Debate on democracy

KARACHI: Do we want democracy? Yes, but why and what for? The question was raised by Dr Tahira Shahid Khan at the Irteqa Discussion Forum. The learned doctor, formerly a political science teacher at the University of Karachi, and now associated with the education wing of the Aga Khan University, spoke about the components needed to construct a democratic social order. Her talk was quite lively and incisive and was listened with rapt attention by a sizable number of audience which the small Irteqa office could accommodate.

Democracy begins at home, she said, which we don’t have in our families. Parental authority goes unchallenged and children are not allowed to think and make their own decisions. Similarly, our educational system is totally authoritarian. Students are required to rote with no questions asked. Challenging and questioning, patience and tolerance are not parts of our social environment. We are accustomed to accept everything which comes from an authority.

Martial laws come and we joyously welcome them. Our economic system is non-democratic, authoritative, and unjust, she continued, and yet we have come to live with it. The same is our conduct with religion.

We accept certain beliefs without giving much thought to them.

Nothing has changed for centuries, no democratic attitude has come to develop, Dr Khan said, and observed that the demand for democracy has not emerged from our soil and it is totally foreign to us.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t need democracy in our country; certainly we do need it, but it requires a lot of self-criticizm and heart-searching on our part to bring a change in our attitudes and also in the society, Dr Khan said.

Blaming others for our failures — our favourite excuse for foreign conspiracies — won’t help us. Democracy will rise and fall as in the past unless we equip it with its necessary components. We should build institutions strong enough to fight against oppression, injustices and corruption. A democratic attitude should first be developed at all levels in the society to bring out a real democratic system, and not just a change of label.

Dr Khan was a bit satirical when she said that to accuse us of being intolerant was not true. We are very tolerant people, she observed. We accept crime of even heinous nature — corruption, rape and murder — because it was done by someone from our own kith and kin, tribe, a co-religionist or from our own nationality etc. This negative tolerance has further supported the undemocratic forces in the country.

As for democracy in the West, its institutions there had passed through the centuries, facing conflicts, hurdles and pitfalls. We in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent have not undergone through those strenuous tests. We kept our old time institutions intact, defended them by all means and sought escape in even religion, when needed.

Over the years, we strengthened our unjust feudal order and unequal economic system. Therefore, it was not right to compare ourselves with the West. In short, we should build institutions and bring about necessary components to run the democratic machinery in Pakistan.

Dr Tahira’s talk was followed by a lively question-answer session, in which Mr Kamran, Wahid Bashir, and many others participated. Rahat Saeed did the compering. —HASAN ABIDI

Tributes to Khalid Akhtar and Aley Ahmed Suroor

TWO important writers bade adieu on February 2 and 9 without having any common ground of creativity between them. They were Mohammed Khalid Akhtar and Aley Ahmed Suroor. One died in Karachi and the other in Aligarh, India, but what united them was their innate propensity for genuine literature. Each one of them could rise higher than the group or ideological tags and applaud any work of literature on merit.

Khalid Akhtar was born in 1921 and Suroor in 1911. What a coincidence that the period between 1910 and 1922 has given us more writers of great consequence than any other two milestones. Whether we think of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Akhtarul Iman, Kaifi Azmi, Sardar Jafri, Ahmed Nadim Qasimi, Noon Meem Rashid, Ali Jawwad Zaidi, Salam Machhli Shehri, Majaz, Moin Ahsan Jazbi, Makhdum Mohiuddin, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Sahir Ludhianwi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Aziz Hamid Madani, Zaheer Kashmiri, Qateel Shifai, Suhail Azimabadi, Hayatullah Ansari, Krishen Chander, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai, Akhtar Orainvi and Rais Amrohvi, it is interesting to note that all of them were born between 1910 and 1922.

There is hardly any other period of time when Urdu literature had so many ‘suckling greats in their mothers’ laps’ as during this period. Maybe, the first and second harvests of Western institutions-trained writers came of age during this period. Both Suroor and Khalid Akhtar belong to this period as well.

Khalid Akhtar remained a neglected and underrated writer. Apart from other reasons, his recluse nature was also to blame for this. We are living in an age when almost many big guns of Urdu literature are busy devising ways and means to boost their posthumous reputation. Having been writing on the ‘personalities’ of Urdu literature for almost four decades I could vouchsafe for the truth of my statement.

I have come across very few writers who do not care about their lobbies. Minus these very few persons, the vast majority has been busy helping the future research scholars to come by well-prepared ‘dossiers’ on them in the form of books, special editions, and all other supporting materials with a view to getting a better and larger-than-life ‘image’ about them. This is a kind of ‘manipulating’ the future historian or literary historiographer while they are alive.

Akhtar didn’t care a fig for this kind of manipulation. But the way the frail Akhtar — almost a skeleton — walked up to the rostrum to get the Rs150,000 Majlis-i-Farogh-i-Adab Doha’s annual award, I wished he could be saved from this heavy penalty the prize had become for him. He didn’t accept the offers of many a luminary sitting on the stage to read his acceptance speech in which he had reiterated his literary ideals.

He had said that the greatest joy which could keep him gleefully spirited was the sight of a good or great work and he was indebted to all the writers of the world which gave him this pleasure. In fact, he was the product of his habit of reading.

He had also said he didn’t mind to which school of thought a writer belonged so long as he wrote to enlighten his readers.

I think that this is what Akhtar became to his fans. He couldn’t countenance nonsense, nor could he dole it out himself. What an enlightened person with having any consciousness of being himself the embodiment of it. What makes him a different breed of humorist is that he combined in his humour a penetrating touch of satire. He was not conscious of what he was doing while some of our humorists are very conscious of what they are doing. They are like pharmacists knowing the grammage of their ingredients and also when an elixir of their ‘mixture’ would turn poison.

Aley Ahmed Suroor: Suroor died at the age of 91 and was buried in the Aligarh University cemetery where many a star of the Aligarh firmament is resting. He started his career as a poet but perhaps was not able to get recognition as a poet in spite of his two collections, Salsabeel (1935) and Zauq-i-Junoon (1955).

Born in September 1911 in Badayun, he did his BSc from St John’s College, Agra, and MA in English literature from Aligarh in 1933. Soon after, he did his MA in Urdu literature and so became the first lecturer in Urdu who had also the background of science education and English literature. This is perhaps what made Suroor a man of unusual equipage when he came to Urdu criticism. He had the rare distinction of teaching English and Urdu at the university level. He served Raza College, Rampur, Lucknow University and Aligarh University. He rose to be the director of the Tarikh-i-Urdu Adab Project, Aligarh University, secretaryship of the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu, visiting fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, and director of the Iqbal Institute, Srinagar.

He retired from the Iqbal Institute in 1972 and from that time onwards he devoted his time to literary criticism. He has some 20 original works and 20 compilations to his credit. His two autobiographies — one, compiled by Zehra Moin with the help of his letters, and the other, his reminiscences, help to throw light on his endeavours.

Suroor is one of the architects of progressive literature and there was a time when his house in Aligarh was the venue of sittings of the PWA. It was in the early 1960s that he distanced himself from active involvement with the PWA on the plea that the progressives had become a bit doctrinaire and hence the works written at the behest of the party were not defensible.

He was regarded as a promoter of the modernist movement. The modernist movement, so long as Suroor remained its fountainhead, was not the cut-and- dried art for art’s sake ‘drift’ which it became under Shamsur Rahman Farooqi’s mentorship.

Suroor subscribed to Croce’s expressionism which stood for the canon that a work with a clear-cut political import could do so provided it remained a work of literature. Suroor didn’t want to sacrifice the preconditions of art at the altar of ideology. Even some progressive poets such as Faiz, Makhdum and Jazbi have proved themselves more ‘artistic’ than Suroor when it came to translating ideology into art. Suroor was a good theoretician of expressionism but he couldn’t impress poetry lovers with his poetry. That’s usually the case with critics who write poetry as well.

Suroor got many awards — the Sahitiya Academy Award and also Pakistan’s Presidential Gold Medal for Iqbalean Studies — but the best award he could be proud of was his unflinching love for Aligarh. He was its child and at his death, he was the guardian spirit of Aligarh culture.

Razzaq future captain of Pakistan

THE Pakistan team has been out of the country for a long time and has returned home triumphant. Admittedly, neither Bangladesh nor the West Indies provided any kind of opposition but winning is habit-forming. When the opposition is soft rather than stern, there is the temptation to take one’s foot off the pedal.

I am glad that Pakistan did not do so and what we saw was a thoroughly professional team going about its business with the single aim of winning. Everyone made runs or took wickets with the exception of Inzamamul Haq, convincing proof that even a great batsman is entitled to a lean patch. Nothing delighted me more than Shoaib Malik, promoted in the batting order, make a hundred and Mohammad Sami get a hat trick. Both players have served notice to the seniors that they are in contention.

Shoaib Malik batted with a maturity that belied his years and after he was past fifty, he batted with authority, as if making hundreds was second nature to him. Sami was sharp, was able to get reverse swing and most of all, he was accurate. We all had our finger crossed for Shoaib Akhtar and I sincerely hope that there won’t be any more fuss about his bowling action. He needs to get an all clear, much the way that Muttiah Muralitharan has, and his fate should not be left to the whims of some individual umpire.

Shoaib Akhtar is a genuine fast bowler and he is a showman, the combination makes him a star. But apart from this, he also happens to be a very good bowler who has learnt to use his head, learnt to vary his pace and use the bouncer sparingly. He knows that his job is to take wickets and not merely to frighten the living daylights of the batsmen.

But the player for me remains Abdul Razzaq. That he has modified his name from Abdur to Abdul has not made the slightest difference to this man for all seasons. He has become Pakistan’s most dependable cricketer and one of the finest all-rounders in the game. He gives the impression of being without emotion, an ice-man, but his young years come through when he gets a wicket and produces a wall-to-wall smile or hits one of his flat, outrageous sixes and his body-language suggests that God is in his heaven and all’s well with the world.

Razzaq will have a stint with Middlesex this summer and it will do him a world of good. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a future captain of Pakistan. We should start grooming him. The West Indies fight-back came too late but I’m glad they got a consolation win and didn’t go home empty handed.

I would have thought that the Australians would have been the last team in the world that would change horses midstream. The sacking of Steve Waugh as the captain of the one-day squad came without any warning. I refuse to believe that the fact that Australia was ousted from its own triangular tournament has anything to do with it. Something else must have been stirring. I cannot think of a cricketer in recent times who gave more than hundred per cent to his team and I think that he has been shabbily treated. But modern cricket has become a cruel game. Steve Waugh was getting on in years but ask his opponents and they will say that his sacking is the best thing to have happened for them! He was a ruthless captain, he played to win and he drilled his team, be it Test or one-day, into one of the finest in the history of the game.

It remains to be seen if Ricky Ponting can hold the team together, particularly since the claims of Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne were overlooked. They will probably rally around the new one-day captain but, in the final analysis, they are human beings and it will be a supreme test of character if they can suppress the disappointment they must feel, particularly Gilchrist, destined to the best man but not the groom.

One presumes that the Australian selectors know what they are doing, their decisions have been unanimous which makes me a little suspicious. Could there be more in Steve Waugh’s sacking than meets the eye? Ponting might surprise us yet and be just the sort of captain Australia’s needs to defend their title of world champions but Steve Waugh is a tough act to follow. No matter how strong a team is, it still needs a captain to put it all together.

By making such a song and dance about Sunil Gavaskar’s comments, the England cricket establishment is proving to the hilt that the England team are the “unbeatable wingers” of the game. Gavaskar is now a media person and has every right to express his opinion. We take a lot of nonsense from the English media who are not always kind about the subcontinent.

That there is any conflict of interest between Gavaskar’s job with the ICC and his writing is so much nonsense. To have raised it is a kind of whinging. I have a lot of time for Gavaskar. He’s a straight shooter and always fair. England must get on with the game. They are not finding it all that easy in New Zealand.