| February 11, 2003 | Tuesday | Zul Hijjah 9, 1423 |
Motorcycle snatching cause alarm
Human cost of the Indian agenda
Agha Suhail has no stomach for what he calls literary mafias, a rather strong word for cliques that govern considerable territory of the contemporary literary scene. Nor does he approve of the good work they do. In a recent interview he has warned young writers and poets to keep away from them. This would be hard for the emerging penmen a it is they in particular who need them the most for their entry into this twilight occupation.
Literary cliques grow around established writers or poets to rival some other literary person who represents a different style or school of thought that seems to threaten the popularity or success of the former group’s protagonist. Generally differences in outlook and approaches result in giving rise to such groupings as birds of the same feather tend to flock together. In the process personal enmities develop between rival groups resulting quite often in acrimonious debates in the heat of which turbans are trampled without regard to any sense of decency or decorum. We saw that recently in the storm that followed Ahmad Nadim Qasmi’s attack on Faiz Ahmad Faiz, both luminaries of the same set. But though such groupings may look like cliques, they actually are natural growths and help advance intellectual debate and keep the literary life in constant ferment. Obviously Agha Suhail is not referring to such broad divisions or their sub groups. What I feel he is pointing to are the coteries of second and third rate writers that open shop under fancy literary names to claim their share in public moneys and by hobnobbing with intellectually-inclined public figures try to create circles of influence for their self-promotion. Once in a while they stage the launching of a book, any book, or hold a memorial meeting for some dear departed. The purpose is to ingratiate with some big invitee and at the same time give the impression of their involvement in literary activities.
New writers and poets too shy or timid to display their talent, come to these promoters of debutantes who after getting into print a book at their own expense are declared as the authentic voice of the century or the millennium, as the case may be, depending on their closeness to the bunch. After achieving this quick acclaim, the need to write more or better comes to an end. This is what Agha Sohail is warning the new writer against. In Islamabad the dubious services such coteries render does entitle them to be called mafias. They are powerful also.Quite genuine people live in dread of their machinations and would not dare expose them even in a secret ballot.
Over time the working of the literary Mafiosi has matured. Their ways have become subtle. They do ghost writing and according to popular gossip even provide doctoral theses to clients in government service. But what they don’t do is displease anyone. Since their main purpose is promotion of self interest they avoid feuding. Also, because they have no intellectual commitment and follow no creed and belong to neither left or right groups. They belong to no particular school of thought. One wonders if they have any thought at all. This ensures easy sailing in all weathers. But this smooth approach, this flexibility and survival tenacity is not peculiar to them. This tendency of avoiding hurt and offence and the please-all diplomacy is endemic like national culture. You find it splashed on book flaps and dust covers. The generosity of the reviewers has emptied good words of their meaning.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise to read an analysis by Fehmida Riaz of a poem published in the Duniyazad, a stimulating new journal that Asif Farrukhi is bringing out from Karachi. Fehmida points out the lack of relationship between lines and the contradictions and irrelevance of thought in the couplets of the ghazal under review to prove that many poets would do well if they wrote nazm instead of ghazal. The latter needs sense as much as sound. But most ghazal writers are unable to forge the unity that couplets require to make a statement. You may make two statements but they must be logical corollaries of each other. Even contradictory sentiments must owe their clash to a flash point in the thought, feeling or perception. Rhyming of end words alone doesn’t make a verse click. I remember when I merely suggested this very weakness in an award winning poet, I was chastised I had caused hurt. Fehmida Riaz’s analysis points to the need for more honest criticism to slow the deluge of vapid versification. Once prospective poets understood that poetry’s power came from sense and symmetry, as much as from emotive content as from artistry of form, they would write less bunkum and cause less mental and moral anguish to obliging critics and reviewers.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY: France which is sensitive to cultural homogenization and wary of the trend towards uncritical adoption of American ways under the steam-roller effect of its super power domination will soon be proposing to UNESCO to adopt a world convention on cultural diversity that should come into effect by 2005. This was announced by President Jacques Chirac at a gathering of actors, singers, musicians, film directors and producers. He said France would not allow itself in any way to be crushed by the American cultural steam-roller. He warned against the supremacy of the market values in which competition is king and where the battle for profit dominates. He said this held true especially for culture and for the arts, activities that cannot be reduced to the laws of the market place. It therefore belongs to our public institutions to preserve and enrich the patrimony of our nations, honour their spirit and their genius, the various traditions and knowledge of our different peoples, also given to each of us, by way of education, the key to progress and a better future. He acknowledged that globalization would bring about greater exchange between cultures and open new horizons of exalting discoveries, but, he warned if we were not careful, every thing may very well converge towards a system where culture of the fit would survive, and towards the inevitable triumph of culture that is preconceived to appeal to the largest possible audience, and inexorably towards the growth of inequalities, the confrontation between a dominant culture and that of the rest of the world.
There is food for thought for all of us in these wise words of this great statesman. The way our media, private and public TV channels and the interactive radio frequencies are succumbing to commercial interests and promoting a hotchpotch, wayward, empty culture, it seems only our rampant poverty and general ignorance is helping keep the steam-roller in check, the jeans- jogger and coke -burger generation having already been flattened on the global expressway.
GROWING incidents of motor-bike snatching in and around the city are causing deep concern among the people. They cannot move freely because highwaymen can strike at any street or road. It is very strange that whenever the police take security measures by establishing checkpoints, highwaymen deprive the people of their motorcycles.
Thieves and highwaymen seem to have a free hand in the area. District Dera Ghazi Khan is divided into two administrative portions the settled area and the tribal area. The settled area is under the control of the Punjab police whereas tribal areas is under the political assistant and border military police. Both the law-enforcement agencies have failed to check the crime rate. Police stations situated in the city have also failed to provide security to the citizens.
In the first week of January, DSP city and his force chased innocent youngsters riding a motor-bike, suspecting them to be highwaymen who had looted the proprietor of a medical store and deprived him of cash and his motor-bike. The DSP resorted to aerial firing during the chase, creating much alarm among the people. The looters, however, could not be rounded up.
Dera Ghazi Khan tehsil is mostly inhabited by Leghari and Khosa Baloch tribes. Neither in the south nor in the north of the city anyone except a member of the tumandar family can go even during early evening.
There is a vast network of highwaymen which has the alleged cover of the police, BMP and tribals. The snatched motor-bikes are sent to the tribal area of Dera Ghazi Khan from where they are delivered to the Rakni, a town on the Balochistan border. It is on record that officials of border military police and the checkpost of Punjab police at the border of tribal area could not halt the illegal practice.
According to sources, relatives of BMP officials deal in stolen and snatched motor-bikes. They allegedly cross the police and BMP checkposts and safely enter into Balochistan. The officials of Punjab police allegedly provide cover to the highwaymen up to Sakhi Sarwar, the last town in the settled area.
Another highway route is from cement factory up to Khohi Baharwan (NWFP). Most of the area from Kot Mubarik to Lakha post falls in Tuman Khosa, and Khosa elders allegedly provide safe passage to the highwaymen. It is strange that the police of these areas are never asked by the high-ups as to why the crime graph is going up.
THE extension project of Shrine of Hazrat Syed Sultan Ahmad Shaki Sarwar Sahib is being executed at a slow pace. Work could not be completed even as the ‘Urs’ of the saint is drawing near. The contractor has stopped work to demand release of more funds. The zonal administration of Auqaf told Dawn that the cost of the project is estimated at Rs03.50 million while Rs1.27 million have been spent on the first phase of the project which will be completed in three phases.
The contractor stopped work after breaking the centuries-old boundary wall of the shrine. The negligence of the department concerned has created problems for the devotees. There is no shelter for them because the contractor has demolished the rest house which was built a century ago through the donation of Seth Lakhpat of Lahore.
The eastern side of the Shrine is without a boundary wall. It poses grave danger as there are deep ditches and anyone cane fall into them. The people have appealed for the early construction of the wall. It is strange that the contractor has completed the commercial portion of the project (markets) but left the important part of Shrine unfinished.
THE recent tension between Bangladesh and India over the latter’s repeated attempts to push several hundred people with disputed citizenship into Bangladesh territory is fast escalating, embittering bilateral relations. Besides, the Indian attitude might contribute to further polarization of people on both sides of the border along communal lines, which will be bad news for those committed to the liberal democratic process.
It all began with India’s BJP-led government, especially its extremely fundamentalist Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, claiming on January 7 that “Bangladeshi immigrants, estimated to be over 20 million, posed the biggest threat to national security”. Mr Advani, who had played a pivotal role in the Babri mosque demolition, said: “Immediate steps should be taken to identify them (the immigrants), locate them and throw them out. The problem needs to be tackled firmly by all states.” Bangladesh rejected his claim as “absurd”.
Meanwhile, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, senior vice-president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which is a close ally of the BJP, announced in Guwahati on Jan 30, that they “would conduct a headcount of Bangladeshis staying illegally in India” in March this year to “find out the exact number of Bangladeshi infiltrators and then set a timeframe for the federal government to deport them”. Claiming that the headcount would take two weeks, the Acharya warned of a “public revolt” if the government failed to deport the Bangladeshis within his prescribed timeframe.
But much before the beginning of Advani’s identification process of the so-called illegal Bangladeshi immigrants or the Acharya’s headcount drive, India’s Border Security Force (BSF) gathered several hundred Bangla-speaking destitute from different parts of India, largely on Bangladesh’s northern frontier, and tried to force them into Bangladesh territory. The only proof India is putting forward is that the people in question are Muslims and speak Bengali, conveniently forgetting that Indian nationals of West Bengal also speak Bengali, and that there are still supposed to be Muslims in India.
The BSF has so far made at least 46 attempts to push a few hundred people into Bangladesh. The border security guards of Bangladesh, BDR, on the other hand, have reportedly been foiling the attempts amidst what Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes has described as a beefing up of Indian troops near the Bangladesh border.
Bangladesh has repeatedly expressed “deep concern” over the Indian attempts to force out “several hundred Bangla-speaking Indian Muslims” and has refused to allow “any of these people to enter”.
Caught in this severe predicament, the hundreds of poor men, women and children — Hindu or Muslim, Indian or Bangladeshi — are living a miserable life under the open sky. Reports have it that at least one person has already died of starvation, while some of them are suffering from bullet injuries sustained in crossfire between the border guards of the two sides.
Mr George Fernandes reportedly told Indian reporters on February 5 that “additional BSF personnel had been deployed” in the border areas, saying “things have unfortunately gone beyond control.” But Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha does not believe that things have already gone out of control and said his country “does not want the situation to blow up, to get out of hand.”
He has also invited Bangladesh Foreign Minister Morshed Khan to India for a dialogue over the issue. Mr Khan told reporters in Dhaka on February 6 that he would go to India on a mutually agreed date. However, he also said something that is being considered here extremely patronizing. According to the Mr. Sinha, “we have always looked at Bangladesh as a very friendly neighbour. We don’t want any quarrel with them. In India there are a lot of sentiments for Bangladesh, because we had a role in their independence struggle. I don’t know if these sentiments are shared by Bangladeshis. They may or may not admit it today. But the fact is Indian blood flowed alongside Bangladeshi blood in their liberation struggle, and we can’t forget that.”
There is no doubt that India helped Bangladesh in its war of independence. But the price Bangladesh has been paying for “Indian blood” that “flowed alongside Bangladeshi blood in their liberation struggle” is extracting a heavy toll in both human and economic terms.
The Indian BSF has killed 203 Bangladeshis in 25 months between Jan 1, 2001, and Jan 31 this year. Besides, 298 people have been injured, 503 arrested and 164 kidnapped.
Bangladesh suffers an annual trade deficit with India of at least US $2.7 billion — the $1.5 billion in informal trade and $1.2 billion in the formal sector.
India has also been consistently refusing to meet Bangladesh’s rightful demand as an LDC to get preferential treatment for its goods under the existing trade agreements. After years of negotiations, Delhi agreed to provide duty-free access to 40 items in 25 categories in August, 2002, but Dhaka found that most of the items lacked export potential.
India has hardly followed the international agreements signed with Bangladesh, the Ganges water sharing treaty being a glaring example. Bangladesh received 5,465 cubic feet per second (cusec) less water from the Ganges than the share fixed in the treaty during the last 10 days of January. The first 10-day cycle was no exception. Bangladesh receiving 3,258 cusec less than its share of 57,673 cusecs.
India’s failure to hand over the Tin Bigha corridor to Bangladesh, in exchange for Berubari, over the last three decades is also common knowledge.
Meanwhile, Delhi’s BJP-VHP-Shiv Sena-sponsored push-in attempts have provided Dhaka’s Jamaat-i-Islami and Islami Oikkya Jote (IOJ) to raise jingoistic slogans on communal line. The left has been protesting against the Indian behaviour, branding it as communal, but their voice is not heard as loudly as that of the Jamaat and IOJ, thanks to the mainstream media’s dislike for leftists. The Awami League, the main opposition party, has discharged its responsibility in the matter only by attributing Indian attempts to “an agreement signed with India by the first government of Khaleda Zia in the early 1990s”, without disclosing the content of the agreement, if there was any.
However, there are still a large number of people in India with a soft-corner for Bangladesh and revulsion for the BJP-VHP- Shiv Sena-sponsored fundamentalism. Bangladesh has also a similar people who refuse to accept the fundamentalism preached by the Jamaat and the IOJ. Such sentiments in the two countries need to be expressed more forcefully and more frequently to mount pressure on the establishments.