy, a former director of the Karachi Zoo and an acknowledged expert on wildlife, and he confirmed that the coastal waters of Karachi were home to at least three species of dolphins.
Some well-meaning Pakistanis have created a web page where anyone who wants to express their condolence to slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s wife, Mariane, can go and sign their name. As of the day this was written, March 9, over 3,400 Pakistanis had signed their names on the condolence message.
It reads: “Dear Ms. Pearl, We, the undersigned citizens of Pakistan, are deeply saddened by the death of your husband. For however little it may now be worth to you, please know that the average Pakistani means you no harm. We unequivocally condemn the perpetrators of this enormity [sic] they are a plague on Pakistan, and the majority of her [sic] citizens would prefer to see their kind destroyed. Incidents like this serve no nationalistic or religious purpose. They harm innocents and tarnish the very causes they claim to champion. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Sincerely, xxxxxxx”
Those who wants to go and sign the condolence message can access it at the following address: http://www.petitiononline.com/fahdbeg/petition.html .
We Karachiites are pretty sick and tired of the builders’ mafia that apparently wreaks havoc — or so the tabloids would have us believe — on the city. Buildings are constructed but with no space for parking, or the building plan is violated with more floors being built, or the structures juts out too much on the road. The best example of this gross violation of laws seems to be a building on the corner of the Teen Talwar Roundabout which is not even a quarter complete — only the ground floor is complete — but which has become one of the city’s largest shopping areas for women’s clothing and related goods.
However, a colleague who was recently invited by the designers of another building in the Clifton area — The Forum — came back pleasantly surprised.
She writes: “Just like all five fingers of a hand are not equal, all the newly constructed buildings in Karachi are not alike. Designed by Habib Fida Ali, the 11 storey building will be formally opened this summer. Some of us who have driven by it might know that it already has some premium shops — that they don’t seem to be doing as well in another story though.
Like the very popular Point, this building too will have a food court to complement the many offices planned for it. Apparently, the structure is earthquake-resistant and has a fire-fighting system (which all buildings should have anyway) and its own power generation plant.
Thankfully, and this is perhaps where it might be different from other structures — as in the law is being followed for a change — there is a parking lot for up to 450 cars.
A large park next to the Forum is going to be developed once the building in complete with help from one of the multinational tenants in the building, Lasmo, which has been having a bit of a trouble in its operations in Dadu these days.
Perhaps, by this summer The Point might have some real competition.
Under its affable new director, Charlie Walker, the British Council has become quite active. Recently, he threw a dinner at his residence to welcome Dr Fred Burke, Director for South Asia of Cambridge International Examinations and Casper Bartington, Regional Officer, of South Asia Edexcel International. Both gentlemen were in Karachi to organize and conduct teachers’ training workshops. Dr. Burke, a nature lover, was glad to not have missed the city’s flower show. He also, it seemed, had made a special effort by trying to great people in Urdu.
In fact, Mr Walker, the director, is quite well-versed in Urdu too. He can even read Urdu after having learnt to read Arabic during a posting in Egypt. Dr. Burke commented during the dinner that papers here carried a bit of news from everywhere in the world instead of concentrating on domestic developments.
Other than that, the British Council hosted a reception this past Friday to introduce the Natural Theatre Company, in Karachi to perform street shows throughout the city. The troupe has four members who will visit different parts of the city and act various routines right on the street — but more on that later. — By Karachian
Since the new setup has been put in place, police have no one to recover from the kidnappers, nor have the dacoits made an attempt to kidnap one in any district under the Sukkur range. The police claim that serious crimes like highway robberies have also been curbed effectively.
The police maintain they have been able to achieve the results through coordination between neighbouring districts, as well as by adopting a comprehensive preventive strategy, such as raiding the known hideouts of the dacoits in various districts and arresting a large number of dacoits and patharidars during last three months.
Thus the Sukkur and the Shikarpur police jointly raided the hideouts of Gura Teghani and Shah Jo Belo. Similarly, the Khairpur and the Larkana police organized raids against the gang of Nazroo Narejo.
The police were able to free, within three months, as many as 26 persons from the clutches of the kidnappers. It after many years that there is not a single person in the custody of the kidnappers in any of the five districts in the Sukkur range.
Moreover, in the past few months 31 dacoits were arrested by the Sukkur district police, 16 by the Khairpur district police and 15 by the Ghotki district police. Moreover, 62 patharidars were arrested by the police of these districts collectively. Also, some dacoits were killed in encounters, though the encounter that took place in Sukkur was much disputed.
But the sixty-four dollar question is, will this happy situation last for ever, or is it an interlude, to be followed by turmoil again? There’s nothing permanent in the world but what is required is constant vigilance and ceaseless efforts to prolong the benefits of the achievement made so far. This can be achieved by keeping the pressure on, and remaining in hot pursuit of, the dacoits. There can be no two opinion about the fact that main sanctuaries of the dacoits are in the areas that include Rounti forest, Gura Teghani, Shah Jo Belo, Baggarji, Bindo forest and Saadh forest. The provincial government will have to provide the local police ample resources to rout out the dacoits from all these areas, once for all.
At present, the police have cleared a number of no-go areas around these safe heavens of dacoits by establishing strong police presence there. It may be mentioned here that the Sukkur range was provided additional resources from other parts of the provinces to restore law and order. It is also feared that once these additional resources are withdrawn from these districts, the police may not be able to maintain a strong presence in the katcha area.
One way to check the dacoit menace, according to experienced police officers, is to establish permanent pickets along the flood protective bund. This conclusion is also drawn from the temporary pickets set up along the bund in Khairpur and Larkana that has made the task of the police much easier.
However, establishing permanent police pickets and equipping them with proper communication and logistics will involve a lot of money. Whether the government will spare that much for such projects will depend on the importance it attaches to the safety and security the people.
KARO-KARI: A former additional advocate-general of Sindh says the government should come out with a heavy hand on those who practise the black custom of Karo-kari in which hundreds of innocent women and men are murdered because the perpetrators of this crime have their own axe to grind, such as usurpation of someone else’s property or showing downing their opponents. Speaking about the new police system, he says Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Ghotki districts in upper Sindh should get due attention. He also seeks a strong role for the lawyers’ community under the new reforms to help build a civil society.
THE group of political heavy weights, which calls itself the Pakistan Muslim League, carrying the label of Quaid-i-Azam (PML-QA) has failed miserably so far to establish firmly its credentials as the Aasli te Waddhi King’s Party. And neither has it successfully cleared the widespread suspicion that it does have some kind of links with the Establishment. Its failure to be recognized as the King’s Party is costing it heavily in terms of its ability to attract more and more winable candidates into its fold. On the other hand its failure to distance itself completely from the Establishment seems to be rendering the electoral fate of even those among its members who can win their seats on their own highly uncertain because traditionally Pakistanis vote against even the perceived Lotas. The King’s Party’s only claim to political respectability being its self-accorded label of Quaid-i-Azam, the PML-QA has already lost out in its attempt to add some more artificial respectability to its name when the nationally recognized political Cynic, Pir of Pagara snubbed three of its stalwarts who had gone to Pir Jo Ghoth to invite him to become the patron-in-chief of the party.
Everybody now knows what had happened between the three PML-QA leaders and Pir Pagara in Pir Jo Ghoth. But only few know what the Pir showed to some others while these three were still his guests. As the story goes, when all the three PML-QA stalwarts had retired for the night after having been slighted by the Pir, the man who by his own confession takes his political guidance from horoscope and instruction from the GHQ is reported to have invited the as yet unidentified fourth member of the PML-QA team into his Hujra and presented him with the horoscopic reasons for not accepting the offer to become the party’s patron-in-chief. The Pir is said to have backed his presentation with evidence from two published books on horoscope, one written by himself and the other by some obscure author in Bangalore (India). The Pir’s horoscopic reasons for not accepting the PML-QA’s offer as conveyed later by the man briefed by him is politically too blasphemous to be repeated here in his exact words. What, however, one assumes is that the Pir and his stars do not see the present setup lasting beyond April-May. So the Pir believes he would only be wasting his time by becoming the patron-in-chief of a party whose very existence is dependent on the continuation of the present setup.
This prediction of the Pir seems to have devastated the top leadership of the PML-QA completely. And in its desperation it foolishly accepted another foolish suggestion by its handlers in the Establishment and rushed to the interior of Sindh challenging the PPP. It was too diabolic a scheme on the part of those who suggested to Ejazul Haq and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to go to Larkana, the birth place of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who is perceived to have been murdered by Ejaz’s father by misusing the judicial process and signature on whose death warrant was put by Gen Ziaul Haq using the pen believed to have been presented to the General on the spot by Shujaat’s father. Even this perhaps would not have provoked the reaction that their presence did in Larkana because every Pakistani politician no matter whose son or daughter has a right to go and ask for votes in any part of the country. But when they started hurling attacks against Bhutto’s daughter and even using the same language that some of the members of the present regime are using against her, it certainly was too much of a provocation for anybody in Larkana, even the most peaceable of them all to resist the temptation to react aggressively. Perhaps if untainted leaders like Imran Khan or Omar Asghar Khan had spoken in the same vein against Benazir in Larkana, they would not have faced such a hostile reaction from the public. But perhaps the people of Larkana were not prepared to listen to the time-tested leaders like Ejaz and Shujaat criticizing Benazir and that too when she was not in the country to defend herself.
The negative reaction in Sindh to their untimely visit and undiplomatic uttering has seemingly made the PML-QA even more desperate and like the gambler who in the hope of breaking the losing streak keeps on throwing good money after the bad the party then decided to stage country-wide protest rallies in front of the PPP offices. There was nothing to be gained politically by staging such rallies. But perhaps the PML-QA handlers in the Establishment who themselves seem to be becoming even more desperate as nothing seemed to be going their way while the election date was fast closing in thought that if they could create a law and order situation by pitting the PML(Q) and PPP workers against each other on the streets, they could have a ‘justifiable’ reason in hand to postpone elections indefinitely if they felt at some stage before October 2002 that they would not be able to achieve the desired results from the polls.
The most disturbing part of the whole story is the government’s shameless selective use of the law banning political activities in the country. The day the PML-QA held its public meeting in the interior towns of Sindh the PTV in its 9pm Khabarnana telecast the news with shots from the venue.
Interestingly this was preceded by a report on a meeting of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy in Lahore in which the ARD leadership was quoted as requesting the government for permission to hold a public meeting in Lahore on March 23. So far there has been no response from the government on this request. And so far neither a case has been instituted against the PML-QA for violating the law of the land by not only holding public meetings in the interior of Sindh but also staging country-wide protest rallies in front of PPP offices. What kind of a ‘genuine’ democracy is Gen Pervez Musharraf trying to introduce in the country? Or is it all another attempt at taking this hapless nation on a joy ride in the so-called supreme national interest which in fact is no more than the vested interest of a few who hold the gun in one hand, the propaganda tools like TV and radio in the other and the judiciary lodged in their pockets? —Onlooker
THERE was this report in the Khaleej Times, dated March 3. It said that the Indian Home Minister, Mr LK Advani, “under criticism for not leading from the front, to contain the communal conflagration in Gujarat is said to have been advised by the intelligence agencies not to visit the trouble spots”.
There were reports that various intelligence agencies had information that a militant group planned to target Mr Advani, the paper wrote. It added that the ISI of Pakistan might have a hand behind the attack (on the Sabarmati Express in which more than fifty Hindus died). Since then, Mr Advani has maintained a low profile but it is felt that he should have rushed to the violence-hit city.
Mr Advani, it may be recalled, played a significant role in the Ahmedabad earthquake last year when he had “camped in the city to oversee the relief operations”. Meanwhile, his protege, the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, has been defending the massacre of the Muslims in the state. Dawn Washington correspondent reported on March 4 that Mr Modi had “publicly defended the anti-Muslim violence”. On the train attack (on the Sabarmati Express), he had said that “every action had an equal and opposite reaction”. He then praised the state population for “their remarkable restraint” under grave provocation. Mr Modi then refused to reject all calls for an “inquiry into the police and the government’s handing of the riots”.
On March 6, the Washington Post reported that Hindu activists in the two carriages that were burnt were behaving like hooligans. “So that’s it. Mr Advani’s blue-eyed boy Narendra Modi has said that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Let’s concede the point for Modi is an honourable man. He has also praised the Gujarati Hindus for this remarkable restraint. Let us accept that remarkable restraint was indeed shown. The Hindus should have slaughtered many, many more Muslims. One wonders why the violence is beginning to subside. It must be encouraged by all means. In fact, Mr Modi should be requested to lead the fresh assaults on the Muslims himself. Let him be brave, bold and suitably monstrous. All Muslims must either be exterminated or forced to flee the state.
As for the ISI, it must have had a hand in the state violence. The Inter-Services Intelligence service has been up to no good in Gujarat to far away Kolkota. In fact, the ISI must be banned altogether. It had been fomenting trouble in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. When Mrs Indra Gandhi ordered the army to storm the temple, she was clearly acting under ISI advice. It engineered Sanjay Gandhi’s death in an air crash and it manipulated Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in a suicide attack. Nobody has ever said ‘no’ to the ISI with the result that it has spread its tentacles through the length and breadth of India.
Such is the extent of the ISI’s perfidy that whenever Mr Advani and George Fernandes sneeze in New Delhi, be sure it is the ISI that did it. The ISI, in fact, has a lot more to answer for and we must seek assistance from RAW to expose its nefarious designs in the world’s largest democracy. And by the way, anything that happens in the “world’s largest democracy” is strictly its internal affair which admits of no interference by the world’s strongest democracy which is the United States. Let President Bush and Secretary Powell mind their own business and let Narendra Modi do as he pleases in Gujarat. And let the US ambassador in Islamabad publicly endorse whatever Mr Modi has done or proposes to do in Gujarat. And let us take every act of brutality in Kashmir and elsewhere in India lying down and enjoy it!
I would have ended my piece on Gujarat here but a news item (Dawn, March 8) caught my eye. It said that the Indian police had arrested some seventy bookmakers who spread rumours about communal riots in Gujarat spreading to other areas in order to make easy money.
The bookies — all living in Rajasthan — were offering odds of 4-1 and 6-1 on the violence crossing the Gujarat borders.
After the arrests, police recovered a large number of betting slips and two dozen mobile phones. Excellent business it was had it been allowed to continue. You see how wonderfully simple it was? Supposing you had put a packet on the riots spreading beyond Gujarat, the only thing you required was to go to a neighbouring state and instigate a few anti-Muslim riots in order to make a small fortune. But this, alas, was not to be. I have all the sympathy in the world for the Indian gamblers who stood to make a bit of money. But not to worry, dear Indians. I have good news for you. The era of anti-Muslim communal riots is at an end. Now there will be pro-Muslim riots in which more Muslims will be killed than they ever were in Gujarat. The Indians will kill Muslims out of the goodness of their hearts, more out of compassion than hatred. They will be personally led by that, LK Advani and his equally wonderful friends like George Fernandes and Mr Jaswant Singh. My odds are 10-9 — a bit too close for comfort but still you can’t lose come what may. It will be small money but it will be certain money. Any takers? Mind you, it a no-win situation for me but since I am known for my generosity by friend and foe. “Kill for compassion” will be my slogan. My second slogan will be: “I have a rupee and lot more for every Indian.” Come one, come all. Let’s all put Robespierre and his guillotine to shame.
There is this organization in India with a membership of 1,200. It is called the Lovers Organization for Voluntary Exhibition. LOVE stands for that. Now what do these voluntary exhibitionists want? They are demanding a special area for romantics where the couples kiss and hug “without embarrassment from nosy police officers or inopportune hawkers”.
But Kolkota Mayor Subroto Mukherjee says: “There is no room for love zones for romantics. This is a bogus demand. Let them protest!”
Ah, but Mayor Mukherjee does not know what he is missing. Here’s a golden opportunity to get rid of as many Muslims as you fancy. Just invite a Muslim to a love zone, hug him (affectionately) and then stab him in the back with loving care.
And we have a precedent for it. You see, there was this famous Marhatta who invited an equally famous Muslim general and offered him great hospitality. So when it was time for the Muslim commander to take his leave, the famous Marhatta shed crocodile tears and begged for a farewell embrace. The Muslim commander — Muslim as he was — agreed readily to embrace his Marhatta host. The latter embraced the commander most warmly and while he was declaring eternal friendship and loyalty, to the former, he took out a dagger from the folds of his gown and drove it in the commander’s back who subsided to the ground without knowing what had happened to him. I don’t know anything about Kolkota but free love zones are essential for Ahmedabad and other cities and towns in Gujarat where they must have state patronage and where Muslims can be hugged and stabbed to death at leisure. What’s more, free love zones will abolish communal riots for ever. There will, you see, be no need for them.
On arrival, he was received by the custodians of the house of the late Nawaz Aliuddin Wazir Khan, the subedar of Lahore during the Shah Jehan era. The house had acquired the name of Pari Mahal. So lavish was the entertainment and so varied the programme, that the maharajah granted a massive Rs100, a huge sum in those days, for the upkeep of the house. Whether he met his pari or not, that we will leave to the reader’s imagination, for the maharajah loved horses and women with gusto. But the fact remains that he had visited what was one of the finest houses — havelis — of Lahore, and that of a man whose contribution to the city of Lahore remains, by all counts, outstanding even to this day.
There is nothing left of Pari Mahal today, for in the period just before partition, the grand building was being knocked down and its bricks sold off by a contractor, and in the fire of partition, everything went up in smoke or was removed with callous abandon in the name of development. In the area that we today call the D-point parking lot in Shahalami stood the palace of Wazir Khan. Next to the Pari Mahal, even today, a small, partly destroyed, yet beautiful mosque stands with two minarets. This is the Pari Mahal mosque.
The palace was a huge and grand haveli that housed Wazir Khan’s family. It had its own small gardens and fountains. The subedear of Lahore made a name for himself in Shah Jehan’s reign by building in Lahore the finest mosque that stands today, named aptly as the Wazir Khan mosque. Why did the name pari come about? According to one source, the Afghan women who lived in this palace were beautiful and fairer than their neighbours, and everyone mentioned them as fairies, a common use of the word for a fair and beautiful woman even today.
Maharajah Ranjit Singh took possession of the house after he effectively ended Muslim rule over the city and used it for his own “creative” ends. He made sure the building was kept in top condition. Just before him the three joint-rulers of Lahore, Lehna Singh, Sobha Singh and Gujjar Singh, between them stripped the Pari Mahal palace of its beautiful stones and sold them. It is said the Maharajah managed to retrieve some of the stones and repair the Pari Mahal. Even though he used a major portion of the huge house as a gunpowder store, he still maintained a portion for himself. When Sikh rule ended a lot of people occupied small portions of the palace and started paying rent to the Maharajah of Kashmir, who by then, thanks to the British, claimed ownership.
By the time partition came, the entire building was set ablaze and then razed to the ground in the name of development. However, the small mosque next to it remains, a testimony to the master builder of Lahore. The entire mosque does not stand today. Just a small portion and two minarets are intact. On both sides of this small mosque one can see the old Mughal-era walls, a testimony to the once grand palace and mosque that surely deserve a mention in the history of the ancient city.
Wazir Khan’s main feat shall remain the grand mosque he built, undoubtedly the finest in Lahore, and of far greater beauty and significance than the Badshahi Masjid opposite the fort. Wazir Khan’s biggest contribution was the opening of a school and university of religious learning on the side of the mosque. He set aside a huge fund to ensure that the tradition of learning continued after he was no longer there. For this, a series of shops were built to contribute funds to the upkeep of this seat of learning.
And so ended the legend of Pari Mahal, the finest haveli that existed in Lahore. The Sikhs plundered and misused it, the British turned a blind eye to it, and the flames of partition consumed it, with the new-era “claim generation” selling off its bricks to put an end to history. Half a century has gone by and now it is being realized that the Walled City of Lahore needs to be protected. My father used to tell me that this was the world’s largest living museum, and live it must to have a meaning, for the people of Lahore, who in all their shades and hues, make up the real Lahore. Special laws are needed to stop the new soul-destroying constructions that are taking place. If we are ever to rebuild our ‘pari mahals,’ a special effort is needed over a long and sustained period of time.