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| December 22, 2008 | Monday | Zilhaj 23, 1429 |
Heritage theft
Neglected teachers
OTHER VOICES - North American Press
Brendel bows out
Construction of history
AT 8.13pm on Dec 18, one of the greatest pianists of his, or any, age sat down to play in public for the last time. Alfred Brendel spread his tails behind him, adjusted the stool and, for the final time, beamed his readiness to the conductor.
IN the process of undergoing decolonisation, colonised countries adopted two methods to gain freedom. One in which political parties and their leadership, by adopting constitutional means, agitated, demonstrated, organised protest meetings, mobilised people to resistance and subsequently negotiated, on the basis of mutual understanding, the terms of independence.
THE survey conducted by the International Republican Institute in the second half of October makes for grim reading for the government: Pakistanis are deeply troubled by the state of the nation and are pessimistic about the future. The government’s performance in key areas, the economy, governance and security, has left the country unimpressed, and its standing is already comparable to Gen Musharraf’s widely disparaged regime earlier this year. While reading too much into poll numbers is problematic (for example, only 18 per cent in the survey claimed they would not vote in the next election, although Pakistan’s voter turnout has historically remained in the low- to mid-40s) the numbers are unsurprising. Before the February elections, three major crises afflicting Pakistan were evident: one, the consumption-led economic bubble had begun to deflate, leaving millions of Pakistanis exposed to high inflation and dwindling economic prospects; two, emboldened militants were widening their area of operation, annexing territory and spreading mayhem in cities; and, three, there was a political crisis caused by damaged institutions, poor governance capacity and constitutional imbalances. Whoever formed the government, they were sure to take a beating on the first two issues, which were clearly medium- and long-term problems that would get worse before they got better.
The dissatisfaction, however, has proven to be all-pervasive because the government has not handled the political front deftly. Consider that of the three most popular politicians in Pakistan, the Sharif brothers occupy two slots. The third is Benazir Bhutto, no doubt sizeable shoes to fill but nevertheless a sign that the current PPP leadership has not won over the people. There is still room for recovery by the PPP-led government though. The survey indicated that while at the moment the PML-N is almost twice as popular as the PPP, the PPP’s standing would rise to almost at par with the PML-N’s were the government to stabilise prices, the economy and the security situation. While definitely a tall order, the PML-N’s model of politicking provides some clues. The party led by Shahbaz Sharif in Punjab and Nawaz Sharif at the centre has deftly combined pragmatism with popular appeal. In Punjab, the PML-N-led government continues to work with the judiciary; at the centre, the Sharif brothers refuse to appear before a ‘tainted’ superior judiciary in personal cases involving electoral eligibility. In Punjab, the tough-minded Shahbaz Sharif has drawn complaints from farmers, businessmen, bureaucrats and human rights activists, but has cleverly emphasised welfare projects that appeal to the people, such as the ‘sasta tandoor’ and a multi-billion income-support programme. Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif has adroitly positioned himself as a principled politician who stands for institution-building and is above petty politics. Successful politicians cannot be on the back foot all the time; they must seize opportunities in crises and build on them.
PAKISTAN Customs’ seizure on Friday of two Buddha statues bound for China once again brings to light the recurring issue of historical artefacts’ smuggling out of the country. The statues were reportedly booked from Islamabad and intercepted, mercifully, at the international mail office in Karachi on a tip-off. Though the museum authorities have yet to authenticate the items as genuine antiques, it can be safely argued that for every illegal shipment of historical relics thus stopped, there will be many that make it to their destinations abroad. Gandhara antiquities of the 2nd century BC to 6th century AD and those of the pre-historic Indus Valley, in particular, form the mainstay of this illicit trade. With every one piece of national heritage smuggled out, the country is poorer. Yet, there is little visible effort made to safeguard historical treasures, whether they are housed in museums or left exposed to the elements at excavation sites across the land. Why this neglect of a heritage that is the envy of the whole wide world is the question.
The answer lies partly in the attempts made by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in the 1980s to disown Pakistan’s pre-Islamic history. Textbooks were rewritten with the aim of purging them of any pride this nation took in its ancient civilisations; a past so rich that many great nations today cannot claim to have enjoyed. Buddhist monasteries and seats of learning dotted the vales of Gandhara as did centres of great pilgrimage, to which stand witness the dozens of carved rocks along the Karakoram range; the Puranas, the Ramayana and the Rigveda were written in the valleys along the Indus; the noble dictates of Asoka were etched on giant stones and placed at transit points here, to state only some facts. History may be disowned through a vile state mechanism; it cannot cease as a process that seeps through to the present and the future. National heritage harking back to millennia must be owned and preserved. This requires more vigilance and action today when forces of obscurantism are flexing their muscles, as in Swat, for instance, which is an ancient cradle of the Gandhara civilisation. It is also time to engage with foreign governments to help stop the theft of Pakistan’s national treasures which reach distant shores all too often and are allowed to go under the hammer, for grabs by private collectors and even state institutions abroad.
GOVERNMENTS in Pakistan have traditionally treated the education sector as a stepchild — unloved but one who cannot be wished away. This approach is betrayed by the indifference shown by the authorities to all aspects of education. The latest victims of this apathy are 600 teaching assistants in Rawalpindi colleges who have not received their salaries since August when they were appointed. Theirs is not a unique case. Teachers in Gujranwala have suffered the same fate and 18 of them even threatened suicide if they were not paid. Others are slightly better off. They receive their emoluments but with their services yet to be regularised they cannot be certain when they may be out of a job. The economic hardship of the teachers in these difficult times, their sense of insecurity and the time they take off to protest to draw attention to their plight naturally affects their performance in the classroom, which is not exemplary, as it is, given their poor training. By neglecting the teachers, the government hurts the cause of education.
Why did matters reach such a pass? Obviously a cavalier approach resulting in ad hocism and lack of planning was responsible for the government’s failure to make budgetary provisions for the extra staff that was hired. Had the education bureaucracy been running efficiently every provincial education department would have meticulously planned the staff strength in every institution in its jurisdiction and made appointments accordingly. Teaching assistants are normally hired by colleges to fill temporary vacancies created by teachers going on leave. The presence of teaching assistants in such large numbers also reflects the failure of the authorities to fill all regular teaching positions creating a crisis in an understaffed institution. It is time our educational planners addressed the teaching sector to bring about improvements to provide good education to students. Lapses in planning and appointments can be avoided by efficient and better management techniques. The bigger challenge is to train the teachers in new teaching methodologies, upgrade their knowledge and provide them the motivation that is necessary to imbue them with a sense of commitment to become role models for their students.
Cheney’s delusions
Los Angeles Times
WE probably shouldn’t have been surprised at Vice President Dick Cheney’s blustering, obstinate insistence on ABC News on Monday that he’s been right all along about virtually everything. But that doesn’t mean we have to agree.
In the interview, Cheney not only acknowledged that he was involved in approving the harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA on suspected terrorists, but said he still thinks that waterboarding was an appropriate way to extract information.
He said — contradicting even President Bush — that he believes the notorious American prison at Guantanamo Bay should remain open for the foreseeable future, and he reiterated that the US invasion of Iraq was justified by, believe it or not, Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes.
Maybe this was just a desperate, last-minute effort to rescue what appears to be a legacy in deep trouble, but it came across as nothing less than self-delusion. Despite public opinion polls showing that only about a third of the country believes the US should have invaded Iraq, undaunted by the irrefutable fact that America’s prestige has plummeted around the world, notwithstanding the outcry by human rights advocates against torture and the fact that there is no meaningful peace in sight in Iraq or Afghanistan, Cheney soldiers on with the same cocky, we know what we’re doing and laws be damned attitude that has come to define him.
...Cheney, of course, was a hawkish, self-righteous and, ultimately, malevolent figure in the Bush inner circle from day one. In Angler, Barton Gellman’s excellent analysis of his tenure, he emerges as a man willing to bend virtually any rule, a true believer with “a sense of mission so acute it drove him to seek power without limit.”
...Cheney likes to joke about himself that when he told his wife, Lynne, that he had been nicknamed ‘Darth Vader’, she didn’t get angry. Instead, she responded: “It humanises you.”
With that, we agree. — (Dec 20)
Two weeks before his 78th birthday, he was ready to bring down the final curtain while still at something like the peak of his powers. To choose such a moment of finality is, for a pianist, a comparatively rare thing. Arthritis gets some in the end; others die in harness; for some, the phone gradually stops ringing. Brendel decided he would rather be in control of the moment.
And he chose the ‘Musikverein in Vienna’, that gilded, white-tied and chandeliered temple to high culture. Brendel may love living in London, but it was to Vienna that he returned to mark the journey that had begun 60 years previously.
Brendel has described this Mozart concerto as “a wonder of the world”. The first of the piece’s startling breaks with tradition is that the piano enters in the second bar, before the orchestra has had a chance to describe the landscape. Brendel kept his hands on his lap for the first bar and a half, as if trying to trick even this most knowing of audiences. It was a typical moment of pure theatre.
The performance was everything we have come to expect of Brendel: technically assured and unshowy; surprising in both small and large ways; sensitive and intensely thoughtful. If the occasion got to him at all, it showed only in the quiet passages, when he vocally willed himself to capture the pathos, the flashes of humour and the serene beauty of the melodic line.
The slow movement was an extended dialogue with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of his 83-year-old friend Sir Charles Mackerras — the piano sometimes passive, sometimes urgently assertive, sometimes imploring and plaintive. Some may have expected a playful finale, but we didn’t get it. There was a tone of gentle, elegiac acceptance; though a hint, too, of not wanting the music to end quite yet. Nor did it. The hall rose to thunder out of such respect that Brendel returned to play the haunting arrangement by Busoni of Bach’s chorale ‘Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland’. The orchestra and audience listened in total silence, then demanded more. Brendel shrugged. He waved a coquettish goodbye. He crossed his arms over his heart and bowed.
After half a dozen returns, he played — for one last time — Liszt’s ‘Au Lac de Wallenstadt’. In an irony that would not have escaped him (he has written a poem on the subject), he played to the accompaniment of a ghostly mobile phone ringtone for a few bars.
These last minutes marked not only the end of his career, but the severing of the thread that links generations of the great instrumentalists.
At the end of all the applause, Brendel smiled with what looked like a surge of relief and gestured down into the audience, which included all four of his significant pupils: Kit Armstrong, Imogen Cooper, Paul Lewis and Till Fellner. He seemed to be saying, “That’s me. Now it’s over to you.” And so the baton was passed on to the next generation. For Brendel, the rest is — in public, at least — silence.
— The Guardian, London
Where this mode was not successful, they declared war against the colonial powers and, after the sacrifice of thousands of people, won independence.
The first category is generally referred to as the ‘struggle for freedom’ and the second one as a ‘war of liberation’.
When a new country emerged as independent, it became the responsibility of historians to construct its history from a fresh perspective and provide basis and legitimacy to its foundation. The distant past which was forgotten or distorted during the colonial period was resurrected to link it with the present in order to obtain a continuity of history.
In the case of Bangladesh, we find that it experienced both phases leading to its independence: the struggle for freedom as well as a war of liberation. In 1947, as a part of the Muslim League campaign to have a separate homeland for the Muslims, it participated in the independence struggle and, after the partition of India, it acquired the new nomenclature of East Pakistan. In 1971, disappointed and disgusted by the policies of the West Pakistan government, when all negotiations for a peaceful solution had failed, military action forced its people to fight a war of liberation and East Pakistan transformed itself into Bangladesh.
Like all newly independent countries, it became the task of Bengali historians to find a new basis for their history. First, the separation from West Pakistan was called the ‘war of liberation’, meaning that the freedom of their country was earned not through peaceful means but by fighting a bloody war. To provide material to historians, the Government of Bangladesh published 15 volumes of documents on it. To remember it, monuments were built and a museum set up. Those who sacrificed their lives during the war were immortalised as heroes.
Further, historians looked at its history beyond 1971. According to one view, Bengal from the very beginning had a separate identity, history and culture.
Though it was conquered and subjugated by north Indian ruling dynasties it never lost its spirit of independence. Moreover, throughout history it provided refuge to rebels and dissident groups and resisted the exercise of central power, thus indicating its spirit of freedom, opposition to exploitation and love for justice.
They glorified the past by tracing its history to an ancient period. Bengal was a rich and prosperous country. It had a golden period when there was no famine or starvation. It developed its textile industry with such skill that the muslin of Dhaka became famous throughout the world. In trade and commerce it had relations with its neighbours and its towns had markets which were full of merchandise and all types of commodities. It is argued that the people of Bengal had a sense of nationhood and took pride in their culture and identity which ultimately culminated in separation from Pakistan.
During the colonial period, an attempt was made to break its national unity by dividing it in 1905. However; its response was so sharp that the British government was forced to annul its decision in 1911.
At the time of partition, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy along with other Bengali leaders wanted to have an independent Bengal. The Muslim League leadership accepted the plan but Congress refused it and ultimately it was partitioned on the basis of religion.East Bengal or East Pakistan suffered as a part of Pakistan. The Pakistani state failed to integrate the Bengalis in the political mainstream. Their language was not given national status. Politically they were not treated on the basis of equality. Their financial share did not go towards the development of their province. Religious nationalism failed to keep them united.
Therefore, historians argue that the separation of Bangladesh was based on linguistic nationalism rather than built on religious lines. They call it Bangladeshi nationalism. Moreover, in the newly constructed history, the role of the Awami League, its leader Mujibur Rahman and the Mukti Bahini is more eulogised while other factions and groups who struggled and fought are either marginalised or ignored altogether.
There is a group of historians who look at its independence with a different point of view. According to their arguments, war and the separation of Bangladesh were the result of conflicts between two elite classes constituting Bengalis and West Pakistanis. As the ruling classes of West Pakistan were dominated by the landed aristocracy, it was not in their interest to share with the Bengali elite class. This caused a disruption in relations, resulting ultimately in the break-up of the country.
However, the common people did not get anything. One exploitative system replaced another. Pakistanis in general are not aware of the history of Bangladesh; it is time to study it and understand different points of view.
