| January 02, 2008 | Wednesday | Zilhaj 22, 1428 |
Not so bad after all
I REMEMBER only one headline from the newspapers of 1979 — the year of Z.A. Bhutto’s execution. But, curiously enough, the headline I remember did not pertain directly to the hanging of the country’s first popularly elected premier. Rather, it was about a statement that Maulana Mufti Mehmood, a bitter rival of Mr Bhutto’s throughout his political career, had made about his relationship with the founder of Pakistan People’s Party.We used to subscribe to an Urdu newspaper at the time. A loose translation of the headline in question would be: “Today my differences with Bhutto end.”
Poets, cloudy beings, who live between the misty spaces of words, could seldom be pundits of politics, but being star gazers and in communion with the gods who speak to them, it is not improbable if intimations from the unknown visit them to inspire verses with prophetic forebodings. And when the moment of truth seizes their imagination they also find the appropriate metaphors to express it.
On Saturday last some of us met at Dr Inayatullah’s house on frugal tea to look for chinks of light in the deepening gloom. I being the only layman among luminaries like Dr A.H. Nayyar, Iqbal Jaffer, poet Harris Khalique, human rights activists Nasreen Azhar, Dr Fauzia Saeed, Marvi Sarmad and psychologist Dr Kamran, laboured to find the long and short of the matter under analysis that seemed to concern itself with the question why public wrath at the heinous crime was being directed at the government instead of the extremist perpetrators. The upshot was why the general mass of the people continued to behave thoughtlessly, against the drift of rational analyses. Will anyone listen to the intellectuals please? The unsolved conundrum was our history’s longest total shut down by an overwhelmingly religious people on the killing of a declared secularist.
Faiz’s dirge on the death of Hassan Nasir that Harris Khalique was asked to read, wound up the pointless analyses and resolved the apparent dichotomy in the poet’s question of the hour:
Dosto qafla-i-dard ka ab kya hoga
Ab koi aur karey parvarishe gulshan-i-gham
Dosto khatm hoee dida-i-tar ki shabnam
Tham geya shor-i-junoon khatm hoee barishe sang
(Friends! what becomes of the caravan of pain now, who to tend the orchard of sorrow, Friends! the dew from the moist eye is gone, the mad din is stilled, the rain of stones ceased)
Indeed for the time at least it looks like the rain of stones, the calumnies that the establishment pours on anyone who poses a threat to it, has been hushed by the shock waves of the cataclysm, and the poor soul of the slain leader is now safe in her grave. Yet the boorish temerity of a guilty conscience took only hours to surface in the ridiculous sunroof theory. The mad din will not take long to pierce the public ear drums.
But a tell tale poem that Iftikhar Arif wrote a long time back, and whose relevance to the bewildering spectacle that we have become increases by the day, depicts this uncanny ability of poets to sum up the crux in the lilting words of a song. The poem opens with a question about the game that is being played:
Bikhar ja aingey hum kya jab tamsha khatm hoga
Meray ma’bud aakhir kab tamasha khatm hoga
(will the show end only at our dispersion/when, when O’ Lord will it end) and wonders:
Kahani a’ap uljhi hey keh uljhaee gaee hey
Yeh uqda tab khulayga jab tamasha khatm hoga (has the plot thickened of itself or has been snarled/ the knot shall open at the show’s end). The poet then records some new developments:
Nai kirdar a’atey ja rahai hain roshni main
Nahin ma’loom ab kis dhab tamasha khatm hoga (new actors are appearing in the spotlight /none knows the shape the end now assumes). He then sees the signs of the impending doom:
Chiraghey hujra’ai darwesh ki bujhti hui lau
Hawa sai keh gaee hai ab tamasha khatm hoga (the dying light of the sage’s lamp/has told the wind the end is near) and tells us when the end will come:
Yeh sab kathputlian raqsaan rahaingi ra’at ki ra’at
Sehr sai pehlai pehlai sab tamasha khatm hoga (the dance of the puppets shall last for the night/by dawn the show will end); but its only the people who are in the dark:
Tamasha karney walon ko khabar di ja chuki hai
Keh parda kab giray ga kab tamasha khatm hoga (the stage managers have been told/when the curtain falls and the show ends). The poem ends with a consoling thought:
Dil-i-na mutma’in aisa bhi kiya mayoos hona
Jo khalq utthi to sab kartab, tamasha khatm hoga (why be so hopeless o’ unsatisfied heart/all games will end when the people stand up).
In the meeting at Dr Inayatullah’s house our psychologist friend had stretched the analyses to the era of Bahadur Shah Zafar to trace the origins of our national predicament and there was a possibility of the discussion going deeper into history when Dr Nayyar requested for the Faiz poem to be read.
I had passed my matric examinations a year earlier and had left the Cadet College, Petaro for good after so doing. I still remember that at the boarding college I used to enter into long debates about ZAB’s performance with my Sindhi friends. I used to criticise Mr Bhutto all the time while my Sindhi friends used to defend him.
I now realise that the only reason for my dislike of the Bhutto government was my father’s influence over me. He was a deeply religious person and used to say his five prayers everyday. He thought that Bhutto’s “wayward ways” were bad for the country and I used to echo his views in my debates with my pro-Bhutto friends.
On the day following ZAB’s execution, I was no expert on his career simply because I had really not followed it closely. Neither had I read too much about Mufti Mehmood, for that matter. But I knew fully that the two stalwarts of Pakistani politics were always at daggers drawn. That’s why the Maulana’s statement seemed to be of the decent sort and that’s why I still remember it.
Fast forward 28 years. It is December of 2007 and ZAB’s beloved Pinky has been assassinated, this time at the hands of a sharpshooter (and not a hangman).
The similarities don’t end there. Like the late 1970s, a general is at the helm. And there is again a lot of anger and hatred in the country, particularly in Sindh. What’s more, there is the real possibility of the Sindhis, after being alienated due to the assassination of the two Bhuttos they deeply revered, of going their own way.
In such a bleak situation, however, a chain of events took place that gave us hope about the federation’s future. Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto’s chief tormentor in her two tenures as the prime minister, visited Naudero as did Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Asfandyar Wali Khan who were also her bitter political rivals. They didn’t just condole with Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari but also visited BB’s grave.
There may be some scepticism, particularly among the Sindhis, about the aforementioned leaders’ visit to Naudero. What good was the visit once Ms Bhutto had been killed?, some people may have asked. By the same token, what use was Mufti Mehmood’s statement after ZAB had been executed?
All kinds of motives may be attributed to the said visit by leaders of the PML-N, JI and ANP. Some detractors may simply describe it as a populist move aimed at winning over voters. Some other sceptics may characterise it as the shrewd politicians’ move to get at, nay politically isolate, President Pervez Musharraf, their chief antagonist.
Regardless of what the real reason was, it is important that we appreciate the move because it helped ease the pain a little. It showed to the world that our politicians, who are reviled far and wide, may not be as visionless as they are made out to be. The visit made it possible for us to see some of our ‘corrupt and petty’ politicians in a positive light for a change, because they may have, just may have, helped save the federation in their small way. They have certainly done more to defuse the situation arising out of Benazir’s killing than has the establishment. Then, the best thing to have happened in the wake of BB’s assassination took place. I am referring of course to the meeting of the PPP’s central executive committee. The decisions taken at that meeting leave no doubt that our politicians are essentially good people and an extremely capable lot.
Ironically, the thing that stood out during the meeting was the late Benazir’s courage and vision. She was no more but her indomitable courage and clear vision was there for all to recognise, admire and emulate. She had been buried a couple of days before but it was her vision that prevailed.
In the end the meeting decided that the next PPP chairman, whoever might that be, would stand for the federation. Thus, the people who wanted Sindh to go its own way were defeated and the federation was victorious. The patriotic Pakistani was victorious, for once.
BB’s will that was read out at the CEC meeting and the few messages that have been published recently in newspapers show clearly that Benazir was no ordinary individual. She knew well of the enormous odds facing her, but she forged ahead. She knew that she could be killed, yet she stood her ground and fought on valiantly.
This is the same woman who, much like Nawaz Sharif, was elected prime minister twice and who was sacked twice. She has made all Pakistani politicians proud.
Can the same be said of the establishment which seems to be in the habit of sacking elected premiers and forcing them out of the country? Well, obviously not.
In my opinion, the one thing that BB’s example has shown us is that the Pakistani politicians are not as bad as they are made out to be. Now it’s for the so-called establishment to do the right thing and make way for them.