Learn from experience

2006: Female cadets at the Quaid's tomb

The following is my article published as Friday Feature in Dawn on December 24, 2010. Some of the wording may vary from the printed version.

The year 1987 was memorable because even those segments of the population who had not been much interested in politics during the various struggles for the restoration of democracy earlier in the decade were now feeling restless. This presumption was corroborated by the historic turnout during the elections that followed a year later. The elections of 1988 were the second occasion in the history of Pakistan where the results, however rigged they may have been, were at least accepted by all major contestants (the first such occasion were the elections of 1970).

In the light of the ideals indigenously developed since 1887, and the goals achieved through them, there are reasons to believe that the new goal that had appeared before the nation in 1988 was actually “emancipation” rather than anything else. This goal had to be achieved through the “inner synthesis” of diverse political experiments carried out in the previous twenty years. The ideal of to be pursued whilst in quest of the goal was “Learn through experience.”

Emancipation was the new goal. This may be concluded from the fact that according to the generally accepted views, conventional democracy (i.e. Western democracy) pre-requires a high literacy rate, which did not exist in Pakistan at that time (nor does it now). If so, then the masses had less reason to care for such democracy and more to care for the other, indigenous, variety that had already been idealized by them: it had been taught to them by the most influential teachers, preachers, poets and artists for more than a thousand years. It was the spiritual democracy, envisioned by the more genuine schools of Sufism in the past, and more recently turned into a political idea by the likes of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Waliullah, Waris Shah, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Ali Brothers and Allama Iqbal. (For a detailed outline of this development, see the previous articles by the present writer published in this newspaper).

In The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930-34), Iqbal stated that for a Muslim, this idea was “a matter of convic¬tion for which even the least enlightened man among us can easily lay down his life.” Hence, the indigenous conception of democracy does not pre-require literacy or formal education, but only spiritual emancipation. Does it not seem natural that the true aspiration of the masses can only be this indigenous variety of democracy? It does not degrade them because of poor literacy rate. It has been ingrained into their consciousness by the best-loved poets and teachers in more than a thousand years.

Just as conventional democracy pre-requires literacy and education, the indigenous variety calls for spiritual emancipation (in the above-mentioned passage, Iqbal goes on to say, “in view of the basic idea of Islam that there can be no further revelation binding on man, we ought to be spiritually one of the most emancipated peoples on earth”).

Spiritual emancipation, in this sense, means emancipation in all spheres of life rather than just one. Artistic and literary, social and political, religious and legal, education and psychological emancipations collectively amount to spiritual emancipation.

In retrospect, we may recognize that we started pursuing this goal in 1987. Unlike some of the earlier goals, such as Muslim nationhood, separate electorates and Muslim homeland, the goal was not clearly stated on this occasion. Beginning with the election of a woman prime minister ahead of any other Muslim nation, the journey towards emancipation was carried out, perhaps, unknowingly for the most part. The quarrels between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the work of the human rights activists and the feminists, the so-called enlightened moderation at the turn of the millennium, the emergence of an all-powerful media with its good and bad influences, and the uneasy alliances with the Western powers may all have contributed towards the achieving of our goal. The strongest factor, however, was undoubtedly the “inner synthesis” of the diverse political ideologies that had been tried out since 1967.

In the absence of a well-stated ideal, the only ideal to be pursued was to learn from experience. This was also important because the emancipation that we were trying to achieve was unprecedented. It was a long-cherished goal that had never become a reality for our society during the long centuries of tyrants and despots. Therefore, the best way forward was to learn from experience.

The benchmark came in 2006, when judicial activism of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, prevailed upon the combined whim of a native military ruler and the sole super power on earth, and made them answerable in a court of law for “the missing persons”, most of whom were not only insignificant citizens, but also disfavored citizens.

As if to symbolize the ethos of the past twenty years, six women cadets and a Sikh gentleman cadet were seen among the contingent that took over guard duties on the mausoleum of the Quaid-i-Azam on 25 December 2006. The 130th birth anniversary of the founder of Pakistan was indeed a good day to mark the end of a stage in the history of the nation, and to start preparation of the next stage. “Emancipation”, which was the goal achieved in the past twenty years, was soon going to become a tool for achieving the next goal, and a new ideal would then be pursued.

From Pakistan, with Love

The following article of mine was published in Dawn, Books & Authors today.

Ibne Safi goes international, again. In a way, he was always international since his books used to be published simultaneously from India and Pakistan. Yet his work was not available in English. Random House, India, has now started publishing Imran Series translated by Bilal Tanweer. Titled The House of Fear, the collected volume containing the first two novels is already out. Blaft Publications is coming up with some novels of Jasoosi Duniya translated by the renowned Shamsur Rehman Faruqui.

The Hindi editions are being published by Harper Collins, India. Unlike the earlier Hindi versions of the 1950s and 60s, the names of the heroes Ahmad Kamal Faridi and Ali Imran have not been changed to Vinod and Rajesh. Perhaps it is the right moment to reconsider how much was lost when the society failed to locate Safi in its literary current in the early years of independence.

He was born Asrar Ahmad in April 1928 in Nara, a small town near Allahabad. One of the earliest influences on him was Talism-i-Hoshruba, the gigantic Urdu classic (currently being translated into English with the first volume already available). The next most important influence was Rider Haggard, whose romances She and The Return of She he read soon after moving to Allahabad for higher education.

When he stared writing fiction and poetry, for a while he followed the literary trends of those days, such as the Progressive Writers’ Movement, but became disillusioned with them sometime around 1942. It seems that he had come to believe that purely speculative theories did not provide a very sound basis for collective development of societies – at least that is the impression one gets from his autobiographical essays such as ‘How Did I Start Writing’ (‘Mien Nay Likhna Kaisay Shuroo Kiya’) and ‘Baqalam Khud’ (In My Own Hand). However, he kept the company of the leading progressive writers of the area as long as he stayed in India, which was till August 1952.

The catastrophic pillage and massacre of 1947 confirmed, at least to him, his doubts about the ability of pure speculation to prevent social tragedies. “I kept thinking and thinking, and arrived at the conclusion that such things will keep happening until the human being learns to respect the law,” he later wrote.

In the late 1951, a comment by someone to the effect that only sexual stuff could sell in Urdu provoked Asrar to launch a movement against the contemporary trends of high literature. He picked up Ironsides’ Lone Hand, a detective story by Victor Gunn and adapted it according to the tastes of the reading public of Urdu, adding some literary flavor of his own and remodeling the two main characters to represent his ideals. Dilair Mujrim, published by Nakhat Publications, Allahabad, and distributed by A.H. Wheeler & Co. in March 1952, sold like hot cake. Asrar Ahmad, now using the penname “Ibne Safi” (“the Son of Safi”, since Safiullah was the name of his father) had proven his point.

He migrated to Pakistan in August the same year and spent the rest of his life in Karachi. By the time he died on July 26, 1980, he had written 246 mystery novels on stock characters Faridi, Hameed and Ali Imran. All except eight adaptations were based on original plots (by his own account), and almost all had been published simultaneously from Allahabad and Karachi, since the author remained equally popular on both sides of the border.

Literary critics labeled him a mere “popular writer” and his fiction as “pulp”. This was to overlook the fact that writers of pulp fiction seldom have explicitly reformist agendas: Ian Fleming once justified the promiscuity of James Bond by saying something to the effect that he was catering to an age where courtship was being replaced with seduction.

Not so with Ibne Safi. He was reinforcing the messages of commonly respected reformers, such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Ali Brothers and Allama Iqbal, while, ironically, the writers of “high literature” were trying to outdo each other in selling sex and sadism. Also, his work touched upon a wider range of contemporary issues – and his literary allusions covered a more diverse range of art, literature and philosophy – than any other writer who ever wrote fiction in Urdu. That does not sound very “pulp” either.

These happen to be a few of the questions brushed under the carpet by the gatekeepers of the literary establishment long ago. More questions can be raised, and they are likely to be raised now that interest in the work of Ibne Safi is about to scale new heights.

Note: Online information about the life and works of Ibne Safi can be found at www.ibnesafi.info and www.wadi-e-urdu.com, both non-profit websites supported by his family, which also maintains a Face Book page at http://www.facebook.com/ibnesafi

The Parable of the Sea

The following is my article published today as 'Samandar, a Parable?' in Dawn, Images.

On January 6, 1968, the government of President Ayub Khan announced that a conspiracy had been un covered between some personnel from East Pakistan and Indian politicians to overthrow the government in East Pakistan and establish an independent state of Bangladesh. Twelve days later, the popular Bengali politician Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was also implicated (he was already under arrest for almost two years, since he had suggested partial autonomy for East Pakistan in his Six Points given in March 1966).

“The young Bengalis were quieter than usual at the Dacca and Chittagong Clubs,” the American Consulate General in Dhaka wrote secretly to the US Department of State a little later. “Eid was quieter this year. Fear was in the air. Men were afraid to pass more than the barest of greetings. Once argumentative chaps endured the taunts of Punjabi and non-Bengali members.”

Against this backdrop, the film Samandar was released on March 10, 1968. It was produced by Waheed Murad, who also played the lead role and sang an unaccredited song. Shabnam, a successful talent from East Pakistan, appeared here in her first lead role in a West Pakistani production. Could the on-screen alliance between talents from the two wings be a thinly veiled parable about the federation?

There are no conclusive answers but there are some pointers. Director Rafiq Razvi was known to be a patriotic filmmaker: his best-known work was Bedari (1957), a film with explicitly patriotic agenda, whose songs are played as national songs even today ("Ae Quaid-i-Azam tera ehsan hai ehsan", to name just one).

The lyrics of Samandar were written by Sehba Akhtar, who would later write such national songs as "Mein bhi Pakistan hoon", and become known as “the Poet of Pakistan”. The music was composed by Deboo Bhatacharya. Since the two wings of the country were connected by the sea, and not by the land, the title song becomes especially symbolic: "Saathi, tera mera saathi hai lehrata samandar" (Friend, the sea is our common friend).

The story is set in a fishing colony, which could be treated as an analogy of Pakistan. Rajah (Waheed Murad) aspires for nothing except love, while his best friend Jeera (Hanif) aspires to become the next chief of the community but ends up playing into the hands of Jaggu Seth (Rashid), a foreign intruder who wants to monopolise the economy. Rajah is persuaded by the people to contest a boat race through which the next chief would be elected. Rajah wins the race, but hands over the power to his former friend after eliciting from him a promise that he would defend the community against the intruder.

If Jeera is taken as a symbolic representation of the politicians of East Pakistan, Rajah becomes a role model for their counterparts in the western wing of the country. Significantly, his love interest is Noori (Shabnam), the chief’s daughter, whom the custom requires to marry the next chief. Thus being associated with Jeera, she becomes a symbol for the land and culture of East Pakistan. In this capacity, she is balanced by Rajah’s sister Bali (Rozina), who is wooed by Jeera.

The paradox is that Rajah does not want to rule, and yet he wants the hand of Noori, who by custom should only marry the ruler. This is not unlike the challenge that the politicians of West Pakistan faced at that time, probably without grasping it: they were supposed to keep the federation without wanting to rule over it forever.

The film was released at a time when there were rumors about Ayub Khan suffering from ailments. His successor would turn out to be Yahya Khan, whose reputation of heavy drinking would even precede his real procrastination. Consciously or unconsciously, both aspects are reflected in the ailing chief in the movie, who admits, “Old age, sickness and alcohol have rendered me incapable of taking a firm stance (against the enemy).” A community ruled by an inebriated head, threatened by foreign intrusion and divided against itself through mistrust, while fear lurks in the hearts of those whose love is pure — could there be a more candid depiction of Pakistan at that hour of its existential crisis?

Rajah resolves the moral dilemma at the tomb of a local saint where the visitors are dressed to represent diverse ethnicities but the two qawwals singing the traditional Sufi song, "Damadam mast qalandar", wear Jinnah caps. Spiritual ideals translated into collective action might be the solution required for Pakistan, even today.

Carving a unified nation out of a diverse stock is like striving against the forces of nature. The human being seems to be in conflict with nature in every song of the film, until it is announced in the final one that the lamps of the people have outshone the stars, and their garden boasts of a perfume that cannot be produced by spring.

This is the promised goal of Samandar, and the film tells us how to achieve it. Whether those who delivered this message 42 years ago were thinking about the debacle of East Pakistan or not they managed to provide an insight that is as relevant today as it was then.

Unite Organically

The following is my article, which appeared as Friday Feature, 'On Organic Unity' in Dawn today. The text presented here may vary from the version printed in the newspaper.

A new goal that appeared before the people of Pakistan in 1967 was to discover a synthesis of socialism and democracy through Islam. The tool for achieving it was the organic unity that Pakistan had achieved in its first twenty years as a new state. The ideal to be kept in front was to use this unity, i.e. unite organically, or through ideals. Some indicators may show us that a synthesis had occurred, in some ways, by 1986.

This may sound like a far-fetched hypothesis because we are not used to reading the history of modern Muslim thought in this manner. However, such a conclusion seems to be the only plausible one when the matter is revisited in the light of the propositions of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Allama Iqbal and Quaid-i-Azam.

For that, we may begin with three essential concepts: (a) synthesis of ideologies through Islam; (b) organic unity as a human resource; and (c) definition of ideals.

When Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was founded on 30 November and 1 December 1967, its credo was stated to be, “Islam is our religion; democracy is our politics; socialism is our economy; power lies with the people.” The intellectuals who wrote the foundational papers of the party, as well as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who founded the party, may or may not have been aware, but the ideas mentioned in this credo had a long history in the collective consciousness of the society. As it was, Maulana Shibli Numani and Allama Iqbal had stated democracy to be the political ideal of Islam long ago, Quaid-i-Azam had talked about Islamic socialism and the very idea of Pakistan was based on the presumption that all power lied with the people.

Hence, the enormous popularity of this credo, as evident from the results of the elections of 1970 in West Pakistan, need not have meant that the people were willing to embrace a new ideology. They had not said yes to socialism, but to its synthesis with democracy and Islam (on the condition that all power remains with the people). Such a synthesis would not have been unprecedented in the history of Islam, since a primary function of Islam had always remained to be the assimilation of alien ideas and beliefs, and their re-evaluation for practical uses in Muslim cultures.

There was no reason to believe that Islam would not do the same for modern ideas and beliefs, such as Western democracy and socialism (in fact, as early as 1920, Iqbal had forewarned the Orientalist R. A. Nicholson, “Islam certainly aims at absorption. This absorption, however, is to be achieved not by territorial conquest but by the simplicity of its teaching, its appeal to the common sense of mankind and its aversion to abstruse metaphysical dogma.”)

The synthesis of ideologies had to occur in the consciences of the individuals. Indeed, that is what happened between 1967 and 1986, but it seems that the intelligentsia failed to notice it due to a “predominantly intellectual culture” (loathed by Iqbal as early as 1926). Hence, the synthesis that occurred was, in the terminology of Iqbal, “an inner synthesis of life”, but unfortunately, it has not been articulated by the intelligentsia to this date.

Mainly due to this failure on part of the intelligentsia, the process of synthesis became tedious, painful and unconscious. First, the country had to withstand the harsh socialistic measures taken by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during his first tenure, i.e. 1971-77. Then a certain kind of Islamization was introduced by General Ziaul Haque during his regime, i.e. 1977-1987. Just a year before the end of that regime, it became obvious that all schools of thought, now also including the right-winged conservatives who had earlier played as “B-Team of the Martial Law”, had come to an agreement for a full-scale adoption of Western democracy without any indigenous modification whatsoever.

This brings us to the second concept, i.e. organic unity as a human resource. Organic unity means unity through shared ideals. Obviously, the conscience of the people must have retained something from each experiences through which the society passed collectively. While the intelligentsia failed to synthesize socialism, Islam and democracy, the masses evidently synthesized these diverse experiences at least at an unconscious level. Therefore, the synthesis has to be sought at the level of ideals, even if not in terms of day-to-day reality. In this sense, ideals are those aspirations that form in the depth of our hearts or souls. They are formed through action, and as an aid to action.

Once formed, ideals express themselves in their own way. This may also explain why the histories of Bangladesh and Pakistan, even after their separation in 1971, reveal some striking similarities. It is quite possible that despite being completely independent of each other, as self-respecting sovereign states must be, both have retained some common ideals from their common past – especially when they struggled to shape Muslim nationalism in South Asia.

Thank You, Iran

Pakistan and Iran have ancient ties. The region now called Pakistan was part of the Achaemenid Commonwealth founded in 559 BC by the great Iranian visionary Cyrus the Great, who, according to some very credible interpretations, was the enlightened Zulqarnayn mentioned in the Quran.

After the advent of Islam, a majority of the people in both areas became Muslim. Since then, the cultures of Iran and the areas now included in Pakistan have had many exchanges, enriching the art and literature on both sides of the border.

Against such background, many in Pakistan would welcome, not just politically but perhaps also personally, the recent statement of the supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the issue of Kashmir – an issue that is so close to the conscience of the people of Pakistan.

According to a news report published on the front-page of Dawn today, Khamenei asked Muslims across the world to back the pro-liberation campaigns in Kashmir, equating the region with Afghanistan and Iraq.

He has been quoted as saying, “Today the major duty of the elite of the Ummah is to provide help to the Palestinian nation, to sympathize and provide assistance to the nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Kashmir, to engage in struggle and resistance against the aggressions of the US and the Zionist regime.”

Reportedly, the Indian external affairs ministry has not been very pleased with this statement and on Friday lodged a protest with the Iranian embassy in New Delhi.

Especially for the youth of Pakistan, many among whom are turning into enthusiastic bloggers, and writers and producers of the “new media”, the best way of showing gratitude to such international support is, perhaps, to understand the issue of Kashmir objectively and to further elaborate the principle-centered stance of Pakistan on this matter.

In all the noise created by an almost senseless and irresponsible media today, we must not forget that the issue of Kashmir is not a sentimental matter for Pakistan. The issue is based on principles, and chief among those principles is the right of a people to choose their own destiny. Well-wishers abroad who express sympathy on this issue in a peaceful manner are not only showing sympathy with the plight of the people of this region but are also raising their voice for a just cause.