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The Thanksgiving holiday in America is always a quiet family occasion when people sit down to the traditional turkey dinner to count their blessings, not their calories.

This Thanksgiving was expected to be no different. Washington, which is a deserted city as soon as offices close on a normal weekday and everybody is gone home, appeared even more deserted this time. The President was where he prefers to be when he does not have to be in the capital, namely Crawford, Texas, an inhospitable, one-horse town where everyone knows everyone and a no-nonsense Texan hamburger with a plateful of fries (still French I am afraid) at Mr Bush’s favourite (and only) diner is the high water mark in sophisticated dining.

But this was destined to be no run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving because on Thursday afternoon as most Americans were about to sit down to dinner, what do they see — if they had the telly on — but a newsflash saying the president was in Baghdad (pronounced as always Bag- dad) and serving turkey dinners to the soldiers. He had flown ten hours in Air Force One, accompanied by some of his staff like Andrew Card and that lethal lady Condi Rice, plus six hand-picked White House reporters who were planning to take over the kitchen of the Crawford diner and see if they were as good at roasting a turkey as they were at filing copy when no copy was to be had.

The president stayed just two and a half hours and then flew right back, straight across the Atlantic for another ten hours or so. It is not interesting who was with him, than who was not with him. Yes, the Secretary of State and a distinguished military man to boot was left out. One would have thought he would have been the first man to get on board after the President. But, no, he wasn’t. It is not difficult to see why. Unlike Rice, Card, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Powell is not on the inside of this Bush White House. The fact is that the cabal that surrounds Bush does not like Powell, whom it sees as too much of a liberal, a soldier who believes peace is better than war, a man who would rather negotiate than lob 5,000 pound bombs on those with whom America has a bone to pick.

When Bush was asked by David Frost in an exclusive interview, if he would retain any of his present team were he to gain a second term, the president paused and said, “Cheney, yes.” He did not say Powell. However, let’s all hope and pray that Bush himself remains a one-term president. One shudders when one thinks what he might do to the world in his second term.

While there is always sympathy and affection, as there should be, for every fighting soldier who is only obeying orders, some questions are already being raised about the visit. Rice when asked Friday morning if the high security that surrounded the president’s short stay in Baghdad did not show that the situation there was not under control, parried an answer but admitted that Iraq was still a ‘very dangerous’ place. A Washington Post correspondent wondered if “Bush in his army jacket yesterday will become a symbol of strong leadership or a symbol of unwarranted bravado.” Without sounding cynical, one has to recognise that the blitzkrieg Baghdad visit was undertaken with an eye on Election 2004 because Iraq is certainly going to be one of the major issues in that high-intensity, multi-million dollar run for the world’s most powerful job.

Perhaps Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution best summed up the feelings of most Americans when he said, “The fact that it’s on Thanksgiving is a little bit contrived, but I don’t have a problem with it. It’s politics the way it’s supposed to be, in a sense.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Osama bin Laden has been found riding a camel with a 46-year old Hitler clone who, being a good clone, looks exactly like the famous original. There appears to be no reason why the $10 million prize money – or was it $5 million – should not go to William Laport, correspondent of Weekly World News. He may even be considered for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.

I am not surprised that the year’s greatest story has been ignored by the New York Times. While it is true that Weekly World News is not exactly known for being always accurate, at least it is the first publication to have put this where-is-he game at an end. I am sure The Boys in dark glasses and unmarked cars in Islamabad are delighted because lots of not-very-nice people had begun to suggest that Osama was in one of their tucked-away facilities in the tribal areas listening to Arab disco music.

The magazine – yours for $1.99 plus local tax at any checkout of an American grocery store – discloses that a top secret memo to President Bush from the CIA says that the Nazi madman’s clone “complements and amplifies Osama’s own evil genius” and presents “a clear and present danger” to the United States, at home and abroad.

The Agency recommends that both Osama and the clone be liquated post-haste and it should take priority over the rebuilding of Iraq. The Agency is afraid that with the recreated Adolf on the al Qaeda team, Osama may have the means to win the war on terror and crush the United States. And where does the clone come from? According to the CIA, the fake Fuehrer was produced by the Soviets in 1957. Bush came to know of it from Putin at Camp David and almost fell from his chair when Putin told him that the clone “is as evil, crazy and hellbent on world domination as Hitler was and certainly nobody to trifle with.”

As the situation in Iraq grows grimmer by the day, the President comes under more and more scrutiny. His is also making the cartoon page more than he or his praetorian guard would like. Machiavelli said the prince must not be the butt of jokes or he would lose his authority. That certainly is happening here; the Pres. is butt of many jokes. While the very decision to go to war in Iraq is now considered by many to have been without justification, moral, legal or military, there is a big question mark over the ability of Bush to make it to a second term. If he loses, he will become one of the few sitting presidents who have failed to get re-elected. This is beginning to get to him and his close circle of neocons. There are also far too many jokes about the President going around, which is never a good sign.

The New Yorker magazine in one a funny short piece run lately came up with suggested questions for Bush’s next press conference. Calvin Trillin, the writer who thought them up, put them apart in different categories. Here is a “friendly” question to the President, “Sir, although your supporters’ predictions that Iraqis would greet our troops with flowers haven’t been borne out, isn’t it possible that, given the problems with the water supply and the infrastructure in general, there is a serious shortage of flowers over there and that Iraqis might be greeting our troops with flowers if Iraqis had any flowers?”

And the follow-up question to the friendly question is, “Mr President, in your budget for the reconstruction of Iraq, is there any money specifically earmarked for rebuilding the Iraqi cut-flower industry, and, if so, would any American company be able to bid on that contract, or would they have to go through your friend Joe Allbaugh’s consulting firm?” There is an alternative question to the friendly question, which is, “Sir, do you think that the flowers with which your administration said Iraqis would greet our troops will ever be found?” If the President answers yes, the reporter is advised to ask, “Then would that justify having gone to war with Iraq?”

Here is a “strategic planning question.” “Sir, now that you’ve acknowledged that there was never any evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11th attacks by al Qaeda, does it remain your policy that in the event of any future al Qaeda attack against this country we would still retaliate against Iraq, and, if so, how would you avoid hitting our own troops?”

The follow up question to the strategic planning question is, “If not, then did you have some other country in mind to retaliate against?” And here is a question about the Coalition. “Is Bulgaria still part of the Coalition, and, if so, what have they done for us lately?” The follow up, depending upon the President’s answer, is, “Would you encourage the American people to drink more Bulgarian wines and, if so, do you know any French wines that might make a good substitute?”

The suggested off-the-wall question for the President is, “Speaking of Iraq and al Qaeda, sir, do you think it’s fair that Arabs don’t have to use a ‘u’ after a ‘q’? And the follow up to the off-the-wall question is (if the answer is no), “Then would that justify having gone to war with Iraq?”

As if all the cartoons and spoofs were not enough, the one British newspaper the President accorded an interview to as part of his visit to Britain turns out to have been The Sun, known more for its topless page-3 girls (“classy Krystle, the beautiful brunette babe”) than international affairs. Mass circulation it may be but I would be embarrassed to be seen reading it on the London Underground. It excels in stories such as “Sobbing islanders say sorry to the ancestor of minister eaten by natives,” or “man begins 12-day sausage, bean and chip bath to promote Brit food.” The news about the President’s Sun interview was announced at the daily White House briefing on 14 November which prompted the Washington Post correspondent Dana Milbank to ask whether the other publications present would get Bush interviews if they ran nude photos of topless girls.

The Sun is owned by “dirty digger” Rupert Murdoch who also owns Fox Television. So now you know why The Sun and not the Guardian or the Telegraph got the interview.

Religious programmes encourage a retreat into history and the past. It is yesterday not today or tomorrow that is the focus of these programmes that drip with piety

The reaction among most Pakistani-American Muslims to the suspicion, hostility and bigotry triggered by the events of 9/11 in this country is not confident self-assertion and aggressive defence of their rights, but withdrawal from the fight, as it were. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that if you appear willing to take it, then more of the same will be forced down your throat.

The various Pakistani-produced television programmes that community channels show in 30-minute segments on Sundays in several cities across the United States, are a good indicator of how the community is dealing with the post-9/11 situation. The religiosity which was already there in heavy doses has increased manifold.

When you do not want to deal with a challenge, the easy way out is to withdraw into a cocoon, wallowing in past glory that no longer has a bearing on the world that you live in and with which you have to come to terms to survive. It is a pity that the debate among Muslims settled across Europe, for example, is not about how to deal with the major issues that they and their religion face today, but why it is essential to put the hijab on women. Is this what Islam has been reduced to?

The Pakistani communities settled abroad are in many ways a mirror image of the larger community back home. The coming onstream of TV channels such as PTV Prime for European and North American viewers, has pushed them even deeper into the lair of religiosity, of which there was far too much already. Religious programmes beamed by this channel, as well as by channels such as ARY, encourage a retreat into history and the past. It is yesterday not today or tomorrow that is the focus of these programmes that drip with piety. The message to Muslims living in these societies is that they should protect themselves and their families from the wickedness and hedonism of the environments in which they find themselves.

There are several Urdu newspapers that come out of New York every week. Sold without charge, they can be picked up from Pakistani restaurants and grocery stores. Because they can be had free, their readership is naturally large. Here is an excerpt from a recent column in one of them (this is typical of the kind of writing these publications feature and the worldview they promote). “In America with each passing day, there is an increase in the number of those who are turning their back on the materialistic life here so that they become one with the universal, peaceful and spiritually enlightening system of Islam … The other day, a Muslim woman who worked in an American restaurant was let go because the management took exception to her wearing a hijab. Not only did she reject the management’s offer to return to work minus her hijab, but she went to court and ultimately won her case. Today, she works with vibrant enthusiasm in the same restaurant. No day now passes when such stories involving other Muslims do not break, enabling the Muslims to renew the springs of their faith.”

MSA, the largest and oldest Muslim student organisation in this country, derives inspiration from men such as Maudoodi and Qutb. Its annual convention, which becomes more and more commercialised with time, is a feast for the eyes of those whose idea of Islam is a beard for men and the hijab for women. When the need of the hour is to relate and integrate with those who follow different ways, the emphasis among Muslims is on isolationism. While these people find the society they have chosen as home full of sin and given to the worship of false gods, I have yet to hear of a single person who has failed to take advantage of the economic and other opportunities America offers. Money, I suppose, has no religion.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

My friend Zafar Rathore reads books and converses, as he once told a young lady from parts foreign many moons ago. He does not practise the holy indifference towards the nation’s state, as many do who have spent a life in the civil service and are now done with the 9 to 5 day and the buzzer that summons the peon asleep outside their door. The books he can and should write he converses away, often to people more interested in the state of their house plumbing than the state of the country.

Rathore likes to talk about the culture of power in our country, how it has evolved over the years and how it affects our lives. He believes that the state has two basic functions. One is to maintain order and the other is to collect taxes. The first is the responsibility of the criminal justice system, the second of the financial administrative machinery. Prolonged failure in the performance of these two core functions condemns the state to anarchy and collapse. Should the political leadership undermine the ability of law enforcement and tax collection to function, or lack the moral and intellectual capacity to supervise the servants of the state, conditions will deteriorate rapidly. And that is exactly what has happened to us.

Rathore says in the absence of a strong, enlightened and rational directing impulse from above, the full predatory potential of the state is in time unleashed on society, which in turn becomes progressively more ungovernable. He says in order to get an idea of how the state called Pakistan has performed these two core functions, some recent events need to be looked at. He cites the repeated attacks on the gaslines connecting the Frontier and the Punjab to the gasfields of Baluchistan as an example of the dysfunctional state that we have become. The first attack, which took place near Kashmore on January 21, left a crater 25 feet deep and 50 feet across. The repair work was undone by further assaults a few days later. He estimates that in the past two years, as many as 29 attacks have been carried out against pipelines. This inter-tribal conflict has caused immense disruption to economic life in the Punjab and the NWFP. It has also gravely undermined the structure of the state and its ability to govern and implement its laws.

Rathore’s second example comes from Multan. On New Year’s Eve 2003 the local police, animated by Islamic fervour, imposed a 10 pm curfew on the city. It also forced hotels and restaurants to close down, while it roughed up those celebrating the in-coming year. The police’s piety-dripping efforts were augmented by club-wielding members of religious parties and groups who offered “ shukrana” or thanksgiving prayers to God for this great victory against Satan and his followers. In Dera Ghazi Khan, Rathore says, a PTCL employee who had disconnected the phone of a major for non-payment was picked up by the officer, taken to his office and roughed up. The PTCL employees fought back by rendering the entire phone exchange inoperative.

Rathore says both the prime minister and the Punjab chief minister have called for the reform of the police and its “depoliticisation”. This is confirmation at the highest level of what the average citizen has known and suffered under for years. The police are neither oriented towards public service, nor are they impartial. So much for the police, he argues. But what about the judiciary, the other component of the criminal justice system? What confidence can the public have in the higher judiciary when the Lahore High Court held last June that President Musharraf’s uniform was not unconstitutional? The war in which the judiciary and the legal profession now find themselves locked is both shocking and unprecedented. If the Supreme Court’s doors can be shut in the face of lawyers, as happened in Islamabad recently, then no one can any longer pretend that lawyers are officers of the court.

Rathore paints a dismal picture of tax collection and the agencies assigned that responsibility. The Central Board of Revenue itself conceded in July 2000 that fraud is committed by department officials by not reporting the amount of tax owed and by sending fake demand notices to taxpayers. The more tax increases are introduced, the greater is the level of injustice and the more ungovernable the country becomes. Rathore points out that since many of these taxes are imposed arbitrarily and often at the instance of international donors, the feeling of injustice felt by the citizens is heightened.

My friend, the only thinking policeman in Pakistan apart from the late AB Awan, makes three keen observations. First, state functionaries are not secure against abuse by their military counterparts; second, the understanding of governance displayed by the political leadership is extremely limited; and, third, the state is unable to protect its most valuable assets from criminal assault by freebooters and the mafiosi. He also believes that the decision-making process in Pakistan contains little or no reference to law or the constitution, both of which are manipulated at will. He concludes that the Pakistani state behaves like a mafia riven by internal feuds. Such behaviour is suicidal, he adds. He scoffs at indoctrinated approaches coupled with a parroting of the latest American-learnt jargon. The fact is that the state of Pakistan today is unable to exercise power in a rational, predictable, effective and humane manner. He has nothing but contempt for what he calls jargon-ridden seminars and mantra-dominated reports and publications.

Rathore, a great Anglophile (and whom I keep reminding that the Brits are not coming back, alas), points out that the British did not and could not transform India into a replica of their homeland. What they did was reduce the level of despotic power exercised by the state. They provided state officials with security against arbitrary removal and transfer, introduced the concept of private property, justiciable rights and set up a predictable system of civil service recruitment. The failure of democracy to take root in Pakistan, he maintains, stems from an all too brief Westernisation experience and the relentless assault to which the philosophical, legal and administrative foundations of the state have been subjected since the fatal passage of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949.

All this, of course, is of no consequence since the BMA rule and God has no interest in these mundane matters. BMA, I may add, is Rathore’s shorthand for our Bahadur Mussalah Afwaj.

Not exactly fear and trembling but a deep sense of unease grips anyone with a Muslim name and a ‘Middle Eastern look’ who arrives at an American port of entry. This country has been hijacked by the mother of US government departments, the Department of Homeland Security. The Department is answerable to no one, except perhaps God and that too because it is led by reborn Christians and those who believe, starting with the man who heads it and his boss in the White House, that they are doing God’s work. While no one knows when His kingdom will come, the kingdom of which John Ashcroft is king and sovereign has already arrived. Doubting Thomases can experience it in its full glory at any point of entry to the United States.

If you are boarding a flight from an American airport, checked baggage is no longer handed over to the airline’s counter with the ticket but lugged by you, the passenger, to a makeshift booth (at JFK New York at least) where you are asked to unlock whatever is locked. If you don’t, it will be done for you (the locks are not returnable, being trophies of some sort for Mr Ashcroft’s troopers).

If you answer to the description cited above, chances are that your bag will be opened and its contents carefully scrutinised. The Department is nothing if not thoughtful because it leaves a notice on top of your stuff captioned ‘Notification of Baggage Inspection ‘ (in red letters too) which gives you the happy news that your bag was ‘opened and physically inspected’ for ‘prohibited items’. Since even the worst excesses are fig-leafed by some law or the other, you may like to know that your bag was inspected under Section 110(b) of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001. Any questions?

On a three-week visit to Pakistan last month, boarding the PIA flight from New York was quite an adventure since not only was my single bag inspected for ‘prohibited items’ but I was also rather thoroughly searched. Shoes had to be taken off; the jacket had to be removed; and the belt had to be undone. Thereafter, something that looked like a Geiger counter was run over all mentionable and unmentionable parts and, finally, I was told, though it seemed not without a trace of disappointment in the agent’s voice, that I was free to go to the passengers’ lounge or wherever.

Arrivals at US ports are much more dicey. If you are the citizen of one of those 25 countries that have been singled out for special attention, you are photographed, fingerprinted, questioned, searched and, in case you make smart alecky or unhelpful answers, detained for further questioning. If you are holding American citizenship but have the wrong origin or name, chances of your being taken aside for special scrutiny are pretty good.

Your passport is slipped into either a green or a red plastic folder and you are marched, accompanied, to a special room which you find full of very morose looking people who do not appear to be greatly optimistic about their future or that of the universe. You are told to take a seat and you watch as your passport is examined in order to determine that it is not forged or stolen. You may also be asked any number of questions and told to show identity cards and even the credit cards that you might hold. If you are returned your passport and dismissed, I would not advise anyone asking why such special scrutiny was necessary in the first place.

Anyone who tells you that there is no racial or religious profiling at American ports of entry is reading too many government press releases. The Bush administration does not realise how much goodwill at home and abroad it has lost and continues to lose by such crass, poorly thought-out and zealously implemented practices.

Last month, Lt Gen Ali Jan Mohammad Orakzai, who commands 11 Corps in Peshawar, told a group of which I was a member, that he would never come to the United States again because last time he did that on an invitation from the US Army, at JFK, New York, he was made to take off his shoes, asked to carry them some distance and searched like a criminal. The General added that he was speaking on the record. This sort of thing obviously has to stop because it is ugly, unpleasant and by and large unnecessary. America must free itself of the siege mentality that has gripped it since 9/11.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Little of value is allowed to stand whole any longer. Old homes and buildings, built in happier, less frantic times, are torn down when with less effort they could have been reconstructed as they once were. I spent the better part of a late October morning driving around Lahore’s Model Town and gasped as I went past some of the monstrosities that had replaced the gracious homes that once stood there. Perhaps this was the only way: if there were a choice between demolishing things and rebuilding them, most of us would choose the easier and more brutal course.

In the West, the old is preserved and maintained with great care and much pride. We, being an older society with a longer and more eventful – though chequered – history, should have had greater reason to preserve what we once had. But we have not done that. The old has been allowed to perish or be vandalised, while its replacement is vulgar, extravagant or unimaginative.

This culture of indifference extends to people. Those who are gone are quickly forgotten. With the famous few, after the prime minister, the president and assorted worthies have expressed “shock” through cliché-studded newspaper statements, the departed is consigned to oblivion. Those who were once famous are seldom noticed, which is what makes the effort made some years ago by journalist and writer Munir Ahmed Munir to seek out faded film stars and record their memories so valuable.

The collection Out of date, first published in 1986, has been out of print for over a decade. My efforts to get hold of a copy only met success because I sought out Munir much as he had sought out film stars Meena Shorey (the Lara lappa girl), Najmul Hasan, Ragni, M Ajmal and Hasan Din, one of the last surviving actors from the silent movie era. Munir maintains a one-room office behind a row of shops on the Mall that overlooks the forlorn headquarters of the essentially fictional Awami Qiadat Party of Mirza Aslam Beg.

Munir pulled out for me, from a pile of files, papers and packets wrapped in plastic, a copy of Out of date, not a happy name. Only film star Ragni, one of the seven people Munir interviewed in the 1980s, is now alive. The rest are gone, including Mukhtar Begum, the flame of Agha Hashr, the Indian Shakespeare, and Farida Khanum’s older sister, though some still think she was her mother. The great virtue of Munir’s work is that he has reproduced exactly what he was told. He did not add a word of his own and he did not embellish or edit what had been said. Because of this, we hear the authentic voice of those he interviewed. Had it not been for this admirable effort, which he later expended on a number of politicians and political observers like Rao Rashid, we would have been deprived of these fascinating vignettes.

Meena, once the hippest girl in the Indian movie industry, was born in Raiwind in a small rural household. Her father, she told Munir, moved to Multan and after burning his boats there, back to Lahore. He lived a wayward life and beat his wife brutally. One of Meena’s sisters married and moved to Bombay, and she and her mother followed. Sohrab Modi at the time was looking for a young girl who could play the lead in Sikandar, Nasim, the most beautiful woman of her time, having walked out. The movie was an all-India hit and there was no looking back for Meena. Following independence, she moved to Lahore and made many films, but Lahore was not Bombay and Pakistan was not India. None of her marriages, except the one with Roop K Shorey, brought her any happiness. One of her Pakistani husbands, the B-grade actor Asad Bokhari, used to beat her as if it were part of his husbandly duties. Her last years were spent in poverty. She told Munir that she felt like a dried up tree in a grove of green saplings that everyone is out to chop down and burn.

Najmul Hasan, who died unsung in Lahore in 1980, was easily the most handsome actor of his time. He was studying law but did not finish and went to Bombay where Himansu Roy, founder of Bombay Talkies, persuaded him to become an actor. He was cast in the hit Jawani ki hawa. Roy’s wife, Devika Rani, who was related to Rabindranath Tagore, fell in love with Najmul Hasan and the two ran away, which many say brought on the heart attack that killed Roy. Najmul Hasan also had a roaring love affair with Jahanara Kajjan, another cinema beauty. He told Munir, “It is regrettable that our movie industry has failed to establish a fund for those who were once great and famous, men like Sadiq Ali, one of the renowned heroes of his time, who spent his last years begging.”

Another great figure was the director Luqman who ran off to Bombay to go into movies (where do young boys run off to these days, Mir Mohammad Ali of Sialkot used to ask). He was hired as a painter, then worked as a bit player, clapper boy, director’s assistant and, finally, a director of note, both in India and in Pakistan. He was Shaukat Hussain Rizvi’s assistant in Zeenat, a runaway success. The year was 1944. He recalled meeting the 18-year-old Bhutto on a movie set, because young Zulfi had a crush on Nargis. His older brother Imdad Ali Bhutto had married the actress Bibbo, who moved to Karachi after independence and was sometimes to be seen in the Central Hotel whose bar was the hangout of the painter Sadequain.

If only people would write or confide in those who write, we would have no need to read fiction because truth is stranger than fiction. Always.

In India, they call them NRIs, short for non-resident Indians, but since we only ape Indian movies and television shows, complete with their ‘Hinglish’ which becomes ‘Urdenglish’, we do not call ours NRPs. Exist they do, nevertheless, and in increasingly large numbers.

Some of our countrymen living in North America are like birds; they follow the sun. In winter, some of them fly to Pakistan for a couple of weeks of winter sun, servants, Food Street and the wedding season. If you meet a person who is hovering between a desi and a quasi-American accent, who is drinking bottled water (which has more germs than its poor cousin from the corporation tap) and flashing credit cards at establishments which prefer old-fashioned cash with the Quaid’s picture to plastic, you can indeed tell your friends that you have just met an NRP.

Doctors do very well in America. Some of them even do even better when they return home, defeating every sinister anti-Islam conspiracy with flying colours as the distinguished Punjab minister of health has recently demonstrated. Some, not yet fully satiated with the lucre they have fattened their bulging bank accounts with, join hands to set up private hospitals and state-of-the-art clinics for those who need their healing touch in the home country. Since it is American treatment their clients come for, it is only fair that they be made to pay American fees. There being no health insurance, public or private in Pakistan, the clients shoulder the entire cost of treatment in cold cash. Many go bankrupt in the process or fall under heavy debt, but why should they complain? They have had the best treatment money could buy and if, later, they are felled by a heart attack because of the crushing financial burden their cure has entailed, it is nobody’s fault. After all, they entered — or were carried to — that ‘Amreekan huspataal’ out of their free will.

Not of course all doctors who live or work here, or who have returned to Pakistan view making money as the sole object of their existence. Many have made admirable contributions to genuinely public-spirited causes, like basic healthcare and school education. But since the Pakistani elite as a rule has shown little regard for social responsibility, it is only natural that those who actually want to serve a good cause involving personal sacrifice, are viewed cynically. The fact is that there are exceptions. The number of those who do good is always small, even in affluent societies; in ours, it is abysmal.

We generally do not put our money where our mouth is because talk costs nothing. The expat community of Pakistani-Americans is today on trial because of General Pervez Musharraf’s decision that the old chancery building in Washington, a heritage property that can fetch millions, will not be sold but become the seat of the Pakistan Centre, to be named after the Quaid-e-Azam. Let’s see if the Pakistani-American community will rise to the challenge. So far, there is no such indication. Recently, one of our countrymen who has made good, reportedly blew over $100,000 over a wedding reception at a Washington hotel. How many schools could have been built with that for children back home, I could not help wondering?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

After I read in an Indian newspaper that Malika Pukhraj, one of the best known exponents of ghazal singing in pre-independence India, had written an account of her life published in India, I was both curious and surprised. Curious because I wanted to read what she had written, and surprised that she should get it published in India and not Pakistan.

I was interested in the book for two reasons close to my heart: music and Jammu, the latter being the city of which both Malika Pukhraj and I are natives. The book has been translated by one Saleem Kidwai from India (no Pakistani except her granddaughter appears to have been involved in the project). Whatever else Kidwai may be, a good translator he is not. Just one example will suffice. He translates tota chasham literally as “parrot-eyed”.

No autobiography can be entirely objective or truthful, but nothing can justify departure from known and established facts. The most troubling and inexplicable part of the book is its glorification of Maharaja Hari Singh, the man whose hands are soaked in the blood of the Muslims of Jammu, his innocent and law-abiding subjects. Practically the entire Muslim population of Jammu city and a good part of that in the province was slaughtered with the connivance, if not under the direct authority, of the Maharaja. From Jammu and its surrounding towns and villages, about 25,000 women were taken away, including the daughters of Chaudhri Hamidullah Khan, a front-rank Muslim leader, and of Chaudhri Ghulam Abbas. While the first was never found, the latter was returned to her family several years later owing to the efforts of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. Hari Singh’s name lives in infamy, but it is he and Malika Pukhraj’s late husband, Syed Shabbir Hussain Shah to whom the book is dedicated. Anyone interested in reading more about the persecution of the Muslims of Jammu should refer to M Yusuf Saraf’s authoritative two-volume history of the Kashmir freedom struggle.

Malika Pukhraj’s book is more about the Maharaja than about her. There is little in it about her music and the great singers and entertainers of that time. She also embellishes the history of her family and its origins. There should have been no shame in admitting that she came from a family of professional singers who resided in Jammu’s Urdu Bazaar. While it is true that she was one of those the Maharaja liked to listen to off and on, she vastly exaggerates her proximity to him and the influence she exercised on his person and his administration. She claims to have been summoned every evening to the palace where he heard her sing pahari airs. She says they used to cook together in the royal kitchen. She describes the coronation of Hari Singh in 1925 as is if she were sitting next to him through the ceremonies. This is both untrue and impossible.

The saddest and most regrettable part of her book is her demonisation of the revered Kashmiri leader Chaudhri Ghulam Abbas. She holds him responsible for anti-Hindu riots in Srinagar when there is absolutely no record of any such event. She says that but for Abbas, Hari Singh would have accepted all the demands made by the Muslims. This is arrant nonsense. She writes that Abbas “instigated the riots” because had Muslim grievances been dealt with by the Maharaja, Abbas’s “dreams of leadership would end”. She says that, unlike Abbas, Sheikh Abdullah (who sold his people down the river) was “greatly loved”. She writes that Abbas failed as a lawyer and inciting communal riots just before the Muslims were to meet the Maharaja was “part of his politics”. She then goes on to claim that “His Highness had decided to accept all the demands of the Muslims and by doing this he had already greatly displeased many of the Hindus”. This is horrendously untruthful.

My esteemed Jammu friend RU Rad, to whom I passed on Malika’s book, made a number of observations that I would like to share. He writes, “In 376 pages, not a single date or year is mentioned. One has no means of knowing when a particular incident took place. The style is naïve, the diction is weak and the translation is horrible. Her knowledge of the geography of the Punjab is very poor. While living in Lahore, she does not know that Aimanabad is closer to Gujranwala than it is to Wazirabad. Nor does she know the location of the game reserves where her husband is said to have hunted ‘crocodiles, tigers and leopards’ because there is no such hunter’s paradise in or around the Punjab.”

Rad points out that Malika Pukhraj has also misrepresented facts and made grave historical errors. “Everyone knows that the Kashmir territory was sold to Gulab Singh by the British after the Second Sikh War under the Treaty of Amritsar. But the author has rewritten history as, according to her, two Dogra youths from Jammu endeared themselves to Ranjit Singh because they killed a tiger against whom they had been pitched in an arena (like gladiators in pagan Rome) and he rewarded them with the kingdom of Jammu.”

Malika Pukhraj writes that the Maharaja said to her one day in Srinagar, “I will show you Nishat Bagh the way Noor Jehan saw it.” Surely the Maharaja was not so ignorant of history as to imagine that Noor Jehan saw a garden that had been laid by her son, Shah Jehan. She also offers the most fanciful explanation of why she left the state. She writes that those who were jealous of her for being the Maharaja’s favourite had spread the rumour that she wanted to poison him. Afraid that he might start believing them, she resigned her post (she says she was a gazetted officer) and left. This is strange, as everyone else in Jammu has quite a different explanation, a decidedly sleazier one at that.

One can go on and on, but less in this case is more.

Rush Limbaugh is America’s Big Mouth. This scourge of all men, ideas and things liberal has been spewing vitriol on talk radio for two decades. His show is broadcast by 600 stations across the nation and his fans and followers number over 20 million. He earns $200 million a year.

His show, interspersed with commercials, some of which he does in his booming voice, is broadcast most days of the week and is an unending harangue against the liberal victim or idea of the day. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Limbaugh, whom his fans calls Rush, attacked Clinton in the most lurid language, urging Congress to impeach him. Much to Rush’s regret, Clinton survived, but so sick was the president of the abuse thrown at him by Rush and his phone-in listeners, that he complained about it publicly, something sitting presidents seldom do. This gave Rush more ammunition to blacken Clinton and heap even more abuse on him.

Limbaugh’s views on the world beyond America can only be imagined. He never has a nice thing to say about any Third World country. If he had the power or the ability, he would just do away with all those teeming millions and their far-flung habitats whose capitals have unpronounceable names and whose languages do not sound like English.

Rush is a great favourite with the Bush family. The elder Bush as president invited him to spend a night at the White House and had the Lincoln room opened for him to sleep in. Could a greater insult have been done to Old Abe? I don’t think. Rush was the loudest, the most persistent advocate of invading Iraq and destroying Saddam Hussein and his regime. He celebrated that one-sided war as a great and glorious chapter in the nation’s book. The chosen target of this human rant-machine in days preceding the invasion was France because of the principled position it had taken in the Security Council. He insulted and abused everything French, including French fries, which are not French but American, someone should have told him. There are no French fries in France, only frites.

And now Bigmouth Rush is down. He who sat in judgment on everything and everyone who did not meet his approval is sprawled on the ground, flat on his face. He has confessed that he, Rush Limbaugh the Thundering Prophet of the Right, is hooked on pain-killing drugs. He has gone off the air and is in a rehab centre for a month. He has also confessed that he has been in rehab twice before with nothing to show for it. He got found out – to the great delight of his victims – when one of his former maids told a tabloid, in return for some greenbacks of course, that she had been procuring huge quantities of pain-killers for the great man for years. The quantities mentioned were mind-boggling. What was he doing with all that? It now turns out that this matter was under FBI investigation for more than a year though not a word of it leaked out.

The drug that Rush says he became addicted to because of his severe and chronic back pain is OxyContin, often called Hillbilly Heroin. Dr Drew Pinsky, an addiction specialist, told CNN that if Limbaugh is addicted to OxyContin, “We’re really talking about opiate addiction. The withdrawal is miserable and painful and it takes a long time to recover.” The disease is insidious, Pinsky said. “It’s a progressive disease, and when it progresses, the house of cards falls.” Still, he said, “I’ve seen miracle recoveries.”

In a 1995 interview, Limbaugh said that “too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river.” He may find that his advice is being finally taken. Limbaugh’s fans are known as ‘dittoheads’. Wrote Joe Conason in an online publication, “I hope he and his dittoheads might learn something from this and their hardhearted attitude might change as a result of seeing someone they care about in trouble.”

It also proves that the Biblical advice ‘judge not that ye not be judged’ remains as valid today as when it was given. I hope the pontificators of our Mullahdom learn something from Rush’s fall, adopt humility and refrain from sitting in judgment on the rest of us.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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