| July 17, 2002 | Wednesday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 6, 1423 |
The archives need better care
Nasser’s gesture unworthy of captain
KARACHI: Story writer Nazrul Hasan Siddiqui’s book Deeda-i-beena, a collection of twelve pen-portraits, was launched here on Monday under the aegis of the Pakistan National Academy (PNA), with Dr Jameel Jalibi in the chair.
Dr Jalibi admired the book for carrying three distinct qualities: a biography with fictional appeal and also a racy, chiselled prose. Its reading by younger people will create in them a taste for literature and also bring them closer to our rich cultural past being lost in the humdrum of media and hazy TV programmes, he said. Through this book we come to know of people of strong personal qualities, neat, clean, upright and honest with civilized manners, some of them belonging to the writer’s own family, but it should be no ‘disqualification’ to be mentioned in the book, Dr Jalibi said and congratulated Dr Khawer Jameel, the Chairman of the Academy, for the launching of Deeda-i-beena. The Academy has an admirable record of holding literary functions for 31 long years.
Among others who addressed the assembly included Dr Aslam Farrukhi, who was also the chief guest of the evening, Shakeel Adilzada, Sajjad Mir and Mahmood Sham.
Nazrul Hasan Siddiqui launched his writing career some 35 years ago, with the late Abul Fazal Siddiqui, his uncle, also junior Siddiqui’s patron and mentor. Dr Farrukhi, paying lavish tribute to Abul Fazal Siddiqui, quoted instances of his literary genius and of the valuable addition he had made in the usage of rich though forgotten vocabulary in his prose. He also praised Nazer for writing highly readable sketches of great noble persons.
Mahmood Sham emphasized the need for creating a book culture and to keep the book alive. The author of Deeda-i-beena has brought to the fore the story of the past, a culture we prided so much, but now it is time to blend it with the present culture to enliven and rejuvenate it, he said.
Shakeel Adilzada admired the writer’s prose.
NHS also read out a paper recalling his career as a writer.
Dr Khawer Jameel briefly introduced the PNA, host of the evening and thanked the guests.
It will be unfair not to mention the compering of Naushaba Siddiqui, an office-bearer of the PNA, who in her brief introductory remarks, in between two speakers, delivered valuable information on the history of sketch writing, coming from the early nineteenth century to the present times.—Hasan Abidi
THE ARCHIVAL treasure of a nation has to be continuously cared for, sustained and augmented in order to keep the nation’s memory alive. Could we be sure that our national and provincial archives departments are fully seized of the importance of the work entrusted to them?
One is inclined to think so because there is hardly any work being published in Pakistan which should give us the feeling of security. In Karachi, for instance, the department of archives of the Sindh government is located, and we have hardly had any publication worthy of this department. In India not only are archives maintained, but they are also compiled and properly annotated, i.e., descriptive cataloguing done on the pattern of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal — now called the Asiatic Society. There are numerous catalogues and files of researches so that what is kept as a treasure inside a building with a team of keepers is shared with the scholars of the world.
Going through a PhD dissertation on the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal a chapter of the thesis titled Publications and Archival Diversity spurred my interest in the kind of work our archives departments — in Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi — are doing. They may be having all the credit for having ‘kept’ the archives — though for some of these centres a proper term could be ‘awfully kept.’ One doesn’t hear of any publications coming from these departments. Why can’t we have, for instance, the ‘Farmans of the Rulers of Sindh’ or ‘The Record of Communication between Delhi and the Sindh Rulers,’ or the publication of the rare MSS of literature treasured by the Sindh Archives.
The same can be said about all the other provincial departments and about the National Archives in Islamabad. The state of affairs is simply pathetic and one only has to pay a visit to the rooms where the precious record — even the Muslim League Record procured from the University of Karachi — has been dumped. Every precious document is simply waiting for the day when it will be finally eaten up by termites.
The dissertation of Dr Khalida Husaini is on the treasure of Persian literature at the Royal Asiatic Society; and it gave me a pleasant surprise that some of the rare Tazkirahs of Urdu poets have also been cursorily mentioned in the dissertation. They run into hundreds. No history of Urdu literature can be compiled without some of the MSS discussed in this important thesis. The Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and NWFP archives would come by a lot of MSS pertaining to their provinces. I am not sure that whether the library at Kolkata has Majmua-i-Makatabast — containing rare documents of Muslim India — from the times of Emperor Akbar to the twilight era of the Mughals — to be precise to the times of Shah Alam the Second — who was also an Urdu poet with the pseudonym Aftab.
No book on Indian history and literature, especially on bilingual poets of Urdu and Persian, could be written without making use of the treasure at Kolkata. I am not aware whether any of our archives departments has ever tried to procure copies of the relevant material. It is so easy these days to ‘construct’ a treasure like the Asiatic Society Library, given the will and a commitment to procure valuable documents.
In the Asiatic Society Library there is a Biyaz of Prince Dara Shikoh of selective couplets which goes to prove what a refined literary taste he had. There are some important books relating to Sindhi literature and culture. A cursory glance at the catalogues can open an untapped door to a wealth of material we should be interested in.
Not only this library but some of the private collections in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the USA and Canada — it has been averred — contain valuable personal observations of those British India officers who, later on, settled in these countries. There is Governor Casey’s private collection in Australia which contains his observations about Indian leaders besides his opinion as to what went wrong during the Bengal famine days besides the Quaid-i-Azam’s historic decision that he won’t like to stay between the demand for a united Bengal and Pakistan if the Muslim and Hindu leaders of Bengal so agreed.
Dr Husaini has also mentioned the vast treasure-house of Urdu and Persian Diwans and Kulliyats besides a great collection of three hundred years of Indo-Persian poetry. Out of some 5,000 MSS in the Asiatic Society’s treasure quite a few pertain to the areas comprising Pakistan, and almost all of them if the Indo-Islamic heritage is taken into account.
The Asiatic Society’s collection needs special attention because it amply proves that the British scholars who served the East India Company made the ‘miracle’ happen with their command over the languages and cultures of the subcontinent. They actually ‘constructed’ the modern Hinduism as we know it today; and every member of the Society was supposed to be master of some Indian languages and was provided full opportunities to take up translations and annotations of Indian classics. It was not only through the ‘conspiracy theory’ that the British came to acquire the position of rulers but also through a decidedly better knowledge of Indian affairs.
Now something interesting about Sir William Jones, who was a Welsh. Born in 1746 in London, his story is the story of a genius. He knew Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, Spanish, Portuguese and French to the extent that he could easily translate any work from any of the languages mentioned above. He was a product of Harrow and Oxford and came to Calcutta as a judge of the Supreme Court. Even the subject peoples would have to think twice to surmise that he was unduly patronized or rewarded. When he landed in Bengal he realized that it was not possible to rule that land without being proficient in Bengali, Sanskrit and Persian. He learnt Sanskrit in an incredibly short time — within one year. He is known as the famous translator of the Rules of Manu. He also translated Muslim laws of inheritance from Sirajuddin’s Arabic book As- Sirajia.
It is not possible to enumerate Sir Jones’s titles of translations. Should not our officers try to emulate Sir John Shore, John Gilchrist, H. H. Wilson, James Princep Henry Colinbrooke and William Hundter who worked for the Royal Asiatic Society and made it the prime source of valuable knowledge about Asiatic peoples. Knowledge is power.
The British scholars had access to Thatta’s Ahmed Bin Nasrullah’s Khulasat-ul-Hayat, a magnum opus from a Sindhi scholar, tracing the history of mankind from Adam to Prophet Muhammed (PBUH). A British scholar has said that this work is essential to know how the Muslim mind comprehends things.
There could not have been a more perfect setting for the Natwest final. Lord’s lit up by a summer sun, cotton-candy white clouds breaking the monotony of the vast expenses of blue skies and a full house. All that was needed was a great game of cricket to match the setting.
As if, scripted, that was exactly what we got. What was common to the two teams was the mediocrity of the bowling and this assured a run feast. 651 runs were scored and only 13 wickets fell.
England made 325 for 5, a massive score and India would have to play out of their skins to overtake this score. Ganguly and Sehwag got India off to a rollicking start, putting on 106 for the first wicket at faster than a run a ball but then India slumped to 146 for 5 and all the big guns were gone, including Sachin Tendulkar.
At this point, I decided to switch off my television set and read a book. But I didn’t, on the theory, that watching cricket was more recreational than reading a book.
The rest is history. Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif showed that they were young men in old warriors’ clothes, that not experience but self-belief was a higher virtue. They did not play flashy cricket, no biff-bam. They ran their singles and twos smartly and pounced on the loose ball.
This was urgency without hurry. When Yuvraj was out, Kaif took charge and what a stage to announce that he had arrived and it was he and Zaheer Khan who saw India to an astonishing win. And one felt that, in a twinkling of an eye, Kaif had grown up. The cub had become a tiger.
The only sour note, in an otherwise, perfect cricket day, was the behaviour of the England captain, Nasser Hussain. He scored a hundred, his first in one-day internationals. He was entitled to celebrate.
Instead, he turned his back towards the media centre and pointed to number three on his back and his lips moved, suggesting what he was mouthing some obscenity.
I was flabbergasted to see what looked like a patently obscene gesture. Nasser Hussain has come in for some flak and there were some who advocated, in print, that he should bat lower in the batting order.
This seems to have irked him, as if, the suggestion amounted to saying that he has no place in the one-day team. If he has a quarrel with sections of the media, he should have kept it private, certainly not retaliated, so that millions of people watching on television could see him washing his dirty linen in public. It was a gesture unworthy of an England captain.
I am surprised that the match-referee decided to take no action against him. Are we to believe that an England captain enjoys some kid of immunity? That he does not bring the game into disrepute by the fact of being England’s captain?
Lord’s is very tough on the spectators and spectators are not allowed to bring flags and drums or whistles to the ground.
I agree with Lord’s to the extent that a cricket match should not be turned into too much of a carnival but that does not mean that it should be turned into a funeral. Imagine the Football World Cup without the sea of flags.
The Natwest final was a festive occasion and the waving of flags would not have disturbed the ghosts of those who saw Lord’s as a secular place of worship. Lord’s has a ‘futuristic’ media centre but the mindset in the Committee Room remains rooted in the past. This is 2002 and not 1902.
The question of whether Australia will tour Pakistan or whether the matches will be shifted to a neutral venue remains in the air.
Even President Pervez Musharraf has volunteered to speak to the Australian government. The Australians are concerned about of the safety of its players. This would suggest that Pakistan is not concerned with the safety of its own players. If it is unsafe to play cricket in Pakistan, it is unsafe for both teams.
At present a row is brewing between Morocco and Spain and there is already a war of words and the Spanish Navy has cocked the guns of its war ships.
Would this make Tangiers, where a triangular tournament is to be played, unsafe? If we were to start cancelling cricket tours because of fears of terrorism, it is to hand the terrorists a victory. Surely that is not the aim of the Australian Cricket Board.
Similarly, no progress has been made in reviving Indo-Pakistan cricket ties and there are even calls for Nelson Mandela to mediate.
I don’t see what Nelson Mandela can do to overturn what is a nakedly, political decision. Cricket is only a victim. It is not Pakistan that is being hurt by this decision but Asian cricket.
Pakistan and India may play against each other in the ICC Trophy unless India is planning to give Pakistan a walk-over. As a cricket person rather than a political person, I have always felt that sports is the bridge that can bring people together.
How wonderful it was to see the Brazilian and German footballers exchange jerseys after their hard fought final. It was an uplifting sight. And all neutrals cheered both the teams. That’s what sports is all about.