| 09 August 2004 | Monday | 22 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
The beginning
The diary of a psychiatrist
Hazrat Abu Bakr's deep attachment to and bond of fidelity with the holy Prophet (PBUH) has been his hallmark - the first among men of his time to acknowledge his slightly older friend's apostle ship. He was a couple of years younger in age and, like the Prophet, had not received any kind of formal education.
But for his conversion to the fledgling faith, the big guns of Quraish who have left their indelible marks on the pages of Islamic history - names like Hazrat Usman, Abdur Rahman bin Auf, Talha, Zubair, Abu Ubaida, Saad bin Abi Waqas - would have been missing.
These illustrious personages embraced Islam only because they were convinced that Hazrat Abu Bakr had the innate quality of recognising the truth and rejecting the falsehood.
It was only because of his "staunch adherence" (in Muir's words) to the holy Prophet that the afore-named persons of remarkable qualities had joined the ranks of the early converts to Islam which was being opposed, tooth and nail, by all those who mattered in Makkah.
The Prophet himself is reported to have acknowledged that "Abu Bakr was an exception, as he embraced Islam unhesitatingly and without arguing with him". As is also a well-known fact, it was Hazrat Abu Bakr alone who accepted the Prophet's version of his 'Ascension' as entirely true while the whole lot of sceptics had raised a storm of unbelief.
Who is not aware that it was for his unflinching faith in the Prophet's honesty in claiming to be inspired by Allah and being His true Messenger, that Hazrat Abu Bakr earned the title of Siddique (literally, one who testifies the Truth) from no one other than the Prophet himself.
Perhaps, the Almighty had willed that the first adult convert to Islam would be the first Khalifa of the Prophet of Islam and the first architect of the citadel of democracy in that part of the world - citadel built on the principles of choosing the most suitable person from the masses to rule as long as that person enjoys popular support and abides by the constitution, or moral/religious code, adopted by the people's will.
"I have been elected your Ameer, although I am not better than you. Help me if I am in the right; and set me right, if I am in the wrong", excerpted from the extempore post-election address of the first Caliph, were words never heard before - a far cry at that time, a long-distance call to the future political order after the overthrow of the authoritarian, autocratic, arbitrary rule of the Persian and Roman emperors in the 7th century A.D.
Although the kind of democracy initiated by the founder of Islam's 'pious Caliphate' underwent a change, degenerating into hereditary kingship (retaining the sacred name of Caliphate), yet it had preserved, though formally or nominally, the principle of 'bayet', or obeisance - expression of approval by the elite of the kingdom to the assumption of power by the ruling Khalifa, whose power was not unlimited but circumscribed by the laws of Shariah as interpreted by the Qazi, or official jurist and judge.
Apart from his exemplary loyalty to the Prophet, Hazrat Abu Bakr's other outstanding trait was kindness - being kind to men generally and slaves particularly. He spent a part of his hard-earned fortune from his textiles trade on buying slaves, including Hazrat Bilal, from their oppressive owners and setting them free.
It was his innate kindness that prompted him to direct the army led by Osama bin Zayd on the first military expedition to Syria in June 632 A.D., soon after becoming Caliph, that "children, women and old men should not be killed nor any trees be cut down wherein there is food for men and animals".
The Prophet's assessment of Hazrat Abu Bakr's outstanding trait was that, "among his followers, he was the most kind-hearted man disposed towards kindness to all the members of the Ummah."
Allama Iqbal's verses about a true believer (momin) that "in friendly environment, he is soft as silk; and, in conflict between Truth and Falsehood, he is strong as steel", appear to have been composed with inspiration from the character-sketch of Hazrat Abu Bakr.
He was the kindest person in the Ummah, according to the Prophet's saying which is read out in Friday sermons in mosques. But, for his being 'strong as steel', one has only to recall how determined and unyielding like a rock he was while dealing with the apostasy movement - refusal to pay Zakat - and the popping up of false prophets like Aswad Ansi, the 'veiled prophet' of Yemen, Tulayha in North Arabia, and the most powerful Musailma, the 'liar', who was subdued by Khalid bin Waleed after the former had defeated two previous military contingents despatched by Hazrat Abu Bakr.
Further instance of his toughness as steel is furnished by about fifteen successful military campaigns launched by him during his short-lived tenure of a little more than two years.
Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Eastern Iraq, Basra, Damascus were occupied by Muslims during this short span of time. These campaigns and conquests paved the way for the complete capitulation of the imperial powers of Persia and Byzantium during the rule of the second Caliph, Hazrat Umar, spread over more than a decade.
The closest companion of the holy Prophet who took refuge with him in a cave during the perilous journey to Madinah remained strongly attached to his guide and master till the end.
The beginning
The following is an account of the early days of The Pakistan Times as written by Muhammad Saeed in his book, Lahore: A Memoir: Year: 1947 Date: August 6, Place: Delhi Railway Station Time: 9 pm
The Frontier Mail was about to leave. But it was unusually a dismal show. The Mail's 25 minutes' stay had always been full of intense activity. The staff, the passengers, the coolies, the vendors all used to be in a state of absolute frenzy.
Today, a pall of gloom hung over the whole atmosphere. There were a few listless coolies, the staff seemed to be preoccupied, and the passengers -- each one of them -- were absorbed in thoughts wherein the fate of the journey mattered more than personal comfort.
The city stretching away magnificently beyond the small garden, was wrapped in a deep silence. Few people stirred. The narrow, tortuous lanes, drenched with human blood lay desolated. It is the cities that impart life to the Railway stations and when the cities are dead, stations can't pretend to be living.
The train clerk cast a look at the Reservation sheet and guided me to my compartment. My wife, with a baby girl in her arms, and two sons, aged nine and five, followed me into the compartment.
When I saw the reservation chits I felt perturbed for we were booked for the upper berths. I expressed my disgust at the arrangement. Immediately, one of the two Hindu gentlemen who were to be our companions in travel, said: "Don't worry, we shall move up". It was a generous offer which I gratefully accepted.
The train left on schedule and after a day of hectic preparations I lay relaxed under a fan. The sudden rattling of the train indicated that we were on the Jamuna bridge. Soon the sound ceased and I fell asleep.
The day was breaking when we steamed into Ludhiana. It was a tame entry for a train as prestigious as the Frontier Mail. Nobody seemed to be bothered. The two Hindu passengers left us.
A well-built Muslim passenger joined us. He advised us to shut the windows for an earlier train was ambushed not far from that spot. The train steamed out of the station and soon we were passing through an area that presented utter gloom.
When we crossed the Beas, the desolution deepened to the point of absolute vacancy. Not a human soul was seen working in the fields, the wayside villages were as till as painted canvas.
The winding country pathways and canals seemed to be interminably losing themselves in a grey void. Only stray streaks of smoke on the distant horizon revealed that yet another human habitation had passed through an orgy of blood and fire.
The sun had risen fairly high when we reached Amritsar -- a confluence of twin charms: the handsome manhood of majha and the romantic visage of the Chamba and Kangra damsels. Every time I visited Amritsar, I felt captivated. But the city, this time, presented the look of a cremation ghat, eerie and stinking. The platform was almost empty. The Railway staff stood silent, and so were the passengers.
There were no vendors. The silence was so perfect that even the faint hiss of steam from the stationary engine sounded a shriek. Only some Sikhs were hanging about, with unsheathed kirpans which they occasionally brandished. None boarded the train and none alighted from it.
The brief stoppage seemed to have lingered into eternity, till the engine whistled and gave a gentle pull. A huge cloud of steam rose around the wheels and the train started gaining speed.
We left Chheharta behind and then Atari and when we entered Wagah and then Harbanspura everyone in the train felt uplifted. A journey through a virtual valley of destruction had ended and when finally the train came to halt at Platform No.2 -- Lahore, the moment was as gratifying as the consummation of a dream.
Next day, I met Faiz Ahmad Faiz in the Civil & Military Gazette building an joined The Pakistan Times. After a brief stay under the roof of C&MG, The Pakistan Times moved to The Tribune's offices, which lay sealed since the final exit of the staff on the morning of freedom.
In between, the premises were opened to us only once by the Deputy Commissioner to enable us to bring out a special edition on the Quaid's death - The C&MG press where The Pakistan Times were printed was closed that day in mourning.
When the doors were opened, Mr. Jamil Ahmad (later News Editor) and I had to stay out for some time to allow the noxious fumes accumulated over the months to escape. The make-up room presented a dismal sight.
It appeared the staff had hurriedly abandoned the work. The chasis were lying in a disordered manner. Page one and the back page were lying locked in the chasis. The banner and subsidiary headlines announcing Partition of India into two dominions, -- Bharat and Pakistan -- in very bold type, (perhaps not less than 60 pt) were not yet redistributed.
Technically, it was a good page, under the circumstances. One is not sure whether the paper ever reached the readers, for city life by then had been reduced to utter chaos.
We gathered the scattered type and when eventually the pages were laid upon the flat-bed, the machine malfunctioned. It was biting more than it could "chew". Anyhow, we got over the difficulty and brought out a paper that was a welcome departure from the monotonous five-column C&MG page.
But this was only a one-day deviation from the routine, till Progressive Papers Ltd. was permanently allotted the premises. The Tribune was the foremost Hindu journal in Lahore.
Wedded to Congress policies, it was initially a moderate paper though sometimes, it did show Mashasabhaist streaks as well. Anyhow, it had a good panel of contributors. The leading articles by Kalinath Ray -- who enjoyed editorial seclusion more than public glare -- were usually long-winded.
There is much truth in poet Akbar's observation: "if you want to have an idea of length, see the hair of a Bengali woman and listen to the talk of a Bengali man." If C&MG was the paper of the foreign elite and highbrow gentry, The Tribune was the paper of middle-class Hindu society, which though highly circumspect -- even timid -- profoundly influenced Congress policies.
The Pakistan Times found the building inadequate and the machines too outdated to meet its needs. Mian Iftikharuddin, the moving spirit behind the new Pakistani venture, immediately took in hand the remodelling of the building and the import of a new printing plant.
He went to the USA to purchase a Goss rotary. How much we lagged behind the world in the field of journalism was demonstrated by the American mechanic who had come to Lahore to install the rotary.
It was a revamped plant and when I doubted whether it could ever keep level with the demand, he said that not much printing had been done on the machine. 'It only printed papers with a circulation of ten thousand each', he said.
I wondered if there could ever by a paper with that lean circulation in America. I was further surprised when he said that the population of the town where the machine was installed did not exceed 10 thousand. In other words, the average was two papers to each individual.
One of Mian Sahib's many hair-raising experiences in the USA was to be caught unwittingly in a whirlpool of American traffic. He had many a close shave. Landing safely on the other side of the road, he told Nasir Farooki who was accompanying him at that moment: 'Sonny, what a hell it was. Whatever Quranic verses my mind could recollect, I recited those in the few interminable seconds of crossing.'
With The Pakistan Times, Imroze, Lail-o-Nahar - all under one roof and Mian Iftikharuddin, Amir Husain Shah, Faiz, Mazhar and a large team of young energetic journalists on all the three publications, the old Tribune building once again started to breath-perhaps more vigorously.
The Pakistan Times, though owned by a 'progressive' politician leaning to the Left, was a happy house of diverse opinions where nobody objected to anybody's views. We were Socialists, Jammat fans, non-politicals -- yet all trying to be professionals.
The paper produced here was respected or hated depending upon the reader's fancy, but never ignored. In that respect we thought ourselves lucky. What a journalist dreads is not abuse, but indifference.
Among my colleagues in the newsroom were Kemal Hyder (later News Editor), Jamil Ahmed (Kemal's successor) Kh. M. Asaf (later Editor and Chairman National Press Trust) H.K. Burki (political analyst and author), Khawaja Mohammad Saeed, Mohammad Sarwar, (a philosophy student, Khaksar). On the reporting side: Mohammad Shafi (Meem Sheen), Tafazzul Husain Siddiqui (later a Brigadier and ISPR Chief (Ali Akhtar Mirza, Amjad Husain (later Joint Editor).
At the writing desk: Mazhar Ali Khan, Abdul Majid (later Editor C&MG) Zuhair Siddiqui (Majid's successor on C&MG), I.A. Rehman, Anwar Ali (the Creator of Nanna) was our Cartoonist. On the other publications were Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, Ashfaq Ahmed, Sibte Hasan, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Zaheer Babur. And above all, Chirag Hasan Hasrat.
(To be concluded)
The diary of a psychiatrist
From a sleepy town of 15,000 inhabitants in 1843, Karachi has become a megalopolis of over 15 million citizens who, apart from facing immense societal pressures, brave a number of irksome civic problems as they go about leading normal lives.
As these difficulties, made harder still by long-drawn spells of violence that break out every now and then, impinge on the consciousness of common citizens, they are turning increasingly to psychiatrists to get their worries and woes off their chests.
Recently, Dr Syed Ali Wasif, a psychiatrist by profession, teamed up with film-maker Khalid Hussain to make a 28-minute movie called "The diary of a psychiatrist". The organizers of the London Film Festival have taken a keen interest in the film, which might be screened in November.
According to Dr Wasif, the process of brutalization of society began shortly after the outbreak of the Afghan War in the early 1980s and led to easy availability of drugs and deadly weapons in Karachi.
His movie takes into account the insidious effect of Gen Ziaul Haq's long reign, characterized by oppression and a rise in religious intolerance, on the country in general and Karachi in particular.
Dr Wasif portrays through his paintings how Shanti Nagar in Punjab was burnt to ashes and the minority Christian community was forced to live in perpetual fear of the Hudood Ordinances and blasphemy law.
The film vividly portrays the sorrows of the people condemned to live in an insecure environment. Dr Wasif insists that the 1992 military operation destroyed the social fabric of the city, with the result that currently over 17 per cent of its citizens suffer from clinical depression.
Since hope springs eternal in the human breast, Dr Wasif's film does not end on a disappointed note. His mural of the extensive city, drawing on verses by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, paints Karachi as a vibrant and forward-looking place.
Reviving the tramway
At the time of partition, five cities in the subcontinent had trams: Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Karachi. In Kolkata, the tram continues and it still has two carriages. It used to have first class and second class, and one wonders if the class distinction is still there under Communist rule in the state.
Mumbai had double-decker trams, perhaps the only city to have these other than Hong Kong, where they continue to operate. There was a lot of song and dance when trams were discontinued in Mumbai towards the end of the 1950s. The Sheriff of Bombay, some celebrities and politicians travelled on the tram's last journey.
Trams in Karachi stopped operating in the 1960s. One doesn't know when trams in Delhi and Chennai went off the road. Those in Karachi were diesel-powered and they had a single car. Elsewhere they had two carriages. In Mumbai, one single-deck carriage was attached to the double-decker trams during the rush hour.
The hub of the trams in Karachi was Saddar from where they plied to the Cantonment Station, Soldier Bazaar, Merewether Tower (some extended up to Keamari) and Gandhi Garden.
The only tram that terminated at the end of Napier Road didn't touch Saddar. It linked Napier Road with Merewether Tower. There were double tracks all the way, except on a narrow strip in front of the Holy Family Hospital.
Initially in Karachi, as also in all other cities with tram services, the carriages were pulled by horses. The East India Tramway Company ran the trams for carrying cargo from the port.
But that was soon discontinued. Only passenger services continued unabated. Sometime in the early 20th century, the horses were replaced by small engines, but it seemed that the trams' brake system wasn't efficient, because quite often, when sliding down the old Keamari bridge, the engine along with the carriage would derail.
Once it ran into the shop of an influential citizen who saw to it that the good old horses were brought back. The engines were shipped back to Manchester. Later, the East India Company sold the trams to Mohammedi Transport Company, which also owned buses.
The undoing of the trams in Karachi, as in Mumbai, was the increase in traffic. They plied in the middle of the road, unlike, say, in Portland, Oregon, where the rails are placed next to the pavements.
Accidents used to occur. On Garden Road, which was made one-way in the late 1950s, the trams ran both ways, which the drivers found difficult to remember. A former minister of state met with an accident.
His old sturdy Chevrolet could take the impact of a tram running at full speed: the minister survived with a couple of broken bones but Mr Maulvi, the Principal of Islamia College, was not that lucky, as he lost his life when one of the wheels of his cycle rickshaw got stuck in the tram tracks near Soldier Bazaar market.
The rickshaw driver, seeing the approaching tram, jumped out of the rickshaw, but Maulvi Sahib, as he was called by one and all, wasn't that agile. Now when the government is talking of introducing tramways once again, the safety factor will naturally have to be a major consideration in a city where the traffic congestion is now far greater than it was in the 1960s.
Cat under the chair
This is a purely personal impression of the rain on Friday: The rain came in fits and starts. It was mild, and did not really have as much of a cooling effect as the news items on Saturday suggested.
The lights went out at around 8.30 in the evening, but this made for a nice bit of family togetherness on the roof. The drizzle was light, and no one felt too uncomfortable. Even the cat came up to enjoy the breeze, but took care to sit well protected under a chair.
A lot of gossip was exchanged, and the 'paandan' too came upstairs. The only discordant note was struck by generators next-door whose whine broke the peace. It was only when you began to feel truly soggy that everyone trooped downstairs. There was a candlelight dinner after a long time, and the sweat trickled down more profusely than usual as the leftover 'nahari' was polished off.
When the electricity supply resumed late at night, you realized the truth in the old saying that you don't know what you are missing till you miss it. But the real moral is that it wasn't really so bad, and if you retain the capacity to do so, you can always make the best of a bad situation and enjoy it.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.