THERE is little doubt that we have become a society increasingly violent. Hardly had the people of the twin cities got over the bomb attack on the church in the diplomatic enclave in which five worshippers were killed, and a little before that the massacre of 11 worshippers at a mosque in Rawalpindi, when they were subjected to the double shock of two grisly murder-cum-suicide incidents in Rawalpindi which took place within a week of each other.

While insensitive and irresponsible policies that breed extremism, intolerance, hatred and polarization may largely explain the “terrorist” and “sectarian” type of violence, how does one explain the incidence of everyday kind of societal violence like suicides, murders and other kinds of impromptu aggression on the streets?

According to the police, in both incidents the fathers had killed their own children, and in one case the wife also, before killing themselves. In the first incident, the father shot his two teenaged sons and wife before shooting himself, and in the second, the father strangled his three young children in their sleep before hanging himself.

What can possibly drive a parent to such a stage whereby he sees no better alternative or solution to his problems than to indulge in such abnormally aggressive behaviour towards his own children and family?

Whether the cases were actually suicides, as the police say they were, or whether the families were murdered by someone else, in either case resort was taken to violence rather than more peaceful and legal means to solve problems.

Barring these two sensational incidents, other more ordinary incidents have also been appearing in the press which point towards society moving towards greater resort to violence as a means of resolving everyday problems. The following recent two examples from the twin cities illustrate the point.

Two vehicles collided along Murree Road in Rawalpindi and the driver of one of the cars took out his gun and started shooting at the other car. Thankfully nobody was injured.

Two young men pumped eight bullets into a teacher right in front of the latter’s house in I-10 sector in Islamabad because he had allegedly taken money for marks enhancement in examinations but somehow did not or could not deliver. Miraculously the teacher survived.

There are plenty of other examples reported from the outskirts of the twin cities whereby apparently frivolous issues and petty reasons lead to fatal violence. Two such examples appeared in Dawn on April 22.

A 20-year-old man quarrelled with his father in a village in the Chakwal district after which he hanged himself on a tree in a nearby wooded area.

An exchange of hot words over cattle grazing among three young men in a village in Taxila area led to the gunning down of one of them by the other two.

All these examples are indicative of an increasing tendency for people to seek to settle problems and disputes by taking the law into their own hands. Why? How is it that society has reached this point of intolerance whereby the more peaceful and legal ways like discussion, debate and the arbitration process are no longer the preferred means of resolving problems?

In developed societies, the blame for violent behaviour is often put on the influence of violence on television. Even the plane attack on the twin towers on Sept 11 was attributed by some to the influence of similar scenes from make-believe Hollywood movies.

But the influence of television is not a sufficient explanation for the many kinds of violence that are taking place in our society. Television may give people ideas about how to go about committing violent acts but it does not explain why people should be so angered or goaded to commit aggression in the first place.

Take, for instance, the number of deaths from burning caused by domestic kitchen fires. According to available statistics, at least 300 women die annually in such incidents in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area alone.

Whether these are suicides, as the in-laws often claim, or whether they are murders, as the women’s parents often say they are, the disturbing fact is that many people are resorting to violent means of behaviour to solve their everyday domestic problems rather than resolving them through discussion, arbitration or through the legal process.

It is obvious that women who commit suicide in this manner do so generally because, for various reasons, they see no alternative route. This points to a low understanding of their legal rights, an insufficient comprehension of the law, and most important of all, lack of available alternative routes to them.

On the other hand, the knowledge that one can get away easily with murder, either through bribery and influence or through glaring loopholes in certain laws, emboldens both husbands and in-laws to commit this violence. Responsibility for this state of affairs lies largely with the governments, past and present, for not enacting adequate laws against such crimes and for not ensuring that the rule of law holds sway.

A society that does not impress hard enough upon its people that crime and breaking the law do not pay will find its people increasingly believing that they can get away with breaking the laws, ranging from as minor an offence like cheating in examinations to murder.

This kind of environment in turn generates even more violence as the lack of confidence in the legal process as a fair and impartial means of obtaining justice and equity tend to drive more people to take the law into their own hands.

Add to this already violent environment, a society under pressure from inadequate social services, bad economic conditions and escalating prices, and we have a perfect recipe for social disorder if not a complete social breakdown.

The results are already appearing before us: the vicious circles of violence bred by increasing discontentment, frustration, anger and intolerance.

THEY quite certainly did not know each other and had very probably never met. Yet, there is an amazing similarity in the essential persona of Geetaben, the Hindu woman who was stripped and lynched in the streets of Gujarat by members of her own faith, because she was married to a Muslim — and Mariane Pearl, who refused to accuse an entire community, despite severe pressure from bigots within her own, when her Jewish husband was beheaded by Muslim fanatics —— and Barbara Lee, the lone voice in the US Congress who not only cautioned against her country’s military campaign against terrorism but quickly spotted scope for devious mischief in Washington’s approach to the global gambit.

Last Sept 14, the US House of Representatives voted to grant President George W. Bush authority to use military force in retaliation against the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, after the Senate had earlier voted unanimously for a similar measure. In an act of great courage, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) cast the lone vote against the House resolution.

In a stirring floor speech, Lee expressed her grief and “sorrow for the families and loved ones who were killed and injured” and called for bringing to justice the “vicious murderers” behind “these outrageous acts” of Sept 11. She then implored her colleagues to “think through the implications of our actions today — let us more fully understand their consequences.”

She pleaded: “I do not want to see this spiral out of control ... we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war.” Prophetic words. Since Lee’s historic vote heard around the world, the Bush administration has embarked on a crusade against “evil,” projecting open-ended military involvement anywhere in the world in its “war on terrorism”. From South Asia to the Middle East and other parts of the world, in the short span since Sept 11, war and violence are threatening to spiral out of control — bringing humanitarian crises of epic proportions to regions of the world, as well as grave consequences for the future of humanity.

As renowned American leftist intellectual Juan Lopez observed, a growing number of members of Congress have begun raising questions about plans for limitless war abroad, the bloated military budget and other aspects of the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic agenda.

After the momentous Sept 14 vote, her supporters coined the expression, “Barbara Lee speaks for me.”

In her remarks on the floor of Congress on Sept 14, Lee also warned against allowing “our justified anger” against those responsible for the Sept 11 tragedy to “inflame prejudice against all Arab Americans, Muslims, Southeast Asians, and any other people because of race, religion, or ethnicity.” She closed by repeating the words a member of the clergy had pronounced earlier that day at the services for the Sept 11 victims: “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

What Barbara Lee had told the US Congress, Mariane Pearl has been telling the whole world. Her message of religious tolerance would have rung hollow had it not carried with it a sharp, stinging critique of the times we live in.

In a finely focussed argument against religious fanaticism, Mariane has made a couple of astute and palpably sympathetic observations about what she calls the silent majority in Pakistan.

“I first learned about Pakistan’s silent majority at a time when most of the world found itself stunned and speechless at the killing of thousands on Sept 11,” she wrote last week in the New York Times.

The Pearls, armed with their spontaneous affinity with fellow humans rather than with the religious masks of those they met, had no fear about being in a Muslim country.

“We had both travelled throughout the Muslim world. Danny had just spent five years covering West Asia. As a girl, I had spent my holidays with a friend in Algeria, and Islam, the second largest religion in France, was very much a part of my childhood at home in Paris,” says Mariane.

“We wished we had been visiting Pakistan in a quieter time. At our first meeting we heard from a group of women who advised the city of Karachi. They expressed anger at Western reporters for blaming the attacks on Muslim fundamentalists and Osama bin Laden without proof. They asked us to think carefully about our responsibilities as Westerners and as journalists.”

The Pearls were told by their Pakistani interlocutors that most people did not share the opinions of fundamentalists. But they found this reassuring voice of the moderate majority was nowhere to be seen or heard.

“Danny and I kept talking with all sorts of people in Pakistan. These conversations were honest and sincere; our interlocutors talked about what they really felt. Some blamed their country’s troubles on corruption and previous regimes. Others blamed India or the West, and sometimes both. All expressed shame and anger at how terrorists and their supporters had stolen Islam for their own purposes by promoting hatred and violence,” says Mariane.

Then Daniel Pearl was kidnapped. But that was only part of the suffering Mariane had to endure.

“Neighbours shut their windows and front doors to me. I cannot really say of what they were afraid. Was it the police? Gossip? Was it some earlier trauma? Was it Pakistan’s intelligence agencies? The terrorists? Themselves?,” she wonders.

She says she prayed that the majority would not remain silent or paralysed by fears. She prayed that people would come out and defend their faith and country — and defend their own dignity by voicing their rejection of criminals determined to destroy the future of Pakistan and the hope of its citizens to live in peace.

“My prayers were realized in part. During this ordeal, I was surrounded by Pakistani and Muslim people as courageous and beautiful as those terrorists appeared ugly and without souls. I can never be grateful enough for their graciousness, a ray of hope in the midst of darkness,” says Mariane stoically.

In the five weeks when she waited in Karachi for her husband to come back to her and to their unborn son, the Pakistani police reported at least 11 killings of Shia Muslims in Karachi alone. Those slain were mostly doctors and professionals. Sectarian terrorists were pursuing their work of destruction. They were planting even deeper the seeds of fear in the hearts of people, making the silence of the majority even more painful. Such fear and terror can destroy a society.

“When I finally had to acknowledge Danny’s bloody murder, I decided not to leave Pakistan right away. I wanted to show defiance against fear. In those days, absorbing the murder of my husband, I received the most heartfelt letters of support from all over the world. I then heard from the majority in Pakistan as it abandoned silence.” Mariane Pearl, by simply standing her ground in the midst of darkness, was able to give a voice to the silent majority.

Of the three brave women that I would salute for the glimmer of hope they give in this hour of need, it is difficult to say whether Geetaben’s ordeal was more horrific than her gut-wrenching end. A picture doing the rounds tell the tale quite vividly.

On a hot and dusty patch of asphalt lies the naked body of Geetaben, her clothes stripped off and thrown carelessly near her. One piece of her underclothing lies a foot away from her body, the other is clutched desperately in her left hand. Her left arm is bloodied, as is her torso, which appears to have deep gashes. Her left thigh is covered in blood and she is wearing a small anklet. Her plastic chappals sit sadly alongside her lifeless body and in the middle of the photo frame is a gnarled, red, hate-filled remnant of a brick, perhaps the one her assailants used to deliver their final blow.

Geetaben was killed in Ahmedabad on March 25, in broad daylight, near a bus-stop close to her home. She was a Hindu who in the eyes of what Siddharth Varadarajan calls Hindu separatists, currently ruling Gujarat, had committed the cardinal sin of falling in love with a Muslim man. When the Sangh mobsters came for him, she stood her ground long enough for him to flee. But the killers seemed more interested in her. She was dragged out, stripped naked and killed.

“No lethal dose of Zyklon-B delivered surreptitiously in a darkened, secluded chamber,” says Varadarajan, one of a small band of journalists for whom her death has become the rallying point against fascism.

“Geetaben’s murder was never meant to be a furtive, secret affair. The holocaust that Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s administration presided over was engineered in the knowledge that the Indian state never punishes murderers with political connections. Delhi 1984, Bombay 1993, Gujarat 2002. Neither Congress, Third Front or BJP believes in Nurembergs,” wrote Varadarajan.

“Even in death, with your helpless, innocent body bloodied and your clothes ripped apart, you showed more courage, humanity and dignity and more fidelity to the Hindu religion than Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has done in the past month. When the day of reckoning comes, no one will dare ask you where you were when Gujarat was burning,” says Varadarajan in his moving tribute to the woman who will inspire the arriving fight to thwart religious intolerance, a fight that is fast mutating into a wider battle against naked fascism.

SAEED ANWAR, one of the best openers in present day cricket, slapped the face of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) when he declared himself fully fit for the coming Test series against New Zealand.

The opener was not considered by the PCB selection committee claiming that his fitness was in doubt.

The PCB chief, time and again has been suggesting that players were the best judge of their fitness. He suggested the theory of rotation among a select band of players to save them from burn-out. Nobody can disagree with the PCB boss on his logic of burn-out. However, he has repeatedly said that the final selection of matches lie with the players themselves. But in the case of Saeed Anwar the same standard has not been applied.

It only shows double standard of the PCB when Saeed Anwar was not consulted and someone or some people around the high ups decided themselves to rule out the classy opener. There were some whispers that he lacks match practice.

Of course Saeed Anwar has not played competitive cricket for nearly six months. But he has to make a beginning if he is still good enough to be included in the team preparing for the World Cup next year.

The functioning of the PCB is beyond imagination. Its working is as unpredictable as the team’s performance graph which is most unpredictable. There is jubilation on Pakistan’s thumping win over Sri Lanka in the final of the Sharjah Cup this week.

It was nothing so surprising. The team’s performance is unpredictable and on a day when everything was in their favour and they were going great guns, the Sri Lanka team had the misfortune of losing their only match-winning bowler, Muttiah Muralitharan who had to leave the field with a dislocated shoulder before he could even spin a single delivery.

This unforeseen incident electrified the morale of the Pakistan team and played a demoralising effect on the Islanders. The rest is history as Pakistan amassed 295, a match winning total.

The PCB chief was so overjoyed that he announced a bonus of three lakh rupees to every member of the Pakistan contingent which included `extra baggage’ who was not a member of the team as well as the counsellor specially flown in.

It seems as if the PCB has turned into a charitable trust and the Pakistani cricketers are its only beneficiaries.

What was so great about the Sharjah victory. It was the same Pakistan team which failed to score 19 runs in the last three overs against the same outfit.

And if one goes with the entire achievement of the Pakistan team which has been boasting of world’s best talent for almost two decades, it has just one World Cup and one Asian Championship title to its credit.

Sharjah and Sahara Cups have no credentials. They are just `Nataks’ of cricket staged by the international event managers to mint money from advertising and other hidden sources.

If the overall performance at Sharjah is taken into consideration one would like to ask the manager and the coach what were they doing when Rashid Latif and Wasim Akram were struggling to score 19 runs from 18 balls and failed.

Manager Yawar Saeed, after the match said that the players made a mistake as they did not ask for the change of the ball which they should have done.

If the players in the heat of the situation failed to demand the change, the wiser men who were sitting outside should have sent in the message. One thinks that the team management was busy counting their gains.

The PCB has an army of officers to run the show on fat salaries. If the team coach can be paid around Rs 2,40,000 for a month does he deserve a bonus too? Secondly one player who was not among the 15 was also paid the bonus of Rs 300,000. One has nothing against Faisal Iqbal he is a budding youngster. Now for no fault of his own this poor chap is being made target of criticism just because he is being pushed into the team when there is no place for him at the moment.

One hopes Faisal does not meet the same fate which Shoaib Mohammad met as he was pushed into the Pakistan team rather prematurely by his supporters and when Shoaib really made a mark and deserved a place in the team he was ignored because of the prejudices and bias of the then cricket board and the selectors.

If the PCB is really interested in grooming Faisal he should be kept in the cricket academy and given chance when there is an opportunity.

Faisal has toured with the Pakistan team to Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, was a member of the team in the Asian Test Championship staged in Pakistan early this year, then was a member of the team in the off-shore Test series in Sharjah and again was a non playing member of the team in the just concluded Sharjah Cup.

He has perhaps set a new Pakistan record of touring with the Pakistan team. One wonders will his career end as a tourist. His supporters should think over it and plan out his career.

And lastly one would like the PCB to cut down it’s extravagant expenditure. The payment to the players, officials and non active members should correspond with the overall economic condition of the country. Cricketers are not rare commodities.

Pakistan hockey team has won more laurels for the country but its players were never honoured or given financial gains. Can one imagine that a win at Sharjah made everybody on the bandwagon richer by at least by Rs three lakh.

Even a country like America, the world’s richest nation never showers it’s Olympic champions with such financial gains. How a poor country like ours can afford such a luxury is beyond imagination.

President Pervez Musharraf who every time advocates for accountability should give a look at the PCB as the money being given to individuals is after all public money and instead of making individuals rich it should be spent on development of cricket in particular and sports in general. The autonomy given to the PCB is perhaps being misused and it should be stopped immediately.

SINDHU writes that President Gen Pervez Musharraf at his referendum rallies in Sukkur and Jacobabad has re-emphasized his views about building dams. Calling the Kalabagh dam unavoidable, he has asked the people of Sindh to become mentally prepared for its construction. He has also “revealed” that Sindh is getting more than its share of water. This makes it clear that his government is determined to build dams, and Sindh is being informed about it in advance.

But is Sindh really getting more water than its share, as claimed by the president? If it is true, why are the province’s fertile lands turning barren? Why are its forests dying? Why agricultural lands in the coastal districts of Thatta and Badin are being claimed by the sea intrusion? Why is not a single drop of water being released below Kotri?

Sindh’s grower is going broke whereas Punjab’s peasant is leading a prosperous life. This anomaly cannot be justified by saying that Punjab is using its underground water reservoirs. If Sindh is getting its due water share, why are its representatives in the Indus River System Authority complaining about their helplessness and the directives of Irsa chairman not being implemented?

If relief is to be provided to the people of Sindh, water distribution among the provinces must be done judiciously. The hearts of the people of Sindh cannot be won by talks only. For this, concrete steps should be taken to rescue the agriculture of the province and to stop Punjab’s interference in the water-sharing and other issues.

According to Tameer-i-Sindh, agricultural production in the province has, on the one hand, decreased alarmingly and, on the other hand, the growers are getting low prices for their produce. The situation has worsened with traders fleecing the farmers by offering them the lowest possible prices instead of buying wheat at the government rate.

Growers in every nook and corner of the province are protesting against these deplorable circumstances but the Sindh government is paying no heed to their outcry. Perhaps this was why the Badin farmers had opted for registering their protest in front of Federal Interior Minister Moin Haider during his recent visit to the area.

The Sindh government, particularly its agriculture ministry, should take immediate notice of the situation. The provincial food department should establish wheat procurement centres in every city and town of Sindh, and it should be mandatory for traders to buy wheat and cotton at government rates.

Ibrat writes that according to the directives of the president, the National Reconstruction Bureau has prepared a package under which the provinces could be given 60 per cent of their revenue. The NRB package will be presented in parliament after the October elections.

If autonomy is given to the provinces, the future of the country would be secured and the dream of the founders of Pakistan would come true.

Kawish says a mysterious mental disease has spread in the Tando Mohammad Khan area affecting 109 or so villagers but the local doctors have failed to identify the ailment. This problem calls for immediate attention of the Sindh health department which has otherwise earned a bad name for its apathy towards the outbreak of leishmania in the Dadu district and other epidemics in other areas. So, only appeals could be made to these health officials to provide some relief to the patients of Tando Mohammad Khan.

WRITERS, be merry. There’s appreciation round the bend. Your nightly toils are going to deliver, your labour of love is going to be acknowledged. Hurry up with your publications. By 15th of June these must be delivered to the Academy of Letters. They will be passed on to this year’s bench of eminent judges for their assessment of the literary merit of the submissions made on a comparative point scale. The scores from all the judges will be totalled. The highest scorer will be adjudged the winner. Simple. But some of us don’t understand simple things, because simple things may not be that simple.

Every time an award is announced, there is controversy. Charges of favouritism, foul play, discrimination and bias taint the crown. The possibility of judgmental error cannot be totally eliminated where creative values are involved. It would be hard to make personal tastes and ideological proclivities entirely ineffective. The Nobel academicians seldom fail to surprise, even though their tilt is not less visible than of the Pisa Tower’s. A book of verse is not a multiplication sum. There can be more than one answer.

Yet in our society, it should be a matter of some satisfaction and not controversy that writers and poets still command some respect and are considered worthy of titles and awards. Belonging as they do to the group of weak and powerless people, who have traditionally been suspect in the eyes of the establishment, it should be intriguing to find an institutional arrangement on ground that with some regularity rummages through published works of poetry and prose and according to a fairly sound system of scrutiny, comparison and consensus picks the best among the lot for award in various categories. The system of selection adopted by the Academy of Letters does not seem open to easy manipulation to affect a verdict arrived at by individual examiners operating independently of each other. This method is applied in the selection of the year’s best books in national and regional languages. The life achievement i.e. the Kamal-i- Fun award, which has so far been given to Ahmad Fraz, Ahmad Nadim Qasmi, Mushtaq Yusufi and Intezar Hussain, was also decided by eminent panels of judges who could have erred in their findings only at the cost of turning it into a posthumous recognition for at least two if not three of the foursome.

The charge, therefore, that is made from time to time that this region, that language or gender has been neglected or shown bias against, is not quite tenable as far as the awards made by the Academy of Letters are concerned since none of its officials are involved in the process of selection. One could not have the same confidence about awards that are conferred annually on national days. We do not know what their basis is and what is the procedure adopted to make the selection. Their system is largely recommendatory probably. The nature of recommendations being what it can be in a decadent bureaucratic dispensation, like ours, one is apt to desist from cherishing expectations and accept the announcements as divine bestowals. Each year nobodies are picked and lined up with somebodies. No questions, no controversies. You put on your achkan and present yourself at the darbar.

Consider the case of Akhter Ahsen, the renowned psychologist, poet and philosopher, author of over two dozen books on his system of psychotherapy who is invited to lecture at world level meetings in Europe and North America and on whose work a number of books have been published. But in Pakistan nobody seems to know him enough to recommend his name for some kind of a tamgha. May be his fascination with Indian mythology scares us or the officialdom concerned is unaware of his scholarly work. The same thing cannot be said about psychologists with foreign degrees. We now have quite a few psychiatrists in every major city managing domestic harmony between neurotic wives and upwardly mobile husbands. They too haven’t heard about him.

Merit, undoubtedly, is the key criterion in awards of all kinds. In literature the determination of merit, the evaluation of distinction can be both hard and easy. If one meets all technical conditions, one may still not be outstanding. Quite often much confusion is resolved by the simple query: Is the thing being said genuine, the author’s personal truth? But for institutions handling awards what is more important is to keep standards high. If in a year good poetry has not been written, bad verse should not be honoured.