I HAD left India, an old country, in June, 1947, for the United States of America and had returned to Pakistan, a new country, in November, 1953. By the end of 1956, I did a little stock-taking. On a personal level, I was charging off in different directions and no career, in the conventional sense of the word, loomed ahead of me. I was taking life one day at a time. I had no problem in adjusting to a country that itself was searching for an identity.
What seemed to be sustaining the country was a dedicated hostility to India matched with the ferocity of India’s hostility to Pakistan. In that sense, Pakistan nationalism was negative. We would say that these were early times, but by now, the direction Pakistan should take should have been set. The distinction between nationalism and nationhood was a subtle one. But we were functioning on the basis that they were identical and interchangeable. It was important that the distinction should have been made.
We had managed the events of Partition, a lesser people would have been overwhelmed by them, but it was coping with the calm that followed the fury that was proving difficult. There seemed to be no dearth of patriots, but there seemed to be no general consensus on what we should be patriotic about. There was, of course, the more exuberant kind of patriotism such as cheering for the Pakistan cricket team and to a man (and woman and child) we celebrated when our team won. It was easy to glow with patriotism when things were going well, but when they were not, it was a different matter.
One of the tragic consequences of this mindless or selective patriotism was that it was being used as a political weapon. The easy facility with which people became ‘traitors’ or ‘anti-State’ the moment they ranged themselves in opposition to the government of the day was scandalous and was symptomatic of a deep-rooted insecurity.
IN other countries, these would have been serious charges and the public would have demanded proof, not the public at large for they were disempowered, but at least that section of the public that was articulate. Instead, these were seen as a trade-off in harmless insults. Thus no one was surprised that a person dubbed as a traitor one day became prime minister the next. From being sworn-at to being sworn-in was a painless transition. But ‘dissent’ was becoming dangerous. To oppose a government was not tantamount to be or being disloyal. On the contrary, given the nature and competence of governments that we had, not to have opposed them would have been disloyal. Even in times of war, the right to disagree is not treasonable. Opposition parties function normally and they hold the government accountable, not only in the way the war is being conducted, but sometimes even the right to make war. When the British government, in collusion with France and Israel, had embarked on their adventure against Nasser when he nationalized the Suez Canal, the Labour Party, then Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, denounced Anthony Eden in language that even Cairo would have considered vituperative. Hugh Gaitskill, the Opposition Leader, minced no words in expressing how he felt. Yet not even the most far-gone Tory would have dared to question the patriotic credentials of Hugh Gaitskill.
IN fact, Gaitskill visited Pakistan soon after the Suez War, and the head of the British Information Service, McSamples, who was a coffee-house regular, asked me whether I would like to meet him. Of course, I did and he arranged the interview. He was staying at Runnymeade in Clifton, the residence of the British High Commissioner. Gaitskill met me amiably enough and immediately made it clear that the interview was off the record and then somewhat pompously cautioned me that he hoped I would honour this. I told him to have no fears on this account.
Naturally, I talked about the Suez and tried to ‘butter’ him up by saying how much we admired him for that stand that he had taken. He seemed uncomfortable to hear this, and he spoke of the Suez in a tone far more moderate than he had used in the House of Commons. I asked him whether he had changed course or was having second thoughts. He denied that he had. What was then this “things are never all that clear-cut,” and “one should not be emotional about international affairs”? He was merely observing the unwritten rule that an opposition member never criticized his country when he was abroad.
I had the same experience when I interviewed Herbert Morrison. He was not being intellectually dishonest, but simply observing the rules that you don’t take your disagreements on your travels though Herbert Morrison was less guarded than Gaitskill.
Knowing McSamples had many advantages and whenever a notable British journalist passed through Karachi, he either brought him to the coffee-house or arranged for me to meet him. I thus met James Cameron and Anthony Sampson. There was a William Clark of The Observer who went on to teach at the University of Chicago. If I remember rightly, he had been Anthony Eden’s public relations officer during the Suez Crisis. He was also one of the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica and arguing with him could be daunting. He put down one of us by simply referring him to one of his footnotes in the Encyclopaedia. “Damn it, Bill,” I told him, “at least do him the courtesy of referring him to the main body and not a footnote.” Another journalist I met was Kingsley Martin, the legendary editor of the The New Statesman, and I had tea with him in the lobby of Hotel Metropole. I must confess that I was very disappointed. I had looked forward to a stimulating discussion, but he seemed preoccupied in wanting to find out who was bringing out a weekly of the same name as his from Karachi and was giving serious thought of taking him to court. I told him that the weekly was The Statesman and was brought out by a friend of mine whose name was Owais and he was wasting his time. I found this a little petty in a man of the stature of Kingsley Martin.
BUT the fifties were the years of the great rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and which we knew as the Cold War. Through our membership of SEATO and CENTO, Pakistan had already become a combatant and Gary Power had taken off on his U-2 from Peshawar and had been shot down over Soviet territory. Khurschev had put a ring round Peshawar on a map and had threatened to blow it to kingdom come.
Nuclear war was too horrible to contemplate and, therefore, was not perceived, as a credible danger. Of course, a nuclear war could start by accident or there could be some lunatic who could press the button. But there was danger to smaller countries of being used as pawns. Pakistan was getting its share of military and economic aid, but was paying the price of earning the enmity of the Soviet Union.
INDIA chose to announce that it was non-aligned, but the tilt was towards the Soviet Union. This did not help our Kashmir case in the United Nations. But it seemed that the immediate rewards of aid outweighed the long-term interests of Pakistan. The Americans insisted that they were giving us aid “without strings”. Considering that we had no idea where this aid was going, one certainly did not see the condition of the common people improving, I argued with my American friends that the aid should be with strings, that it should go into social programmes, that the aid should be like bridge-financing. The ultimate aim should be that we should become self-reliant. We were, instead, going into debt.
BUT the Cold War had its advantages and it could be enjoyed. When the Russians sent a cultural troupe to Karachi, some dancers from the Ukraine, it was only a matter of time when the Americans would match this and Duke Ellington and his orchestra duly arrived. This sort of ‘cultural’ rivalry brought a freshness to the social life of Karachi. Other countries, too, got into the act. Although these cultural events were meant to win the minds and hearts of the people, unfortunately, the same people were invited as went to the Embassy receptions. Thus one kept meeting the same people over and over again.
In the meantime, someone brought the news to us in the coffee-house that a most respected journalist had been thrown out of one of the best hotels for being improperly dressed. He was wearing kurta and pyjamas. We saw that as a clarion call to go to town on that hotel and we wrote indignant stories and the hotel management duly claimed that there had been some misunderstanding and people wearing kurta-pyjamas were welcome. A small victory for the free press and we felt good about it. But when I met the hotelier, I felt a little ashamed of myself. He explained to me that the dress code had been enforced by a party that was holding a reception. “I just got caught in the middle,” he moaned. I told him that life was unfair.
I HAD left India, an old country, in June, 1947, for the United States of America and had returned to Pakistan, a new country, in November, 1953. By the end of 1956, I did a little stock-taking. On a personal level, I was charging off in different directions and no career, in the conventional sense of the word, loomed ahead of me. I was taking life one day at a time. I had no problem in adjusting to a country that itself was searching for an identity.
