| July 6, 2003 | Sunday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 5,1424 |
The book writers of Lahore
Is there ‘light’ at the end of tunnel?
AL QUDS: After 1,000 days of mutual bloodshed, Israel’s army chief and the Palestinian security chief both expressed confidence this week that the current Intifada was over.
When you read that power riots have erupted in Karachi, during this week, and have dreadful thoughts that when it rains there is every likelihood of it all getting worse, it does make you contemplate that why Karachi? Of course, as we reside in this city it is our primary concern, argue citizens of Sindh capital. What they are implying, somewhat directly, is why is there no power supply crisis in the other cities and provincial capitals of the country. What is it that they have done, where the KESC has failed?
“At this moment there certainly is a chance to completely end the round of violence,” Lieutenant-General Moshe Ya’alon said in a newspaper interview published on Friday.
Mohammed Dahlan was even more decisive. “I’m telling you: in the first weeks maybe there will be an incident here and there, but within a month it’s all going to be over. This is the end of the Intifada. Halas! (Enough!),” the Palestinian security affairs minister said in a television interview late Thursday.
The remarks led local observers to wonder whether June 29, 2003, would indeed be written into their history books as the day the second Intifada ended.
That was when the main Palestinian factions, notably the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad, declared a ceasefire. Israel withdrew from reoccupied autonomous areas in the Gaza Strip hours later, followed by a pullout from Bethlehem on Wednesday.
But other Israeli officials were more circumspect in their pronouncement than was the chief of staff, while polls showed the Israeli public was apprehensive.
“The coming weeks are critical,” Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Ma’ariv daily. “There is still a possibility that there will be another severe outburst of violence over the coming months. We need to be watchful and conduct ourselves with caution,” he said.
A large majority of Israelis (73 per cent) support the ceasefire, a poll published Friday in the Ma’ariv revealed. But only 38 per cent believe it has a chance of ending the Israeli-Palestinian violence. The poll questioned 594 people this week and has a margin of error of 4.5 per cent.
Many Palestinians were skeptical too. “Nobody in the Palestinian street is talking of an end to the Intifada. They do not believe (Israeli Premier Ariel) Sharon wants peace,” a Palestinian journalist said. “Many believe the truce will not last long,” he added.
Both sides say it is in the hands of the other whether the calm and progress made will last.
Israel says it all depends on whether the Palestinians will take serious action against militants — a condition for further progress — and, as Ya’alon argued, on whether the Palestinian leadership creates an atmosphere of reconciliation, rather than one of encouraging “martyrdom”.
The Palestinians say the three-month, conditional truce was unlikely to hold if Israel continued its military operations. Releasing prisoners — one condition listed by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad when they called the truce — would help, but removing road blocks so that people could resume normal lives was even more crucial, they said.
Israel must make the lives of Palestinians easier, Dahlan told Israel’s Channel One Television.
Perhaps prematurely then, newspaper analysts here were discussing at length Friday which side could claim victory.
In his interview with the Yediot Ahronot daily, Ya’alon partly retracted a controversial remark made earlier this week that the Intifada which began in September 2000 appeared to have ended and that meant a victory for the Israeli army.
“In their story they won and in our story we won,” he told Yediot.
“You thought you’d win. We thought we’d win. We didn’t win. You didn’t win,” said Dahlan.—dpa
The city of Lahore did not have any printing presses till the British arrived in 1849. The first printing press arrived in 1850 and was owned by Munshi Harsukh Rai, who launched a weekly English publication by the name of Koh-i-Noor, which was also the name of his press. The age of printing had arrived in Lahore.
But before the printing press came, Lahore had a unique place in the world of book publication. Books hand-written in Lahore were much sought after, and traders exported books to far off places like Iran and Khorasan and even to Constantinople and beyond. The museums of almost all these places have hand-written books from Lahore as unique samples of excellence. The story of that tradition needs to be told.
There was a time when the trade caravans from all over the know world used to reach Lahore. Their normal place of rest was in the huge open space just opposite the mosque of Wazir Khan. Around this area were the famous ‘Karvan serais’ of Lahore. A few names from antiquity of these serai’s are Maula Bakhsh Ki Serai and Babu Ki Serai. This space was the collection point, the melting pot of ideas from all over the world. To one side of the ‘maiden’ was the Nakaskhana, or the Horse Stables, and just near it were numerous water troughs. Even today one such trough, probably dating back to the 1700s is still functional. The ideas of the changing world came from this place, and it is this very place where the institution of the kissakhawan, or storyteller, emerged.
From this institution or practice of narrating the tales of strange lands and people grew the industry of story writing, and Lahore excelled in this. There is no doubt that at Delhi, Peshawar, Samarkand and Bokhara the tradition of the storyteller existed. But then at all these places, just like they existed in the Europe of old, the written word followed the spoken one. The written word meant that the business of publishing existed there, and it might interest those in the habit of reading that of the shops that ringed the maidan outside the mosque of Wazir Khan, over two dozen book publishers did excellent business. A brief description of these businesses merits mention, for it provides us with reasonable clues as to what Lahore meant to the world of books and scholarship before the printing press arrived.
One of the largest publishing houses of old Lahore was owned by Mian Muhammad Bakhsh Sahaf, who had over 50 calligraphers who copied books and sent them for binding.
Epics like Alif Laila and numerous other Punjabi, Persian and even Turkish tales (when it was written in the traditional Turkish script) were written here. The sheer beauty of the Sahaf publications made them expensive copies. Besides the usual commodities that traders purchased, books also did excellent business and were purchased from all over the world.
Besides this group, other well known publishing houses were owned by Chiragh Din, who in the year 1815 sold books worth over one thousand rupees every day, as one account puts it. In the initial Sikh conquest of the walled city of Lahore, another account states that “the book sellers of Lahore had more money than the goldsmiths, a fact that shocked Ranjit Singh”.
Fakirullah, who was a Sadhu by caste as one description puts it, owned another major book publishing concern. He had employed over 65 calligraphers and he specialized in publishing religious texts like copies of the Holy Quran. Copies of the Quran with the Fakirullah sign are among some of the prized copies in the British Museum.
Yet another major publishing concern was owned by Sheikh Elahi Bukhsh. He also had over 60 calligraphers working for him. He also specialized in religious texts, though some samples of traditional folk stories are known for their sheer beauty. The artistry of the outer spaces show the high level of expertise and taste that the books of Elahi Bukhsh were known for.
All these numerous publishing houses had their own specialist binders, and all these hand-written manuscripts were leather bound and done in a style that was in later years to be copied by many experts in the West. The leather used in bookbinding is of a special type with specific properties to make them last. Today, there are only two families that specialize in leather bookbinding, with both devoting their energies to binding copies of the Holy Quran.
If we visit the Wazir Khan mosque even today, we can visualize the scene of numerous caravans, with storytellers helping the tired traders pass the time as the night approaches. The book business has always been good business, and still remains a major industry in all sane societies. In Lahore the habit of reading has touched an all-time low, let alone the tradition of hand-written manuscripts and leather-bound editions. The old city of Lahore had libraries in virtually every mohallah. Gone are the libraries, the calligraphers, and the leather bookbinders. Not that the printing presses ruined their trade. If anything it enhanced it, and gave it a new respectability. —Majid Sheikh
Indeed, as one is apprehensive and angry at the way the KESC is faring this summer, there are many thoughts that come to mind as a rather inevitable sort of an option that makes it imperative to focus on the persistent water and power crisis. And they are interconnected.
But focus on the power crisis here, and the fact that almost the entire Metropolitan front page was focused on this crisis which highlighted the rage and the suffering of the localities that had been hit.
There is particularly nothing new in focusing on this power failure context, except the fact that there is a deepening of the crisis. There is apparently an escalation of the problem in that it is spreading to more and more localities in the city.
Those who are financially able to avail other options, like power generators and UPS systems and rechargeable lights and fans etc., as against the somewhat naive and poetic option of candles, are not as affected. But the majority of the citizens who argue that it is the responsibility of the planners and the decision makers, suffer enormously. And as one says this there is need to refer to Feica’s excellent cartoon in Friday’s Dawn, which underlined the point that in Karachi power water crisis the Sindh government and the City district government were blaming each other for the “collapse”. Statements to this effect have appeared in many sections of the press and it is worrying. Who will solve the problem then? Citizens worry, naturally.
One Karachiite went on further with this argument and said that what is it that will improve the performance of an organization like the KESC? Is it a further tightening of management control or is it more resources to augment the system? This is the way in which people talk and there are numerous interpretations, and conclusions. In most cases there is little cheer, little sunshine.
Whether it is directly relevant to the theme or not, it is interesting to refer to an advertisement of the State Life Insurance Corporation of Pakistan (SLIC), which has picked up the water theme as one of the messages that it seeks to convey to the people of Pakistan, in particular Karachi? It shows a man using a hose-pipe to wash his car and another person, presumably trying to remind him not to do so! The advertisement copy reminds that the shortage of water is growing all over the world, so there is need to avoid its wastage in our daily lives. This SLIC advertisement is a reflection of a situation, where water is becoming central to our routine conversations, and its wastage by those who have it, or can afford to buy it at any price, at this stage, which is being widely resented. Let me point out that in localities where there is an unrestrained and careless watering of lawns and gardens, it is a sore point amongst watchful neighbours. Also pertinent is the fact that in certain apartment complexes water meters have been installed already, while there are other where the residents are contemplating these water meters, for there are residents who say that if they conserve water the next door neighbour does not. So why should one pay for what one does not use? Good point.
That is the way it is with electricity too in many cases. For example, as one reflects on this theme of current power shortage, and daily breakdowns, there is the thought that those who pay their bills on time, are also paying for the line losses of the KESC caused by defaulters and kunda connections. An old lament.
Wednesday’s power failures also disturbed, substantially, the already inadequate water supply schedule for a city whose population has braved the crisis, so far, but it is beginning to lose its uneasy calm. First, it is the uncertainty, and secondly, it is the sheer suffocation caused by heat and absence of electricity that has psychologically tired the people. Imagine the discomfort of the ill and ailing and imagine the impact of these power failures on city’s health care system. Nobody has focused specifically on the impact of the water and power shortage on the medical facilities that we have, and needless to say that they are grossly insufficient. How much of inefficiency or rather how much more of the inefficiency of the system must have been caused only by these twin factors.
I cannot but refer to the photographs, that almost all newspapers have carried, of Wednesday’s power riots. Somewhat reminiscent of the kind of photographs that have appeared in the print media during political movements that the city has seen. One photograph, in four columns, focused on one of the localities in Lyari Town after the riots against the power breakdown. And another showed the bonfires that had been lit by the protesters in Pak Colony. And there was yet another showing the residents of Gazdarabad. Of course there is a KESC version of the entire episode, and the aftermath, but with the passage of time it is evident that people are weary and disbelieving when it comes to these explanations. Neither the educated nor the uneducated man in this society believes such official explanations and that is another reminder of how we have let the public down. Leading them to disbelief.
Let me refer to the report which appeared about Wednesday, July 3’s collapse. (How often we use this expression in our lives, dear fellow citizens). Here is the quote “The failure of the KESC to restore power for more than 14 hours, forced the people to come out of their homes and stage a protest against the poor performance of the power utility.” It further said: “the dejected people took to the streets in Ranchore Lines, Ramswami, Nishter Road, Lasbella, Gulistan Colony, Agra Taj Colony, Bihar Colony, Mirza Adam Khan Road, Nazimabad, Rizvia Society, Pak Colony, North Nazimabad, New Karachi’s sectors 5 D and 5 G and Baloch Para in Jamshed Quarters.” Keep in mind that there was baton-charging of the protesters by the police, besides tear-gassing.
With the thought that the power situation could get worse (in spells that is?) in the foreseeable future, there is a view that wonders why Karachi’s power issue be decided in Islamabad. The question has been asked by the Council of Karachi’s Industrial Association. That is yet another dimension.
But as one revisits this power crisis that has its highs and lows, obviously, try and imagine the picture that comes to mind of “half of the City without power for ten hours,” that two police posts and a car were torched by angry protesters.
And any light at the end of the tunnel in all this? Leave it to the reader to come to his own conclusion. The answer is so obvious, my friend. Pray that it does not escalate any further.