The Ministry of Truth, Noblesse Oblige and Salvation has issued its monthly list of authors that it deems dangerous, obscene and generally unworthy of the high intellectual standards set by the Cliftonian establishment for the Republic. In a recent press conference, Brigadier Babar ‘Bobby’ Niazi (forcibly retd), the ministry’s spokesperson, shared the names of individuals henceforth banned from bookshops, websites, textbooks, television screens, radio channels, podcasts, T-shirts, mugs and the collective lips of all Cliftonians.

Eos shares below excerpts from Cliftonia Index Librorum Prohibitorum June 2020 and the minister’s press conference:

“In order to show the world how writers and journalists are freer in our glorious Cliftonia than anywhere in the West, our administration has decided to ban the following authors with immediate effect,” said Brig Niazi. 

• Ja’far Zatalli: Everything penned by this vulgar poet who hardly ever showed any remorse for his disrespect towards authority. Says he:

‘You mocked and satirised your Sultan,And made wretched your life-spiritFallen behind, shorn of wing and feather,Say now, Ja’far, how to cope?Where’s now the milk-sugar-and-egg puddingAnd where now the rice-pudding, the wateryRice drink, where the honeyed sweet?Where’s the soft bedding, and the pillow?Say now, Ja’far, how to cope?’“How to cope indeed! Emperor Farrukh-Siyar showed him how, didn’t he?”

• Saadat Hasan Manto: Rubbish such as the excerpt below from his Letter To Uncle Sam will no longer be tolerated, as it is detrimental to the republic’s foreign relations:

The Cliftonian establishment has issued its monthly list of authors that it deems dangerous and obscene for the general public

‘Recently one of your citizens was here and some friends introduced me to him. By then I had read Brother Evelyn Waugh’s book and I read an Urdu couplet to your countryman that he did not follow. However, the fact is, uncle, that we have so distorted our faces that they have become unrecognisable, even to us. And there we have you who can even make the dead look more beautiful than they ever were in life. The truth is that only you have a right to live on this earth: the rest of us are wasting our time.’

“Satirising one’s own culture is despicable to begin with, but to poke fun at a great benefactor and the recent recipient of a planeload of our PPEs [personal protective equipment]? Totally unacceptable!”

* Fehmida Riaz: The republic cannot and will not tolerate unfeminine writing from any woman. Consider this obscenity masquerading as a poem:

‘Youhave measured me,waist, hips, breast,and all the rest.The curvesheld a heartand the round skulla brain.If I’m valuedjust by the inch,why do you shrinkfrom tit for tat,When I startto measuresome of yourparts?’“Haaw hai! No sharam? No haya? Banned!”

* Nazim Hikmet: We are happy to welcome a fictionalised Ertugrul into our lives but never such misinformed, dangerous verse from a pretender poet:

‘You love your country as the nearest, most precious thing to you.But one day, for example,they may endorse it over to America,and you, too, with your great freedom —you have the freedom to become an air-base.You may proclaim that one must livenot as a tool, a number or a linkbut as a human being —then at once they handcuff your wrists.

You are free to be arrested, imprisoned and even hanged.’

* Hanna Arendt: And then there’s this woman. Dangerous and once again, unfeminine to the core. Observe:

‘The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.’

* Ustad Daman: He is the most dangerous of the lot, because of the language he speaks and the way he speaks it. He mocks our authority and our values and our authority and our morals and especially our authority. How can this filth be allowed to poison the minds of the youth? The excerpt below proves our point:

‘Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,Whoever can make you go away.Ecstasy does my land surroundAll around the Army is to be found.Hundreds of thousands were surrendered as POWs.Half of the land was bartered away in the fray.Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,Whoever can make you go away.’

“Meanwhile, complete works of a radical group of poets comprising Maulana Rumi, Mansur Hallaj, Baba Farid, Sarmad Shaheed, Baba Bulleh Shah, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Rehman Baba, among others, have also been banned forthwith for the safety and protection of the patriotic Cliftonian.”

Farid Alvie was born. He currently lives. He tweets @faridalvie

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 7th, 2020