| November 18, 2003 | Tuesday | Ramazan 22, 1424 |
A metaphor for a myopic world view
Moenjodaro after the rains
A UNESCO expert, H. J. Plenderleath, had visited Moenjodaro in 1964 at the invitation of the Pakistan government and after inspecting the historic site said: “If nothing is done to preserve the remains, all existing excavations will crumble within the next 20 to 30 years, and one of the most striking monuments of the dawn of civilization will be lost forever.”
The recent sacking of a police inspector by the deputy inspector general of police, Faisalabad range, raises questions about the official claims of rule of law.
As the story goes, a police team led by People’s Colony SHO inspector Saifullah Bhatti raided a bungalow owned by a known local yarn trader in Saeed Colony, Madina Town, on April 22 and arrested nine people — five traders and four call girls — all drunk. The raiding team also recovered Rs2 million stake money and over 2kg gold.
Immediately after their arrest, a number of influential people, including members of parliament, came into action for securing their release. They pressed the SHO not to bring their detention on record.
Sources said the Sadar SP reached the People’s Colony police station where he made the SHO release the arrested men and the girls.
Next morning the local press ran stories of the raid and release of the accused. The SP (city) sought explanation from the People’s Colony SDPO who reportedly resorted to delaying tactics. By the time inspector Saifullah Bhatti approached the traders and returned half of the amount recovered during the raid.
The SP (city) decided to proceed on his own and formally issued show cause notices to inspector Saifullah Bhatti, ASI Saleem Nawaz, constables Muhammad Arif, Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Akram and Sabir Hussain on charges of conducting raid, bringing the accused to the police station, receiving illegal gratification and releasing them without taking legal action against them, misusing official powers and failure to perform official duty under the law.
As the SP found the entire raiding party guilty of misuse of powers, he fired all except the SHO, because in the latter’s case the competent authority is the DIG.
On SP’s report, the then DIG ordered his suspension. But the inspector not only manoeuvred his reinstatement but also got himself posted at the Sadar police station the day the former DIG was transferred to Gujranwala.
In this scenario, inspector Saifullah Bhatti came under the command of Osama Mumtaz Raja, the Sadar SP, on whose pressure he had released the traders and call girls.
Abid Saeed, who took over as DIG in August last, proceeded against the SHO in the light of the show cause issued by his predecessor.
Not satisfied with SHO’s reply, the new DIG ordered his dismissal under the Punjab Removal from Service (Special Powers) Ordinance 2000.
The decision of the DIG is the talk of the town as people in knowledge of the entire episode wonder why a PSP officer was spared.
No inquiry officer summoned the Sadar SP and accused traders to know under what circumstances they were arrested and released
This is an established fact that PSP officers in police hierarchy always exert pressure for their personal gains to get a job done from subordinates and when a wrongdoing goes public, they escape whereas their subordinates are made to pay.
SADDA Mian, a scion of the royal family of Bhopal, had believed all his life that Bhadbhada, the biggish natural water reservoir on the edge of the city, was the world’s largest lake. Until one day, according to film actor Dilip Kumar, who knew and admired the burly gentleman, Sadda Mian visited Bombay. Hands on hips, he gazed at the Arabian Sea for hours from the Marine Drive, and then exclaimed, not without a tinge of awe: “Kya haqeeqat hai Bhabhade ki!” (Where does Bhadbhada stand against this!)
As schoolboys we were brought up on the staple diet of gentle patriotism. That Allama Iqbal’s maudlin praise of his country in “Saarey Jahan Sey Achcha Hindustan Hamara” was a forerunner to the Bhadbhada syndrome, would dawn much later. This wisdom arrived when a schoolgirl remarked rather innocently at a debating session: “What a silly song. It makes all our neighbours and the rest of the world look unwarrantedly inferior to us.”
Little did the young lady realize that she was echoing the views expressed a few hundred years earlier by no less a sage than the mediaeval chronicler Alberuni. For, Mehmood Ghaznavi’s companion, though a great admirer of Indian sciences, mathematics, architecture and Hindu philosophy, could still not mask his frustration with some people he met when he described Indians as “haughty, foolishly vain, self-contained and stolid. They believe there is no country like theirs, no nation like theirs, no science like theirs, no religion like theirs.”
At a more popular level, day in and day out cricket maestro Sachin Tendulkar is projected as the world’s number one batsman, and if someone like Imran Khan suggests that Tendulkar has yet to prove to be a match winner, there are howls of protest from the media. Assiduously fawning commentators never tire of praising Tendulkar even when he has paled so obviously before the blitzkrieg of an Adam Gilchrist or a Ricky Ponting.
It is this ready gullibility of so many Indians that seems to have sustained a large measure of the country’s politics too. Thus, it is easy to laud the greatness of a nation when it goes in for a nuclear explosion. For mass consumption a nuclear bomb is projected as something like Sachin Tendulkar’s special heavy bat that can be used to fix rivals in a one-day international. Ministers think little of the consequences when they foolishly talk of teaching the enemy “the lesson of its life”. If we lose 30 or 40 million people in the process here and several times more across the border, it doesn’t seem to count. Everyone applauds.
Flattery or self-deception is a double-edged sword. The Americans had sized up this Indian weakness a few years ago. So every visitor who comes to our shores is equipped with a couple of gratuitous remarks that are certain to find immediate favour. The one that never fails to work is: “You are the world’s largest democracy, an economic superpower in the making.” How does it matter if we are the largest democracy if a large chunk of our population is still among the most deprived?
India claims to be a nuclear power, but it must be the only nuclear power that routinely looks forward to visitors from the Ivory Coast and Togo, or Afghanistan and Bhutan to reassure its candidature as a permanent member in a restructured Security Council. Is it the demeanour of a superpower-in-the-making to get excited by the mere fact of China removing Sikkim from its website of sovereign countries, and that only to be told tersely soon afterwards that the issue still remains a dispute?
It is in this context that we have to see the frequently parroted Pakistani position, which appears to be a deliberate policy issue, that Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is the last hope for peace with Pakistan. It is a nice thing to say to a prime minister of the day. It is also a flattering point of view which any politician would find difficult to resist. More so, the media. That’s how Pakistan’s Information Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, got himself on the front pages of all the newspapers in Delhi. He kept repeating the mantra, Vajpayee or bust.
The trouble is that Indian democracy ordains elections, which are due next year. Are we to believe that if Mr Vajpayee is unseated, it would signal the end of the road for Indian and Pakistani peace efforts? Surely there is a world beyond Bhadbhada, as Sadda Mian discovered.
Soft Hindutva has become the Congress Party’s speciality. Now in a bid to counter an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party on the obscurantist front, the ruling Congress in Madhya Pradesh has pledged to grant minority status to the Sindhis and provide financial assistance to Mansarovar pilgrims and cow welfare initiatives.
A 70-page Congress manifesto for the December 1 assembly poll in Madhya Pradesh was released in Bhopal by the state unit chief, Radhakishan Malviya, in the presence of Chief Minister Digvijay Singh.
The Sindhi community — a traditional BJP vote bank — has a substantial presence in commercial centres like Indore, Jabalpur and Bhopal, and the promise to grant them minority status is an obvious ploy to win their votes.
The manifesto promises generous financial assistance for construction of ‘gaushalas’ (cow shelters) in the state. It also speaks of an advisory board for suggesting reforms in administration of temples.
The Congress has also promised to take necessary steps for proper development of religious places belonging to the minority community.
The manifesto says those found guilty in spreading communal riots will be barred from contesting elections, a double-edged sword.
Professor Plenderleath’s remarks are printed on the back of the “master plan” for the preservation of Moenjodaro, approved jointly by the experts of Unesco and Pakistan in 1972.
Perhaps the countdown has begun. The recent heavy rains in the area affected the entire site, as a recent visit by this correspondent showed. The rains led to fissures, gullies, crevices and ditches in the structures in some of the areas. The main and vital structure of the site is the stupa and you notice that its covering has been damaged and ‘leakage’ has been reported.
In 1948, mud plaster was applied to protect the remains and Moenjodaro Conservation Cell (MCC) experts in the late 1990s also used the same technique. But the rains this season appear to have washed away the plaster coating. In an area close to the stupa, Block 6 has been affected, including room numbers 2, 3 and 5. When you enter the DK area, Block No80, you find house No3 severely affected and rooms 25, 26, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42 and 43 to be damaged.
Rainwater had led to ditches in the granary and partially damaged the walls. The top of the wells has also been affected, as there is no proper drainage system at the site. Block No3 on the southern side of the HR area is affected, particularly some rooms in house No11. The rooms were filled with rainwater and there was ‘salt settlement’, leaning of walls and bulging of structures. The moisture content is said to have gone up to seven per cent, which could be alarming.
In the L-area, 20 pillars of the Assembly Hall have been washed away and only their bases are visible. The steps and walls of the Great Baths were also affected and a portion of the steps has fallen.
The federal government has not made any separate provision in the budget for maintenance of this huge site. The scientific laboratory set up at the site has been without a chemist after the transfer of the incumbent to Lahore on Sept 15, with his successor yet to arrive. The staff says they have not been paid for the last two months. The staff at the site has reportedly been cut from 67 to 37. It has been learnt that local officials at Moenjodaro had informed the director, Southern circle, Hyderabad, about the rain damage in the first week of September.
Another problem is that 27 tubewells sunk around the site to fight waterlogging and salinity have been closed since early 1997. They were closed on an experimental basis but it seems as if they have been permanently abandoned.
A huge amount of funds left with the federal ministry of culture following the 1997 closure of the Authority for the Preservation of Moenjodaro (APM) are lying unutilized, says the district Nazim, Khurshid Ahmed Junejo. He said the government was not prepared to hand over the site to the district government nor was it utilizing funds held up with the culture ministry.
The Friends of Moenjodaro Association, Larkana, has urged the government and Unicef officials to take early and concrete steps to save Moenjodaro from deterioration.