| November 24, 2003 | Monday | Ramazan 28, 1424 |
He could not be an examiner in Bengali
DIFFERENCES have cropped up in the district setup of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q over organizational matters. This is the second political party to have divided into rival groups. Earlier, the People’s Party Parliamentarians suffered a similar fate over the issue of ‘personality clash’.
The Bahawalpur PML-Q was divided into two groups after its reorganization and the holding of party elections recently. The ruling party had some time ago decided to hold elections at the district and tehsil levels to mobilize its workers and strengthen its organization. But, these hopes seemed unfulfilled as not only here but at other places also the PML-Q has split.
The PML-Q high command had set up a Bahawalpur reorganization committee under the supervision of Punjab Minister for Excise and Taxation Dr Shafiq Chaudhry, who visited Bahawalpur last week. Former federal minister Syed Tasneem Nawaz Gardezi, MNA, headed the committee. The minister during his visit convened a meeting of PML voters at the Circuit House. Mr Gardezi and PML’s Punjab media committee chairman Syed Tabish Alwari who was himself a candidate for district president, informed Dr Shafiq Chaudhry that the total number of voters was 22 whereas the minister was provided a list of 27 voters by the other group.
Most of the PML workers and activists objected to this and protested during the proceedings. At this, Mr Gardezi argued that in the presence of a controversial list of voters, the election process could not be initiated. But the minister, who was just a supervisor of the process, insisted and decided to hold elections in the presence of a large gathering of the rival group. At one stage, both Dr Shafiq and Mr Gardezi discussed in camera how to control the situation. But after emerging from the room, the minister announced the decision to hold elections, which sparked a protest by the workers who walked out of the hall. Amid a pandemonium, the minister, who was not authorized for this in the presence of committee chief Gardezi, announced the election result and declared former MPA Chaudhry Mohammed Iqbal as district president.
Later, Tabish Alwari group termed these elections illegal and unconstitutional and informed the PML high command about the situation. Now, the party which was supposed to be strengthened by the reorganization, has developed cracks instead and both groups are busy influencing the high-ups in their favour. Workers are in a fix as to whom they should support because the high command is tight-lipped and undecided in this regard.
THE citizens are facing severe problems relating to non-availability of potable water and defective sewerage. It is a shocking disclosure, it was pointed out that the underground water of the entire city and its suburbs has turned brackish and is not fit for human consumption. The press has on several occasions pointed this out to the district administration officials but so far no concrete scheme has been chalked out to provide potable water to the people here.
Earlier, MMA deputy parliamentary leader in the Punjab Assembly Dr Syed Waseem Akhtar (JI), who belongs to Bahawalpur, discussed the problem with the officials of the Asian Development Bank in Lahore. At an Iftar party the other day, he said the ADB had agreed to launch a Rs1.5 billion project for contamination-free drinking water and the sewerage to the areas of Bahawalpur tehsil. He expressed the hope that details would be sorted out by the ADB with the district government soon enabling the bank to launch the project by May 2004.
According to him, due to the dried-up River Sutlej near here, the level of underground water in Bahawalpur has considerably decreased creating problems in installing new tubewells and handpumps. The Irrigation Department, on his initiative, had decided to release 3,000 cusecs of water in the Sutlej through Sidhnai-Mailsi-Bahawal link. Out of this, 2,000 cusecs would be allocated to head Islam near Hasilpur-Vehari and the remaining 1,000 cusecs would be released in the Sutlej for the benefit of the local population so that with the seepage of water, the underground water level around the Bahawalpur city could be raised. For this purpose, the embankments of SMB link were being strengthened by the Irrigation Department, he said.
Dr Syed Waseem Akhtar said during the current fiscal, the Bahawal Victoria Hospital would be provided with an angiography machine costing Rs100 million while two new units of burn and kidney would be built in the hospital during the next financial year. In addition, he claimed the Punjab government agreed to sanction some 50 posts of doctors and lower-grade staff for making functional the closed Children’s Complex and the opening of a thalassemia ward of BVH, and it was expected that the vacant posts would be filled during the next month.
He said the Agriculture Dep-artment had accepted his plea to appoint 25 employees from the local deserving people in the Date Research Centre, Bahawalpur.
Dr Syed Waseem Akhtar said the government had expressed its willingness to revive the 34 sick industrial units of the local small industrial estate and a breakthrough in this regard was expected soon.
LET me resume today my excerpts from my favourite chronology, The Statesman (1875-1975) and see what issues the paper was addressing in 1926, barely 20 years from Independence.
It wrote on May 9 that year:
Today Dr Rabindranath Tagore celebrates his sixty-fifth birthday. He has long been chief among those whose achievements won wide fame for this province —- his Novel Prize, stamping his reputation for all the world to see, was given to him in 1913. Literature and education have been his life. Twenty-five years ago he made his first tentative efforts for a school at Bolpur which should be distinctive, and he has at last succeeded in making it more than a school and giving it an outlook which is wider than provincial and a reputation which is international. It attracts famous scholars from all parts of the world; Bolpur is a link between Indian scholarship and scholarship in other countries. His literary activity has shown no slackening; Gora was published in 1923, Red Oleanders in 1925, as also Broken Ties, but Bolpur is his chief interest nowadays.
On December 19 the same year, The Statesman commented:
Born in a gifted family sixty-five years ago, Rabindranath had its boyhood traits of character which enabled him to make the most of his fortune. In no other home could he have experienced the national life at its fullest and freest. His education was desultory; the conventional education against which he has tilted so often was not for him, simply because he refused to submit to it. He was sent to school but rebelled against it, and enviable among boys, was permitted to rebel successfully. The city and the country, Bengali and Sanskrit literature, were to unite in shaping and thoughts and dreams. But he was no lover of the wild. He loved nature as truly and deeply as his great father did, says Thompson, but it is nature as she comes close to habitations of men. Reading and roaming at will, feeding an old literature, and on all the talk that he heard about the new currents setting into the life of India —- that was his preparation of his mission. England he visited, and at University College found inspiration in Henry Morley; but his memories of the country were not all pleasant, and fortune was kind to him and India and the whole civilized world when she frustrated his intention of reading for the Bar. His companion on the voyage, a nephew, suffered so much after leaving the river that they turned back from Madras. Rabindranath’s years were not to be wasted in stuffy courts; India had other work for him. He had already published some verses and fiction, and there has been little intermission of activity since. When Gitanjali, published in 1910, won the enthusiasm of a civilization that was somewhat wearied of its own materialism. Bengal looked on unmoved; she had learnt his worth long before, and his songs and poems were already deep in Bengal hearts. But elsewhere millions thought that a new star had suddenly risen. If the award of Nobel Prize three years later was triumph for India it was for the poet at least for a time, the end of the quietness and seclusion that he loved. He was world famous and had to pay the penalty. Perhaps the smallest of his tribulations was that men all over India would send him their sonnets that he could advise them whether to apply for the prize. Mr Thompson traces the development of his powers through his many works and his criticism deserves respectful attention. Few Indian readers will entirely agree with his estimates. Some may find it amiss that he has no indiscriminate panegyrist; an intimate friend of the poet he does not hesitate to put his finger on many witnesses. But all will be grateful to him for the information that the university once declined to appoint the poet an examiner for Bengali at the Matriculation examination on the ground that he was not an authority on the language.
ON a couple of occasions, I have given you some vital information given to me by Mr Ahmad Salim. I owe it to you to introduce him.
He was born on January 26, 1945, in Pind Dadan Khan. He is a Punjabi poet and a prose writer. In 1971, he was arrested for his views on the Bangladesh issues. He was an instructor in Punjabi at the University of Sindh, and a teacher in ethical behaviour at the NED University Karachi. He was also associated with the University of Karachi and the Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, Islamabad. He has been a contributor to several newspapers and magazines. He edited a number of journals during 1981-1982.
Mr Ahmad Salim has written and compiled seventy five books on culture, art, literature, history and political issues. He is currently working for the SDPI as editor of its research journal, Paider Taraqqi.
Mr Ahmad Salim has won several awards from various research and literary organizations.