Edward Said — conscience of the Arab world

It was right but somewhat niggardly to call Edward Said the conscience of Palestine because in no small measure he could easily be seen as representing the conscience of the Arab world. What moved him was not just Palestine but in essence everything Arab, including Islam, which was not his religion. To his very end he did not relent in his exposure of hostile propaganda as well as the weaknesses that marred Arab society in general and the Palestinian politics in particular. But the importance and value of his struggle lay chiefly in the stolid intellectual defence that he put up to debunk any thought or suggestion that was made to belittle any aspect of Arab life that he considered to be valuable. And because the positions that he took were always based on humanistic values and were non-parochial, it was found hard to repudiate him by the best establishment gurus who do the thinking for America.

While he reasoned against the US invasion of Iraq and exposed the diabolical motives of this lawless act, he did not spare the Arab rulers either for their ‘colossal failure in nerve, in dignity, in self-solidarity.’ He pulled them up for their inability to speak up to President Bush when he claimed he had divine guidance at his back to justify his aggression. ‘Doesn’t one Arab leader have the courage just to say that as a great people, we are guided by our own lights and traditions and religion,’ he asked. This kind of feeling and concern one missed across the entire world of Islam where one could find most leaders hiding behind platitudes, cosmetic frowns and polite remonstrances that one generally reserves for errant grand children.

Edward Said’s pleadings for the Arab cause and his informed exposure of Western hypocrisy and double standards will be missed on the political front because there may not be another voice commanding as much credibility with Western intelligentsia as his words did as a Palestinian, yet where his death has created a near total vacuum is the realm of learned discourse on matters such as society, culture and letters, in fact the whole wide expanse of civilization that few single minds in the Arab or Muslim world have a full gasp on and who may be able to perceive the subtle insinuations that are employed to mislead and misinform a largely biased Western public. When Edward Said spoke on these matters and pointed out the loose ends of the logic that was being put into service by pseudo-liberal intellectuals of the right, he was heard, and indeed only very seldom answered back, often in the shape of canards and conspiracies. One that hurt him much was a research that sought to prove he was not a Palestinian!

Only weeks before his death he challenged the invidious thesis peddled by some expert in linguistics that was promptly taken up by the Zionist electronic media for prime time discussion suggesting that the Arabic language lacked the capacity for clear and consistent thought, that it was ambiguous and hence it followed that the people who spoke it were muddle headed. Said was quick to trash it as a racist insult against a non-Western language through which much of Greek thought was transferred to Europe, and which was not only a repository of a great culture but also of a moral and spiritual philosophy that governed the lives of more than a billion people. Not only that. Even during the centuries of its subjugated status, the Arab culture had held on to its own, preserving its identity in its vast literature, its poetry, music and the deep moral roots it had in its unshakeable faith in Islam.

Edward Said also debunked the vulgar and absolutely vapid suggestion derived from the alleged inadequacy of the Arabic language that the Arabs unlike the Europeans and Americans had no “sense of individuality, no regard for individual life, no values that express love, intimacy and understanding”. This was rubbish, declared Edward Said and castigated those ignorant, self-receiving Arab intellectuals who found in terrorist activities of small militant groups a social dysfunctionality afflicting the world of Islam and Arabs in particular. He pointed out that between themselves the Europeans and the Americans had caused the violent death of millions in the 20th Century compared to the fraction of such casualties related to the Islamic world.

While quite a few Muslim scholars speak reverently of Professor Huntington as some kind of a secular divine, Edward Said plainly called him a false prophet of civilizational conflict. “Huntington is dead wrong on every point he makes. No culture or civilization exists by itself; none is made up of things like individuality and enlightenment that are completely exclusive to it; and none exists without the basic human attributes of community, love, value for life and all others. To suggest otherwise as Huntington does is the purest invidious racism of the same stripe as people who argue that Africans have naturally inferior brains, or that Asians are really born for servitude, or that Europeans are a naturally superior race. This is a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed uniquely today against Arabs and Muslims, and we must be very firm as to not even go through the motions of arguing against it. It is the purest drivel.”

Professor Huntington must have turned in his bed all night. Who else could have this authentic tenor in his lucid voice? His message was plain. The Arabs, and for that matter any other people needed nobody’s approval. The Western model was probably good for the Western people as it was evolved in that historical ethos. It could not serve as model for other societies. Yet the whole notion of East and West, of the Orient and the Occident, was to him a device to keep the human race divided and perpetuate Western dominance on the myth of superior civilization whose real superiority lay in superior armaments. At the same time he did not fail to warn Arabs against the great chasm that existed between them and their narrow ruling elite who did not represent the best of their people. This was preventing growth as the elite chose to keep the society closed and segregated.

In Emmanuel Hamon’s film on his life made last year, Edward Said says his major role as a Palestinian activist and thinker is to keep the Palestinian issue alive, to keep the debate open by asking questions, disturbing people and suggesting new alternatives to moribund positions. Yet an intellectual was not a preacher nor was he someone who ever sided with power or who was not part of the social awakening of his people.

It is a difficult role Edward Said has left for anyone who may rise to fill his place.

Need to go beyond ‘vengeful past’: Shahbaz

LAHORE: The following is the edited text of the Dawn Dialogue interview with PML-N president, Shahbaz Sharif:

QUESTION: Until recently you have been a strong advocate of pragmatism to steer the country out of the prevailing crisis. According to some press reports, you have been saying that some agreement with Gen Musharraf will have to be worked out to ensure the smooth working of a democratic system. But lately you appear very radical in your approach, indicating that a patch-up with the army is not possible. Why such a big change in your thinking in such a short time?

ANSWER: My vision to avoid conflict and confrontation is based on the need to steer Pakistan towards an environment where people are inspired to work and toil on a war footing so that we make up for lost time. But this can only be achieved through a genuine grand national reconciliation. However it is not possible to achieve this unilaterally. The entire country is surely aware that the government has not responded to my vision; instead it has frantically sought short term preservation at a very high national cost. Needless to say, because of this and the self- perpetuation programme of the military-led government, my effort has intentionally been misrepresented, misconstrued and twisted by vested interests. In no way and at no time have I ever endorsed military rule, and for no reason I am prepared to compromise on the Constitution and subjugate parliamentary democracy to any single person or authority.

To answer the second part of your question, I must say that I maintain my faith in adopting a radical approach to replace this decadent and oppressive system which has consistently inflicted misery and injustice on the people of Pakistan. Unless, we trash the present system and create a true welfare state, the creation of Pakistan cannot be justified.

Q: You and Mian Nawaz Sharif have been insisting that the military takeover was unconstitutional and the entire tenure of Gen Musharraf is without legitimacy. If your view is accepted as valid, what’s the status of the period when your handpicked president Rafiq Tarar cooperated with the military setup? Had you ever asked him to quit as president? If he was not told to do so, will one be right in concluding that you were responsible for providing a democratic facade to the whole setup?

A: Any action outside the provisions of the Constitution can be seen in no other way but as illegal and unconstitutional. This, I am sure, needs no elaboration for those who are aware of what the constitution of Pakistan instructs.

I think the second part of your question can be best answered by Mr Rafiq Tarar who even now almost four years after the military takeover considers himself as the constitutional head of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Q: Your party leaders say that those who joined the PML-Q are turncoats. The question is if the Sharifs can leave the country to save themselves, why don’t the people left behind have the right to adopt an appropriate strategy to save their political careers?

A: I have answered this question on numerous occasions and during numerous interviews in the last one year. As such no useful purpose will be served by going over the same ground. As far as the members of the PML are concerned, it is obvious that people had to make choices. Left alone to save themselves, these were not real choices, they were ‘do or die ‘decisions forced upon them by undemocratic military rule. If you were to ask many of the people you have called turncoats to make a choice without a barrel pointed at their heads, I am certain that they will turn yet again.

Q: Don’t you think that after the ouster of the PML government your party leaders turned their backs on Mian Nawaz Sharif just like the latter had done with Mr Junejo when his government was dismissed by Gen Zia in 1988? Will you agree that Mr Sharif had committed a mistake by supporting Zia’s action against your party’s government?

A: Those members of our party who felt compelled, convinced or were otherwise persuaded to join the officially blessed Muslim League can best explain why they did what they did. As far as the Junejo case is concerned, I do not think it is relevant here. Democracy has come a long way from that time; we now have two national ‘awami’ parties representing the people of Pakistan as opposed to just one party in the past. In any case, this sort of debate should cease because it is negative, unprogressive and lacks any saving grace.

A: It was first claimed that the Sharifs had made no agreement with the government to leave the country. Then it was said that Mr Sharif had gone for medical treatment. Later it was claimed that the agreement was applicable to four people only. What’s the factual position?

A: The factual position has been stated on more than one occasion. I find myself answering this question constantly, and in case some of your readers have not read the other interviews I have given, I will answer it yet again as it is important for people to know the facts. The Sharif family has signed no agreement with the Musharraf regime. If there is an agreement, why doesn’t the government make it public?

Q: If there’s no agreement, why don’t you come back along with your family members? What precisely is impeding your return home?

A: Only recently the people of Pakistan witnessed the undignified and unlawful manner in which my ailing, apolitical wife and young daughters were hunted down like criminals and forced to board a plane into exile. They are Pakistani passport holders who returned home to live with Hamza - the only male member allowed to remain in Pakistan - and make arrangements for the marriages of my daughters into families who are also Pakistanis and who live in Pakistan. All of a sudden this peaceful family (reunion) was disrupted in the most crass, shocking and unprecedented incident in Pakistan’s history. In fact nowhere in the world has it been heard that citizens have ever been deported from their country of birth, only foreign countries are known to deport illegal entrants. The gross injustice in impeding the return of a father, who is a cancer survivor, forcibly exiled and duty bound to wed his young daughters, was made worse by subsequently declaring me an absconder even when I insisted on returning to face a bogus charge in a court of law. Despite these obvious messages to halt and obstruct my return, I will return, God willing - and I will return to serve the people of Pakistan honourable with my head held high.

Q: What’s the possibility of the Sharifs returning home in the company of Ms Benazir Bhutto? When can you be expected back? What will be your future plans in case you are unable to return immediately?

A: Let me just say that nobody can keep us out of Pakistan permanently because just as it is Pervez Musharraf’s country as well as of all our opponents, it is also ours. Whether we return by ourselves or with others living in exile remains an open question for now. In politics nothing can be ruled out.

Answering the second part of your question, I, for one, am making only one plan, and that is to return home. The question of making alternative plans does not arise because my exile cannot be justified in any court of law in any country of the world.

Q: You were all praise for the Supreme Court of Pakistan when it had reinstated the dismissed PML government and the assemblies in 1993. But now you are reluctant to accept the verdict of the same apex court. You refuse to accept the authority given to Gen Musharraf in the Zafar Ali Shah case.

A: Your reading of the Supreme Court judgment is not valid. Gen Musharraf has exceeded the authority vested in him by the Supreme Court.

The judgment clearly lays down that nothing should be done to alter the parliamentary character of the government. The LFO is a clear violation of that legal obligation.

Q: The establishment of a National Security Council is being resisted by your party and other parties in opposition. If there’s no such institution in place, how can the prime minister be prevented from misusing his powers? Why could the PML-N not stop Mr Sharif from confrontation with all the army chiefs with whom he worked?

A: You either believe in the right of an elected government to administer the affairs of state or you don’t. I believe that there can be no abridgment of the sovereign rights of the people who choose the government they elect by exercising their free will. If an elected government betrays the trust placed in it by the electorate, it cannot last long. The cure for a bad democracy is more not less democracy. In the presence of the Constitution of Pakistan no other protective institution or authority is required.

In answer to your question as to how a prime minister can be prevented from misuse of power, a simple majority of the house can remove him, or else the electorate can hold him accountable through the force of the ballot as is practised in India and other democracies of the world. By the same token it could be argued as to how you can guard against the excesses of a president if he is allowed to become stronger than the prime minister and parliament.

Q: How do you retrospectively see Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and his alliance’s movement against the government of Mian Nawaz Sharif?

A: We have the highest respect for Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan because of his life-long advocacy of the people’s right to have a government of their choice. He will remain a symbol of democracy and I salute him. Pakistan should note down his fight for democracy in her history books.

Q: Which democratic system are you fighting for — the one which was in force during the Nawaz Sharif period when the opposition was on the streets or the one when Benazir Bhutto was in the driving seat and your people were engaged in the “Tehrik-i-Nijaat”?

A: Neither. Pakistan has seen short, militarily-disrupted periods of democracy, which, instead of nourishing political growth, crushed and suppressed it in the infancy of every single civil government. It has taken time and experience for politicians to become adults in this unhealthy and oppressive environment. We have now come of age; therefore we are now also competent, farsighted and resilient enough to struggle for a genuine representative government, which acts as a true servant of the people and is accountable to those who elected it. There is no place in democracy for electoral dictatorship; on the other hand, there is ample room for a healthy and productive opposition because it too is representative of the needs of the electorate.

Q: How in your opinion can the confrontation between the present government and opposition parties be brought to an end? Can you accept Gen Musharraf as president, who has been accepted even by the Supreme Court whose chief justice administered the oath of office to him?

A: First of all, let me make it clear that I have the greatest regard for the highly disciplined institution of the armed forces of Pakistan. The problem is with those who abrogate the constitution, impose military rule and in the past have left Pakistan dismembered and in deep crisis. This must not happen again. But we must also not remain tethered to a vengeful past and move forward instead.

I was the first person to call for an end to confrontation in favour of a grand national reconciliation. I believe in the supremacy of the Constitution of Pakistan and if it is to be amended at all, none other than an elected parliament has the authority to do so. No individual has the authority to amend the Constitution through executive decree. This one-man authority, needless to say, is not just an affront, it makes a mockery of the most sacred document of a sovereign state. We can neither allow nor afford that.

Q: What kind of future relationship can be expected between the PML-N and the PPP?

A: We can congratulate the people of Pakistan that today the two major ‘awami’ parties are committed to upholding democracy by uniting under the flag of Pakistan while at the same time holding their separate party flags and individual manifestos in their hands. This indeed is proof that politics in Pakistan has matured and that we have learnt from our mistakes.

Q: How do you see the unification of five factions of the PML?

A: I see it as another attempt that will fail because it is not conducive to reality and the electorate does not trust it as genuine. You cannot fool the people with superficial and shallow games, especially when (the game is) neither innovative nor new nor subtle.

Q: Mr Saifur Rehman, who headed the ehtesab bureau during PML-N rule, insists that all corruption charges against Ms Bhutto were right and all cases instituted were justified. Your comment?

A: Why do you want my comments on something Mr Saifur Rehman has said?

Q: How will the Sharifs be different from what they were in the past in case they get another chance to rule the country?

A: As I have said before, although civil governments made mistakes and indulged in misuse of power, they were always dislodged in infancy which allowed them no time to grow into adulthood with sound experience gained in freedom from hidden agendas. I believe there will be another kind of politics this time around as we have learned important lessons from the past. We are now ready and determined to serve the people of Pakistan with true dedication and selfless commitment.

Q: You have set up a steel mill in Saudi Arabia at a time when Pakistan is in dire need of investment. Why such a decision by a leader who has proudly been calling himself “Made in Pakistan “.

A: Our family was exiled from Pakistan. Do we not have even the right to establish a means of livelihood abroad?

Yes, we have set up a steel mill, but we have also been a pioneering industrial family in Pakistan of which we are proud. My father is a businessman, and believes in a work ethic that requires hard work until death. On being thrown out of Pakistan our choices were obviously more than limited, otherwise how could a family which established six new factories in Pakistan immediately after having lost everything to nationalization in 1972, — the only example of its kind in contemporary history — even imagine investing outside Pakistan .

Of course we would have preferred that this investment be made in Pakistan, where it is so badly needed for our economy. Unfortunately and ironically, while the military government is wooing foreign investors, the Sharif family is not allowed to enter Pakistan, let alone invest in the country where their achievements in industry are widely known and acknowledged.

The interview was conducted by Ashraf Mumtaz

Hashim Raza: man of many parts

IT WAS a long life, Ghalib was still alive when my grandfather was born. My father was born near Lucknow in 1910, and grew up at a time when Muslim culture was yet unselfconscious and assertive in the long afterglow of Muslim power still suffusing society in the northern provinces of India. Traditions of this culture provided the framework for his life’s interests.

Syed Hashim Raza was initially drawn to journalism, not only from personal inclination: the heroes of his time were writers. As Indian politics gathered steam, the 1920s were a period of fiery journalism and writers of the time were in the vanguard of the liberation movement. His earliest hero was Mohammad Ali Jauhar, then editing ‘Comrade’; the other person he admired was Maulana Hasrat Mohani, with his ‘Humsafar’. He respected their talent and authority, their courage and integrity.

However, the ambition to follow in their footsteps remained stillborn. The ICS had become a ‘mettle’ test for many with some academic accomplishment and he sat successfully for the examination, becoming a member of the 1934-ICS batch. More than tinges of nostalgia remained, though, for the road not taken; a strong interest in writing and in literary forums remained intact all his life. At Oxford, as an ICS probationer, he appears to have spent the time not taken up by learning how to ride and to speak Marathi in organizing literary and political events, and seminar discussions with several prominent Indian figures visiting the UK, including Mr Jinnah and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. I recently came across an old letter from Mr B.K. Nehru, his ICS batchmate, quoting Urdu couplets composed by my father and read by him at an Oxford Majlis gathering — and I noted that Mr B.K. Nehru’s was the calligraphic Urdu handwriting of those who first learnt to write with bamboo quills on wooden ‘takhtis’.

Indeed, until his service in Maharashtra, in 1935, my father had little appreciation for an India that precluded his own sense of ‘Indian’ identity. In the UP of his youth, common traditions of language, dress and etiquette among the urban middle class frequently dissipated the influence of religious differences. Hindu-Muslim society shared social backgrounds, landed classes intertwined with urban professionals.

He was little prepared for the circumstances he encountered in Maharashtra/Gujarat. The region’s history, and the sources of its economic development, and how those factors shaped the interests, attitudes and character of society had created a society markedly different from the India he knew. Cultural activity was more linked to the traditions of Hindu religion, and Gandhi’s stirring of ‘nationalism’ was, in the region, reinforcing Hindi revivalism.

While he found the early years of his service there stimulating, differences of culture, language and a ‘world view’ persuaded my father that he would remain an outsider in the province. As the Bombay presidency then included Sindh, in 1938 he obtained a transfer from Nasik to Karachi as AC, Tharparkar. Sindh felt to him almost like coming home. He spent 20 of the remaining 28 years of his service working all over Sindh, and later in corporate life. In his retirement, Karachi was home — ‘Hamari Manzil’, as he named his house.

CHALLENGE OF PARTITION: At partition, he was DM, then administrator, Karachi, until 1951. The city’s population was to increase fourfold, from 600,000 people to 2.5 million over this period. The continuing challenge throughout was provision of supplies and rudimentary settlement of refugees, arriving in tens of thousands each week, and the maintenance of civic harmony, with limited resources at hand. At the same time, the administrator’s job was complicated by the establishment of the new central government in Karachi.

His authority was often compromised by uncoordinated pre-emption by the centre, whereas, in common perception, the administrator possessed the powers of redress. It was a time of ‘vigilante’ democracy. Some may remember the frequency and fast mobilization of protest processions in those days. Given the punishing conditions of refugee life, these were treated with sympathy and tolerance, and a great deal of the administration’s time and powers of ingenuity were dedicated to dismantling protest through persuasion, strictly without the use of force.

Though many factors contributed to the passing of those early, cluttered years without serious crisis, the patient idealism of all the public servants of the day made an important contribution. For my father, the job’s unceasing demands eviscerated in the headiness of having a role in the reality coming alive in the region. The crush of issues that required urgent response meant that normal bureaucratic procedure had to be set aside.

Much had to be decided directly, and face to face. While it may have tested the good humour of many, his natural interest in human affairs made direct interaction with people something he took quite in his stride, and with patience and forbearance.

Refugee settlement was a major preoccupation. Randomly emerging new settlements needed a modicum of access to services, however crude and jerry built, and the allocation of evacuee property had to be escalated to take pressure off ‘squatting’ and forcible occupation.

A committee covering evacuee property had been formed by the Karachi administration. All claims for allocation of local property had to be validated by providing title deeds for property of similar value left behind in India. (In an ironical instance, my father came across an individual who produced title deeds over land in Hardoi district, UP. My father recognized the property; it had been part of a larger landholding that had belonged to his great-grandfather, confiscated by the British in 1857 after he had fled to Nepal with other ‘rebels’ who had stood with the Oudh Court. The family returned from Nepal several years later, and the individual who had ‘inherited’ the estate demonstrated a sense of honour in giving back a part of it, which then became the base for the family home; in a village called Naitoni).

Inevitably, there were multiple claimants for each available evacuee property, and rivalry could be keen. In one hotly contested case, an individual’s claim had succeeded against desperate machinations of all rivals. This individual had chosen to litter his written exchanges to the committee with Urdu verse, quoting liberally from Ghalib throughout.

My father’s fondness for poetry may have become known; for a couple of months afterwards, the committee received a plethora of applications entirely in verse, and formal notification had to be issued to warn that applications in verse would be disregarded ... And even Ustad Qamar Jalalvi had noted, one day in Jang:

Huzoor, is ko bhee koee jagah allot karein,

Yay Urdu bhee hamarey saath lut kay aee hay

But Qamar Jalalvi need not have worried. Urdu flourished.

Partition brought the various traditions of Urdu, from across India, into a single city. For my father, the rapid proliferation of Urdu media and of its literary forums was exhilarating in itself, and being able to help and encourage all this was an attendant blessing of place and time.

Karachi rapidly developed a distinct, urban character of its own. The migrants were largely white collar professionals and craftsmen, used to self-employment, not traditionally reliant on ‘notables’ or intermediaries. With the government, and the country’s major business houses headquartered in Karachi, access to decision makers was quite readily available, and the watchful and critical role of the press kept common issues in the public eye.

There was an aggressive sense of personal ‘rights’ about that time, a sense that government and business were accountable to the people. It became, quickly, a culturally self-aware city, linked by traditional bonds of familiarity with styles and themes in writing, satire, drama, and music. Newspapers, magazines and the cult of the coffee house developed rapidly. Urdu drama quickly became a ‘popular’ event, and plays were staged regularly in Denso Hall, Katrak Hall and under shamianas in open grounds. Cultural education remained a tradition in family life, and served as the link between generations, and within society.

Many aspects of that early culture were to decay with time and circumstance. With all its problems, Karachi is a vigorous and cosmopolitan city, and personal initiative and improvization provide what quite inadequate governmental resources cannot.

However, in its continuing evolution as a national frontier of economic opportunity, the fostering of the city’s cultural identity would have needed organization and recurring support from the administration and its businessmen. In the absence of such support, its role as the national ‘economic engine’ would increasingly come to dominate the character of the city, with the inevitable fragmentation of its society as income disparities broadened, but without the cultural links that could moderate the implications of such differences.

One of my father’s recurring issues with the central government at the time had to do with its progressive restriction, then clampdown, on the inflow of refugees. He took some satisfaction in the fact that he was able, more than once, to get the allowable number increased by several tens of thousands.

Later in his service, as chief settlement commissioner from 1958 to 1960, he returned to work for refugee settlement. Here, again, he pushed hard, without much luck, to have the government dissolve the distinction between refugees from ‘agreed’ versus ‘non-agreed’ areas, for entitlement to compensation in Pakistan.

The fundamental needs though, pucca housing and municipal services, had still remained substantially unaddressed by 1958. Millions still lived in jhuggis with disease prone water and sanitation arrangements.

Gen Azam Khan, who was rehabilitation minister under Ayub Khan at the time, undertook the long lingering task, and by 1960, the great part of resettlement had been completed.

My father developed great respect for Gen Azam’s ‘can do’ attitude in railroading through the resources that were necessary for the task, and he stayed in touch with him until the general’s death in the 1970s.

READY FOR CHANGE: My father left government service in 1965, when he was 55. He was ready for change. The imperial service, he had originally joined, had been invested with the powers of a massive empire, and though the very substantial authority of its agents was derived from it, and not something ‘earned’ by them as individuals, they assumed the ‘trusteeship’ with integrity and purpose.

In the ICS, the British had refined a highly efficient form of managing matrices, simplifying the complexity of providing the full range of public and security services, across the subcontinent, via the coordinating aegis of a single service. At partition, there were 650 ICS officers, for a population of 400 million.

He moved to Karachi, and managed Spencer’s, a large, national distribution business, as its managing director, until 1988. He had great regard for the founding owner of the organization he managed, Mr Badrul Islam. He maintained a foothold in public affairs throughout, serving on public service commissions and on various Pakistan delegations to the United Nations. He spent a good deal of time in work associated with the Quaid-i-Azam Trust and associated charities.

Living in Karachi, he found unceasing distraction in the city’s literary, media-based, and social activities, frequently participating, often contributing. The extended family, once scattered all over Pakistan and Karachi, had, over time, settled into a small area of Defence and Clifton, and with their proximity, a cross-generational link, with associations from his childhood, was established.

The slowing down of physical activity made him an even more voracious reader, and his reservoir of anecdotes, verses and historical pastiches continued to accumulate. The huge power of his memory worked like a magic engine — his reminiscences often resonant with the power of the original emotion, unsullied and unrevised with the passage of years. Age brought him no nearer to leaning on the wisdom we attribute to those with long and successful lives; he was as little inclined to passing judgement on the times, or on people, or to moralization, as ever; human frailty left him sometimes bemused, never angry or critical.

He understood the mutability of things, celebrated life and praised God for the privilege. To him, the ‘travelling’ was all. He was a person who would have lived fully at any time ... and not a little of his gift was the awareness that life was incomplete without time for the inclusion and the indulgence of others.

Kyunkar sambhaaltey hamein woh nakhuda jo khud

sahil ki afiyat sey bhanwar dekhtey rahey;

Manzil ki dhun mein, abla paa, chal kharey huey

aur shahsawar gard-i-safar dekhtay rahey

(Hashim Raza)

Murder near DPO’s office

TERMING the murder of its Shikarpur correspondent an attack on the freedom of expression, Kawish accuses the Sindh government and the area police of having adopted an apathetic attitude to the crime.

The daily writes that Amir Bakhsh Brohi was shot dead just 50 yards away from the office of the Shikarpur district police officer. Yet the police failed to move to arrest the culprits. Even after the passage of three days, the police have been unable to even identify the killers which is strange in a small city like Shikarpur where everybody knows everyone. The attitude of the police suggests, the paper asserts, that either they are not interested in solving the case or have identified the killers and do not want to expose them.

The paper says that the elected representatives of Shikarpur should raise their voice against the killing and regrets that only a few of them have come forward to offer condolence to the grieved family and colleagues of the slain reporter.

Referring to the yet-to-be-launched relief operation in the rain-hit areas of Sindh, Awami Awaz says that in the July downpour, 241 people died, more than 100,000 houses collapsed, a similar number were damaged and standing crop worth millions of rupees was washed away.

Despite the passage of two and half months, the daily points out, the rain victims have not received any compensation though the compensation money is lying with the Sindh government. Last month the Sindh chief minister, at a meeting of the provincial relief committee, had issued directives to complete the survey of the rain-caused losses in a week, but the work has not been completed so far.

The Awami Awaz points out that the Zarai Taraqqiati Bank had launched a loan recovery drive in the worst affected district of Badin. This is like adding insult to the injury for those who have lost their financial assets as well as near and dear ones.

Taking up the water issue, Ibrat writes that the advisory council of the Indus River System Authority has decided to distribute water amongst provinces according to the historical use formula since Punjab had adamantly refused to accept the water sharing under the 1991 accord. It recalls that it is the same accord on the basis of which the greater Thal canal is being constructed in spite of the opposition from Sindh.

The daily says that the Irsa committee has also decided not to allocate water for downstream Kotri though the 1991 accord calls for a discharge of 10 million acre feet water until a study determines the water requirements of the area.

Tameer-i-Sindh says that the situation in Jacobabad, neighbouring the prime minister’s home town, proves that Sindh’s water crisis is not confined to a shortage of water for irrigation but also for drinking.

In this scenario, the legislators of the ruling federal and provincial coalitions were called by the president to attend a briefing in Islamabad to convince them to accept the Kalabagh dam, which, according to the daily, is seen by all and sundry in Sindh as a death warrant for their water-starved province.