| 27 April 2004 | Tuesday | 06 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
Ban on jirga trials
Why do we remember Abdullah Haroon, year after year, on his death anniversary? Because he is relevant even today. He is relevant because he serves as a role model today, as he did in his own life-time. We remember him for what he had stood and worked for and for what he had accomplished.
People belonging to his genre generally set a trend for shaping the course of history, a trend which become as it were a part of his people's national heritage. Abdullah Haroon's eminence as a leader and friend of the poor stems from the fact that he started from scratch, with a limited resource base, and yet became a success in business, in politics, in organizing and establishing social work and charitable institutions, and in various other spheres of life and in various other ways.
Consider, in the first instance, his business activities which provided him a solid financial base to move on to other fields. An orphan at age four, with little formal education, he started out as a messenger and help boy at age fourteen.
He entered as an under-study in his maternal uncle's grains business firm at age eighteen, started his own modest business at age twenty-four, began importing sugar on a large scale at age thirty-two, secured a sound footing in the sugar import business at age thirty-seven, and bought up the zamindari of Motipur in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, imported equipment from England, and set up a sugar mill at Motipur during 1931-34 when he was about sixty.
Twice he suffered heavy losses (in 1907 and 1918), but that did not dampen his spirits, nor deflected him from his chosen path. He believed in initiative, enterprise, and hard work.
He built up his business, step by step, laboriously, strenuously and patiently, and that over long decades; he competed with established houses in the field on their terms, and made his mark. In short, he rose from rags to riches, and that without ever resorting to unfair means, to gimmicks, and to business tricks.
Today, in Pakistan, to name only one category of unethical practices, bank loan defaulters (in business) form a legion, and that provides an index to the prevalent business ethics.
Thus, Haji Abdullah Haroon's life presents a role model for those latter-day business tycoons and industrialists who are obsessed with the idea of getting rich overnight, and by all means, fair or foul.
Now consider his political career. Although he started taking interest in politics and attending public meetings from 1901, he did not launch himself formally into public life until 1913.
That year he was elected to the Karachi municipal committee as a member. Interestingly though, before entering a public career, he had built for himself (and his family) a solid financial base.
He had acquired, among other things, a spacious office on Napier Road, then the hub of business activities in Karachi, and bought property in Ranchore Lines, a horse-carriage, and a bungalow on Victoria Road, then part of the city's fashionable and expensive areas.
This would later become "Seafield" and serve as a transit camp for such political luminaries as Maulana Mohammad Ali, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Bi Amma, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, and Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
This means that unlike latter-day leaders, Haji Abdullah Haroon did not live off politics, nor did he intend to make a profession out of it. This reminds us of what Khasa Subba Rao, editor of the Indian Express, once wrote about Jinnah.
At about the turn of the century, when Jinnah had already established himself at the bar, he was asked as to why he was not taking active part in politics. Jinnah's reply was characteristic of the man who would later be acknowledged as the most incorruptible politician in the country.
He said that he was awaiting the day when he had saved up enough (and he named a figure, considered enormous at the time) to afford to involve himself in politics since he did not want to live off nor make a profession of politics.
And like Jinnah, Abdullah Haroon considered politics as a means of serving the community and the country, and not as a source for amassing wealth. He spent his own money to finance not only his own political activities, but also those of his party.
In one of his last letters sent posthumously, he told Shaikh Abdul Majid, "... you know very well that I have no more funds left and of the Working Committee of the assembly party, except a very few, none yet sent in their help, though they had promised to do so. As yet I have been financing all the expenses of the Muslim League branch here."
What a contrast to our present-day leaders who miss no opportunity to call themselves awami and swear by democracy present. The list of bank loans and telephone and electricity bills' defaulters among politicians is long.
The proceedings of the National Assembly during the past six months, and the "Mehrangate affair" of earlier years provide an indication of their insatiable greed to amass wealth through political pressure and influence, and to defraud the nation and its exchequer of billions of rupees which should have gone for social and economic development.
Above all, their penchant for living off politics is unlimited. Even umras, along with planeloads of family members and favourites, are performed at public expense while bemoaning an empty treasury, while all the provinces, especially Sindh, are burdened with overdrafts of billions of rupees.
Against this background, it is easy to see how Abdullah Haroon's thrift and financial discipline and how his role in politics becomes relevant to contemporary Pakistan - relevant if we really want to rid our politics of pervasive corruption and make our leaders servants of the people rather than their exploiters and oppressors.
Consider Abdullah Haroon's role in social development. Having himself gone through the travails that are the fate of orphans in a backward and economically downtrodden society, he dedicated himself, once he had become financially solvent and secure, to alleviating the sufferings of the poor, the orphans, and the needy.
This dedication led him to set up the Jamia Islamia Yatim Khana (1923), Karachi Muslim Gymkhana (1927), Hajiani Hanifabai Memon Girls School, Sind Muslim League Employees Bureau (1939), Wakf alal-Aulad Trust (1940), Sukkur Relief Fund (1940), and a charitable trust (1941).
He contributed liberally to the Angora Fund, the Symerna Fund (circa 1920s), the Palestine Relief Fund (circa 1930s), the Bhuj Famine Fund, and to scores of other charities and organisations involved in promoting education, health and religions causes.
His philanthropy knew no geographical bounds: it extended to the entire subcontinent, and even to Arabia. The sums he contributed were enormous even by today's standards.
Today there are in Pakistan tycoons and industrialists who are a lot more affluent than Haji Abdullah Haroon, and yet how many have involved themselves in promoting education, health, charitable institutions, orphanages and such other activities, designed to alleviate the lot of the poor and promote social development? The beneficiaries and legatees of Haji Abdoola Haroon also need to emulate his example.
At his forty-seventh death anniversary commemorative meeting at Karachi in 1989, this writer had suggested that a Trust be set up with a sum amounting to the par value at current prices of his total charities during the last nine months of his life and that the proceeds from it be utilized to set up a research centre after his name, and that this centre should sponsor meaningful research studies not only on his life and times, but also on Sindh and Pakistan.
Such an institution would be a more fitting tribute to Haji Abdullah Haroon than mere commemorative meetings and anniversary articles held once a year.
Abdullah Haroon Foundation on the lines of Carnegie or Rockefeller Foundation would hopefully break new ground and become a trend setter in Pakistan. That suggestion needs to be taken seriously.Abdullah Haroon's last letter, addressed to Nawab Ghulam Hussain Leghari and despatched posthumously, reads as if it does not pertain to 1942 but to 1994.
Therein, among other things, he said "In all parts of Sind reports of bloodshed and dacoities are rife which I always read in the press. May God have pity on us and give some sense to our Muslim brethren to stop this oppression. My conclusion is that this is all due to the disunity and folly in our ranks ...."
As the discussion above indicates, even specific events in the life of great men contain or are inspired by an element of universal truth, which is relevant at all times. As Benedetto Croce, the famed Italian philosopher, says, "The practical requirements which underlie every historical judgment give to all history the character of contemporary history because, however remote in time events there recounted may seem to be, the history in reality refers to present needs and present situations wherein those events vibrate".
As with history, so with the lives of great men who shape the course of history. And the events in their lives, when abstracted in terms of their underlying, universal components and interpreted in perspective, become relevant to present needs and situations.
Finally, one aspect that still needs to be delineated is Haji Abdullah Haroon's role in charting the course of modern Muslim India's history - the aspect which calls for our attention even if he had not done anything else.
This was the First Sind Provincial Muslim League conference in October 1938, which he organized and of whose reception committee he was the chairman. This represented his most important contribution as a shaper of history.
In particular, it was the resolution adopted at this conference which he formulated (presumably with the assistance of Pir Ali Muhammad Rashidi) but which he allowed Shaikh Abdul Majid, secretary of the reception committee, to move because of Shaikh's threat to walk-out of the conference if he was denied that privilege and because of his (Haroon's) keen desire to keep unity in the Sindh Muslim League's disparate and factious ranks.
In perspective, the Sind Provincial Conference resolution represented the penultimate step to, and prepared the ground for, the adoption of the Lahore Resolution at the Muslim League session in March 1940. Herein lies the significance of Haji Abdullah Haroon contribution as a trend-setter in modern Muslim India's politics, and as a "shaper" of history in a larger sense.
The writer is a former director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy and a distinguished author.
Ban on jirga trials
Hailing a Sindh High Court ban on jirga trials, Kawish writes that just a day after the announcement of the historic verdict, 13-year-old Rozina was forcibly married to a 40-year-old blind man in the Wahi Pandhi area of Dadu district in accordance with a jirga decision.
The daily urges the Sindh government to ensure implementation of the verdict not only in the case of Rozina but also for other girls who are sacrificed at the altar of the jirga system as a way of settling disputes involving men of their families.
It also calls for an increase in the number of judges so that justice is speedily provided to people and their confidence in the judicial system is restored. It is the lack of this confidence which compels the people to approach the unofficial courts.
Referring to a clash in Khairpur city, Awami Awaz says that one of the parties involved has tried to give a sectarian colour to a land dispute as it not only had set the house of its rivals on fire but also attacked some places of worship. The paper calls upon the administration to ensure that law and order is maintained in the sensitive city.
Welcoming the "Education for all" campaign launched by the government, Ibrat says that it is never too late to mend. If the government really wants to bring about an educational revolution in the country, the campaign should not be limited to a week but continued on a permanent basis.
For this purpose, it is imperative to allocate more funds for education and increase salaries of teachers to attract competent people to the profession.
Moreover, action should be taken against 'ghost teachers' and those influential people who have turned a large number of schools into their autaqs (guest houses) and cattle pens.
Taking up the issues raised at the Karachi public meeting of the Pakistan Oppressed Nations' Movement, Halchal says that attention must be paid to feelings of the people of Sindh and Balochistan on the Kalabagh dam and Gwadar port projects must otherwise sense of deprivation in the provinces would intensify.