| November 7, 2005 | Monday | Shawwal 4, 1426 |
Galloway and the Natwar way
Karachi welcomes new nazim
FIVE PUNJABI CENTURIES is a collection of essays written to honour Prof. J.S. Grewal, a noted Indian scholar. It was first published in 1997 and re-printed in 2000.
One of the contributors, Ravinder Kumar, wrote a piece on “Urban Society and Urban Politics: Lahore in 1919”.
Among other things, Ravinder Kumar writes: As the capital of a vast province, and centre of commerce, education and politics, Lahore contained a high proportion of individuals who were engaged in the liberal professions, in the civil service, and in business. At the conclusion of the first world war, 45,000 individuals out of a total population of 280,000 were dependent for their livelihood upon trade or business. Similarly, the civil service and the professions accounted for another 42,000 persons. Of these, more than 10,000 worked in the civil service, while 3,500 persons were attached to the District and High Courts, which administered justice to a populous district and an extensive province. Medicine and education accounted for more than 5,000 of the citizens of Lahore.
The figures dealing with the strength of different professions in Lahore acquire a heightened significance when we take a closer look at the social background of the individuals in these profession. The Brahmins did not dominate Hindu society in Punjab as much as in the other parts of the country. The middle classes of the Punjab were drawn predominantly from other commercial castes like the Khatris, the Aroras and the Banias. Of these three castes, the Khatris were outstanding: superior in intellectual and physical energy to the other commercial castes, they claimed a mythical descent from the Kashtariyas or the warrior castes of ancient India. Though the Khatris dabbled in business, they were completely free of the servility which characterized other trading castes in India:
Trade is their main occupation, but in fact they have broader and more distinguishing characteristics. Besides monopolising trade... they are in the Punjab the chief civil administrators, and have all literary work on their hands... Thus they are in the Punjab, as far as a more energetic race will permit them, all that the Maratha Brahmins are in the Maratha Country, besides engrossing themselves in the trade which the Maratha Brahmins have not. They are not usually military in character, but are quite capable of using the sword when necessary. Dewan Sawan Mul, Governor of Multan, and his notorious successor, Mulraj, and very many of Ranjit Singh’s chief functionaries were Khatris. Even under the Muslim rulers of the West, they have risen to high administrative posts.... There can be no doubt that the Khatris are one of the most acute, energetic and remarkable races in India. Comparable to the Khatris in acquisitiveness, enterprise, and acumen, though lacking the Khatri toughness of fibre, were castes like the Banias and the Aroras, of which the former were further sub-divided into groups like the Agarwals, Oswals and Maheshwaris. The Aroras and Banias, particularly the latter, were closely tied to the commerce, and they lacked a tradition of participation in politics or in the administration. The relationship between Khatris, Aroras and Banias is highlighted by the fact that Aroras claimed to be Khatris, a claim which the latter contested, while the Banias accepted it with a submissiveness characteristic of their caste a position of inferiority vis-a-vis the Khatris as well as the Aroras.
The establishment of British rule over the Punjab opened up new opportunities which evoked an encouraging response from these middle castes. Careers in the administration, in the legal and medical professions, in the schools and colleges, and even in the army were open to those who possessed ability and enterprise. The Khatris were the first to exploit these opportunities, but other castes did not lag far behind. In a few decades the middle castes of Lahore had spread all over the Punjab government civil list, the medical service of the army open to Indians, and the professions of lawyers, barristers, doctors, scientists and professors. Many rose from the lowest ranks through integrity, hard work and self-teaching...Many of them even left India and went across the forbidden black waters... in the search of greater responsibility and better opportunities.
The key to these opportunities was provided by education: this was of course, fully realised by the middle classes of the Punjab. As a centre of education, Lahore was unrivalled among the cities of the north; many a young Punjabi with talent and ambition journeyed to the city in order to better his prospects through education. If he wanted to practise medicine, he could enter the Medical College, which had been established in 1860 and was equipped to provide training in western medicine. For those wanting the legal profession, a Law College had been set up in 1870. Professional education, however, was costly and time-consuming, and it made intellectual demands which few could satisfy. Most young men who desired a university education, therefore, entered one of the colleges which prepared students for the degrees awarded by the Punjab University established in 1882. Foremost of those was the Government College which had been instituted in 1865 and which trained students in the humanities as well as in the sciences.
Equally famous was the Forman Christian College, which was established by an American Presbyterian Mission in 1886. There were three ‘denominational’ colleges of Indian origin: the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College set up in 1888 by the Arya Samaj; the Islamia College established by the Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam in 1892, and the Dyal Singh College, which owed its existence indirectly to the Brahmo Samaj in Lahore. The capital of the Punjab could also boast of the Kinnaird College for Women, which was set up in 1913; and of the Aitchison College, which had been established to provide ‘an education and training for the Ruling Chiefs and the nobility of the Punjab, on lines similar to those of an English Public School’. The Arya Samaj set before the Hindu community an ideal according to which the good life consisted in involvement in social problems rather than in escape from them. This was eloquently reflected in the character and personality of Mahatma Hans Raj, who canalized his creativity through the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College of Lahore, over which he presided from 1888 to 1911.
The activities of the Arya Samaj in Lahore centred on the mandirs where its pracharaks held their weekly meetings, and on the schools and colleges controlled by the Samaj. These activities exercised an influence on the social and intellectual life of the Hindu community whose magnitude was reflected all too inadequately in the formal membership of the movement. It would be no exaggeration to contend that very few middle-class Hindus entirely escaped the influence of the Samaj. Tens upon thousands of young men were educated in the institutions controlled by the Samaj during which period they imbibed in varying degrees the ideals of the movement. After completing their education these young men went into business, or entered the civil service, or set themselves up in the professions. In this manner individuals who were influenced by the Samaj came up to hold positions of responsibility in different walks of life, and they made the Samaj a powerful force in the life of the community. Typical of the middle classes of Lahore whose values were moulded by the Arya Samaj was the rising barrister, Gokul Chand Narang. His connections with the Arya Samaj and his success in the legal profession encouraged Narang to venture into business and politics, and by the end of the first world war he had established himself as a leading figure in Lahore. Rai Bahadur Mukand Lal Puri, M.A. (Punjab and Oxford), Barrister-at-Law, a pillar of the Hindu establishment and the scion of a distinguished Khatri family, was also a product of the Samaj. He too successfully combined a career in law with extensive interests in business and politics.
The middle classes of Lahore, however, were not exclusively drawn to the Arya Samaj. Indeed, many members of the middle classes were either indifferent to the Samaj or hostile to it. The distinguished jurist, Sir Shadi Lal, belonged to the former category. This may partly have been so because he was educated at the Government College, Lahore, before he proceeded to Oxford for higher studies. Sir Shadi led a busy life which embraced politics over and above his professional commitment to law. But he had no connections with the Arya Samaj, or with any of the organizations connected with it. Prominent among those who were actually hostile to the Samaj was Rai Bahadur Ram Saran Das. He was a successful businessman and distinguished citizen of Lahore, and he supported the Sanatan Dharam Sabha, which opposed movements of reform and sought to popularize the values of orthodoxy in the Hindu community. Notwithstanding men like Sir Shadi Lal and Ram Saran Das, however, the influence of the Arya Samaj was widespread in Lahore, and it played a significant role in shaping the outlook of its middle classes.
Mr Ravinder Kumar was director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library New Delhi, when the book under reference was published. Mr Kumar was also a former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research.
Galloway and the Natwar way
THERE COULD be numerous ways of looking at the Paul Volcker committee’s investigations into Iraq’s UN-sponsored oil-for-food deals. One way is to regard the probe in its most essential form as an attempt to trivialise the American invasion of Iraq. As such, much of Mr Volcker’s exercise serves as a ploy to shift the focus away from the seizure of a sovereign country with unacceptable brutality in which the United Nations became an emasculated onlooker.
The second obvious advantage of thus marginalizing the raging issue of the continued occupation of Iraq is that the embedded media, which thrives today in most countries, including India, relegates the war crimes of Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and Guantanamo Bay to the trash bin of public memory.
Simultaneously it provides a platform to the conniving opinion-makers to paint some hangers-on or even genuine associates of the former Iraqi dictator as small-time swindlers, profiteers and greedy people worthy of public scorn, if possible also of outright retribution.
Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh has been named by the Volcker committee as a beneficiary of Saddam Hussein’s oil largesse. India’s ruling Congress party stands similarly accused of unfairly profiting from the oil-for-food transactions in the summer of 2001.
Briefly put, the allegations imply that some people claiming to be close to Natwar Singh and the Congress party got the Iraqis to sell them oil, in 2001 when the Congress was in opposition, at well below the international price. This oil was then re-sold via a Swiss firm called Masefield AG and the beneficiaries of the cheap oil made a handsome profit.
There are hints that the foreign minister’s son Jagat, a Congress politician from Rajasthan, was the man who claimed to represent his father and perhaps the Congress. The worst that can be said from available evidence is that the son of an Indian opposition politician used his father’s contacts to make a quick buck from the Iraqi oil offer.
Natwar Singh’s reply and also the reaction of the Congress party to the reported charges have ranged from the churlish to the wimpish, much like their government’s foreign policy on key issues, including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and several other matters which in the olden days would be flaunted as Third World solidarity.
The funny thing is that the so-called scandal is headed for a further probe. In other words an international inquiry committee would be probed by India’s own handpicked inquiry committee to go into the tedium of charges and counter-charges. There would be bedlam in parliament, which thanks to the Congress intervention had opposed the US assault on Iraq.
The Indian foreign minister has reportedly pointed to three senior Congress party colleagues for setting the trap on him. They include Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who recently signed a controversial security agreement with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr Singh would be justified if he blamed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s entire government too for betraying him, for letting him down and allowing the Congress to bat alone against the scandal-mongers, with its own inept representatives. But this is the nature of the beast. We can’t do much about the situation now. The Congress party has been traditionally divided between left and right, and the power brokers, who change sides according to the situation, are out for the foreign minister’s jugular. They will not hesitate to target Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi herself if they are reasonably assured that the ploy would succeed.
It seems highly probable that since Natwar Singh and the Congress, under Ms Gandhi, were seen to be vocal against prime minister Vajpayee’s move to endorse the invasion of Iraq, they are being dealt with by their own colleagues and rivals who see themselves as more comfortably aligned with the United States.
But Natwar Singh, instead of challenging them from the very beginning, chose to change his own line to suit theirs. First he was criticized by his Congress colleagues for getting too warm with China; then he was left alone by his prime minister to face abusive US Congressmen who called him a dense foreign minister for embracing the old non-aligned friend, Iran. On his part, probably finding the heat unbearable, Natwar Singh backed down from his own preferred choice to not betray Iran at the IAEA vote.
Little does Mr Singh realize that a proven way to deal with abusive US Congressmen or to confront Washington’s handpicked man posing as a UN-backed investigator is not to behave like a grovelling courtier, pleading innocence with his own tormentors. There is something to be learnt from British MP George Galloway who too was similarly accused of profiting from Saddam Hussein’s oil deals.
Did Mr Galloway make money from his proximity to the ousted Iraqi regime? Supposing, he did. Has it taken the sheen off his crusading spirit that Mr Galloway continues to represent for an entire generation of anti-war protesters across the globe, including in Europe and the United States?
Remember how George Galloway tore into US Senator Norm Coleman? “Mr Chairman, I am not now, nor have I ever been an oil trader, and neither has anyone been on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf.” That was the easy part. Natwar Singh would say something similar to his tormentors in parliament.
The difficult part came in the following lines of Mr Galloway, which Natwar Singh will find hard to emulate.
“Now, Senator,” declared the British MP. “I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life’s blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children. Most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.”
In fact, Mr Galloway had successfully challenged the same accusations in Britain and gone on to win a stunning victory in that country’s May 5 election. There’s still hope for Natwar Singh, in fact there’s an opportunity in the swirling mess around him for him to redeem his image as a weak-kneed leader.
Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, who led the Indian army to a landmark victory over Pakistan in 1971, is reported to be seriously ill with pneumonia. He has been admitted to a hospital in Cunoor in southern India, and will now be flown into Delhi on Monday. Manekshaw is now more than 91 years old.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Ramazan 2005 has not only changed Pakistan with the earthquake that struck mighty blows on 8th October, but it has apparently given to Karachi a couple of new dimensions.
Take the fact that on the first day of the holy month came to an end the local body election process and newspapers carried headlines that Syed Mustafa Kamal had been elected nazim of Karachi.
Two days later came the earthquake disaster and while the city was spared the wrath of nature, it provided an opportunity to the Sindh capital to demonstrate to the rest of the country its leading role in providing relief to the affected people. This act of Karachi was indeed amazing. And as the details of death and destruction wrought by the earthquake, and the aftershocks, came in through the media, there was also born (read again) the awareness and the realization that an earthquake could hit Karachi also. And what is likely to happen given our crowded city, and an absence of disaster management infrastructure became an instant theme for this metropolis.
With the result that now Karachi has another major theme to live with, to deal with, another challenge that the decision makers have been confronted with. And it is in this context that Karachi gets a new nazim. The list of problems and challenges that Karachi has is unarguably long, and with the population rising steadily, as always, solutions even when found may not last long. They will get undone, given our ambience, our attitude, our resources.
I am tempted to talk of the disaster and crisis management panel discussions that private TV channels have had, focusing on this city, and the gloomy implications, and dreadful consequences that appear to be in store in case, God forbid, were an earthquake to strike this city. One is not talking of the Richter scale at this stage.
But let us put that aside and instead welcome City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal. It is a good sign that the power transfer has been smooth, and to the common citizen this is good news. Any anticipation and speculation that things could go wrong have been disproved, remarked a housewife, appearing relieved.
Indeed there is much that Mr Kamal has said since assuming office of the city nazim. One of his recent statements wherein he has vowed to change the life of Karachiites has caught my attention. The life of an ordinary Karachiite is a theme that I have always believed is subject that has not been explored by sociologists. What is the inner landscape of the citizen of this city. Rich theme, by all counts.
He made the above commitment while speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the Korangi Town office and “vowed to bring revolutionary changes in the life of the common man with regard to provision of civic facilities.” And he was quoted as having emphasized the need to “create a sense of ownership among the people and administration for the city, and a sense of participation for a betterment of the city.”
These are some of the broad perimeters within which the new nazim seeks to work, and strive, and succeed. And there is absolutely no reason why every Karachiite should not support these goals. There is every reason to believe that every nazim in Karachi(or anywhere for that matter) should succeed. There is so much at stake vis-a-vis the people of a town or a city that relates to life. Real life. Argued one citizen. He added that when a nazim fails, it is the city that fails. And then everyone suffers. Modern urban life is getting tougher by the day, and without the sustained, sincere support of all quarters concerned, urban daily living would be everybody’s hell.
Take a quick brief (read incomplete) look at the list of problems ands priorities that Karachi has. I do not wish to talk of the image of this city. No one really cares about it, observed one Karachiite, who went onto say that even a city like Islamabad, which has no culture except that of bureaucracy, calls itself as a “beautiful city”. Karachi for all its plus points still doesn’t have a description in that sense. They keep saying the most affectionate things about Lahore, including “beloved city”. In fact a collection of writings on Lahore has just been published.
All this makes one reflect on what could be a befitting prefix for Karachi. And why not “beloved Karachi”. Indeed there have been writings on Karachi in terms of its history, or on the commercial and materialistic side of the Sindh capital. But is that all there is to this city? Is there not to this city of at least 15 million people, a soft side, and a soft reality? Have not the people of this lived happily, despite constraints: lived content in spite of the discontent? Why has not then there emerged a collective, definitive loving, loveable image of this city, dear reader. Your city, as much as it is mine. As one middle aged, Karachi university-educated, Karachiite remarked “why is everyone wanting to possess Karachi, without owning it?”.
I have got distracted. Let me look at that list mentioned above. Karachi has the water shortage we all know. But it has a power shortage too. It has a sewerage disposal problem. There is a traffic jungle that threatens our sanity. There are broken and poorly made roads that drive the pedestrian and the motorist to murder. There is pollution, and adulteration, that endanger and in fact ruin people’s health. Public parks and sports facilities and grounds are an exception , not the rule. A green Karachi is a distant dream. A clean Karachi is almost like asking for the moon, in certain residential and commercial areas. And residential and commercial areas, both have encroachments and dangerous dilapidated buildings. Crime, and policing. The less said, the better.
The purpose here is not to detail for the city nazim all that needs to be done in Karachi. He knows his job, and will improve with time, one prays. He is young, and on television channels he comes through as a pleasant , reasonable, moderate, modern person. For a people familiar with the arrogance of bureaucracy, and used to the contempt with which most civil servants talk to the common man, it is indeed a welcome relief to have all that put aside. Not gone, yet, one feels.
Even the previous city nazim, Niamatullah Khan, was a mild-mannered man in authority. It is a healthy sign that the new face of Karachi’s leadership has a gentle appearance. One reads this as a positive sign, a kind of inherent symbolism in it.
Having said all this, there is reason to also take note that Ramazan 2005 was a peaceful one, and as one writes this on a Thursday evening, one hopes that Eid, though sad, will have brought families and neighbours closer, as they reflect on how to value and cherish what they have. There is always another day, after the longest night.