| April 27, 2003 | Sunday | Safar 24, 1424 |
Walking down a sacred track
PCB’s hierarchy does not believe in accountability
Instead of accountability at all levels in the backdrop of Pakistan’s miserable performance in the World Cup in southern Africa, a new tradition have been put in place by Chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board, Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, who opted to retain all his wise guys, in the process elevating his blue-eyed official.
The subject is grim and disturbing, but let us begin on a limited note of cheer, some optimism. Now that the two student organizations, the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba and the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO), have reportedly agreed to refrain from violence and the Intermediate examinations have begun peacefully. The news is good. It is a matter of relief.
Yet at the same time it is also a matter of contemplation as to why at all did these two student organizations clashed, causing a short closure of universities and colleges. Why did it happen at this time?
There are those who contend that there is some sort of relationship, and a trickle-down effect of the kind of politics that is taking place at the provincial and the federal government level. And that is where the worry comes in.
However good the news may be, there are cynics and sceptics having their own reasons for the pessimism with which they look at the picture.
The odd and interesting point to note in this good news about an agreement having being reached is the somewhat symbolic fact that the talks were held between the two students parties, and their leaders, at the office of a political party; at the Idara Noor-i-Haq. It exposes the claims made by various academicians and officials that now that students unions are banned in the province there is no students politics. The fact of the matter is that students today, more than ever before are political, and aware of what is happening in the country, the province, the city. The very fact that voting age has been reduced and brought down from 21 to 18 is indicative of the point that students awareness vis-a-vis political matters and associated realities is sharp, clear and alive. It is too much to expect students, or rather the youth of today, to be out of politics, keeping in mind that we live in an information age propelled by technology.
I have spoken to some parents who have read the peace agreement reached on Thursday with keen interest.
They were happy that the two angry student groups were able to appreciate the fact of the examinations being held, and thus, the return of things to normal. It is the appreciation and understanding that they displayed that has evoked a sigh of relief. Students getting ready for their inter examinations were unsure of whether the exams would actually begin or get postponed. And generally speaking, parents and families of students whose sons and daughters are students of those institutions where there was trouble had fears.
Is a campus safe? The agreement, as reported by PPI, says: “The two sides promised not to use firearms in the event of clashes at any educational institution or at any other place. Kidnapping of rival activists would also be discouraged, they pledged”. Just think of the dreadful bloody prospects indicated in this. The use of firearms and the threat of kidnapping? Real-life politics at that young age?
There is something else in the agreement which merits serious thought. Both sides have reportedly expressed willingness to resolve differences through meaningful dialogue and refrain from indulging in violence. No counter provocation through violent attacks. They have said this too!
Many questions come to mind as one reads this. What are the differences that agitate the minds of the young? Should they be bothered about the larger issues that torment this land. Should they not be absorbed only by academic issues, and academic ideals? Should not books, or personal computers in keeping with the demands of this age, be their only companions?
Strangely the causes of the clashes are “obscure”. A Dawn report on 23rd April said:
“Academicians have no clue why the students wings of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Jamat-i-Islami decided to turn the academic institutions of the city into battlefields, particularly when the Intermediate examinations were approaching”. Any guesses?
Can one imagine the chaos that would have resulted had the exams been postponed? Can one imagine how frustrated young students would be, having worked throughout the year to take the examinations? Think another thought: that the standard of education is a constant cause for worry, and that poor academic standards are beginning to have a negative and obvious bearing on the quality of the graduate student. We all know that the poor quality of education is telling on the human resource factor in the country.
Also bear in mind the fact that a model university ordinance is also in the pipeline, and there is much controversy about what it contains. Unrest on this count has also been raising its head with an intermittent regularity. Where will it go?
There is much to bear in mind while thinking about the clashes, which, some feel, might have erupted because of the kind of relations that exist between the Sindh government and the city government in Karachi; a reference to the political divide that exists in the present given political and administrative setup.
One wonders whether there is anything deeper in these clashes, and which may surface in the weeks ahead, or whether it was a show of strength and a flexing of muscles for reasons easy to comprehend.
LAST week I was in “the zone” —- as athletes like to describe that special feeling of perfect union of mind and body. Having parked my car near Sherpao Bridge, I decided to walk along the railway track from the Lahore Cantonment railway station to the Walton station —- that sacred rail track where thousands of would-be Pakistanis were received dead in 1947.
I was reading this piece about institutionalized “low intensity conflict” that the bureaucracies of India and Pakistan, through mutual ‘silent’ understanding, nature. It makes them rich and the people poor, in perpetuity. Dr Mubashir Hasan did a great service by stating the “unstated”. Silence is sin in every book that I know of. How could such a magnificent set of people hate each other? With these thoughts I walked along wondering at just how much effort had gone into the building of these tracks, the thousands of railways stations that dot the sub-continent, and the trains and the locomotives, and the people who built them.
The railways arrived in the sub-continent in 1850, just one year after Lahore was taken and the entire track from Calcutta (Kolkata) to the Afghan border was under British rule. Mind you, the railways had not been fully laid in most European cities by that time. So it was a revolutionary step by any reckoning. By the year 1899, rail tracks had been laid from the south of Madras to the Afghan border, more than 23,000 miles. It was the biggest and the costliest construction project undertaken by any colonial power in any colony anywhere in the world. It was also the largest single investment of British capital in the whole of the 19th century.
By 1863, some three million tons of rails, sleepers and locomotives had been shipped to India from Britain in approximately 70 ships a year non-stop for half a century. Such was their commitment to the railways of the sub-continent. Engineers had looped tracks over the steepest mountains in the world, sunk foundations hundreds of feet into the hot shifting deserts, bridged rivers as wide and as turbulent as the Ganges and the Indus. It was an undertaking the world had never seen, and probably might never see again. Yet today it remains a most unresearched subject, for we just do not have any railway buffs like they do in Britain and all over the world. We simply do not treasure what we have. Somehow it seems to be in the spirit of the times in which we live —- in constant low intensity conflict, in constant tension.
The railways also brought about an economic and social revolution. As travel time shrank, the resultant mobility added to the economic development that such mobility brings. Mobility brought with it the feeling of the sub-continent being one huge unified mass. Ironically, a century later, the same railways also made possible the irreparable division of the sub-continent. The partition of India led to what was probably the greatest migration in human history. More than 12 million people exchanged both their homes and their countries. Twelve million souls tore themselves apart from the land of their ancestors.
That very act is still a fresh wound; the severing of a bonding cemented over thousands of years and probably part of our very genes. The railways managed to transport a major chunk of those moving, and in the process over one million people lost their lives in the space of merely 100 days. Never before, and hopefully never again, will mankind see such slaughter, and the rail track between Walton and the Lahore Cantonment railway stations is living testimony of the slaughter that people are even today scared to talk about. Such has been the impact. Such is the intensity of hate. Walking on that track brings forth such thoughts.
It brought forth the question, ‘would partition have been possible without the railway?’ Many researchers are of the view that it would not have been possible, for millions of people had to be shifted over long distances in a small time space. My view is that partition would have taken place, only the slaughter would have been far greater. It was on the railways that much of the worst violence took place. Lahore station was “the eye of the whirlwind”. The fate of Lahore remained uncertain until the final maps of the boundaries between the two nations were released.
In the event the city went to Pakistan, just 15 miles from the Indian border, and the city and its people were instantly torn apart. Thousands of Hindus and Sikhs fought their way to the station to flee to India. At the same time train after train began arriving from the south carrying hundreds of thousands of Muslims to their new homeland. The Lahore railway station became a battleground. This is where the worst slaughter took place.
On the night of Independence the last British officials in Lahore arrived at the station. They had picked their way through gutted streets, many of which were still littered with the dead from the riots. On the platforms they found the railway staff grimly hosing down pools of blood and carrying away piles of corpses on luggage trolleys for mass burial. Minutes earlier a last group of desperate Hindus had been massacred by a Muslim mob as they sat waiting quietly for the Bombay Express.
The late Khwaja Bilal had the unenviable job of being the Station Master of Lahore in August, 1947. He is on record as having said: “On the 14th of August I was on duty. We heard an announcement that partition had taken place. Soon after that the killing started, the slaughter began. Despite the presence of British soldiers, hundreds were being killed on the platforms, on the bridges, in the ticket halls. There were stabbings, rapes, and arson. It was unstoppable.
“At night I could not sleep because of the screams and moans of the dying coming from the platform. Every morning hundreds of slaughtered bodies would be lying everywhere. One morning, I think it was August 30, the Bombay Express came in from Delhi via Bhatinda. There were around 2,000 people on this train. We found dead bodies in the lavatories, on the seats, under the seats. We checked the whole train, but nobody was alive except one person who had hidden in the engine water tank. We used to receive one hundred trains a day. There were hundreds of corpses in every one”.
When Lord John Lawrence broke the earth on the future site of the Lahore railway station in February 1859, the silver shovel he used bore the Latin motto ‘tam bello quam pace’ — better peace than war. Little did he know how things would turn out. — Majid Sheikh
Gen Tauqir announced earlier in the week that come what may no official of PCB would be sacked while reshuffling was being done. Indeed, the chairman has now set a bad precedent which will definitely go in favour of his successor, in future.
In fact, Pakistan’s ever worst World Cup performance needed a major surgery.
Gen Tauqir’s decision to promote Ramiz Raja to the post of chief executive was not a surprise since the former national captain had been the chairman’s most trusted lieutenant when the two joined hands in Dec 1999.
It was Ramiz, who with the blessing of the PCB chief, got employed a number of foreigners for the Pakistan team. Richard Pybus (chief coach), Daryl Foster (bowling coach), Dennis Waight (trainer) and Trevor Chappell were hired on lucrative contracts.
The end results were obvious as the national squad plunged from one crisis to another, all because of the policies endorsed by PCB chairman and mainly initiated by Ramiz.
Like a true master, Gen Tauqir kept showering praise on Ramiz and openly stated time and again that he (Ramiz) did not take a single rupee from the board for his loyal services.
Ramiz is the incharge of the sports department of a local bank, has been regularly globe-trotting since he became a cricket commentator several years ago.
Further, money and more money is not the priority. What matters most is to pick the right person for the right job. Ramiz, a very ordinary player, has no special experience to deal with running of a cricket board.
Some of the appointments in the PCB smack of favouritism. The credentials of some of board’s current officials are open to debate since they hold key positions.
Surprisingly, the chairman refused to accept the recommendations of his own handpicked and cricket non-entities World Cup review committee. The committee had suggested that one of the reason behind the debacle in South Africa was the the army of officials accompanying the team.
The committee had also objected to the flashy send-off arranged before the departure of the team. No action was taken against the department which arranged it. Media-hype was another reason stated by the committee. Who built it up?.
By not taking action against any official, the PCB chairman had saved all the his men from any accountability. It clearly means that the chairman held no PCB official responsible for the debacle and put entire blame on the senior players. If it is true then why the board sacked the national selection committee and coach Richard Pybus?
The then national committee, headed by Wasim Bari had been made the scapegoat. The chairman is still continuing the same treatment with the new selection committee, now supervised by the controversial Aamir Sohail.
Recently, the chairman curtailed a list of probables for the training camp which is in progress at Gaddafi Stadium. The names of former skipper Moin Khan and seasoned batsman Inzamam-ul-Haq were deleted from the list.
One can’t forget the post-World Cup operation after Pakistan lost to Australia in the final in 1999. Both the PCB chairman Khalid Mahmood and the chief executive Majid Khan were sacked. Then how come the present PCB hierarchy absolves itself from being a part of the World Cup 2003 catastrophe?