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“Oh! Loads”, says Farogh Naweed, a former additional secretary who has held key positions in Nawaz Sharif’s and Benazir Bhutto’s governments. Ask him how and he’s got a story to tell why names matter, especially those that get jerked around long after the people whose memory they honour are dead and gone. The name Emerson, for example. But more of this later.
Today, name-calling has hit the Indian media like a Titanic hitting an iceberg. The ‘iceberg’ being our prime minister. “He’s getting called ‘The Beheader’,” a relative from Delhi rings up to say. “It’s Pakistan bashing at its height provoked by the arrival of Prime Minister Pervez Ashraf to India”. Pity the man who has earned the name of ‘Raja Rental’ in his own country and now netted a new title from across the border. “The Indians blame him for the slaying of their soldier,” she quickly adds. A frequent visitor to Delhi to pay her respects at the shrine of Nazimuddin Aulia, Nigar says the hysteria against the Pakistani VVIP visitor is unprecedented.
Notorious for name-tagging, folks in the subcontinent show resentment against crooked leaders by dubbing them with deleterious labels that stick like gum. In short, these epithets become household names. Recounting them requires a separate column. Another time, shall we say?
Pakistan is presently undergoing the resurrection of the Bhutto name just when the pretender to that name winds up his five year ‘democracy is the best revenge’ misrule. Everything in sight is being baptised with Bhutto as if Islamabad didn’t already have a surfeit of the name. The PPP honchos at the Senate recently sneaked in a bill naming Islamabad’s existing Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) the ‘Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical University’. Like the North Koreans who worship their leader Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, the Zardari government doggedly wants the Bhutto to become another Kim Jong cult.
History shows that these myopically short-range schemes of the jiyalas drag the Bhutto name in the dust when a new ruler turns up. Remember how the ‘Bhutto House’ written big and bold across the grand edifice touted as the ‘Awami Centre’ in Islamabad by bureaucrat Salman Farooqi to please prime minister Benazir Bhutto got unceremoniously pulled down the moment she exited.
Driving on Jinnah Avenue, we hit Agha Shahi Road. We wait endlessly at the traffic intersection. The dual carriageway is choked at all times of the day. The road was named after the former foreign secretary soon after his death. One feels sorry for the civic agencies scraping the barrel, so to say, when they have to resort to calling the Ninth Avenue ‘Agha Shahi Road.’
Dr Nafis Sadik, the former executive director of UN Population Fund is with us in the car. She is the first woman to have broken through the glass ceiling at the United Nations. She notices the Agha Shahi name and casually remarks that prime minister Benazir Bhutto had promised to honour the memory of Nafis Sadik’s late father finance minister Mohammad Shoaib by naming a road after him. That never happened.
Pakistani leaders, past and present, have a penchant for naming or renaming anything that catches their personal whims.
President Ayub Khan dislodged the whole government from Karachi, spent billions to construct a new capital and called it ‘Islamabad’. Only because he wanted to be close to the GHQ in Pindi and his village Rehana near Abbottabad. (Maybe Abbotabad may get a new name to erase the badnami Pakistan faced after Osama bin Laden was discovered living there for five long years unbeknownst to the ISI!) Lyallpur became Faisalabad because the ruler of the day wanted to ingratiate himself with King Faisal; the Lahore cricket stadium became Gaddafi Stadium because Zulfikar Ali Bhutto got dollops from the Libyan dictator. The name continues despite the horrible end the dictator met mauled to death by his long suffering populace.
Lyallpur was named after Sir James Lyall, the lieutenant governor of the Punjab. Mark Lyall Grant, his great-grand nephew served during Musharraf’s reign as the British high commissioner to Pakistan. In fact he was the prime negotiator of the notorious NRO between Benazir and Musharraf. “As a reward for his valuable services, he could request Musharraf to change Faisalabad back to Lyallpur,” someone quipped.
But Lady Mary Kinnaird lives on even after 100 years. Who was this woman whose name stands out larger than life at Lahore’s Jail Road, on which one of the best colleges for women sits like a queen? She was a great philanthropist. The multi-generational roll call of ‘who’s who’ was proudly displayed at the college’s centenary celebrations. Daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters have passed through this august institution. Caroline and Mary, two great, great granddaughters of Lady Kinnaird travelled from Britain as special guests of the college to celebrate the centenary.
However, Sir Herbert William Emerson was not as lucky as Lady Mary Kinnaird. Punjab governor Emerson spearheaded the founding of the largest college for men in Multan, which 13 years later ended up having his name. Emerson was dropped in the ’60s. Some idiot in power must have decided to junk ‘Emerson’ and revert to calling the largest college for men in Multan, ‘Government College Bosan Road.’
Enter Farogh Naweed. He is an Emersonian. He joined this college at age 13 and four years later left as a graduate and an alumnus of this famous institution only to return as a lecturer. During his tenure, he particularly remembers two distinguished visitors, historian Arnold Toynbee and Justice M.R. Kayani (by the way a road is named after him in Lahore) come to the college.
“I was sad when Emerson got dropped. It hurt. As one who had a long and proud association with this college, I felt as if my own identity was lost. I vowed to get Emerson back on my alma mater’s name plate.”
And Farogh Naweed fulfilled his promise!
Farogh Naweed’s opportunity to restore the name came when chief minister Shahbaz Sharif made him head of an important task force in the government of Punjab. “I actively lobbied with people concerned in the education department for the restoration of Emerson’s name on the college,” he tells me. “One morning he got a call from an old resident of Multan to give him the good news. Not only was Emerson put back on the college name plate but even Bosan Road became Emerson College Road.”
Last December, Naweed who now leads a life of retirement went to Multan for a formal inauguration of the college as Emerson College. Bylaws were drafted and an executive committee was set up to okay them. “We meet on April 15 to finalise them,” Naweed says. But he is the last person to blow his own trumpet and hog all the attention. “I am a humble man”. Indeed this same man, as prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s economic and finance wizard saved the government of Pakistan Rs13 billion in the construction of Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore. “The PM asked me to deal with the tenders for the construction. There were seven in all. I chose the one that was clean and without any kickbacks or commissions. It was a transparent deal.”
Farogh Naweed is a diehard Sharif supporter. The brothers trust him. Just before Nawaz Sharif’s government fell, Naweed along with secretary Water & Power and chairman Wapda visited India to sell them 1,000 megawatt of electricity which Pakistan was producing as surplus energy. “Today, positions have reversed. We are begging India to give us their surplus power!” he says.
