ATAUL HAQ Qasmi has severely censured those writers who have dared to defend the referendum on PTV.
I am not referring here to any of his columns. It would have been in the fitness of things had he written all this in his column. What intrigued me was the fact that he had, for the first time, chosen to give vent to his political anger in his literary journal, Muasir.
Hitherto, he had reserved his column for his political outpourings which were never allowed to make inroads into the Muasir, a purely literary journal owned and edited by him. It is for the first time that I have seen his political baggage transferred from his column to his esteemed editorial in Muasir. This obviously intrigued me. Perhaps, the hostile reaction of the press to the referendum gave him some confidence. He then decided to assert his political views on the literary front.
However, with this decision on the part of Ataul Haq Qasmi, the respectable distance between his column and his literary journal, which he had so strenuously maintained, has now been bridged. Now Muasir may be read in continuation of his columns.
Qasmi (I mean Qasmi Junior) says that quite a large number of writers appeared on PTV and spoke on the referendum. Unfortunately, not being a regular TV viewer, I could not listen to them all. Only while seeing Shoaib Hashmi’s programme I had the good luck to listen to Shahzad Ahmad and Asghar Nadeem Sayed on this subject. For the rest of the writers I will have to depend on the version provided by Qasmi. According to him, the writers justified the referendum and expressed satisfaction on the transparency of the results. In brief, they found no fault with the present ruler.
Qasmi’s anger on this attitude of the writers amused me. I was reminded of a number of writers, who were seen censuring Qasmi for the same kind of behaviour. They wondered that Qasmi was all praise for Mian Nawaz Sharif and never for a moment cared to take note of the stigma of corruption his hero carried with him.
This line of argument has never convinced me. In fact, the followers of political figures in our society fall under the category of lovers. A lover should not be expected to have the kind of objectivity we demand from a historian or a political analyst. A lover, or to be more precise, a jiyala is a jiyala so long as he reposes his confidence and faith blindly in his leader, suspending all doubts if he has any. The moment he develops a critical attitude, he ceases to be a jiyala and a lover.
In literature, there are two points of view in respect of writers’ relation with politics, giving birth to two schools of thought. One school insists that the writer has no business to dabble in politics. Of course, he is expected to have an awareness of his times, of all that is happening on the social, political level, and on the level of thoughts and ideas. This awareness should inform his writings in a creative, rather than expressed in a journalistic manner.
Writers belonging to the other school of thought have no patience to wait for an awareness which takes time to develop and finds expression in elusive ways. They stand for a straightforward political commitment and demand from the writer a quick response to politically and socially meaningful events.
The latter point of view was ardently advocated by the progressive movement in its heyday. But now writers belonging to the rightists’ camp are owning it and interpreting it in their own way.
Those belonging to the former school of thought may not like to see a writer appearing on TV and speaking on the referendum, even when they see a justification for it. From their point of view, this is a direct dabbling in politics, which a writer should avoid.
As for Ataul Haq Qasmi, he is angry just because certain writers chose to speak in defence of the referendum. He will not mind anyone speaking on this issue if he chooses to question its desirability. In that case, he will rather welcome it. He will welcome it more if a writer chooses to censure the regime, ignoring all that had happened during Nawaz Sharif’s times.
Qasmi has reserved for himself the right to think politically, while denying the same right to his contemporaries. He is so sure of his political ground that he would not like to see any writer thinking and expressing in a way different from his political stand.
Qasmi cannot afford to believe that there can be two points of view on an issue. This kind of belief asks for genuine democratic thinking, which our society sadly lacks. We hanker for democracy without being democratic.
