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            Perhaps it is the fate of great men to become the subject of unsubstantiated stories which, more often than not,  emanate from those who, in the words of Dr M.D. Taseer, are more keen “to gain immortality” than place facts on record. Such attempts do not necessarily wait for a decent period of time either; they can start as soon as the great man is gone. Allama Muhammad Iqbal has been no exception.

            Only one year after his death in 1938, so records his nephew Ijaz Ahmed in his 1985 biography, a Lahore Urdu newspaper and a weekly published articles about Iqbal’s childhood, based on, what they claimed, were the recollections of his “childhood playmate”. This “playmate” had also supplied the papers with a photograph which ran under the caption ‘Iqbal in the lap of his father’. The picture showed two children, no more than two and a half, one sitting to the left and identified as Iqbal, and the other as his “cousin”, more specifically, his uncle’s son. The man in the middle was clearly in his early sixties. A moment’s reflection would have shown that if this indeed was Iqbal’s father (as he was), then at the time the picture was taken, Iqbal could not have been two and a half. The two children, actually, were Ijaz, son of Sheikh Ata Mohammad, Iqbal’s elder brother, and Ijaz’s cousin Aftab, Iqbal’s eldest son. This photograph continues to appear off an on in special ‘Iqbal Numbers’ brought out on his birthday. It was, therefore, apt that Ijaz called his biography Mazloom Iqbal.

            Once, records Ijaz, Iqbal was told about a new commentary of the Quran being done by someone not particularly known for his adherence to Islam. Iqbal, always a man of few words, smiled and said, “There was a time when it was Hussain who was the mazloom. Today, it is the Quran.” Then he recited a verse from the holy book and added, “Let’s see what he does with this one.” Little did he know that after his death, he would become another mazloom with “friends” galore and stories bearing no relation to truth. Faiz Ahmed Faiz once said, “In our time, there is no poet who is more mazloom than Iqbal. Every critic and commentator has tried to make him conform to his own views, ideas and beliefs. These gentlemen are always ready with a verse or quote from Iqbal’s writings to prove their point.”

            The adoption of Iqbal by state institutions, though well motivated, has practically ensured that he be feared more than read. Radio Pakistan, official organs of information, literary heavyweights, political orators and state academies have collectively managed to put Iqbal, not within, but outside the reach of the common reader. The younger generation, which Iqbal hoped would instruct the old, knows little about him or what he wrote and even less about the kind of man he was. The young see him as a colossus who is best viewed from a distance. By projecting him as an unsmiling philosopher and an austere theologian, these institutions have done great disservice to both Iqbal the poet and Iqbal the human being.  There are few poets more readable than Iqbal, especially the Iqbal of Bang-e-Dara.

It is painful, despite the distance of years, to think that though Iqbal earned barely enough, yet all his life, he continued to help several members of the family who had no one else to turn to. He never wanted his poetry to be a means of earning money because he believed it to be God’s gift and not a result of his own efforts. However, so limited remained his income, dependent entirely on his legal practice, that he felt obliged to allow himself some earnings from his books, though they were always negligible. His heart was not in his legal work, nor was he temperamentally equipped to follow any of the techniques that turn lawyers into money-minting machines.  He would have been happy  to be appointed to the Lahore High Court but was denied the position because of the Chief Justice, Sir Shadi Lal, who said, “I know Iqbal as a poet, not a lawyer.” Iqbal also hoped that one of the princely Muslim states, especially Hyderabad, would grant him an annuity or stipend that would free him from day-to-day financial worries and give him time to write and reflect.

Tragically, that was not to be. He made a trip to Hyderabad in 1910 with this in view but returned in some disappointment. What would it have mattered to the richest ruler in the world to set aside a minuscule sum for the greatest poet and seer of his age! In 1932, the Nawab of Bhopal wrote a personal letter to the Nizam of Hydrabad asking that the State pay a monthly stipend of Rs 1,000 to Iqbal so that he could concentrate on his literary work. The proposal was examined by one of the Nizam’s ministers who wrote, “That Sir Muhammad Iqbal is a good poet is a matter about which those well versed in the art of poetry disagree. Assuming that he indeed is a good poet, it is still not ground enough to grant him a monthly stipend of Rs. 1,000. Why does the Nawab Sahib of Bhopal who recommends his case, not pay him this stipend himself? In principle, Hyderabad funds should not leave the State, unless there is a real need for this to happen.”  Iqbal, obviously, was “no real need”.

Iqbal began legal practice in 1908 and earned only between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 in the next ten years. In a letter to his father he writes, “I have so far not been able to rent a nice house, nor buy proper furniture, nor acquire a horse and carriage.” In 1916, much as he wanted to escape the heat of Lahore in the summer and spend a few days in the hills, he did not have the money to do so. He waited years to buy a car and when he did, it was a used one which spent more time in the repair shop than on the road. Iqbal’s will, written in 1935, lists his possessions. His books are willed to the Islamia College, Lahore, his clothes for distribution among the poor, which leaves two carpets, one cotton broadloom, one sofa set, some chairs and a bit of money kept in the bank in the names of his two minor children. That was all.

Iqbal detested Mullahism and considered it a “disgrace to Islam”. However, the Mullahs got their revenge when taking advantage of a statement Iqbal had made favouring Sultan Ibne Saud, the Khatib of Lahore’s Wazir Khan mosque, one Syed Deedar Ali Shah, issued a fatwa declaring Iqbal an infidel because of some of his verses. He also said that any Muslim who interacted with Iqbal would be in a state of grave sin.”

Today, no one remembers Syed Deeder Ali Shah, but the “infidel’s” name shines in glorious splendour.

            As was to be expected, V.S. Naipaul has held Muslims responsible for the carnage in Gujarat. If Lady Nadira Khanum Alvi Naipaul is still looking for a reason to leave him, this could be it. However, from all accounts, she is now more Naipaul than Naipaul, so on that one count, we can all take a rest.

            In the past, Naipaul has defended the demolition of the Babri Mosque and expressed understanding for the building of the Ram temple on the site. He has called it a reassertion of “Hindu pride” humbled by a thousand years of alien Muslim rule. One Indian writer said of him, “Naipaul’s ignorance of Islam is deep. What he says may shock many people here, but it comes as no surprise to those of us who have read his books. He is basically a Hindu nationalist who has a deep dislike of Muslims, so that is where he is coming from.”

            Naipaul calls Islam “an Arab religion” and all those Muslims who are not Arabs, which would include his wife, “converts”. To quote him, “Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are Arab lands. His sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his.” While it is true that there is an extraterritorial dimension to being a Muslim, only a man as arrogant and self-deluded as Naipaul would fail to see that Muslims in India and Pakistan have retained much of their history and culture which they do not see as clashing with their Islamic faith. And if non-Arab Muslims are “converts”, then so are the Arabs. And what about Christians and Jews and Hindus themselves? They are also all “converts”. Hinduism is not indigenous to India; it was brought in by Aryan invaders. Both Christianity and Judaism are Middle Eastern in origin. Naipaul is silent on this which is understandable since it knocks the bottom out of his theory.

            Asked last October by New York Times reporter Adam Shatz about his what many see as his insensitivity and pandering to Western prejudices about Islam, he replied, “Well, that is the trouble with writing about Muslim people. There are people of the universities who want to run you out of town, and they’re paid to, and so they pay attention to what you actually say.” When reminded that he had described the Taliban as “vermin,” he answered blithely, “No, that’s my wife. She’s a Pakistani journalist who for many years wrote a column. She writes from that kind of perspective.” As to whether he was surprised by Osama’s support in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Iran, he replied, “No, because these are converted peoples of Islam. To put it brutally, these are people who are not Arabs. Part of the neurosis of the convert is that he always has to prove himself. He has to be more royalist than the king, as the French say.”

            Asked if he was right about Islam’s “imperial drive to extend its reach and root out the unbeliever,” then how did he explain why Islam’s appeal was so potent, he replied that the idea of brotherhood was very powerful in Islam, which was what had “frightened” the king of Sindh (actually Raja Dahir). Naipaul said non-fundamentalist Islam was a “contradiction”, adding that “the idea in Islam, the most important thing, is paradise. No one can be a moderate in wishing to go to paradise. The idea of a moderate (Islamic) state is something cooked up by politicians looking to get a few loans here and there.”

            And what did Naipaul think about September 11? According to him, it was caused by religious hate and the realisation that the world was getting more and more out of reach for the Muslims. He called Islam “calamitous”, comparing it with colonialism. The big oil money once gave the Muslims the illusion that power had at last come to them but “they didn’t understand that the goods that gave them power in the end were made by another civilisation.” That being so, why blame poor Huntington! Naipaul is two steps ahead of the professor. Asked, since he describes himself as a “historian of Islam,” which scholars of Islam he had relied on, he answered none. He said he travelled and met people and that was the “best way to go.”

            Meanwhile, Naipaul continues to be rude to people. In February this year, he stormed out of a writers’ conference in Rajasthan, India. What led to the outburst were opening remarks by Jawaharlal Nehru’s favourite niece and well-known author Nayantara Sehgal who talked about colonialism and an author’s relationship with gender and oppression. “My life is short. I can’t listen to banalities,” the Nobel Laureate screamed at her. The novelist Vikram Seth, in an effort to calm Naipaul, patted him gently on the back, “What are you doing?” Naipaul shouted at him. Sehgal fell silent. An Indian journalist who asked Naipaul if winning the Nobel had given him “larger acceptance” in Trinidad and India was told, “I never read the Trinidad newspapers so I have no idea … It is not important whether I am loved or hated.”
            The writer Robert Fulford has said of Naipaul, “Most people disappoint him. Entire continents, such as Africa, fail to meet his standards.” In 1988, Naipaul said of his native land, “My books aren’t read in Trinidad now – drum-beating is a higher activity.” Trinidadians, he added, “live purely physical lives which I find contemptible … It makes them interesting only to chaps in universities who want to do compassionate studies about brutes.”

            Indian novelist Githa Hariharan wrote in November last year, “Naipaul has been given the Nobel this year of all years in the midst of hawkish cacophony on the ‘clash of civilisations’. Naipaul has been given the Nobel after he reacted to the September 11 tragedy, in myth-affirming terms, of Islam’s calamitous effect on civilisation.”

            In an interview last year with Farrukh Dhondy, Naipaul said of Pakistan, “The Pakistani dream is one day that there’ll be a Muslim resurgence and they will lead the prayers in the mosques in Delhi. You can hear that in Pakistan.” In a speech in London after a reading from his last book Half a Life, he said that Pakistan was living proof of the damage Islam could wreak. “The story of Pakistan is a terror story actually. It started with a poet who thought that Muslims were so highly evolved that they should have a special place in India for themselves. This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant populations is terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan.” The admirable Palestinian-American writer Edward Said has analysed Naipaul’s problem best, “His obsession with Islam caused him somehow to stop thinking, to become instead a kind of mental suicide compelled to repeat the same formula over and over. This is what I call an intellectual catastrophe of the first order.”

            A Pakistani diplomat in New York, when asked recently if the Gujarat killings of thousands of Muslims by organised mobs of Hindu zealots on the rampage would be raised by Pakistan at the United Nations, replied that what happened in Gujarat, though regrettable, was a domestic Indian affair and, as such, it was not for Pakistan to bring it up at the United Nations. Was the diplomat speaking in what is called the spirit of Shimla, if not of SAARC?

There was a time when Pakistan used to be the first and, nearly always, the only country in the world to invite international attention to such “domestic affairs.” If the killing of Indian Muslims is no longer Pakistan’s concern, then by the same logic, neither is the killing of Kashmiri Muslims any of Pakistan’s business. Does such an approach not nullify the entire concept of human rights which have for some years now been seen as transcending sovereign and geographical boundaries?

If this philosophy were to be accepted, then every government would be free to do what it wished to those who lived in its territories and under its control. Organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch might then as well shut shop and stop speaking on behalf of the world’s oppressed. One wonders what the instructions of Pakistan’s delegation to this year’s meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission will be. If what the New York-based diplomat said reflects official thinking –and there is no reason to suppose otherwise – then it is not difficult to guess what those instructions will be.

Another official, elsewhere, felt differently and wrote about the happenings in Gujarat. What makes this account especially moving is the fact that the writer is a member of the Indian Administrative Service, the Indian counterpart of Pakistan’s DMG-CSP axis. The name of this courageous Indian is Harsh Mander. ‘Cry the beloved country’, he calls his reportage, a title borrowed from that admirable South African writer, Alan Patton. The 2000-word piece subtitled ‘Reflections on the Gujarat massacre’ was given to me in Vienna by my friend Hayat Mehdi who received it from a friend in Jakarta by e-mail. What Mander wrote deserves to be read widely in Pakistan, as elsewhere.

“Numbed with disgust and horror,” Mander writes, “I return from Gujarat ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed the state. My heart is sickened, my soul wearied, my shoulders aching with the burdens of guilt and shame.” He speaks of 53,000 women, men and children huddled in 28 temporary settlements. He sees people clutching small bundles of relief materials, their eyes dry and glassy. Some talk in low voices, others busy themselves with humdrum tasks that are necessary to keep body and soul together.

Mander writes that the accounts you hear of what happened are “so macabre, that my pen falters.” The “pitiless brutality” against women and children by organised bands of armed young men has been “more savage than anything witnessed in the riots that have shamed this nation from time to time during the past century.”  He narrates stories of such pure horror that one flinches as one reads them. “What can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spared; her assailants instead slit open her stomach, pulled out her foetus and slaughtered it before her eyes! What can you say about a family of 19 killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity!” A boy of six sees six of his brothers and sisters battered to death. He survives because he is taken for dead. A young woman with a three-year old is shepherded to “safety” by a policemen and is surrounded by a mob which douses her and the baby with gasoline and sets them on fire.

Mander hears reports everywhere of “gang rape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by murder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and, in one case, with a screwdriver.” Women tell appalling stories of how armed men disrobe themselves in front of them to cower them down. Most people he  meets in Ahmedabad agree that what happened in Gujarat was “not a riot but a terrorist attack followed by a systematic, planned massacre, a pogrom.” The “pillage and plunder” was organised like a “military operation against an armed enemy.” A truck would arrive broadcasting inflammatory slogans, followed by more trucks which would disgorge young men in khaki shorts and saffron sashes, armed with sophisticated explosive materials, weapons, daggers and tridents. The leaders spoke constantly on mobile phones to those directing their operations. Some carried computer-generated lists of Muslim homes. “It was not a spontaneous upsurge of mass anger; it was a carefully planned pogrom,” Mander concludes.

Rich Muslim homes and businesses were prime targets, which after being looted would be set on fire. “Mosques and darghas were razed,” according to Mander, “replaced by statues of Hanuman and saffron flags. Some darghas in Ahmedabad city crossings have overnight been demolished and their sites covered with road-building material and bulldozed so efficiently that these spots are indistinguishable from the rest of the road. Traffic now plies over these former darghas, as though they never existed.” He points out that the “unconscionable failures and active connivance of the state police and administrative machinery is now widely acknowledged.” The police provided a “protective shield” to pillaging mobs and were “deaf to the pleas of desperate Muslim victims.” There are many reports of police firing directly at gathered Muslims. Most of those arrested are Muslims.

Mander charges that not even one administrative officer fulfilled his duty, whereas he was required by law to “act independently, fearlessly, impartially, decisively, with courage and compassion.”  No riot can continue, he argues, beyond a few hours without the active connivance of the local police and magistracy, adding, “The blood of hundreds of innocents is on the hands of the police and civil authorities of Gujarat and by sharing in the conspiracy of silence, the entire higher bureaucracy of the country.” Ironically, the gates of the Sabarmati Ashram, founded in honour of Mahatama Gandhi, were closed to protect the property, otherwise some Muslims could have found shelter there. Another “matter of shame” is that the refugee camps are being run entirely by Muslims, the state being nowhere in evidence. “It is as though the monumental pain, loss, betrayal and injustice suffered by the Muslim people is the concern only of other Muslim people, and the rest of us have no share in the responsibility to assuage, to heal and rebuild,” he adds.

Mander ends his poignant account with these words, “There is much that the murdering mobs in Gujarat have robbed me of. One of them is a song I often sang with pride and conviction. ‘Sare jahan se achha, Hindustan hamara.’ It is a song I will never be able to sing again.”

            There was one thing Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto shared. Both wanted to be test cricketers. Skipper Abdul Hafiz Karadar, who had known ZAB since his school days in Bombay, told me once that had he continued playing, he would have been good enough to make representative cricket. That, alas, was not what the gods had in mind. But ZAB never lost interest in cricket and given his phenomenal memory, was able to rattle off cricket statistics that would have made the editors of Wisden sit up. Before I move to that other unfulfilled cricketer, the great poet of the “land of yellow leaves’, it should be recorded that ZAB’s favourite player was Mushtaq Ali, the scintillating Indian test opener who scored a memorable century against England at Old Trafford in 1936, the third Indian player to do so, Lala Amarnath, the lifelong Lahoria, being the first.

            Somewhere in Lahore’s Jail Road where the legendary Pakistan Times photographer ‘Chacha’ F.E. Chaudhry, now in his utterly non-nervous 90s, lives all by himself with his old cameras, clippings, photographs and his late wife’s collection of dolls and matchboxes, there is a picture of Faiz, all padded up, going in to bat for the Pakistan Times XI. How many runs he scored, no one remembers, but what is certain is that he did not get out for a duck. Since Faiz was always laid back, taking his own time when it came to physical activity, his favourite stroke must have been the late cut, that most delicate of shots, seen so rarely these days. Faiz never lost his interest in cricket. For example, he only watched television when there was a game on.

            Talking of television, how Anwar Maqsood roped Faiz in to do an interview, is only known to him, but rope him in, he did. There was only one condition, either suggested by Anwar or by Faiz: the interview would be in “cricketese”. The credit for unearthing the transcript of this delightful exchange goes to Lahore’s famous literary “jasoos”, Sheema Majeed. I may add as a footnote for the benefit of those who never met Faiz, that he always used the plural form of the first person because he thought it de-emphasised individual ego.      

Anwar: Faiz sahib, what would you say was your best innings? Faiz: We have played many good innings, but right now, we can’t think of any. Anwar: But every good batsman invariably remembers his best innings. Faiz: One innings that we played was to make our country beautiful, an experience full of pain and helpless rage. Since that innings, no one has been able to get our wicket. Anwar: And what innings was that? Faiz: That was our second Test, Dast-i-Saba. We think our best innings was Dast-i-Saba. Anwar: Are you afraid of fast bowling? Faiz: We have never worn a helmet. Anwar: Why? Faiz: What can be more joyous than to breathe the air of freedom! What is the point of carrying a weight a on your head? Anwar: But you had numerous opportunities to put on a helmet? Faiz: We are a different class of player. Don’t get us wrong.

Anwar: I have heard that you have mostly been bowled? Faiz: For a change, you should sometimes hear what also happens to be true. We have always been caught, never bowled. Anwar: On what side? Faiz: Always on the right side, because our left side was always very powerful. And that was why, we always tried to play every ball that had pitched on the right side to the left. The result was that someone would always catch us in the slips. Anwar: You don’t seem to play much cricket these days. Faiz: It isn’t that; the thing is that there is nobody who wants to play with us. How long can we go on playing on our own? Anwar: Why is the Selection Committee always against you? Faiz: It is not without reason. You see, when the Test player himself is against the Committee, it is perfectly understandable that the Committee is not exactly enamoured of him. Anwar: What does one need to be able to play a good innings? Faiz: To play a good innings, you need pen and paper — and a newspaper. These are the game’s essentials.

Anwar: Do you bowl? Faiz: We bowl left-arm googlies. Anwar: And what kind of a fielder are you? Faiz: We are in a class apart, having let many fours go us by. Anwar: Why? Faiz: Well, because we cannot bend. Anwar: When is your benefit match being played? Faiz: Why should we have our benefit match played? We are perfectly fit. Anwar: How many matches have you won so far? Faiz: The matches we play are not the kind where one side wins and the other side loses. If it is a good match, then what do defeat and victory matter! When we win, well it is obviously satisfying, but when we lose, it is like water off a duck’s back. Anwar: What are your future plans? Faiz: We are now getting ready to play our matches in the next world. Anwar: But you still have to play many matches here. Faiz: Why? Haven’t we played enough? Anwar: This is a rather hurriedly drawn plan. Faiz: (in reply reads four lines of his verse) Fikr-e-sood au ziyaan tau chootay gi: Minnat-e-ee au aan tau chootay gi. Khair dozakh mein mai milay na milay: Sheikh sahib se jaan tau chootay gi. (One will be rid of the anxiety of gain and loss, of seeking this and that. A drink in hell, there may not be, but one will be rid of sermon mongers).

            I recall that once in London during an interview on BBC Asian Television, Faiz was asked if he had some advice for young poets. He replied, “Yes, there are three things about poetry. First, whatever you write, should spring from the heart. Do not write because someone asks you to write, and do not write because your are being forced to. And do not write in the hope of reward. Don’t even write for the sake of politics. Only write what your heart dictates. If your heart is not involved, don’t write. Secondly, the ego is of no consequence. There is nothing that you can pull out of there because whatever is on the inside has come from the outside. So the important thing is to observe what lies beyond your ego. And there you have to watch for three things. Your own self and what happens to it. You should also understand what effect it has on others, on your people, on your nation. You should bear all this in mind when you survey the world beyond the confines of the self. You should also be aware of your past, your present and your future. You should always be conscious of your links with the past, of what you are doing in the present and what road you are going to take in the future. Then and only then can great poetry take birth, poetry that can be of service to society.”

            Faiz called Iqbal the “sweet-voiced minstrel who once passed this way”. He could have been describing himself.

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