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Point of View
Pakistani culture and identity WITH reference to Mr Aitizaz Ahsan’s interview (August 10), he is criticizing what he calls the successive Pakistani establishments and ‘their fundamentalist collaborator’s’ attempts to show that ‘our identity and culture is very different from that of the Indians’. This is belied by the fact that it was actually the Quaid-e-Azam, himself a progressive person, who had very articulately made this point himself even before the partition. He had said that we have our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and standards, laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitude anal ambitions. As such, we were a separate nation and should have a separate homeland where we could live according to our own aspirations. In his memoirs pertaining to his White House years, Henry Kissinger had pointed out that the Hindus and Muslims had stark differences that were evident even from looking at their places of worship. The mosques were well lit, spacious and simple, whereas the Hindu temples tended to be generally dark and congested, with carvings of an intricate nature. The Islamic influence, be it Turkish, Persian, Arabic or Central Asian, on the South Asian Muslims was profound enough to make them distinct from the Hindus. On the contrary, the likely Indian influence upon the Pakistanis can be gauged from how a well-known Indian politician had boasted a couple of years back that even the Madhuri Dixit, the Indian film star, was more than enough for Pakistan’s deadliest missile, Ghauri. Therefore, opposed to what some people, enamoured of India may want, Pakistanis are better off looking towards West Asia, and their emotional Qibla had better remain in Makkah or thereabouts, instead of being changed to New Delhi or Bollywood. This, however, does not mean that the two neighbours should not have friendly relations. ZAHOOR AHSAN Karachi | ||
WITH reference to Intizar Hussain’s column on Halqa-e-Arbab-e-Zauq transported me back to 1942 when I was enrolled as a member of the Halqa by Tabish Siddiqui. Through the years 1942-44, I rarely missed a weekly meeting of the Halqa held every Sunday afternoon in the boardroom of YMCA Lahore. I remember distinctly that the membership register and record of the proceedings of the meetings was maintained by Mukhtar Siddiqui.|
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