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| March 25, 2007 | Sunday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 5, 1428 |
Why plead before the bars?
Little action on TB front
Quaid’s concept of Pakistan
A resistant disease
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it….. Oscar Wilde
AS the crisis on Iran intensifies with an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities still looming large on the horizon, new developments add to the tension in the Gulf region. Iran’s action in seizing 15 British sailors from a dhow, claiming them to be in Iranian waters, has sparked a diplomatic standoff that will certainly not help create a climate conducive to the resolution of the crisis in any way. On its part, the United States, which has been pushing for sanctions against Iran and is the driving force behind the on-going confrontation, is trying hard to torpedo the IPI that will link India, Pakistan and Iran in an energy relationship when the gas pipeline traversing Pakistani territory has been laid. The two South Asian states have so far resisted American arm-twisting and they must continue to do so. The UN Security Council members have also faced pressures from Washington to agree to the sanctions resolution spelling out the second set of penalising measures in a bid to tighten the noose round Iran’s neck.
Will these pressurising tactics help the cause of peace in the Middle East? The region is already torn by the war in Iraq and the conflict in Palestine. The big powers, all of which have a stake in the region, have failed to recognise the close link between the Middle East and international relations. With its oil wealth, the region cannot be insulated from international happenings and what happens here affects the world profoundly and has a direct bearing on global peace and security. Hence it is difficult to understand how the West, especially the United States, hopes to defuse the tension in the Gulf by adopting a cavalierly approach when Iran has refused to be browbeaten by the US since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
The effort America has had to put in to create a semblance of unanimity when introducing any resolution providing for penalties against Iran indicates the battle of wills taking place behind the scenes between the big powers which wield the veto. Seen in strictly technical terms, it has not been proved — even by IAEA’s numerous inspectors — that Iran is about to acquire nuclear arms as alleged by Washington. Hence, proceeding on the assumption that Iran is guilty of violating the NPT is a politically unwise move. But if there are powers that wish to preempt the emergence of Iran as a nuclear weapon state in the future, they should adopt a more sensible line of action. It is important that negotiations should be opened with Tehran on an equal footing beginning with the assumption that it is innocent. Diplomatic bargaining is a process of give and take. That is how it will have to be in the case of Iran as well. At this stage, when the first objective of any strategy should be to avert war, it would be well worth pondering the IAEA chief’s proposal. Mr Mohammad Elbaradei has called on all states to consider a “time-out” to allow for talks. In the interregnum Iran could suspend uranium enrichment while the international community should lift sanctions. The fact is that American policy is driven by its mindset vis-à-vis Iran since 1979 — the government in Tehran is anathema that has to be destroyed. Should the wider world be held hostage to this American obsession?
A LOT of water has passed under the bridge since the March 9 controversial suspension by President Musharraf of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Unfortunately, events and actions on the part of the government following the filing of the judicial reference against Justice Chaudhry at the Supreme Judicial Council have been even more controversial. Now, the president’s Pakistan Day appeal to the legal community not to politicise the issue may sound as a fine piece of advice but for the way the government has gone about handling the whole affair. And this continues: indeed not a day passes without the president or the ruling Muslim League leaders taking it on themselves to justify the government’s position — be it at public rallies, which only government leaders are allowed to hold in Punjab, or in interviews with the media — while ironically insisting that the matter is sub judice. It was the state machinery’s highhandedness against the CJ, the media, and the lawyers that politicised what should have strictly remained a judicial matter. The gross mishandling has now led the lawyers backing the CJ to invite him to address the Rawalpindi and Peshawar bar councils. One hopes that better sense will prevail and the CJ will review his decision to comply with the invitation. He should continue to hold the moral high ground that he has won through his upright conduct so far and shun attempts at persuading him to plead his case before the bars, rather than the Supreme Judicial Council.
Indeed, the SJC, now headed by the country’s next senior-most judge after the CJ, Justice Rana Bhagwandas, is the only forum at which the validity or otherwise of the presidential reference is to be determined. This is necessary to keep the dignity and impartiality of the office of the CJ, and, even more so, to uphold the cause of an independent judiciary, as seen and fought for by the legal fraternity. The government is wrong in trying to settle the issue through the media or at public meetings; the Chief Justice should not do the same, for two wrongs do not make a right.
A NUMBER of articles have been printed in this newspaper and in others on the occasion of World TB Day on Saturday. The statistics that they have provided with reference to tuberculosis in the country show that despite possessing a fairly active National TB Control Programme, Pakistan has still far to go before its health authorities can achieve a substantial decrease in the incidence of the disease. TB is a highly contagious disease and one patient can infect up to 10-15 persons. Its victims are generally the poor who live in congested and unhealthy surroundings. About 1.5 million people in the country have TB, although not all are aware of it, and 250,000 new cases are added to the list every year. However, the fact that TB is a curable disease should provide a ray of hope to its victims — especially since we now have in place the DOTS system that is meant to ensure that each patient has his or her medication for a stipulated length of time.
The fact that a number of patients stopped taking their medication midway through the course, or resorted to self-medication, meant that the TB bacteria developed resilience, rendering traditional medicines ineffective against it in many cases. According to the government, DOTS coverage has been extended to all the districts. But if this is true, why are we not seeing the expected results and a drastic reduction in the number of TB patients? Clearly, the government has to move fast on a number of fronts, two of the most crucial being the need to make available diagnostic and treatment facilities to the people, especially those living in remote areas, and to provide enough information on the disease and its debilitating, potentially fatal, consequences to those who are unaware of its symptoms. That would be the only way to halt its onslaught.
A CONSTITUTIONAL (Amendment) Bill has been moved calling for the inclusion of the Quaid’s famous speech delivered as the president of Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly and as governor-general designate, to be included in Article 2 as a substantive part of Pakistan’s Constitution.
This calls for some explanation. The tenor and content of this speech, which includes the direction, “you may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State”, runs counter to Article 2 of the 1973 Constitution, which says: “Islam shall be the state religion of Pakistan.”
Incidentally, the Islamic edict does not appear in the constitutions of 1956 or 1962. How do we resolve this contradiction? A brief historical detour appears necessary.
To begin with, let it be said that the Quaid does not need the halo of any of his official titles. He was the founder of Pakistan. Had he passed away, say, before July 1946 – and he was living on sheer will-power hiding from his enemies and friends his mortal illness – the chances of Pakistan emerging 13 months later would have been slim. The truth is that there were so many improbable twists and turns that the emergence of Pakistan was almost a miracle (perhaps the best book on the extreme complexities preceding partition is H.M. Seervai’s Partition of India: Legend and Reality).
Our textbooks and propaganda histories seldom make mention of the fact that the Quaid and the Muslim League Council had accepted a British-proposed confederal India in 1946. This was the so-called “grouping scheme” which envisaged three groups among the provinces of British India – the four provinces now constituting Pakistan as Group B, Bengal and Assam as Group C, the remaining Hindustan as Group A. According to the plan, each group was to have virtual autonomy over its internal affairs and a relatively weak centre would be charged with foreign affairs, defence and communications only.
The confederal scheme was to remain in force for 10 years, after which each group was to decide whether it desired independence or the same dispensation. The grouping of the provinces was the keystone in the confederal scheme.
Let there be no doubt, the Quaid’s goal, at least following the Pakistan Resolution of March 1940, was not a confederal India but a Pakistan. The last thing he wanted was a partition of Punjab (Muslim majority 62 per cent); perhaps, this was one of the considerations uppermost in his mind in accepting the confederal scheme.
A united Punjab would virtually envelop Jammu and Kashmir within Group B. A united Punjab would give Group B a significant minority just as Group A would have a significant Muslim minority. The presence of sizable minorities in all the three groups was vital in the mind of the framers in keeping communal peace and harmony. The grouping scheme, if it had come about, might have avoided the partition holocaust of 1947.
But history rolls in unpredictable ways. Men may design a map for the future, but fate or human frailty humbles the grandest of schemes.
On July 10, 1946, two days after Jawaharlal Nehru was elected Congress president, he spoke to the press. He renounced the commitment of Congress on the grouping. His real intention was to lure one or more provinces from groups B and C into Hindustan. Said he, “We have agreed to go into this Constituent Assembly, but, we have agreed to nothing else… what we do there in the Constituent Assembly, we are entirely and absolutely free to determine.” The keystone in the confederal arch was thus knocked down.
This was an earthshaking statement which completely upset the scheme of things. It was regarded by the League as yet another example of Congress perfidy. Consequently, on July 29, 1946, the Muslim League Council voted unanimously to reject the confederal scheme and empower Jinnah “to resort to Direct Action to achieve Pakistan”. On that occasion the Quaid declared, “We have taken a most historic decision. Today we have said goodbye to constitutions and constitutional methods.” Friday, August 16, 1946, was chosen by the League as a Direct Action Day. The emergence of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, was only a short step away from there.
If one goes through the Muslim League Council records from 1906 to 1948, there is no reference to a theocratic Pakistan. The repeated reference (and there are a multitude of these) was that Pakistan was to be a homeland for the Muslim minority of British India.
Since Pakistan was not perceived to be a religious entity right from Allama Iqbal’s Allahabad speech of 1930 to the last session of the All-India Muslim League in 1948, it was vigorously and vehemently opposed by practically all the right-wing Muslim parties such as Maulana Maudoodi’s Jamaat-i-Islami, the Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Hind and the Khaksars. These parties had nebulous or fantastic notions of an Islamic India, which had little relevance to reality.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah had therefore to battle single-handedly not only against the dominant Congress and British imperialism but also against a powerful force within the Muslim community which was Islamist and yet played into the Congress hands.
The truth is that Jinnah was a true believing Muslim, and not one who wore his religion on his sleeve.
I have been able to trace at least 15 speeches of the Quaid in which he upholds the glorious ideals of Islam as his guiding star. Even Jinnah’s worst enemy would concede that he was not a hypocrite. He stood alone as a rock in the mid of a cacophony of hypocrisy and muddle-headedness because of his intellectual and moral standing. He represented the highest and noblest values of his religion.
There is no doubt that he loathed the bigoted clergy and their narrow textual interpretations of Islam and their fanaticism. He repeatedly and vehemently asserted that Pakistan would not be a “theocratic” state because theocracy mixed with politics would unleash sectarianism, communalism and fanaticism and hinder Muslim “unity”. The Quaid repeatedly urged unity as his slogan and placed it before faith, which has since been distorted by our spin doctors to read “faith, unity and discipline”.
Unity was placed above all other values, so that the divisiveness which was bound to occur in a faith-driven state could be avoided. A theocratic state will surely interpret “faith” in ways that are bound prove disruptive for Pakistan and national unity. And this is exactly what happened in the state interpretation of “faith” in General Ziaul Haq’s time.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah was opposed to the intrusion of religion into politics right from the days of the Khilafat movement in 1919/24, which stirred Muslims in British India politically for the first time in the 20th century. He resigned from the Home League of Gandhi and so did the Mohammed Ali brothers, the main protagonists of the Khilafat movement, for this very reason. A nexus can be found between his letter of resignation from the Home League addressed to Gandhi and his speech of August 11, 1947.
There is no cavil at the Objectives Resolution being included in the Constitution (Article 2A). However, to balance Article 2, I propose that either the entire August 11, 1947, speech of the founder or those parts of the speech quoted below be made part of the Constitution:
The Quaid had declared: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or cast or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
“Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
It is proposed that the grundnorm of Pakistan is Quaid-i-Azam’s speech of August 11, 1947, and it be incorporated as a substantive part of the Constitution in Article 2.
To generate support for the bill, which aims at restoring the ideals of the Quaid, a website has been opened: http://www.quaidsvision11august1947.info for readers. The idea is to gather strong support for this bill for the inclusion in the Quaid’s vision of Pakistan in the Constitution.
The writer is a member of the National Assembly.
IT'S a truism that in movies or novels set in the Victorian era, one shouldn't get too attached to a heroine who coughs. She'll be dead well before the denouement.
Tuberculosis, an airborne bacterium that infects the lungs, isn't the death sentence that it was in the days of the Moulin Rouge. In fact, in the run-up to Saturday’s observance of World Tuberculosis Day, which marks the 125th anniversary of the discovery of the microorganism that causes TB, came the release of studies indicating that the disease is on the decline. But the TB bug is wily — it has a tendency to come roaring back when health officials let down their guards. And new strains are arising that are nearly as resistant to treatment as all forms of the disease were in the 19th century.
The good news is that the focus placed on eradicating TB around the world, which started in the mid-1990s and accelerated at the turn of the century, is paying off. —Los Angeles Times