| 2 April, 2005 | Saturday | 22 Safar 1426 |
Hymns and seekings of a teetotaler
“IN a comprehensive victory both sides are the winners”. This saying, generally attributed to Lord Buddha, may well be attributed, with equal truth, to any man of God and of peace. In his widely discussed thesis on ‘enlightened moderation’ (June 2004), President Pervez Musharraf defined his ‘strategy’ as a “win-win for all —- the Muslim and the non-Muslim world ... it must aim at resolutely resolving all political disputes with justice.”
Addressing the world community, Muslims in particular, the president went on to ask: “Is the way ahead one of confrontation and militancy?... The armies of Islam did not march forward to convert people to Islam through the sword, but to deliver them from the darkness they were under through a visible example of their virtues...”
Reduced to a Pakistani perspective, the Musharraf doctrine has a telling relevance to the crisis between Balochistan and Islamabad. Recent violence gives it the contours of an embryonic civil war or a low-intensity conflict.
A single day’s (March 17) bag of casualties, killed and wounded, on both sides exceeded the hundred mark — fellow citizens, whether personnel of the para-military Frontier Corp (FC) or Balochis. The cost of the physical damage done to vital Sui Gas installations, their repair and replacement is informally estimated at $3-4 million.
Historically, Balochistan had been through a long and continuing cycle of military interventions. It has been like that since April 1948, when the military had to show the flag to bring the recalcitrant Khan of Kalat into the national mainstream.
A similar intervention took place when the Khan of Kalat once again raised the ensign of rebellion around October 1958. However, what turned out to be the fiercest and the longest-lasting military action. It was ordered in April 1973, to end four years later in 1977. Civilian and military casualties, yet to be officially accounted for, ran into thousands.
Since about January this year, Balochistan has been in the grip of yet another civil-military face-off. Tension continues despite the mediatory efforts recently undertaken by the PML-Q chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. Short of a military operation, the level of violence and the TV images of the tribal astride hill tops in their well prepared positions were daunting. Also accounts of the weaponry used and captured —- from sophisticated multi-barrel rocket launchers to heavy mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and automatics —- would show that apparently the stocks can last the militants for any length of time.
General Musharraf accuses the Baloch sardars of each “harbouring’ a private army. The Bugtis’ comprise some 7,000 militants, the Marris about 9,000 and the Mengals about 10,000. Who is funding them and providing ammunition to them to meet their ‘nefarious designs?’, the president want on to ask.
Even more important is the question whether by any chance, the insurgency was a combined effort of the three sardars or was Akbar Bugti’s own scheme. Should the first be true, it will lend an ominous dimension to the crisis. But the three sardars, in spite of their centrifugal proclivities, have hardly ever been known as a united force striving for a shared objective. Each has had his own tribal and personal interest to serve. Sardar Akbar Bugti is noted for his highly self-centred attitudes. Khair Baksh Marri is of a markedly quiet disposition, not given to high profile heroics. The Marris by and large are peaceful herdsmen rather than trigger-happy like the Bugtis. Sardar Ataullah Mengal is by far the most seasoned and even-tempered of the Baloch sardars. His brief tenure as Balochistan chief minister (1972-73) bears ample witness to his role and character as a responsible politician and administrator. Except for lip-service, both he and Khair Bakhsh have practically kept themselves out of the Dera Bugti mess. Thus, the report about the private armies of the three sardars — accounting for some 30,000 to 40,000 militants — forging a common anti-centre front will be bad news — if true.
Regarding a comparison between the Dera Bugti insurgency and East Pakistan, it can be understood largely in terms of our own traumatized mindset. Once bitten is twice shy: our threshold of tolerance and endurance in the face of a crisis has gone down.
The reported stand-off between the president and Akbar Bugti as to who should go the extra mile for a handshake reminds one of the stand-off between President Yahya Khan and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The Sheikh would not respond to the president’s invitation to come to Karachi. Yahya for his part went to Dhaka only when it was too late. Public anger in the aftermath of the postponement of the inaugural session of the National Assembly scheduled for March 3, 1971 had already turned into a mass revolt. — The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.
Jahane-e-Maloom (the Known World) I would submit, is a very intriguing title for Iftikhar Arif’s new collection of verse. To most of us the known world is our mundane existence, or to go a little higher to a more impersonal level, it is the sum of our world as we know it through our senses. But Iftikhar Arif’s ‘Jahan-e-Maloom’, paradoxically, is a little known world, a personal space, that he explores with fond reverence. A collection mostly of hymns, na’ats, psalms, salaams and diverse verse of generally a devotional character, it reveals the poet in an attitude of benediction, of spiritual seeking and surrender. The symbol of Kerbela flows like an infusion in his poetic veins. Torment and lament are consecrated as the price for piety and rectitude. There’s a placid acceptance of whatever fate may ordain by way of atonement and a distressing readiness to suffer more pain. And yet Iftikhar Arif manages to salvage his basic humanity through entreaties for the preservation of what God in his mercy has made it his lot in this world to be.
One might find such humbling of the self, such mortification and humility at the altar of belief and effacement of one’s dignity somewhat peculiar for a man whose adequate store of discretion would always stand him in good stead against temptation and hold him back from crossing the limit. Perhaps the religious urge is basic in him, not just a reflection of insecurity that is behind most charity and spiritual solicitude. He has been able to confound and keep at bay longings in greener years that have trounced many men past their days of indiscretion. I fear him sometimes when I see him in his meticulous dress, with his propriety and poise, his inscrutable affableness anaesthetizing the pangs and achings of his heart. What is the source of his mellow, sophisticated verse? What savagery of passion is he seeking to sublimate in his resigned ways, his stoicism, that Anna Suvorova suggests could be his protest. But he is not even mildly distressed. He seeks solace and benediction of acceptance. Slowly, very slowly, darkness has settled in the eyes and flow frozen in the blood. Time has stopped as it were. And abandoning rebellion I move towards surrender/ God willing even this may my calling be. All he needs is an abode of contentment and fortitude in a secure world. Such concern for well being is indeed alarming. It is healthy, positive, role-modelish and even stylish in a regressive and profligate society to be a teetotaller but there is no justification to lay down the arms so soon. There is time yet in the known world for Iftikhar Arif to allow himself a few more summers.
URDU CONFERENCE: Like it or not Urdu is no more anybody’s handmaiden; not any country’s, not any nationality’s, not any region’s or ethnicity’s. It happens that a great many people love it. Their number is growing. It is flourishing without patronage, in hostile and indifferent climes and on alien soils. The ‘janata’, not the ‘Junta’, is its mainstay. This causes parochial rancour, heart burning and controversy which is a sign of its vitality. The international Urdu conference, a multi-dimensional event, held in Islamabad recently is quite understandably being belittled in surreptitious ways as it was a big, spontaneous show indeed of its popularity. The VVIPs maintained a discreet distance allowing organizers a free hand to manage things. The short notice did not give murmurings time to pick up volume. The discussion remained scholarly in all the sessions on the various topics. Kishwar Naheed who acted as the fulcrum of organizational activities has gathered all the papers and these would soon be published. The conference, if nothing else, has reopened a kind of live debate that was erstwhile going on in cold print. The origin of the language, courses of study, gender issues, genres and trends as well as the great poets and directions of literary criticism, all were discussed in a spirited atmosphere. Scholars from India, Messrs Gopi Chand Narang, Shams-ur-Rahman Faruqui, Dr Qamar Rais and Qazi Afzaal; from United Kingdom Dr. David Mathews, from Germany Dr Christina, from Russia Dr Ludmila Vasileva and other guest speakers from abroad as well as Intezar Hussain, Dr Anwar, Zahida Hina and Fehmida Riaz were some of the prominent participants whose views were heard with great interest. The key inaugural address by Mr Mushtaq Yusufi touched some raw spots and plucked a few sensitive chords.
Urdu is seldom spared the criticism with regard to its incompatibility as a language of science and technology. It is assumed that mere learning of the English language will make us scientists all; as if it is English which has given birth to science. But strangely it is never asked why despite our two hundred years’ old association with English we have produced only one or two scientists of world standing. It is time we understood it was not Urdu which was standing between us and science but our unscientific approach to life, our dogmatic and bigoted ways of thought. Science comes to inquisitive, inquiring, questioning minds, not to skulls filled with mumbo-jumbo. The great Muslim scientists of yore we talk so much about did not know a word of English. They were thinkers. Qazi Afzaal at the Urdu conference had no hesitation in asserting that the primacy of English in our life would keep us relegated to a secondary and contingent position. We shall ever remain users of foreign technology, never its inventors. In the same context let me mention what Prof Fateh Mohammad Malik said at another function recently that it was wrong to criticize the West for its materialism. They were a dynamic, vibrant society, alive and pulsating, spiritually. Without that no community could continue to be creative in so many fields of life for so long.