| January 28, 2003 | Tuesday | Ziqa’ad 24, 1423 |
Defending Sir Syed
THE district council of Faisalabad, consisting of 479 members, is still not fully functional because of lack of knowledge and indifferent attitude of its members. This has deprived the people of the fruits of the new system.
The mainstay of the system ways the formation of various committees to enlist the cooperation of the people in discharging important functions relating to social welfare and development. However, in spite of passage of more than one-and-a-half year, most of such committees have not been formed.
Under the Punjab Local Government Ordinance, 2001, the elected district governments were bound to appoint a Zila Mohtasib in every district, to redress complaints of maladministration against the holders of public offices in the local governments.
All holders of public offices were made responsible for aiding and assisting the Zila Mohtasib in the exercise of his functions. The Zila Mohtasib was allowed to hold office for a term of four years. But this important function remains dormant in almost all the districts of the province, including Faisalabad.
Another important function was to constitute the Zila Mushavirat committee to discharge duties relating to integrated development of the district. They were supposed to prioritize and co-ordinate inter-tehsil development plans, resolve intra-district disputes, muster resources for crisis management and set direction for realizing economic potential of the district.
It was made mandatory that the Zila Mushavirat Committee should meet at least once in every three months or as and when called by the Zila Nazim or any two members of the committee.
Unfortunately, this important committee has not so far been constituted.
It is said that top functionaries, including the Zila Nazim, were hesitant to set up such committee and councils lest their power should be compromised by the delegation of authority to non-elected people.
Similarly, the Musalihat Anjuman (conciliation committee) at union council level to resolve the people’s problems and complaints at grass roots level has not been set up. It was also made mandatory that the Musalihat Anjumans shall be constituted in each union council, consisting of a panel of three Musaleheen (conciliators), one of whom was to be its convener, to be selected by the Insaaf committee of the union council, within 30 days after its election from among residents of the union, who would be publicly known to be people of integrity, good judgment and commanding respect.
Under the rules, any casual vacancy in the panel of Musaleheen (conciliators) was to be filled in by the Insaaf committee, as soon as practicable. The Musaleheen were to be selected for the term of the union council or until replaced earlier. Where in the opinion of the Insaaf committee, a Musleh (conciliator) was accused of consistent partiality and malpractice in the performance of his functions, the Insaaf committee might, subject to notice to show cause, remove such Musleh (conciliator) and select another Musleh (conciliator) in his place.
An interesting feature of the devolution plan was that the courts could also refer cases to the Musalihat Anjuman. Setting up of such committees was not only expected to provide relief to the law-enforcement agencies, but also to reduce the burden of judiciary as minor disputes could be resolved at the local level without the intervention and expense of government.
The composition of the Citizen Community Board is also in doldrums, although it was made mandatory that in every local area, a group of non-elected citizens may, for energizing the community for development and improvement in service delivery, set up such a body.
The district government has also failed to set up complaint cells in local councils for redress of grievances within the ambit of their responsibilities. As against this, the Nazimeen right from union council to district government were involved in the campaign for the October general election.
The District Nazim of Faisalabad manoeuvred a seat of the National Assembly for his younger brother, Asim Nazir; the City Tehsil Nazim got elected his brother Mushtaq Ali Cheema as MNA; Tandlianwala Tehsil Nazim got elected his uncle, Rajab Ali Khan Baloch, as MNA; Jaranwala Tehsil Nazim Abdul Rahman got elected his wife as MPA.
Chak Jhumra Tehsil Nazim was the campaigner of the Punjab Assembly Speaker, Muhammad Afzal Sahi. Similarly, Tehsil Saddar Faisalabad Nazim, Muhammad Afzal, was campaigner of MNA Asim Nazir, brother of district Nazim, Zahid Nazir.
The recent decision of the government to allocate Rs10 million each for assembly members as development fund further negated the devolution plan.
Likewise, nowhere in the district, any union council has so far set up welfare homes for orphans and widows, bathing places for animals, mobile medical aid centres, fire-fighting units, centres for protection of pollution, slaughter-houses, neighbourhood committees for protecting and watching the activities of criminals.
The union councils were also supposed to issue ‘daily situation report’ in their particular areas. The police were made accountable at union council level as they had to face removal from service in case they concealed even a minor crime or event such as burning of a house, killing of dogs and cats, etc.
One doubts if anywhere in Pakistan such duties and functions are being discharged by the union councils, indicating that the system has failed to take off.
Among the erudite minority of our literary critics Mohammad Ali Siddiqi treads with the care, caution and exactitude of a draughtsman between extreme angles. Without prevaricating he hedges his opinion with subtle clauses but hardly ever shies away from taking positions. His expression is a lesson in urbane civility, employing conjecture where others would assertion and insinuation when indictment would be polite. Over the years through his engaging newspaper columns he has embellished informed opinion on current as well as perennial issues with his incisive essays on society and aesthetics as seen in the realm of letters.
His latest book, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan aur Jiddat Pasandi is a polite rebuke to those monocled mullahs and single-ribbed revolutionaries who continue to accuse the Big Beard of being a colonial lackey for no other reason but that to undermine his brave and bold efforts to lift the Muslim society of his day from its supine fallen state and delusions that hurt pride instils in broken hearts. It is not realized or, perhaps, deliberately ignored that the anglophile in Sir Syed was entirely devoted to the Muslim cause. It was not servility in the service of personal gain like that of his peers in official hierarchy, among the landed gentry, the Nabobs and the urban elite. Had he been serving himself he would not have been lowered into his grave with contributed dole.
Sir Syed is not his contemporary, laments Dr Siddiqui, and therefore it would not be possible for him to assess his views with reference to the present situation and in the light of current thought. But, he apprehends, that had Sir Syed been in our midst today, it would have saddened him to find how much of mending remained to be done on the fabric of our national thought. Sir Syed in his day foresaw a hundred years thence. But today at the advent of the 21st century the South Asian subcontinent’s Muslim society is hell bent on regression and Sir Syed’s thought, particularly his interpretations of religious concepts on which social advancement hinges, remain anathema as much as they were in the 19th century. In fact a great many Muslim intellectuals who, Dr Siddiqui says, could be described as enlightened have not deliberated as much on Sir Syed’s positive and inspiring role as a reformer as they have dwelt on his pro- British views. In comparison the more educated Hindus have felt less piqued by Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s more pronounced pro-Raj leanings. He is still idolized as a Hindu though he founded the Brahmo Samaj sect, but Sir Syed who merely extolled the laws of Nature and science was branded as an apostate and mercilessly vilified. This blinkered vision persists. We disown our one and only Nobel laureate.
Dr Siddiqui examines the modernist movement in the Muslim world in the light of Sir Syed’s thought, his religious ideas and the political realities of his time. The interpretation of the Islamic concepts of knowledge, education, interest, the audacious articles that Sir Syed published in Tehzibul Akhlaque and comparison with Shibli and Iqbal have been discussed with a view to establishing that what little light we see in the overall national gloom comes from the enlightenment men like Sir Syed and Iqbal have helped grow and but for their services the darkness into which their detractors wanted the nation to remain would have been total.
The discussion of his controversial views on Jihad and his insistence that the Law was open to reform and change is very engaging as well as the behaviour of his mud-slinging opponents like Akbar Allahbadi who lambasted Sir Syed for his “angraziat” but sent his own son to study law in England.
The book is supplemented with 7 appendices for readers’ direct reference to original material from Sir Syed’s time. Among them Sir Syed’s rebuttal of Dr Hunter’s accusations against Muslim society in respect of Jihad and his requests to the Crown for providing modern educational facilities are reflective of the constraints and peculiarities of that period of time.
In the last quarter of the 19th century the anti-Sir Syed movement while providing bread and butter to his opponents caused the greatest setback to the economic future of Muslim India. Dr Siddiqui salutes Sir Syed’s sense of humour in not hesitating to accept contributions for his college even from incomes his enemies were making by selling pamphlets against him. His detractors in his time and even afterwards could not see that the causes he identified of Muslim backwardness in the subcontinent were applicable even today to the whole Muslim world which refuses to accept change and continues to lampoon new ideas and lambaste leaders of reform as it did a century back. It is no surprise that bold men are no longer born in the land of the pure. Quibblers and hypocrites and charlatans alone rule the roost. But what does surprise is the quaint feeling Sir Syed had better time in his day. He could afford to be different, persist in his adamant ways and still manage to live robustly for 80 fulsome years.