Narrow nationalism or foolish stunt?

FIRST to recap the atrocious bit of news as the world read or saw it recently. A poster showing Bombay movie star Amitabh Bachchan against a backdrop of the Pakistani flag was banned in Karachi. The poster was an advert for a telephone quiz contest based on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? programme that Bachchan hosted in India. The contest was to start on Pakistan’s Independence Day.

Bachchan’s picture alongside the flag was an “objectionable act”, said a Karachi official, according to a wire agency. A place alongside the flag “is reserved only for our own heroes. We have already started disassociating Bachchan’s picture from the national flag. It was a mistake.”

The incident seemed as silly as the one involving Indian diplomats in Dubai in the mid-1980s when they pointlessly browbeat Indian movie comedian Mehmood in their nefarious quest for a narrow nationalist agenda. The actor was visiting Sharjah where Indian and Pakistani teams were locked in a grim cricket contest, which in itself is a contradiction of sorts. But Mehmood’s presence in the pavilion had evidently helped ease the prevailing high tension. It was probably a match in which Javed Miandad had hit a last ball six to get Pakistan an unbelievable victory over India.

The next day’s Khaleej Times published a picture of Mehmood waving the Pakistani flag in the company of Pakistani school-children who had sneaked in to watch the players and the movie stars who were a fixture there. There is a myth that Indian Muslims cheer for Pakistan in sports contests but I know more Hindus than Muslims who clap for Pakistan in a cricket match. Be that as it may, who can forget the presence of the fugitive Indian underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, relaxing in the Sharjah VIP pavilion in the company of senior diplomats, Indian movie stars and cricket officials from both countries? A Muslim, Dawood had never even once publicly cheered for Pakistan. So much for the myth. On the contrary, he was trying to fix things all the time to support the Indian team. On one occasion he is said to have promised the players a new Japanese car if they beat Pakistan.

Indian officials were obviously so miffed by the Mehmood picture which showed him merrily waving the “enemy flag” that they descended on him like a ton of bricks. They willy-nilly got him to pose with the Indian flag this time and seemed to have enough contacts in the newspaper to ensure that the pathetic composition was published the next day. I said pathetic because it was forced on the poor fellow like some kind of an urgent correction that newspapers issue only in emergencies.

Sharjah was the venue of another heart-rending tragedy in the realm of culture which again seemed so avoidable. This relates to a conversation I had with the late Malika Pukhraj when she was visiting the Gulf state for a concert with her daughter Tahira Syed. We noticed that Malika would take off her shoes before walking on the stage in apparent respect for a widely appreciated tradition, not so her daughter.

After the concert Malika Pukhraj spoke to me about her early beginnings with Indian classical music. Was it correct to describe it as Pakistani music and mask its Indian origins? My question had a background, for it was even truer in those days that some Pakistanis disliked India so badly that they had even thought of changing the name of the Indian Ocean to something else. The “Indian subcontinent” has already become “South Asian subcontinent” due to this quibbling.

Malika Pukhraj responded to the query in the only way she knew -– by being completely forthright. “You cannot sing the musical notes in Urdu. It has to be Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni whether it is in India or Pakistan. Those notes according to me are in Hindi. It cannot be Alif Bey Pey Tey Tay Sey,” she stressed, referring to the different alphabets of Hindi and Urdu. Ergo, there could not be a South Asian classical music, it had to be Hindustani, Indian or Carnatic genre. This much was firmly established in the interview. And since that was the Zia-ul-Haq era of narrow nationalism Malika Pukhraj was banished from the state-run radio for goodness knows how many months or years.

But coming back to the original question: whether it was fair to ban Amitabh Bachchan from the Pakistan posters merely because of the flag controversy? Yes, but only to the extent that the Indian diplomats were right in issuing a “corrected” picture of Mehmood in the Khaleej Times. Both the foolish controversies would seem to have been engineered not so much by nationalist zealot but by those who stood to benefit commercially from the controversy. Your guess is as good as mine. It is always useful to trigger a national controversy about a book or a movie or a play, which is otherwise not likely to sell too well, to improve its commercial chances. The rule should ideally apply to every sphere of profit not just a TV quiz.

Is that what Indian actor Feroz Khan tried to do in Lahore when he made nasty comments about the Pakistani film industry? Or was he being genuinely obnoxious? Or was he just too drunk to really know what he was saying? Is it possible that by berating its Pakistani audiences Feroz Khan may have tried, eventually in vain, to sell his brother’s film to an audience of hard-line Indian nationalists back home? Whatever he was trying to do, it was in bad taste.

Two of Indian film industry’s secular icons are Dilip Kumar and A.K. Hangal, one a Muslim originally from Peshawar and the other a Kashmiri Brahmin. Dilip Kumar’s life was made miserable by Bombay’s Hindu fanatics just because he was awarded Pakistan’s high civilian honour for his acting abilities. Instead of rejoicing, India’s most loved actor for more than 60 years was branded a traitor by the Shiv Sena. Hangal played the role of a peace-loving Muslim cleric in the blockbuster ‘Sholay’ — one who was also willing to fight a decent fight for his fellow villagers. That was enough to make the octogenarian Hangal a legend in his own life. Instead he was called a traitor because he visited the Pakistan Consulate in Bombay to attend their National Day function. Hangal’s films were banned and he was made to forgo roles in movies he had signed contracts for.

So what does one do to get out of the trap woven by warped minds on both sides of the cultural divide? I would say follow Allan Faqeer’s prescription. The late mystic singer from Sindh was visiting India during Prime Minister Gujral’s brief rule around 1998. If a stranger were to meet Allan Faqeer on a dark desolate road he would run for cover. The Pakistani singer had an intimidating way of looking you directly in the eye. The impact was heightened by the thick bushy eyebrows and an unkempt beard and a mouth reeking of the previous night’s excesses. The neck often had hundreds of colourful beads strung around it.

It was brave of Allan Faqeer to walk into Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, all by himself. He had no visa to be in Agra. Naturally a curious cop got attracted to this weird looking visitor. What followed was a minor inquisition, enough to throw an ordinary Pakistani off balance. But Allan Faqeer was a different kettle of fish. “I am a guest of your prime minister. Why should I need a visa?” he thundered at the bewildered cops. Was Allan Faqeer the Indian prime minister’s personal guest? The question was to soon become vestigial. By the time the checks were carried out with the prime minister’s office, Allan Faqeer had crooned his way out of the police station, in time to catch the next train to Delhi. That’s the way forward for India-Pakistan cultural ties. It requires a bit of wit, a bit of self-service.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

METRO VOICE: Is Karachi a no man’s land?

KARACHI: As predicted, we did get more of God’s blessing from the heavens and all hell broke loose in Karachi, again. When the sun rose over Karachi on Friday morning, the scene resembled the aftermath of a high velocity tornado, cyclone or tsunami. But none of these calamities had visited us. It was only rain.

Rain of three hours or so does not create so much havoc in cities which boast of modern infrastructure. But Karachi, which is proudly quoted by its leaders as being one of the largest cities of the world, for the second time in three weeks submerged in accumulated rain water which turned it into an undeveloped hamlet in a matter of minutes. And this was no unexpected rain. The Met office had repeatedly given warnings of another imminent thunderstorm since the last spell on July 31.

At the peak calamity hour when total chaos had rendered the city paralysed, our City Nazim Mustafa Kamal was heard saying that a city as large as Karachi could never have a proper contingency plan for a situation like this. And with regards to the six-hour long gridlock on the roads, DIG Traffic Karachi, Falak Khursheed, stated that “it is not the responsibility of my team but (the responsibility) of the city nazim.”

These eminent officials have finally thrown in the towel it seems by giving their official denials of responsibility. The higher authorities of the DHA and Clifton Cantonment Board, however, have not even bothered to issue a disclaimer, even though it was the Defence, Clifton and Bath Island locations that once again submerged under rain and sewerage water. All the dumps where garbage had continued to pile up after the last deluge, became displaced from their resting ground clogging street openings and nearby nullahs, leaving the citizens to deal with the emergency ensuing from floating refuse, rain and sewerage water in and around their houses.

Words fail as all superlatives have been used repeatedly to describe the nightmare on the streets of Karachi during the rain – twice! And while no one thought it was possible, the situation on the roads was worse during this second spell of rain. In Defence Society specially, the number of houses where rain water gushed in giant waves exceeded that of the last time.

The garbage from the dump in a street off Sunset Boulevard got dislodged and accumulated at the mouth of the street near the main Sunset Boulevard signal where over two feet of water had accumulated. And of course, Bath Island yet again turned into a multi-artery river, and passage for area residents is still impossible after five days have passed. In all other phases coming under the DHA and Clifton Cantonment Board, the situation is much the same.Nothing can disguise the inefficiency of the city government, the DHA and CCB and a high-level inquiry must be conducted for lack of pro-active and emergency measures on their part. The DHA, which taxes its residents heavily for water and property should either disband its outfit or pay the residents compensation for damages incurred. Never has the DHA fulfilled its duties and dues towards the residents. Particularly where water supply is concerned, there are many who will assert that despite regular payment of water taxes no water is supplied to their area and they have to incur a sizeable monthly expenditure for purchasing water through tankers.

While their golf clubs sport lush green acres and officer colonies thrive on uninterrupted water supply and clean sewerage system, why is it impossible to ensure basic services to its other landowners who pay taxes directly to them? And as for the rain emergency plan for DHA and CCB areas, despite repeated media reporting of the clogged gutters and sewerage lines, no contingency measures were made for a situation like Thursday’s to drain out water as it accumulated.

The city government is as much to blame regarding the issue of rain water drainage from the Clifton and DHA areas which were never so badly submerged in the heavy rainfalls of the past years. It is primarily the city government which has gone ahead with the land-filling of the vital, natural rain-water drain for commercial purposes, which is the Neher-i-Khayyam. Inspection of the Neher has shown that half of this Neher has already been sealed off/filled and a very narrow passageway has been allotted for sewerage/rain water disposal.

The available drain will not suffice for even half of the drainage needs of Clifton, Defence and Bath Island. But of course it is prime land and the city government perhaps feels that a sewer will not be a lucrative proposition whereas solid land surely will be. If the land-filling process is not reversed with immediate effect, many more long lasting repercussions will be felt by the area residents. The newer drains hastily being dug by the city government to compensate for the Neher-i-Khayyam’s land-filling will never answer the purpose instead raise more havoc.

When these civic agencies took a stock of the situation after the last rain fall what was their basic assessment and subsequent contingency plan? Since more rains were imminent, shouldn’t it have been a basic preparatory measure to install water pumping units at the junctions, which had earlier become heavily filled with rain water? More than 60 hours have passed and still water is not being removed by machines in submerged areas, and where an attempt is being made, mops and wipers are being used by sanitary workers.

The city government’s pathetic attempts would be laughable if the situation was less grave.

The city nazim had spoken of emergency services many times much before the rains came, but well past midnight on the day it rained, drivers were seen pushing their cars manually without any help at hand and exposed to the threat of marauders who come out in times like these like sewer rats. After the downpour ended, the least that could have been done was a taxi service of sorts to pick up stranded passengers around the city in four by four vehicles, ambulances or through the aegis of the fire brigade department. But while news reports were confirming the death toll in the city due to electrocution, the city leaders, as usual, were busy shifting responsibility, allowing people to wade through the dangerous waters on their own, oblivious of their duty to the citizens. While the blame of the havoc may be transferred to nature, what excuse is there for the incompetent post-calamity assistance?

Is Karachi a no man’s land, where only the writ of the thug will prevail? What has the Rs42 billion allotted to the present city government as an extraordinary package for Karachi’s uplift been spent on? Will the citizens be re-compensated with that money for all the damages incurred or will more money only go into beautifying Karachi’s façade to give the citizens more landmarks like the water fountain which lies shut for half the year?

KARACHI NOTEBOOK: Demand for single authority control

As the torrential rain continues to wreak havoc on the city’s infrastructure, the situation seems to be slipping irretrievably out of the grip of the civic agencies. And people are nonplussed as to whom to blame for what.

After the first spell of monsoon rains and subsequent mess across the metropolis, the desperate city nazim called for a single authority to handle Karachi’s intertwined civic matters. This, in his opinion, would help improve the state of affairs.

About a dozen institutions, including the Karachi Port Trust, Defence Housing Authority and the six cantonment boards, are in control of the city’s land with overlapping jurisdictions, each eager to reap benefits but reluctant to shoulder responsibilities. (The city government’s share: land 34 per cent, blame 94 per cent.)

This reminds one of the short story titled 'The 34th gate’. In this classic Sindhi fiction, the Sukkur barrage’s 66 gates are divided between two police stations. When a corpse is found floating behind the water doors, policemen covertly push the corpse from the 33rd door to the 34th. When the men of the other police post on patrol find the body drifting in their part, they push it back to where it belonged. Neither of the two authorities was ready to pull the body out and initiate an investigation.

Some of these civic agencies, as well as others with vested interests, are sure to oppose Syed Mustafa Kamal’s proposal. But it has echoed the long-standing demand of a chunk of the city’s population. A civil locality administered by a cantonment board gets nothing but suffering. As the rest of the city has seen a flurry of development activity during the last few years, little uplift work has been carried out in most of the civil localities under the cantonment boards.

The cantonment boards have men in uniform as their presidents. Brigadier Maqsood Hussain is the administrator of the Defence Housing Authority and president of the Cantonment Board of Clifton. Corps Commander Syed Athar Ali Naqvi is the DHA’s ex-officio chairman.

Besides, each cantonment board has an executive officer, a civil servant, with his team of surveyors, supervisors, clerks and other staff. They all seem to be there just to add to residents’ woes. People coming to them with complaints of water shortage or a sewerage breakdown are usually turned away on flimsy grounds or with false promises.

The civil bureaucrat and his or her team have the liberty to impose as much tax as they will for the almost non-existent amenities. They do not spare even the smallest possible plot of land when it comes to levying tax. Those who do not want to evade tax feel embarrassed at their inability to pay the high amounts. Those who do not, cannot be compelled to pay until, probably, such time as they want to dispose of their property and an NOC (no-objection certificate) is required for its transfer.

In 1999, the Nawaz Sharif government abolished the so-called octroi tax. This tax, though an additional burden on the residents, was a major source of income for the cantonment boards. People had to pay for anything they moved in from another part of the city – or even from across the road. It looked as if these people were crossing into an alien territory and paying customs duty on things as diverse as cement blocks and furniture.

But in those days the boards carried out development activities on a regular basis. They supplied water to the deficient areas through their own tanker system. Then they were also not so keen to squeeze taxes out of the mostly low-income people.

The boards were supposed to get funds from the federal government in lieu of the octroi tax they had to forgo. Now they say these funds are not received regularly and, hence, they have no alternative but to tax the civil population.

So the small roads that once had metalled surfaces are in tatters. The sewerage eruption is frequent. And the water supply system is unimaginably abysmal. When people living in areas governed by the city government lament that they have not received water for a week, the cantonment board residents may be surprised. “Really? Just for one week. We hardly receive water for 12 days in as many months!”

The Clifton cantonment board is the best off of the six. But it cannot pay judicious attention to its developed areas of Clifton and Gizri and neglected areas of Punjab Colony, Delhi Colony, Neelum Colony, etc, falling under its jurisdiction.

The worst is the area under the control of the Cantonment Board, Korangi Creek. A brief visit to the area may show the apathy of the men in whose hands its administration is. Wherever there is an open plot, it is filled with rainwater mixed with sewage from overloaded and leaking sewers. Naturally, the residents are attacked by swarms of flies during the day and those of mosquitoes at night. The roads are simply impassable except for the tankers which rumble through with supply of brackish water and charge at will.

This also speaks of the water shortage problem this locality suffers from. It does have its water supply system. But the lines have mostly rusted and stopped carrying water. Then there is its tanker supply system. The offices of the board are located five kilometres away from the locality. A consumer has to go to the office in the morning to get a slip of paper for a payment of Rs75. Only 20 slips are issued daily. If the number of people exceeds 20, they are sent home empty handed. Even if you get a slip and deposit it, water supply is not guaranteed. So, one may have to make rounds of the pumping station.

For such people a takeover by the city government will be a great relief. They believe that under the control of their elected representatives, the situation will improve considerably. They government officials are not accountable to the public. They are routinely transferred from place to place. Therefore, they do not develop an abiding interest in a certain place’s development.

Years ago, Malir’s civil population got rid of the cantonment board. Only the semi-civil area called Cantt Bazaar remains in its jurisdiction. Recently Gulistan-i-Jauhar’s water and sewerage services were transferred from the Faisal cantonment board to the city government. A similar plan had been discussed by the CBKC and the former city government. But nothing emerged. Residents say they will be happy even with the sewerage and water services going to the city government’s control.

But the question is: is the city government willing to take control of such settlements? Or, is it just interested in the posh and already developed areas?

Smiles on wheels

‘Naam hi kafi hay,’ or name alone is enough. What may this phrase mean when no name stands next to it? Well, that can be a nomenclature itself in an array of weird names such as New Classic, Hercules, Black Cobra, Shangri La, Al-Sameer, Al-Buraaq, Komal Rani, Super Shahrukh, …… And what is in a name, an inquisitive person may ask.

Of course, nothing. After all, these are all buses running between Saddar and Landhi-Korangi. Their names may tickle some funny bones when the functioning of these buses irritate those sitting within or travelling near these monsters.

— Karachian

Email: naseer.awan@dawn.com