Accepting neutral venue dangerous precedent: SWINGING DRIVES

I MUST confess to be baffled by the reluctance of the West Indies to tour Pakistan. First the situation in Afghanistan was cited and now the tension between India and Pakistan. The West Indies do not seem to be unduly impressed by the fact that England went ahead with its tour of India and are now returning to India to play the one-day series.

The idea that the series should be played at a neutral venue should be acceptable only if it is agreed that, if and when, Pakistan is required to play the West Indies again, that series too would be played at a neutral venue. I think the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has been most patient with the West Indies. I think the PCB should have reported the matter to the ICC and simply told the West Indies to go fly a kite.

The West Indies Cricket Board betrays a lack of common sense. As I wrote last week, if there was the slightest danger, Pakistan itself would have called off the tour. Security concerns about players is a patently bogus excuse for getting out of a tour. If there is danger to the life and limb of members of a visiting team, there is the same danger to members of the home team. Is it the West Indian position that we care less about the safety of our players?

Accepting to play the series at a neutral venue is setting a dangerous precedent. I see the possibility, as a credible scenario, of vested interests like television companies, throwing their oar in and a series going to a neutral venue which is the highest bidder.

The irony is that the West Indies rate among the weakest teams in international cricket. They bear no resemblance to the West Indies of yesteryears. I would have thought that they would have been grateful that anybody would be prepared to play against them.

Australia whitewashed South Africa and about this a little later. It is the events preceding the last Test match at Sydney that merit comment. The South African team for this Test match was changed by the UCB and Justin Ontong was included. This was done because the representation of the coloured players was deemed to be inadequate.

This created a storm and several former South African Test players including Clive Rice, Fanny de Villiers and Pat Symcox weighed in against the United Cricket Board (UCB).

In theory, the best team should be selected to play for the country irrespective of race, colour or creed. But South Africa is not a normal case. We must not forget that with its apartheid history, leave alone play South African blacks, the blacks had to watch cricket from segregated stands. There was not a squeak out of those white players who now boldly criticise the UCB.

Moreover, it was not, as if, Justin Ontong was a duffer. He looked a pretty good player and in both the innings, he was on the receiving end of leg-before umpiring decisions that were dicey. But that is neither here nor there.

But I think that the UCB should clarify its selection policy so that a tour selection committee including the captain are in no doubt about what the policy is. But the ‘white’ South Africans must realise that the apartheid mindset or psyche is still very much there and simply by encouraging cricket in the townships is not enough.

The blacks have to be brought into the main stream and when there are two players of comparable merit, one white and the other black, the black should be given the preference. The blacks have a lot of catching up to do.

But this little bit of, off the field drama had no bearing on the performance of the South African team. The series had been lost by the time the drama enfolded. The South Africans need to do some serious re-thinking.

The batting did come good in the second innings but it was the veteran Gary Kirsten who scored a magnificent hundred and Kirsten will probably call it a day after the World Cup next year and there is no replacement in sight. There is also no replacement in sight for Allan Donald who looks to be over the hill.

But the main weakness is that South Africa does not have a quality spinner. Perhaps, the wickets at home do not encourage spin bowling but spin is back and to be a quality Test team, one has to have a top class spinner.

Shane Warne has had much to do with Australia being the world’s best team. He, not only, gets wickets but his presence on the field acts as a tonic for the others. He is now making runs regularly and is taking some great catches in the slips.

But what was most disappointing was the fielding of the South Africans, not only by their own high standards, but by the standards of Test cricket. It was not skill that was missing but there seemed to be a lack of concentration. In the past, the South Africans gave the impression that they enjoyed fielding. Not so, in this series. Shaun Pollock’s own bowling form is taking its toll on his captaincy and he led the South Africans without imagination, almost, as if, his heart was not in the job.

Pakistan is in Bangladesh but quite frankly there isn’t too much interest in the tour but, perhaps, once the tour begins seriously, people will start getting excited about it. On paper, it appears to be an one-sided series but cricket is not played on paper.

In any event, the tour will be a big boost for Bangladesh cricket as well as a chance for some young Pakistan players to stake a permanent place in the side.

In any event, Pakistan will be playing before a full house and that creates its own atmosphere.

Phantoms of lost liberties in US society!: DATELINE NEW YORK

EVER since Sept 11 attacks on the United States dissenting voices on the American scene have been silenced. The mainstream Americans, reports and surveys say, are willing to give up their basic civil rights to bolster government efforts to fight terrorism.

US Attorney-General John Ashcroft leads the attack against civil libertarians seeking constitutional guarantees in arrests and questioning of suspects. Ashcroft said on the US Senate floor hearings: “Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty ... only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”

Ashcroft’s foreboding words have been taken very seriously by many Americans who are willing to sacrifice the liberties guaranteed them by the constitution.

An incident in Sacramento (California) as related by American magazine The Nation is perhaps the microcosm on things to come.

It says that while it is hardly news that dissenting voices have been silenced in many settings since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, few communities have witnessed so dramatic a stifling of the discourse as did Sacramento on Dec 15. Sacramento Bee newspaper publisher and president Janis Besler Heaphy was forced to leave the podium at her city’s Arco Arena that day, after her commencement address was drowned out by heckling from many in the crowd of 17,000 that attended the school’s fall graduation ceremony.

The booing and foot-stomping began about eight minutes into the speech, when Heaphy began to address controversial issues such as secret military tribunals, the federal detention of more than 1,000 individuals since Sept 11 and racial profiling of concerns. The crowd noise overwhelmed Heaphy after she said: “No one argues the validity and need for both retaliation and security. But to what lengths are we willing to go to achieve them? Specifically, to what degree are we willing to compromise our civil liberties in the name of security?”

After she was forced to leave the podium, Heaphy received apologies from some in the crowd. But talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh, whose career took off when he was on radio in Sacramento, joined local conservatives in attacking the publisher.

The heckling and the ensuing attacks on Heaphy, in turn, have sparked an intense local debate about free speech in Sacramento — and America.

One contributor to the Bee’s letter’s page saw in the silencing of discourse a threat every bit as serious as that posed by foreign terrorists.

“[The) actions of these hecklers cuts more deeply into America’s fabric than Osama bin Laden’s suicide planes,” wrote Sacramento resident Bill Blank. “If these hecklers go unpunished, if opinions voiced by recognized, legitimate community leaders can be drowned out by faceless goons, then bin Laden has destroyed us.”

What was the radical statement that Heaphy dared utter?

The core remarks from her speech — most of which was never delivered — “Clearly, against the backdrop of fear and uncertainty [since Sept 11), we must reevaluate our policies regarding surveillance and espionage. President Bush reminds us that we are at war against terrorism; that we are fighting acts of war on American soil, not mere crimes. As such, the government’s surveillance powers have been significantly expanded, with the FBI being allowed to eavesdrop on conversations between certain suspected terrorists and their defence attorneys. “But what would happen to our individual privacy if wiretaps were to become common and widespread? “ Ms Healy asked.

“Racial profiling, long opposed by civil libertarians, has gained support as an investigative tool — at least in specific, limited situations.

“Since Sept 11 the FBI has questioned about 5,000 Middle-eastern men in this country on temporary visas. And more than 1,000 people have been arrested or detained, many of them on visa violations unrelated to terrorism. Those being held have been stripped of their rights to due process. For the most part, they go unnamed, uncharged.

“White House officials contend that the old rules don’t work in the new paradigm under which we now live.

“The current legal and law-enforcement cultures, they claim, have to change to prevent future attacks and to identify and prosecute suspected terrorists. But what would it do to our society if racial-profiling became routine and individuals were treated as suspects solely on the basis of their resembling known criminals? And what would it say about the integrity of our judicial system if the suspension of habeas corpus became common?

“Perhaps most troubling is the establishment of a secret military tribunal that would be used to try accused terrorists. Because of the vagueness surrounding their parameters, these same tribunals could be applied to ordinary state or federal crimes and used for any of the nation’s 20 million resident aliens. And what do the tribunals say about our willingness to suspend a suspect’s rights?

“President Bush defends the Administration’s actions pertaining to the curtailment of civil liberties as necessary, under the circumstances. ‘We’re an open society,’ President Bush says. ‘But we’re at war... And we must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself.’”

PAKISTAN STUDENTS: Indeed Bush’s words have had a profound impact on American educational institutions, particularly in case of Duke University Prof Mike Reedy who, in response to the applications for admission of three students of Aga Khan University to the university’s biomedical research department, said:

From: Mike Reedy

To: “Imran Bhaila”, Hussain Khwaja, Omar Ashraf

CC: Harold Erickson

Subject: Re: Summer electives

Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001

Yours is among three such messages from 2nd year med. students in your school I have had in the last 10 days. Just in case you are legitimate, you should know my immediate reaction, and the true nature of your disadvantage.

Your ethnicity and your age (student age = idealistic) are so similar to those of the jihad-minded terrorists from the schools that nurtured the Taliban and Al Qaeda that it is not worth our trouble to try to determine if you are a well-disguised terrorist or a real learning-motivated medical student.

You may well be innocent, but some of your neighbours are as potentially lethal as anthrax or HIV, and must be protected against. As long as there are zealots whose idea of reasonable dialogue and persuasive rhetoric is suicide bombing, we seem to have no efficient choice but to react with suspicion, which must motivate us to extreme avoidance or to kill-or-be-killed defensive activism aimed at extermination.

The problem of such global terrorism, motivated by a delusion of holy sanction for the killing of “infidels,” presently comes mainly from your world and culture. You must solve it internally, or face rejection and suspicion such as mine from outside. If you and your fellows do not root out such unreason from your own ranks, you leave it to be solved by unsympathetic military violence by outsiders. I believe it can only be finally solved by your internal action, and I pray you can find better and less violent solutions than we outsiders must use.

You will then stand forth as true heroes and peace-bringers to all of humanity, rather than as members of a culture suspected for fostering, tolerating and covertly sympathizing with the deluded and doomed pseudo-heroism of future-hating jihad-minded suicide bombers. War-makers are no longer the heroes humanity needs.

- signed

Mike Reedy

In response to Mr Reedy’s assertions, one student from the Aga Khan University wrote:

Dear Sir:

I write this to you in shock. I honestly didn’t think that a professor of your standard would have written such a letter to hopeful students. Surely you understand the example that you set to both your colleagues and students. Is the example you want to set one of closed hearts, judgments and stereotypes? You say in your e-mail that you are hopeful for a more cooperative and tolerant world. Do you honestly think that excluding people and creating a ‘them vs us’ society is really going to bring you what you hope for?

You say: ‘The problem of such global terrorism, motivated by a delusion of holy sanction for the killing of “infidels”, presently comes mainly from your world and culture.’

I believe this to be a very narrow interpretation of a man who really does not want to take responsibility for the ideal that is called ‘globalization.’ Sir, please note that this is also ‘your world.’ I believe us all to be responsible in some way for the horrors that now befall us. A more open mind who seeks understanding would understand that Sept 11 did not happen overnight. Nobody can justify the horrors that were felt by thousands (if not millions) of people, just as nobody will justify the killing and injustice experienced by those before Sept 11, those who suffer now and those who are yet to suffer.

I try to understand that your suspicion comes from fear. But do you really think that closing off a portion of ‘our world’ is really going to make you feel any better? You have passed judgment on people because of their background.

Tell me, Sir, after Timothy McVeigh did you refuse all applicants whose name was Timothy? Did you refuse all Caucasian students ‘just in case’ they were coming to learn the latest in terrorist techniques?

You seem to think that because your response was in a written form that it was less damaging.

Again, I do not think that you realize the severity of the implications of such words. Through your self-admitted need to heel your prejudice and fear, you have discriminated against a group of shall we assume innocent people, who simply wanted to make the world a better place by helping humanity through medicine. Who is to say that one of these students may have nursed you when you are old and weary and suffering the effects of age? Who is to say that some people with the very same background that you fear did not try and save the lives of those who were injured on Sept 11?

Our mutual world is a global place and passing judgments on others because of their background is totally against everything the American ideal would espouse. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty?” Reactions such as yours, especially coming from a prominent professor, are not healthy to humanity, nor will it lead to the tolerant and cooperative global society which you claim to want.

Please take the time to be open-minded and less judgmental. Your judgments have hurt people in my Islamic community. And in our global community. Surely the last thing we need right now is more hurt and anger at the hands of a fellow man.

Regards,

A concerned Muslim

Ever since the exchange of letters it seems Prof Reedy was reprimanded by the Duke University’s faculty and he has since apologized for the suggestions made in his letter to the students. But that does not change the mindset afflicting the American society. Indeed it’s time for introspection for us all.

Maulana Johar: a man of many parts

PERHAPS Muslim India has not produced another multi-faceted personality like Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar whose 71st death anniversary is falling on Jan 4, 2002. He was a poet, politician, journalist and orator of varying degrees.

As a politician, he dominated the scene for over two decades, if the launching of the weekly Comrade in Calcutta on Jan 14, 1910, is taken as the first step towards his political career.

Born in 1872 in Rampur (UP) in a Yusufzai Pathan family, he got his education in Bareilley and Aligarh. An extraordinary student, he topped in the BA examination, 1896. From Aligarh he went to England to appear in the ICS examination but failed to clear it. Later he went to Oxford University and was the first Indian to become secretary of the Oxford Society.

After brief stints of service in Rampur and Baroda, he decided to bring out the Comrade, which became the first Muslim nationalist weekly. For their high integrity, both the weekly and its editor were held in great esteem by the Raj functionaries — right from the viceroy to a district officer. With the shifting of the Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi, the Comrade also moved to Delhi. The last issue produced in Calcutta was on Sept 14. It was on Oct 12, 1912, that the Comrade appeared in Delhi.

Johar’s efforts to help Turkey in the hour of its worst crisis — the Balkan War — made him a popular leader. His appeal for donations to help the Turkish cause was so successful that it has become a piece of historic significance.

A substantial number of Englishmen were the readers of the Comrade. In those days the Muslim press was, on the whole, subdued and crestfallen. The Hindu press, save some Bengali and Marathi papers, was no different and it was with the Comrade, Al-Hilal (Urdu) and the daily Hamdard that Indian journalism became a different breed. His article, a befitting reply to the article ‘Choice of the Turks’ published in The Times, London, is perhaps the culminating point of Muslim impatience with the British policy on Turkey.

It is surprising that Johar didn’t support the Turkish decision to back Germany in its war against England and France but when Turkey went on war against England, he took the stand that no harm should be caused to the caliphate, an institution which he considered a symbol of the Ummat. He couldn’t defend Turkey as an enemy of the British but he defended the Caliphate so vehemently that Mahatma Gandhi and Congress too had to support the Ali Brothers. One cannot forget the Amritsar session of Congress in 1921, which also saw the birth of Jamiat Ulema-i- Hind.

Johar brought out the daily Hamdard on June 1, 1913, and the two papers became the main arsenal in Muslim India’s constitutional fight for safeguards. They were accompanied by the Zamindar, Al-Jamiat, Madina and Khilafat and that was all we had in terms of real ‘hot’ stuff.

AS POET: Very little has been written on Johar as a poet. He initiated in his Aligarh days, with Sajjad Hyder Yaldrum, Qurratulain Hyder’s father, ‘Chowdhwin Ka Mushaira’ — a poetry recital event on the 14th of every lunar month. Johar has a Diwan to press his claim for inclusion in the list of those poets who, in spite of the brimful of taghazzul, wrote purposive, patriotic poetry in the style of Chakbast, Suroor, Zafar Ali Khan, Hasrat Mohani and Iqbal. Some of his couplets speak volumes of his poetic prowess:

Kiyon Taab-i-Deed Hazrat-i-Moosa na La Sake

Kiya Pehluye-i-Ado ki Tarah Koh-i-Toor Tha

.....

Ghair Ka Khat Hai Ke Dil Hai kisi Dildadah Ka

Kuch To Hai Tum Ne Jo Muthi Mein Chupa Rakha Hai

.....

Faiz Se Tere Hi Ai Qaid-i-Farang

Bal-o-Par Nikle Qafas ke Dar Khule

Hai Rashk Kiyon Yeh Ham Ko Sazawar Dekh Kar

Daite Hain Badah Zarf-i-Qadah Khwar Dekh Kar

Ek Shehre Aarzoo Pe Bhi Hona Para Khajil

Hal Man Mazid Kehti Hai Rehmat Dua Ke Baad

Khogar-i-Jaur Se Thori Si Jafa Aur Sahi

Is Qadar Zulf Pe Mauqoof Had Kiya Aur Sahi

Mujhe Inkar-i-Wasal-i-Ghair Par Kiyonkar Na Shak Guzre

Zaban Kuch Aur Bo-i-Pairahan Kuch Aur Kehti Hai

Qatal-i-Husain Asl Mein Marg-i-Yazid Hai

Islam Zinda Hota Hai Har Karbala Ke Baad

Johar was a diehard Congressite until the publication of the Nehru Report (1928) when he took a U-turn. The Nehru Report had gone back on the federal character of the proposed constitution for India. It had denied separate electorates and the Muslim majority status to the Muslim majority provinces. All those points had been agreed upon by the Congress in the Lucknow Pact in 1916.

A thoroughly disillusioned Johar went to attend the Roundtable Conference at London. He wanted either a free India or ‘two yards of land for burial in a free country’. He died on Jan 4, 1931, in London and was buried at Masjid-i-Aqsa.

His mother, Bi Amma, and he himself have become more of folklore characters than historical personalities. What we need now is to do some authoritative work on his poetry.