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Narowal, a place nobody in Lahore knows the exact whereabouts of, produced Chaudhry Anwar Aziz whose great genius for politics and deal making now finds fulfillment in his son Danyal Aziz. “Danny” was once number two to the un-doer of Pakistan’s administrative cohesion and is now number one in the same outfit, which may be a good thing as he can perhaps make up for what he helped get done in the first place.

And, of course, Narowal produced Faiz Ahmed Faiz, his village of Kala Qadir being in the Narowal area. Though Faiz went to school in Sialkot as that was where his father had his law practice, he never lost his Narowal moorings. Barely days before his death, on what surely was a premonition, he went to his village and distributed the land that he still had there to the peasants who had cultivated it.

The Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi who died three years short of his fiftieth birthday and who has left behind a body of work of haunting intensity and lyricism, was born in a village in the Shakargarh tehsil, not too far from Narowal.

Yet another remarkable son of Narowal – and one who is totally unremembered in that town or for that matter in Pakistan itself – was the great film director and Indian film industry literary genius, Kidar Sharma, who died in Bombay in April 1999. His death went unnoticed in Pakistan, except perhaps by those like Sheikh Hafizur Rehman in Islamabad who can still hum nearly the entire score from the Kidar Sharma classic Chitralekha, made in 1940. All twelve of the songs, most of them in the lovely and haunting voice of Ram Dulari, were set to music by Ustad Jhande Khan, who belonged to Gujranwala, in the raga ‘Bhairvi’.

Kidar Sharma was born in Narowal in 1909. He went to school in Amritsar but Narowal remained home. In 1964 when my friend Akhtar Mirza met him in Bombay, Sharma talked nostalgically about Narowal and of having gone to Murray College. He told Mirza that when Narowal was connected by rail to Sialkot, there was a doggerel from that time that he remembered: ‘ Gaddi aayi, gaddi aayi Narowal di. Babay di pug wichh ugg baldi’. After partition, he never returned to the town where he was born and had played as a boy. In 1932 he was married, the baraat going all the way to Bannu.

Kidar Sharma was in his early 20s when he saw Debki Bose’s Puran Bhagat which inspired him, making him run off to Calcutta from Amritsar. He recalled in a memoir, “I had nothing to recommend me. My voice was horrible and my face was average. My health was poor and my purse empty and there was nobody to help me. Only my sense of humour and my faith in God goaded me on to continue the struggle.” Of Debki Bose, he wrote, “He expressed his ideas through symbolism. He was the greatest moviemaker. Even today no one can match his subtlety and mastery. He was the supreme guru and all subsequent directors have learned a thing or two from him.” Kidar Sharma did not have the train fare to Calcutta but his wife produced the money that she had saved. It was just Rs. 25.

His first job was as assistant painter at the city’s Madan Theatres but he lost it after two months. Both Prithviraj, Raj Kapoor’s father, and K.L. Saigal were in Calcutta working for New Theatres. Kidar Sharma first went to see Prithviraj and asked him to help a “Punjabi brother” by introducing him to Debki Bose. Prithviraj sent him to Saigal who introduced him to Durga Khote who was playing the lead in the new Bose film. She introduced him to Bose who was charmed by his wit and hired him as his still cameraman (Kidar Sharma had a Brownie camera and could take good pictures) for the director’s new film Seeta. In Calcutta he also met the blind singer K.C. Dey (Manna Dey’s uncle), legendary music director R.C. Boral, the great character actor Nawab Kashmiri and the singer Pahari Sanyal, both of them from Lucknow.

Kidar Sharma, who was a fine Urdu poet, was asked to write the dialogue and lyrics for Devdas, an assignment he got because of his friend Saigal who was playing the lead. The great Saigal classics from that movie ‘ Dukh ke ab din beetat nahin’ and ‘ Balam ayo basso mere mun mein’ are Kidar Sharma’s work. The cameraman was Bimal Roy who became one of Indian cinema’s greatest directors, and who cast Dilip Kumar as Devdas in the movie’s remake. Kidar Sharma wrote five songs for Saigal for which he was paid a total of Rs 25. They included such unforgettables as ‘ Sunno sunno jay Krishan kala’ and ‘ Panchhi kahe hoa’t uddas’. He also wrote the ghazal ‘ Shama ka jalna hai ya sozish’e-parwana hai’ for Saigal and the evergreen Saigal hit “ Mein kya janoon kya jaddo hai.’ And the hauntingly beautiful lullaby, immortalised by Saigal, ‘ So ja rajkumati so ja’ as well as the great Kanan Bala song ‘ Moray angana mein aye aali, mein chaal chaloon matwali’.

After an argument with the director Nitin Bose, Kidar Sharma left New Theatres, as did his friend Prithviraj in sympathy. Both moved to Bombay. His first film as director in Bombay was Aulad, starring Gyani and the lovely Romola. Gyani later played the lead in Chitralekha opposite the doe-eyed Mehtab who married Sohrab Modi, the great dramatic actor and director. Kidar Sharma gave Raj Kapoor and Madhubala, then known as Baby Mumtaz, their first break by casting them in the movie Neel Kamal. It was also he who cast the teenager Geeta Bali in Sohag Raat, thus launching a career that ended prematurely due to her tragic early death. He also cast Nargis against Dilip in Jogan, which Nargis always considered her best film.

Kidar Sharma’s parents escaped from Narowal in 1947 but before they left, his mother cleaned the house thoroughly so that the next occupants should not think that those who had lived there were negligent, and his father put his picture on the wall so that they should know whose house it was.

Jawaharlal Nehru who was a great admirer of Urdu and Urdu poetry (he once said he listened to Radio Pakistan for news as he could not understand a word broadcast by All India Radio) was so struck by a Kidar Sharma song that he sent for him. According to Kidar Sharma’s memoirs, Mir Tariq Mir was Nehru’s favourite poet. The Sharma lines that had entranced Panditji were from a Sohag Raatsong: ‘ Aankhoon mein aankhain daal toonay mujhko kya pilaya: Jiss taray par nazar parri, wo tara larrkharraya.’

If anyone still cares about such things, they should put a memorial plaque on the house in Narowal where Kidar Sharma was born. Here then is something for Danyal Aziz to do. It may even win him both salvation and forgiveness for what he and Gen. Naqvi did to us.

This is a regular weekly column filed from Washington DC.

As a rule, not only are ambassadors from countries the US does not like kept under surveillance, their family members are tailed as well. During the Cold War days, there were always stories about such ambassadors’ children frequenting bars and nightclubs

Munir Akram is not the only bright and outspoken ambassador serving at the United Nations to have become the focus of media attention for something unrelated to his work. There have been others before him.

What happened on the evening of December 10 was unpleasant and should not have taken place. But I have known Munir Akram for many years. He has served his country with devotion. We all make mistakes. However, in the end it is the good that outweighs the bad. Some of those in Pakistan who chose to sit in moral judgment on him should remember what Jesus Christ said about casting the first stone.

I am reminded of something that happened at the United Nations 17 years ago when certain elements in the US establishment tried, though unsuccessfully, to silence Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, a highly articulate academician who was proving to be a thorn in the side of the United States as well as Israel. In a crude and botched FBI operation, the Iranian envoy, a man of great piety and abstemiousness, was charged with stealing a raincoat from a New York store.

On May 7, 1986, Rajaie-Khorassani, tailed by FBI men, went to Manhattan’s Alexander department store. He said he selected a $99.95 raincoat and put it on to view himself in a nearby mirror. Not quite sure if it looked right on him, he moved towards the store’s front section, some distance away, to stand before a three-way mirror. Suddenly, the store detective pounced on the bewildered envoy. “What’s all this about?” asked the ambassador. The detective told him that he had to accompany him to the store manager’s office in the basement.

Not knowing what lay ahead, the ambassador followed the detective to the basement where FBI men were waiting. The manager told Rajaie-Khorassani that he was going to report him to the police on a shoplifting charge. The ambassador then identified himself and protested at the insult being done to him. He denied the ridiculous shoplifting charge and wanted to know how on earth he could be accused of theft when he had not stepped out of the store. The manager replied that the store detective had “deduced” that he was “heading towards the exit.”

While the argument was going on, he claimed that one of the FBI agents raised his hand and said, “Look ambassador, all this could be overlooked if you begin to cooperate with us, say, soften your rhetoric at the UN and the like, otherwise the press would come to know of your theft. The consequences would not be very pleasant for you.” The other FBI men went a step further, “If the story breaks, I don’t think your government would want to keep you here.”

The ambassador refused to be cowed down. The FBI men kept threatening him but he told them he was ready to face the consequences of his refusal. After nearly two hours, the ambassador was finally allowed to go. The next day the entire print and electronic media was inundated with identical stories of the so-called “theft”. No one questioned the police version. In a bold move, Rajaie-Khorassani called a press conference at the UN to lay bare the facts. He spoke of his constant harassment by FBI men, narrating the sequence of events as well as the conversation that had taken place in the store manager’s office. While only a skeleton version of his press conference made the papers that had splashed the “theft” story across their pages, the incident was most embarrassing for the administration. And despite the fact that the ambassador had become somewhat controversial, the Iranian government stood behind him, insisting that he complete his full tenure.

In other cases, if the FBI couldn’t find anything hard against offending ambassadors, stories about their expensive purchases were planted, especially if they came from Third World countries. As a rule, not only are ambassadors from countries the US does not like kept under surveillance, their family members are tailed as well. During the Cold War days, there were always stories about such ambassadors’ children frequenting bars and nightclubs, as if those of their counterparts from US-friendly states always spent their evenings at home keeping mama company.

The late Jamil Baroody, a Christian who represented Saudi Arabia for nearly 25 years at the United Nations, was known for always speaking out his mind. Despite their best efforts, the FBI men were never able to catch him on the wrong foot, so he was invariably depicted in the press as a “nut case” who was not to be taken seriously.

There may not have been any such conspiracy to specifically “get Akram” but in the current environment this was an “opportunity” that certain interests must have relished exploiting.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The British are not coming back – that’s for sure. One person who finds it hard to reconcile himself to this fact is my friend Zafar Rathore who believes that things are getting progressively worse in Pakistan because we have laid to waste every good thing that the British taught us and every value that they tried to plant in this hostile and uncaring soil. “ Angrez ki baqiyat bhi khatam ho gayeen,” Rathore has been heard lamenting.

Without success I have tried to get him out of this elegiac state of mind, marked by creeping disillusionment, by reminding him of the famous ditty sung by Amir Karnatki for a movie made around the end of the Raj. The song went: “ Angrezi chora challa gya, wo gora gora challa gya”. Rathore’s theory is that with the passing of the generation that had imbibed some of the values bequeathed by the British, we have returned to our original state, characterised by lawlessness, self-aggrandisement, aggression, corruption at all levels, sycophancy and contempt for both order and orderliness. I confess that five minutes of driving a car on any road in Pakistan is enough to convince you of the wisdom of Rathore’s analysis.

A friend of mine, Mohammad Rafiq, who kissed goodbye to the Mumlikat-e-Khudadad more than thirty years ago for England but keeps returning two or three times a year to see if things have gotten any worse – and invariably finds that they have – reminds me that the British took one look at India and declared that these people were ungovernable. And yet, he continues, they made a good job of governing India by keeping policymaking in Whitehall, implementing both policy and decision-making in India themselves and delegating workaday tasks to Indians along strictly laid-down lines. “Isn’t it amazing how such a small nation was able to produce enough brains to work in the small space of Whitehall to rule the world? These were their tools. And they had the vision, a different one for every country they ruled. If we are so proud and sure of ourselves, why did Benazir bring in ex-Scotland Yard detectives to solve the killing of her brother? Or why is the FBI working in Pakistan?” To which one should add that it is the ‘whys’ that keep piling up in Pakistan. The ‘because’ slot remains empty.

Rafiq and I often exchange our private woes over what has happened to English and English writing in Pakistan. In that vein, he informs me that he once wrote to Qutubuddin Aziz, Editor of Pakistan News, brought out by the information division of the Pakistan High Commission in London. Aziz had been sent over to conquer the British press by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and to this day he (not Zia) is confident that he accomplished his mission with flying colours. While Aziz ran Fleet Street from his perch in Lowndes Square, one day Rafiq picked up an issue of Pakistan News, pulled out his red pencil and picked out 154 spelling mistakes in just three pages of that single issue. He says he deliberately did not point out mistakes of language because “our people can become argumentative instead of constructively accepting criticism that can put them on the way to improvement.” He also offered to proofread Pakistan News free of charge every fortnight. After a few days, Rafiq heard from Qutubuddin Aziz to the effect that since “reading this publication makes you so unhappy, I am deleting your name from the mailing list.”

But to return to the British in India, the concept that there are citizens and they have a right to justice did not exist before they arrived in the subcontinent. In fact, there was no concept of citizenship, only of loyal subjects who were to be kept in their place and if they made trouble they were to be suitably dealt with. Private property was to be administered at the pleasure of the king who was like a god. It was his to give and his to take away. Rights to property lapsed if the holder of those rights passed away. Law was what the will of the king or the official appointed by him happened to be on a given day. That was why people always prayed for a good man to be sent to rule them. We continue to offer that prayer into the 21st century. Every other day one hears someone sighing, raising his eyes skywards and saying, “Let’s pray to God to give us a good ruler.” Well sometimes these prayers have been answered, only to have St Theresa’s law come into play. She it was who said that more tears are shed for answered prayers than for those that are not answered.

Philip Mason in his monumental work, The Men who Ruled India, wondered what it was that kept the Raj going. And he came to the conclusion that the whole structure was controlled by a cadre of district officers, rigorously picked and trained. Because they were so few they had to let their subordinates do their own work. Confidence that they would be backed up from above was a hallmark of their profession and they acquired a confidence in themselves that they would be obeyed, which meant that they were obeyed. “Few administrations can have ruled so many with so slight a use of force,” he wrote. Lord Wavell in an informal speech made after he left India said the English would be remembered not by this institution or that, but by the ideal they left behind of what a district officer should be.

Little did Wavell know that just over half a century after he spoke those historic words, there would appear on the scene in one of the two independent states that the British left behind, a man by the name of Lt. Gen. retired Tanvir Naqvi who would dismantle brick by brick the structure that it had taken the British a hundred years to build.

This is a regular weekly column filed from Washington DC.

Since Pakistanis always want to stay a step or two ahead of the competition, not to mention law, hundreds of them have been crossing into Canada all along the thousands of miles of border the two countries share. There are those who are crossing legally. The more adventurous are crossing commando style

The Immigration and Naturalisation Department (INS), the current Pakistani equivalent of the Big Bad Bear, is not without a sense of humour despite the fact that the baleful shadow of its founding father, the later Edgar J. Hoover, who kept files on everybody and was a secret cross-dresser, still hangs over it. The INS has announced that illegal immigrants are not required to register. In the Department’s clipped officialese, the answer to the question, “What if my last entry into the United States was not legal, do I have to register?” is, “No. The current registration requirements apply only to aliens who have been inspected by an immigration officer and admitted to the United States.”

Illegal Pakistanis, whose number is said to be legion, can, therefore, relax. Why they are running scared, I am unable to understand. They continue to have the run of the place. They can go where they like and get any of the thousands of jobs where you are paid cash under the counter when nobody is looking. It is true you do not earn what you would have earned had you been legal, but earn enough you do. Admittedly, you do not make the kind of loot that will buy you a Corvette or one of those sleek two-seater Audis, Mercs or BMWs, but food is cheap in this country and bus rides do not cost all that much. Old bangers can be had for next to nothing and sometimes people pay you money to drive their old car away. I have seen cars on the road being driven by our Latin American and South Asian brothers which defy all known laws of physics and dynamics. Gas, which is what the Americans say when they mean petrol, is cheap. It is certainly cheaper here than it is in Pakistan where upping the price is one of Mr Shaukat Aziz’s weekend hobbies.

However, since Pakistanis always want to stay a step or two ahead of the competition, not to mention law, hundreds of them have been crossing into Canada all along the thousands of miles of border the two countries share. There are those who are crossing legally, that is through a border check post. The more adventurous are crossing commando style. I am sure some of them carry in their wallets pictures of the nation’s first commando head of state, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, President and Chief of Army Staff until further orders, which, needless to say, are his own.

The Canadians are said to be baffled. One Pakistani who had asked a friend to drop him at one of the crossing points in upstate New York, being a believer in the slogan “See North America on foot”, waited patiently for his turn which came some hours later. The American side let him through when he said that he was seeking political asylum in Canada. The Canadian border guards asked him where he was headed. He replied that he was a political refugee. And why was he a political refugee, they wanted to know? Because he feared persecution in America. But how had he landed in America in the first place, they asked? He had escaped from Pakistan where he feared political persecution. When he was asked when he had escaped from Pakistan, he said it was during the rule of Nawaz Sharif who was not a good man, though he built the Motorway, and who was out to get him.

But there had been two changes of government since, the Canadian official, who was not as uninformed as he looked, pointed out. True indeed, but he feared persecution from the “military types.” But there was now a civilian prime minister in Pakistan, he was reminded. That was the only time, our friend laughed. “You must be joking. Gen. Musharraf is king, was king, will be king.”

He was admitted and is now waiting for an immigration hearing later this month.

Pakistanis are enterprising people, and that is the truth. When I was the Pakistan embassy’s counsellor in Ottawa in the mid-1970s, a young fellow walked into my room and asked for a new passport as he had lost the one he had. “I will give you a new passport if you tell me how many passports you already have?” I suggested. “You promise,” he said after giving the matter some thought. “I couldn’t be more serious,” I replied. “Well, four but they are all useless,” he said. I better end the story here otherwise I may have the ISI at my tail for issuing unauthorised passports.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

            The other day, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington was pelted with questions on Kashmir and UN resolutions at a thinly attended and otherwise incomprehensible news conference by two gentlemen, one from India, the other from Pakistan, both of whom were saying contrary things. What was more, both were wrong, though they would have been the last to admit that. It occurred to me at the time (I kept my mouth shut following the old Chinese adage: those who speak do not know; those who know do not speak) that practically everyone in India and Pakistan considers himself an authority on Kashmir, but few have the facts right.

            Facts of course have never been too popular in the subcontinent because people prefer opinions, even when they fly in the face of facts, but what of it! Who cares or who knows. Be that as it may, we owe it to Kashmir and to ourselves that at least get the basics are got right. Indians, for example, insist that it is Pakistan that is in violation of UN resolutions and not India. They also maintain that while India has always been willing to make a settlement, it is Pakistan that has blocked it on one excuse or another. Since 1972, they have taken the position that the Simla Agreement has made all UN resolutions on Kashmir redundant.

            Let me deal with the last thing first. The Simla Agreement recognises the need for a “final settlement” of the Kashmir dispute. It will be unlawful, according to Prof. Ali Khan, to use the bilateral clause to put off a final settlement indefinitely with the intention of freezing the status quo. It will also be a violation of the fundamental principle underlying the law of treaties which mandates that every agreement must be performed in good faith. A Security Council resolution remains legally binding until it is repealed, either directly or through a subsequent resolution. Article 103 of the UN Charter lays down that “in the event of a conflict between the obligations of the members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.” The Simla Agreement states that relations between India and Pakistan shall be governed by the principles of the UN Charter.

            There are twelve substantive resolutions of the Security Council that directly relate to the settlement of the Kashmir dispute and the determination of its final status through an impartial plebiscite. The Simla Agreement in its preamble speaks of the resolve of the signatories to the establishment of a durable peace in the subcontinent. How can a durable peace be established unless the Kashmir dispute that has kept the two neighbours in a state of war or near war for fifty-five years is settled?

            India has said in its defence that it was she who took the matter to the United Nations, without admitting that it did so on the assumption that Pakistan would be declared an aggressor which would put the seal of approval on India’s annexation of Kashmir. In going to the Security Council on 1 January 1948, India promised that once the state was  “cleared of the invader and normal conditions restored, its people would be free to decide their future by (the) recognised democratic method of (a) plebiscite or referendum which, in order to ensure complete impartiality, might be held under international auspices.”

On 20 January, the Security Council set up the UN Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP), ordered it to proceed to the subcontinent, bring an end to the fighting and take “necessary measures” for the holding of a plebiscite. On 1 January 1949, a ceasefire took effect on all fronts. Even a cursory examination of the failure of efforts made by the Commission and various countries to bring about a settlement will show that in the end it was India that prevented any breakthrough. Nehru in a private letter (that has since been published) written in 1948 stated that while India would for the time being go along with the UN, once it consolidated its position, it would enforce its will on both Pakistan and the Kashmiris, which is exactly what it has done.

            Indians have argued that there were no protests in Kashmir over accession to India by the Maharaja. As M. Yusuf Buch, the best informed and the most clear-headed authority on Kashmir, has written, “No invasion of one country by another encounters an immediate insurrection. There were no popular uprisings in the capitals of Western Europe when they witnessed the march of Nazi troops.” Indians also cite the lack of a popular uprising in Kashmir when Pakistani irregulars and Azad Kashmiri troops and volunteers entered the state as part of Operation Gibraltar as evidence that the Kashmiris had already accepted Indian rule. Insurgencies are never instant. They need an incubation period. Also, the operation was ill planned and its executors had taken no Kashmiri, this or that side of the dividing line, into confidence. What is not mentioned by anyone is that Kashmiris on their own had risen in revolt against India in 1964.

            As for the Indian charge that it is Pakistan which is in violation of UN resolutions, let this be answered by Joseph Korbel, a member of UNCIP and father of former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, “This is not true. Pakistan was not expected to withdraw her forces from Kashmir as long as there was no agreed-upon plan for simultaneous Indian withdrawal.” While it is true that Pakistan was to begin to withdraw its forces before India, there was also the requirement that the completion of the process be synchronised and be simultaneous on both sides. The Truce Plan prepared by the Commission to bring this about was rejected by India, despite intense efforts by Sir Own Dixon and Dr Frank Graham and a joint appeal by President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee to the two governments to accept the arbitration of the Plebiscite Administrator-designate. Pakistan accepted the plan in its totality. This, as one looks back, really ended the UN’s role in Kashmir.

            As for the Indian argument that receives much support in the West that any settlement on Kashmir will spell the death of Indian secularism, let me quote Yusuf Buch again, “How can the security of Indian Muslims be made dependent on the occupation of Kashmir by force? Secularism should be a function of India’s own history, the composition of its population, its diversified cultural heritage, as well as its international contacts. If the proven and well-demonstrated loyalty of Indian Muslims since 1991 does not guarantee their security and well-being in India, how will the coerced allegiance of the Kashmiri Muslims do that? India is the only state in the world that demands a price from others for the safety of its own citizens. And with a posture of self-righteousness to boot.”

The latest insult to Islam comes in the form of a new book — “Islam Unveiled” — by Robert Spencer which rejects the thesis that Islam is a religion of peace or that it has been hijacked by a minority of extremists

It is open season on Islam in America. Seldom has there been such a concentrated attack on the religion and its teachings which are denounced almost without respite through articles, website messages, discussion groups, radio and television programmes and books. There are few voices raised in its defence. Suffice it to say that it is far easier to get an attack on Islam published than anything in defence of it.

Powerful evangelists with close personal ties to President George Bush — one of them administered the oath of office to him in 2001 — have attacked Islam and its teachings. The person of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), has been singled out for the most shameful calumny, regardless of the feelings of the nearly six million Muslims who live in America, a number larger than that of the most influential and by far the richest community in the country, the Jews. The President took an embarrassingly long time before dissociating himself from the likes of the fire-breathing Islam haters who can best be described as the evangelist attack dogs of the conservative establishment that believes Bush is the best thing to have happened to America since George Washington.

The latest insult to Islam comes in the form of a new book — “Islam Unveiled” — by Robert Spencer which rejects the thesis that Islam is a religion of peace or that it has been hijacked by a minority of extremists. This book, claim the publishers, “dares to tell the truth and show you exactly why this religion is so easy to hijack” and what Islamic authorities really teach about the kind of barbarities committed on that fateful day in September 2001. He argues that there is no distinction between true and terrorist Islam as fanaticism and terrorism are rooted in the Quran and the core Islamic traditions. He holds that since violence is integral to Islam, Muslim “moderates” would never be able to convince the majority that it isn’t.

Spencer quotes selectively from the Quran to assert that while Jews and Christians do not accept violent passages in their holy books in a literal sense, Muslims do. He also questions that Islam gave rights to women as he unloads his own interpretation of the institution of polygamy and divorce laws. He also subjects the Holy Prophet’s person (PBUH) to blasphemous criticism. He denounces the human rights record of Islamic countries and maintains that secularism will be unable to overcome the hurdles it faces to secure a foothold in the Islamic world.

Spencer, who has written for a number of right-wing journals, argues that suicide bombings derive their inspiration and rationale from Islamic theology. He says wife beating is sanctioned by the Quran and under Islamic law rape is impossible to prove. He argues that the Saudi Wahabi or Salafi movement is not the originator of Islamic radicalism or terrorism. Jihad is endemic to Islam and will continue. He quotes a Muslim journalist as saying that Islamic countries today are “full of bigotry, fanaticism, hypocrisy and plain ignorance.”

Nor does Spencer acknowledge Islam’s great contribution to science, art and culture. He writes that they virtually died out in the Muslim world which is the root cause of modern Muslim resentment against the West. As for the Crusades, the western world has no need to apologise to the Muslim world, he maintains. He does not believe that there is such a thing as tolerance in an Islamic society. His theory is that the Muslims are carrying out a “demographic jihad” against the West by breeding in large numbers. In the end they will just take over western Europe in human waves.

And, as is to be expected in a book of this kind, Spencer in order to drive home the point that Islam is intolerant and, thus, unwilling to co-exist with other religions, quotes that arch detractor of Islam, V S Naipaul, who justified the demolition of the Babri Mosque. Our very own Lady Nadaan Nadira finds no mention. I suppose one should be grateful for small mercies!

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Pran Nevile says though he left Lahore fifty-five years ago, that’s where his heart has always remained. “In a way, you can say, I never left Lahore because it is always with me. I have carried it with me wherever I have gone, and when I look back and there is no place on earth I haven’t been and all through those years, Lahore has stayed with me. I am an unreconstructed Lahoria, you can say, who never thought he would ever live elsewhere.”

I first “met” Pran Nevile at Vanguard Books in Lahore. That was where I picked up his book, first published in 1993. He had called it, “Lahore, a sentimental journey”. I was fascinated by his recreation of Lahore as it was in the thirties and forties; and although I had never seen the city then, I have had a lifelong nostalgia about it. That is the Lahore I would have liked to live in, and if not that, then, once again, in the Lahore of the sixties, the city the uncrowned king of whose streets was the great Sardar Muhammad Sadiq, who now lies in Bibi Pakdaman’s little acre off Empress Road.

My subsequent contact with Pran was maintained through his childhood friend Saeed Ahmed Khan, whom I never met but with whom I began to correspond when he sent me a piece Pran had written in an Indian newspaper. These two friends were inseparable before independence and retained the same affection for each other and longed to meet again as the years passed. Saeed Ahmed Khan, from one of Jullandhur’s Pathan bastis, had come to Lahore for his schooling. He and Pran were in Government College together. Saeed Ahmed Khan, I report with regret, passed on some years ago, but not before he and Pran had a tearful reunion in Lahore.

This is how Pran described it to me when I met him for the first time in a Washington suburb in the first week of December. He had come from Delhi and he was staying with another old friend from his Lahore days. “It was the most emotional meeting of my life. We had met after more than fifty years and both of us broke down. It all came back in that one magic moment. It was as if we had never been separated.”

I asked Pran what he meant when he wrote that Lahore did not have a “composite culture”. What it had could not be given a name, but it was a culture all its own, something wholesome and vital, something that lay in perfect harmony within and without. “This term composite culture,” he said in his rich and pure Lahori Punjabi that fifty-five years of exile from the city have not altered or affected, “is a term invented by the new intellectual elite. These new fangled terms, enough of which we hear in India also, are beyond me.”

“Why was Lahore called the gem of India?” I asked. “That it indeed was,” Pran replied, “It was totally different from the rest of India, in every way. It was the educational centre of North India. It had more colleges than any other city of India. The student population of Lahore was lively and wonderful. Co-education came late, but there it was. Lahore was always very prosperous; it was the hub of North India right up to Peshawar. Everything about Lahore was special. If you wanted to see the best-dressed young men in India, they were to be found in Lahore. The best food in India was to be found in Lahore. It was a city of gourmets and it had romance. A popular film song of those days went: Ik shehr ki laundia, nainoon ke teer chala gayee.And this doggerel that we all knew and I to this day remember: Tibbi mein phir ke jalwa-e-Parwardigar dekh: Hai dekhney ki cheez issay baar baar dekh.The great stars, the great movers and shakers of the Bombay movie world were all from Lahore.”

Pran’s father, a government servant, opted for Pakistan. “He used to say, as did everybody, ‘All this is going to pass, this Hindu-Muslim rioting.’ We never could imagine that people would have to move across in such massive numbers, never to see their homes again, never to meet their friends again. My father was advised to take some leave, stay away from the city and in a few weeks, all would be well when he could return. That was never to be.” Pran reminisced about Lahore’s old and now vanished Mall restaurants: Lorang’s, Stiffles, Volga, Elphinstone, Metro, the last one, he said, was the gathering place of movie stars. “It was a very classy place,” he recalled, a distant look in his eyes.

Pran said the best ‘mithai’ shop in Lahore was run by Umrao Singh outside Lohari Gate. At the other end of Anarkali that turns into Ganpat Road was the popular ‘lassi’ outlet of Bhagwan Das. Close to it was another famous ‘mithai’ place called Kundan Lal Sweet House, not too far from the Kesari Aerated Water Company – ah those pre-Coca Cola days – whose lemonade was much sought after. Anarkali was the main shopping centre – even Atal Behari Vajpayee when he came to Lahore recalled visiting Anarkali as a boy – where the city’s best cloth and apparel store, Dunichand and Sons, was located.

Pran said his earliest memory of Lahore dates back to 1929 when from a balcony he saw the historic Congress procession led by its newly elected president, Jawaharlal Nehru, riding a white horse. Flower petals were being showered on him as the marchers wended their way through Anarkali where they all came to a stop in front of the Bhalla Shoe Store where the proud owner Dhani Ram Bhalla placed a garland of crisp banknotes around Nehru’s neck. As Pran talked, I recalled Nasir Kazmi’s lines: Shehr-e-Lahore, teri raunaqain dayam aabad: Teri galyon ki hawa khainch ke layee mujh ko.

Before I took my leave of Pran Nevile, the unreconstructed son of Lahore, he signed his new book for me, Beyond the Veil, Indian women of the Raj.He was flying to Delhi the next day. When I came home, I opened the book, scribbled across the flyleaf was the inscription, ‘In remembrance of my dearest friend Saeed Ahmed who introduced me to you.’

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