| June 11, 2008 | Wednesday | Jamadi-us-Sani 06, 1429 |
Irish ‘no’ may trigger another crisis of confidence in EU
In the fifties to which septuagenarians retreat at the faintest smell of good, our cozy city of Rawalpindi had only one lady who was known to be a practising poet. She was Rabia Fakhri, a slight person, fragile and in decrepit health, you would see measuring her steps to cross the road near the Cantonment Hospital where she lived probably with her brother, the gentle and very affable, the late Dr Qamrul Islam. She was known to the literary set because she attended meetings of the Halqa. I remember no other lady of consequence in our all male literary ambience of that period studded with the likes of Agha Babur, Akhtar Ahsen, Salim Asmi, Shafquat Tanvir Mirza, Munno Bhai, Ustad Zafar, Mansoor Qaiser, Izhar Kazmi, Sultan Ghazi, Uncle Claudius, Ejaz Mukri, Kamal Mustafa, Jaffar Tahir, Salim Ibrahim, Riaz Quader, Sami Ahuja et al.
But right then the scene in Lahore was more mixed what with starlets like Kishwar Naheed ‘folding the flanks of adab’ (as they say in Urdu) before titans like Sufi Tabassum, Faiz and Qasmi. And countrywide it appears things were even better than our cantonment’s unisex milieu. Women were figuring prominently in the larger than life shadow of Asmat Chughtai whose Tairrhee Lakeer and Lehaf had cleared a path in the thorny brush for literary suffragettes like Mumtaz Shireen, Quratulain Hyder, Hajira Masroor, Khadija Mastoor, Parveen Syed Fana and Zehra Nigah. But the blossoming of the perfumed garden occurs somewhere around the mid sixties (I can’t be wrong by more than a few years). That was the time when feudal and religious curbs on female thought and expression were beginning to crumble and the Pakistani woman was coming into her own in a sizable way. Was that a universal wave sweeping across the continents, or some other social upheaval topically close or merely the continuity of trickle down effect gathering momentum, is for research people to determine, but ever since despite retrograde movements and the rising tide of religiosity the flood gates have been difficult to close on talking women baring their souls on the literary and their bodies on the social stage.
The act on which the curtain rises reveals women claiming seats in the front row, with many among them young enough to outlast the male giants of whom remain but a few there is Fraz, Intezar, Aali, Yusufi — who else? From the pre-Partition generation alone as many as two dozen writers and poets are represented among contributors to the latest edition of Pakistani Literature’s special women writers issue that the Pakistan Academy of Letters has been updating from year to year since 1994. In addition to the two dozen oldies there can safely be another dozen who have left the age column blank in the biographical notes. Women are seldom without hope, which is a good thing in our hopeless times. Once this lot bows out there should be no vacuum as the literary scene is brimming with bright young educated women whose seat in the hall of fame looks booked. Some of them are free of the gender poltergeist and writing prose and verse in the manner of writers and not as female somebodies. Their stories and their poems are free of fear, lamentations and protest. They can look you in the eye with the assurance that the first to bat is going to be yours if that surprised male happens to be you.
Intellectually speaking it can be said with some certainty that the days of male domination in the realm of the arts are over. They have been overtaken. Men would be thankful if their better halves agree to walk with them shoulder to shoulder, that is, a step behind their rightful foot forward. The stuff which Yasmeen Hameed has put together in this volume is wide ranging “from Hijab Imtiaz Ali’s early twentieth century innocence to Khadija Mastoor’s more realistic narrative in the post-Partition period, moving on to Bano Qudsia’s philosophical analysis of man’s mind ... and Khalida Hussain’s introspective intellectualism that became popular in the 1960s.” Yasmeen finds later generations “more aggressive and blatant”. This fiction weaves the social transformation that has been taking place in the growing political mayhem and economic disparities even as “predicaments of deep, intricate human emotion surface in narratives like Mumtaz Shirin’s The Mirror and Bina Shah’s Imprints.”
The poetry selection from regional languages is rather slim which is understandable as often poems have to be available in Urdu to be translated into English. But Pushpa Vallabh’s plaintive solicitude: I am water/Do not confine me to a little bowl,/Let me flow,/I am meant to advance,/Make my own way serenades the general tone of the women’s song in much of their poetry. It is interesting how both Urdu and English poets tend to get lost in extended imageries and thought fails to emerge from stultified rhetoric.
Yasmeen Hameed, who will leave nothing under the sun untranslated, often comes to the help of poets in distress but obviously cannot save them all, always.
Our chairman of the Academy, Iftikhar Arif, not only for his gallant admission of remorse for surviving in separation (tum se bichhar ke zinda hain...) but the prodigious effort he has made towards recognition of women writers and poets and promotion of their work could very well have been called our ladies’ man of the century but for the appellation’s more common usage. This selection presents forty-seven writers of fiction and as many as fifty poets of Urdu, Punjabi, Seraeki, Sindhi, Balochi, Pushto and English. It is a bedside reader for eligible singles who wish to know and inconsolable widowers who don’t know why.
Shadaba Islam
It was not supposed to be this difficult. For months, European Union policymakers have taken for granted that Irish voters would endorse the bloc’s new reform treaty in a referendum set for June 12. After all, they argued, Ireland is one of the “old” EU states—along with Spain, Portugal and Greece — which has benefited most from an injection of huge amounts of EU aid and access to a vast and lucrative European single market.
So clearly, Irish voters would say an enthusiastic “yes” to the new EU constitutional blueprint, wouldn’t they?
Well…they may not. In what many fear could be a repetition of the EU’s failed 2005 bid to secure French and Dutch public approval of plans for a new constitution to update and modernise European Union institutions, it now looks likely that Irish voters could reject the new EU reform treaty — a modified version of the 2005 document — plunging the 27-nation bloc into another, prolonged crisis.
All 27 EU states must ratify the new treaty for it to come into effect next year.
Latest polls show the “No” camp in Ireland building support ahead of the poll, with one survey in the Irish Times newspaper last week showing opponents of the reform treaty in the lead for the first time. Unlike most other EU states, Ireland is legally bound to hold a referendum because the new EU treaty will affect its national constitution.
Other EU states, including France, Netherlands and even Britain — where Euro scepticism remains rife — have taken the less controversial route of requiring parliamentary ratification of the blueprint.
The public consultation in Ireland means that voters in a country accounting for less than one per cent of the bloc’s 490 million strong population hold the fate of the entire bloc in their hands.
EU policymakers argue that the reform treaty is needed to equip the 27-nation bloc to tackle new domestic and global challenges.
The blueprint provides for the nomination of a long-term president of the European Council of EU leaders, a stronger foreign policy chief, a more democratic voting system and more say to national and European parliaments.
EU officials also warn that rejection of the reform treaty will put future enlargement of the bloc on hold and also deliver a massive blow to EU hopes of playing a stronger global political role.
However, not all Irish are convinced. True, the “Yes” campaign is backed by Ireland’s three biggest political parties, congress of trade unions, business confederation and powerful farming lobby. However, opponents of the treaty fear it compromises Ireland’s military neutrality.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups say strict Irish abortion laws risk being diluted and nationalists that argue small countries in Europe will lose influence if the new blueprint is adopted.
A handful of Irish businessmen have also warned control over tax policy will be lost to Brussels and almost all opponents say the treaty fails to give enough power to elected representatives. Significantly also, the vote comes amidst tougher economic times in the country, with many voters undecided whether to blame the EU for the situation or view it as a potential saviour. The mood is becoming increasingly bitter. The Irish government, led by new Prime Minister Brian Cowen, accuses opponents of scaremongering.
Cowen says he is confident that he can still win a “Yes” vote for thetreaty if the country’s main political parties can persuade their supporters to turn out and cast their ballots.
This is not the first time that Ireland has been in the EU spotlight.
Dublin almost derailed plans to expand the bloc eastwards in 2001 when voters initially rejected Europe’s Nice Treaty. The document was modified to take account of Irish concerns — and then approved by Irish voters in 2002.
The stakes are high. If Ireland votes for the treaty, EU policymakers will heave a huge collective sigh of relief and rub their hands in glee at putting an end to more than a decade of wrangling over the bloc’s institutional architecture.
In practical terms, France, which takes over the EU presidency as of July 1, will be able to begin the difficult bargaining process to farm out new jobs created by the treaty.
A “No” vote in Ireland will trigger yet another crisis of confidence within the bloc over its inability to attract public support and could also prompt a so-called core group of countries to press ahead with further integration initiatives without the laggards. Equally seriously, Britain and others could decide to suspend parliamentary ratification.
Irish Premier Cowen has warned that a treaty rejection would take Ireland down “down a new and more uncertain route”. The options in case of a rejection could be a renegotiation of the treaty, giving Ireland some more opt-outs, for instance on plans to introduce an EU-wide corporate tax and putting the document to vote again as in 2002. The EU could also totally abandon the enterprise and decide to carry on with the current treaties.
Whatever the results, the issue is expected to dominate a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on June 19-20. If Ireland backs the treaty, expect the EU summit to issue self-congratulatory messages on Europe’s future.
An Irish “No”, on the other hand, will deliver a blow to the EU’s international reputation and further erode public trust in the bloc’s leaders and institutions.
