Shylock’s humour—Dammam judge and Mr Shourie

FORGERY MEANS passing off your own work as someone else’s.

Plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work as your own. Religious law-enforcers are past masters at masking the difference. They quote from scriptures that few of their quarries have either read or understood. Sometimes they invent passages to suit their whims and sometimes they delete key riders that would otherwise put the passages in an appropriate context, again to suit their whims.

When the whimsical Shylock, lampooned as a mean Jew by William Shakespeare (why is the world hounding Iran’s poor President Ahmedinejad?) is urged by the Venetian Duke to forgo the pound of Antonio’s flesh which he has earned by an archaic law rooted in religion, he refuses. Shylock is offered 6,000 ducats instead of the 3,000 that Antonio owed him. But he still refuses.

His argument for persisting with a patently mean quest for ‘justice’ is enough to leave the audience cold. “You’ll ask me why I’d rather have a weight in carrion flesh than to receive three thousand ducats,” Shylock growls at the judge. “I’ll not answer that, but say it is my humour.”

Shakespeare wrote Merchant of Venice between 1596 and 1598. That was still a good 400 years before an Indian immigrant worker lodged in a jail in Saudi Arabia since April 2003 would appeal to the world to save his eye that the religious judge in Dammam had ordered to be gouged out. The 34-year old Naushad, a petrol station attendant, was involved in a scuffle with a Saudi national who ended up losing an eye, hence the proposed retribution. The Saudi judge had decreed that Naushad must lose one eye as part of the punishment for his assault on the Saudi man.

According to Human Rights Watch this has happened at least once before in Saudi Arabia, when a convict was surgically blinded in one eye. The difference this time is that leaders of Muslim countries were gathered in Makkah last week to recast their image as a moderate people with a contemporary, forward-looking worldview.

Gouging out of eyes or knocking out a tooth or two is not some patented punishment meted out in Islam. It has its roots in the Judaic faith if not even more ancient cultures. From the Judeo-Christian tradition comes the following quote in Exodus 21:23-25 (KJV): “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

Even today, despite the spirit of moderation that is encouraged among the millions of followers of the three Semitic religions — Jaudism, Christianity and Islam — there is a still a huge yawning ground left to be covered. Europe may have given up capital punishment en masse, no small progress here, but it still plays second fiddle to the United States, where a core group of rightwing Republicans runs the world’s biggest laboratory of medieval ideologies. Of course Naushad’s distraught wife Zulekha need not look at the dismal global picture of post-9/11 rights abuse to fear for her husband. If she looks carefully enough she will find that in India the virus of mediaeval brutality had mutated into mainstream politics with worrying acceptability a couple of decades ago.

We are not talking about the known Indian zealots to watch out for. We are not looking at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the Deendaar Anjuman. We are not talking of a Togadia or a Shahi Imam. We are not discussing the lunatic fringe of an Indian society in turmoil. None of them would be half as lethal put together as some of our mainstream, supposedly educated, articulate exponents of the Hindutva ideology. One of the most widely respected people in India today, on television, in parliament, is former journalist and government minister Arun Shourie. If we followed Mr Shourie’s prescription, which always has the air of a spanking new original thinking distinct from a plagiarized copy of some ancient Semitic ideology — Naushad would end up losing both his eyes, not just one.

“For the past twenty years, I have been saying it should be two eyes for an eye and a jaw for a tooth but it is left to the prime minister, home minister, defence minister and others to decide what steps to take,” he told Star News to a question on whether India should exercise the military option against Pakistan in late 2001.

The ‘two eyes for an eye and a jaw for a tooth’ thesis is self-confessedly 20 years older than the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament. That should coincide with Indira Gandhi’s return to power in 1980. What were the burning issues of the day that nudged Mr Shourie towards medieval solutions? Sikh insurgency? Mr Shourie does not come across as someone who would use a harsh tone for India’s Sikhs.

His main quarry has been the Muslims, followed by organized Dalits and Christians. It so happens that September 1983 was the time of the Nellie massacre in Assam, when Hindutva hordes went on the rampage against the state’s minority Muslims.

Was it the outcome of Mr Shourie’s deep ‘interest’ in the northeast that he was assigned the charge of the remote region during the Vajpayee administration? Remember that it was Mr Vajpayee’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in Assam that had worked as a catalyst to the butchery in Nellie. At any rate the Nellie massacre covered the early history, shall we say, of Mr Shourie’s development of original ideas on the quantum of punishment to deal with enemies of the state. And since he has already defined the categories of people who stand to lose their eyes and jaws thus, it is worthwhile to note that they most certainly include the poorest of the poor Indians called Naxalites.

Between Shylock and Mr Shourie, the judge in Dammam comes across as a dyed-in-the-wool plagiarist. But even Shylock was checkmated by the clever woman called Portia. In the absence of such luck for us in 21st century

India, we may as well learn to cope with Mr Shourie’s unique ‘humour’.

LEGENDARY thespian Dilip Kumar celebrated his 82nd birthday on Sunday. In comments to Times of India, he came across as a cheerful, contented man who was looking forward to a quiet evening with family and close friends at his Mumbai mansion.

Asked how he felt being 82, he said: “If I say something about my feelings in good-humour, log kahenge ki yeh diwana ho gaya. I am very optimistic about life in all its aspects.” As often happens with Dilip Kumar, part of his charm has been his well preserved enigma.

Over the years he has seen many changes: “We all know change is the most constant factor in life. But I grew up to the changing times without losing my wit. That’s my biggest achievement,” he says.

Does he spot a future Dilip Kumar in the making? “Dilip Kumar is the benchmark in acting,” he says, adding: “Having said this, dhundne jao toh bahut milenge.”

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

HIV positive cases on the rise

NEITHER the health department nor any NGO observed the AIDS Day for the sake of awareness regarding all aspects of the disease in Dera Ghazi Khan last week. According to the authorities, there are 20 plus HIV positive patients, including women and children, in the district. They all have been facing social problems and difficulties in the provision of medicines.

The health department takes small amount of interest in the proper handling of HIV positive people as it has no adequate record at its district office. Reportedly, cases were found from Dajil (Rajanpur district), tribal area, Sakhi Sarwar, Shah Saddar Din and Dera Ghazi Khan city. It is important that complete a screening of inhabitants of these areas is carried out for the adoption of preventive measures. HIV positive cases have been reported in the district since 1994. Contrary to the claim of the district health department, a senior private medical practitioner on assurance of anonymity told Dawn that there could be hundreds of HIV positive patients in the district because the authorities in the DHQ hospital and the health department did not care about the proper registration and looking after of patients.

There are some patients who were deported from Arab countries and South Africa. Before deportation, the government concerned always informs the Pakistan government about their proper care. If there are HIV positive cases in Sakhi Sarwar, there is a fear of its spread in view of lack of awareness about the disease. Thousands of devotees go there from upper and central Punjab to celebrate the three-month long Urs of Hazrat Sakhi Sarwar. There remains the chance of spread of the disease from a barber shop. Devotees live in the homes of Mujawars (custodians of shrine). Every devotee has a permanent link with one family of Mujawar since the times of his forefathers. The town is also frequent by the tourists the whole year.

The head of the biology department and research institute of the Government College, Dera Ghazi Khan, Amin Ahmad, told Dawn that there was a need of complete screening of inhabitants of the affected areas regarding HIV and other deadly diseases like hepatitis and thallasemia. He maintained that the cases of thallasemia were common among the residents of Sakhi Sarwar. There is a need of proper awareness about the disease during the festival.

It is pertinent to mention that medical and health facilities in Sakhi Sarwar are in poor shape as the government hospital and several dispensaries in and around the place are in a very bad condition. Barber shops and medical clinics run by qualified doctors should monitor the situation and inform the people about the causes of spread of the disease and preventive measures, a social scientist maintained. He made an appeal to non-government organizations to come forward to fight AIDS in these backward areas. The district officer population welfare told Dawn that he had written officially to the authority concerned to include the awareness campaign about AIDS in the projects of population welfare and soon it will be started. He maintained that earlier in Dera Ghazi Khan there was not a single project regarding awareness about the disease. The executive district officer (health) was not available for comment.

H H H H H

Punjab agriculture secretary Fayaz Bashir has said the national programme for improvement of water courses is very important for the development of the economy and the agriculture sector, and the district coordination officer and other district heads of the departments concerned should personally monitor the programmes in the field at tehsil level. He was presiding over a meeting here last week in the committee room of the DCO’s office in which district Nazim Maqsood Khan Leghari, DCO Pervaiz Khusro, Rajanpur DCO Samiullah Abid, Muzaffargarh DCO Chaudhry Mohammad Azhar, Layyah DCO Nazir Ahmad, water management director-general Mushtaq Gill, project director Dr Pervaiz, EDO (revenue) Iram Bukhari and regional manager Mahmood Javed Bhatti participated.

The agriculture secretary said as many as 28,000 kacha water courses were being improved in the province under a four-year programme while 7,000 water courses have been improved uptill now. He said the president and the Punjab chief minister were monitoring the project personally. He said the staff showing outstanding performance in this regard would be rewarded whereas a stern action would be taken against the officials responsible for negligence. He said additional staff for the programme would be recruited during the first week of January, and applications for the vacant posts could be submitted till Dec 22.

He said a sum of Rs1 billion had been allocated for the provision of 500 laser leveller machines on a 50 per cent subsidy in union councils.

Water management director-general Mushtaq Gill said 112 water courses would be improved in Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, Layyah and Muzaffargarh. The newly-recruited staff will be imparted training under a crash programme in different cities of the province.