• Home
• About
• IN MEMORIAM 1934-2009
• Columns
• > Postcard USA
• > Private View
• Longer Pieces
• Books
• Photos
• Contact

Faiz Ahmed Faiz wanted to be a Test cricketer and his interest in the game did not wane with the years. He never became one, though in the early days of The Pakistan Times, which Faiz edited, he played more than one match. Padded up, all in white, he very much looked like a cricketer, as a photograph taken by Chacha FE Chaudhry (whose 95th birthday was celebrated in Lahore in March) shows. Pakistan was still in its first innocence, the fervour and idealism of independence lingering in the air and the locust of military rule that was to descend on the land soon – never really to leave – the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Pakistan was still trying to find its feet, still trying to deal with the devastating loss of first the Quaid-e-Azam, who lived to see Pakistan’s birth by the sheer power of his will, and Liaquat Ali Khan, his chosen deputy, murdered by men whose identity remains unknown to this day. There was much jockeying for position among politicians, it is true, some of whom changed parties with the same frequency they changed their undershirts, but had the process not been interrupted, it would have all eventually settled down. That, of course, was not to be. The man who some years later would turn himself into a field marshal without scoring a single victory, struck one night to “save the nation”, a blow from which the nation has yet to recover.

Faiz’s innings, in journalism and cricket, had ended earlier because of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, a “conspiracy” that when “unearthed” had long been abandoned. The men, some of them Pakistan’s finest soldiers, were guilty in thought at best, not in deed. Faiz once gave an interview to Anwar Maqsood Hameedi, conducted entirely in “cricket language”. Asked if he was afraid of fast bowling, Faiz said he had never worn a helmet. When reminded that he had had many opportunities to put one on, Faiz said, “Please don’t get it wrong: one is a different type of player.” Was he often out clean bowled? “Never,” Faiz answered. “Always caught, and always on the right side, since our left side was very powerful, which was why we tried to even hit balls pitched on our right to our left.” And why was the selection committee always against him? Because if the player himself is against the selection committee, there is nothing the committee can do. Was he a good fielder? “No, we let many fours go past us.” Why? “Because we do not know how to bend,” replied Faiz. Did he ever try his hand at bowling? “Yes, left arm googlies,” said Faiz.

Faiz was devastated by Bhutto’s execution. He was in the Soviet Union at the time. The USSR is, like him, no longer with us, but at least Faiz did not live to see it go; he died 20 years ago this year. His hosts broke the news of the execution to him late. Faiz was a man of few words, which would become even fewer when he was grieving. From Moscow he flew to London where I spent a good deal of time with him. The only thing he said about Bhutto’s execution was: “Not that he would do what one told him, but he was always there.” Faiz was also in London when Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabussum died in Lahore. He was not only Faiz’s teacher but also a friend. All Faiz said was: “One always sought Sufi sahib’s guidance, when in doubt. Whom does one go to now?”

Faiz left Pakistan in 1978 and lived in Beirut until 1984, travelling to various countries in between but always returning to the Lebanese capital. One of his books is dedicated to his friend Yasser Arafat. In Beirut he edited Lotus, the journal of the Afro-Asian Writers Association, published in English, French and Arabic. I translated a number of Urdu short stories for Lotus at his asking. I have three letters that he wrote to me from Beirut, two on the Lotus letterhead and one on his personal stationery, his address printed in green lettering: Post Office Box 135/430, Beirut, Lebanon. On January 19 (no year given), Faiz writes: “I am greatly saddened by events back home. The Soviet entry into Afghanistan reminds me of Iqbal’s line ‘Kal rwa rakhtay thay tum, jo mein rwa rakhta hoon aaj’ (What you considered legitimate yesterday, I consider legitimate today). In other words, the Americans think they have the right to kick hell thousands of miles from home wherever they wish, be it Korea or Vietnam, on the excuse that their interests are threatened. But when the Russians see the enemy at their doorstep, they are expected to remain quiet and do nothing. Sitting so far, one can perhaps say that their action is ill-advised, but what made them take that route, one cannot know. ‘Only the kings know what the secrets of empire are.’ Whatever it is, let us pray this catastrophe leaves us unscathed.” It did not, as time has shown.

In another letter sent on June 23, 1981, Faiz, just having turned seventy, writes, “In April, the Indians, determined to advertise our old age, invited us over. Lucknow, Allahabad, Bhopal, Bombay… we were made to sit through session after session where our praises were sung. In Delhi there was a virtual four-day ‘mela’. In Moscow and Pakistan, that sort of rumpus had already taken place. In Lahore, everyone associated with the celebration was nabbed. According to Shoaib Hashmi, when this troupe arrived at Kot Lakhpat jail, one of the inmates asked, ‘Which party?’ ‘Birthday party,’ Shoaib answered. While Shoaib, Mazhar, Tahira and Muhammad Ali (film star) were soon released, Abdulla Malik, Hamid Akhtar and Rehman continue to remain guests of the state. One hears they are in no particular hurry to go home.”

By 1981 I was in Vienna writing about oil and energy, not exactly my idea of thrilling work. When I told Faiz that I was missing all the action in London where an anti-Zia movement was raging, he wrote: “There is no need to have any regrets about ‘sitting it out’. From Moses to Marx to Lenin, each of these gents has done exactly that when forced by circumstance. There is no sense anyway in going out of one’s way to court trouble. When the Chinese still had their heads screwed on right, one of their seers told them, ‘When there is no space for doing politics, it is best to work hard, study hard and make friends.’”

He ended the letter with two verses that show his despair: “Deserted lie the scaffold, the mosque, the tavern. In whose care should we then place the burden of the world? Let’s go to the graves of our martyrs and sound the call to prayer. One of them may perhaps appear, tearing through his shroud.”

Maqtil mein na masjid na khrabaat mein koi:
Hum kis ki amanat mein gham-e-kar-e-jahan dayen.
Shai’d koi inn mein se kafan phaar ke niklay:
Ab jaayain shaheedoon ke mazaroon par azaan dain.

The other week Rao Rashid, who belongs to that small group of policemen whose courage and integrity has always been beyond question, wrote a letter entitled “Murder history” (TFT Apr 2-8). He pointed out that while we are magnanimous to a fault when writing obituaries, even if we have to murder history in the process, he had to take exception to the one published after the death of Ijaz Hussain Batalvi. Batalvi, he wrote, might have been an outstanding advocate, but it had to be asked why he made his “brilliant advocacy and professional competence” available to earn Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the death sentence Gen Zia-ul-Haq had already chosen for him. “Mr Batalvi was just a tool in the hands of a traitorous military junta and an unscrupulous judiciary,” wrote Rao Rashid.

What made Ijaz Batalvi become a part of what, from the very start, was a sinister plan conceived by the ruling junta? The initial investigation was done by the Federal Intelligence Agency’s Lahore office, then headed by Wajahat Latif. When Mr Bhutto’s High Court bail was cancelled under instructions from Rawalpindi, and he was brought to Lahore, it was Wajahat Latif who took him into custody. By that time, the wheels were turning and the decision to terminate Mr Bhutto’s life had been taken. It is a fact and any number of people who were on the inside then would testify today (were their conscience to catch up with them) that had the deposed prime minister been acquitted of the murder charge he would have been charged with another capital crime and then another and then another. The junta had made up its mind that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto would not walk out of jail alive.

When Ijaz Hussain Batalvi agreed to take the case against Mr Bhutto on behalf of the prosecution, it is not possible that he, as the most eminent murder lawyer at the Lahore bar, did not know that the dice was already loaded against Mr Bhutto. Sheikh Ijaz Ali, whom Gen Zia had personally approached earlier with the offer to prosecute the prime minister, refused that crown of thorns. The first man chosen as Mr Bhutto’s prosecutor was M Anwar who died suddenly. Next was Sheikh Ijaz Ali. After he declined, Batalvi was approached and he agreed and took MA Rehman as his advocate on record.

Some people said that Batalvi had taken the case because of the lure of money. The fees paid to the Batalvi team were said to be unprecedented in Pakistan’s judicial history, but I don’t think money was the motive. Batalvi had nothing personal against Mr Bhutto, but he was very bitter about the manner in which his best friend, Altaf Gauhar, had been treated. Gauhar had been jailed on false charges, kept in solitary confinement and released only when none of the charges against him could be sustained in court. Although later Gauhar and the family reconciled with Bhutto – and benefited from the truce in several ways – the fact is that Altaf Gauhar never forgave Mr Bhutto and got even when the time came by writing a nasty piece about him in The Guardian, just days before the prime minister’s execution.

Batalvi’s decision to take up the case against Mr Bhutto remains indefensible on professional and moral grounds. Batalvi also knew of the great animosity that existed between Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain and Mr Bhutto. The chief justice who presided imperiously over the bench that sentenced Mr Bhutto, referring throughout the trial to him as “the principal accused”, hated the prime minister because he had denied him the chief justiceship to which he was entitled because of his seniority. Batalvi knew that well. He also knew, being from Model Town where Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain also lived, that Nawab Mohammad Ahmed Khan, Ahmed Raza Kasuri’s murdered father, and the maulvi were close friends. Knowing all this, by appearing in the case, he compromised his legal and moral integrity.

Ijaz Hussain Batalvi was never the same man again. Although he never expressed regrets over his role in Bhutto’s unjust execution, even to his close friends, I have no doubt that a man of his artistic temperament and essential personal decencies must have carried it on his conscience. Before the Bhutto case overwhelmed Batalvi, he was one of the princes of Lahore’s intellectual life. A warm and wonderful friend, he was always full of good humour. Fond of his own voice, to a fault sometimes, he was invariably entertaining and his outlook on life and things in general was always robust. He had more than one life. His life as a lawyer had its own dynamics and its own circle, among which there were such grand and upright men as Sardar Zafarullah who had the courage to stand up in a public meeting in Lahore and criticise Ayub Khan at the height of his power in 1964. Ijaz’s other life was literary. He was one of the stars of the Halqa Arbab-e-Zauq and had most of his time not been taken up by law, he would have been a major figure of literature. He was a charmer when it came to women, with a harmlessly flirtatious manner which flattered and delighted them.

During the 1980s, on a visit to Delhi, I met LK Malhotra, one of Ijaz’s close friends from his Government College days. He asked me as we sat sharing a drink at India International Centre whether I knew Ijaz. “Yes,” I replied, “but since the Bhutto execution, I don’t feel the same way about him.” LK (as he was known to everyone in Delhi) became reflective. “I know,” he said. “I ask myself why Ijaz did it. All right, a lawyer is a lawyer, but he wasn’t the only lawyer in Lahore.” LK also gave me a note for Ijaz which he wrote in Urdu on a stray piece of paper. It said: “Dear Ijaz, it seems our stars are not destined to meet over the skies of Delhi. May be they are not destined to meet at all.”

That turned out to be true. They were not destined to meet under the stars that shine over this earth, but if there is a hereafter, there can be little doubt that the two spend many evenings together, drinking whatever there is to drink on the other side.

One of the most incandescent writers of the English language in daily journalism which she practised with great style, humour, good taste and compassion is gone. Mary McGrory died in Washington last week at the age of 85. Her passing is being mourned as if she were a queen — which she was, more than any queen can ever be.

She burst on the journalism scene during the McCarthy witch-hunt of communists and supposed communists in government and elsewhere, including show business and Hollywood. She was 35-years-old and had just been hired by Washington Star which no longer exists. She stayed with the paper, even when she had become a nationally syndicated columnist and won the Pulitzer Prize until it closed. Her next stop was Washington Post for which she wrote until felled by a stroke last year. It would do our column writers a world of good to know that Ms McGrory never wrote more than 800 words, each word perfect in its place and conveying what takes everyone else a paragraph.

The New York Times in a handsome tribute published Friday said of her, “The nation has lost one of its purest witnesses ever to plumb Washington’s daily grab bag of human frailties and glories … Her honours included a Pulitzer Prize and the No. 20 position on Nixon’s enemies list … The mischief, the grandeur, the evil in public life stand as the narrative core of her work.” She loved Jane Austen and her informing principle, like hers, was civility and kindness even when she was taking the mickey out of someone.

When Kennedy died, she wrote, “The only time I ever heard him brag was about the White House garden.” A life-long liberal, she wrote of Nixon’s last state of the union address, “The sound of hissing was heard in the chamber, a historic first, and it came from people who by this time had wearied of the travesty. The Republicans gave him a standing ovation. If it wasn’t his swan song, it was theirs.” Of George Bush the elder she said, “I know George Bush has succeeded in making the word (liberal) so vile that I wouldn’t be surprised to see some urchin with the ‘L-word’ banded on the sheet show up along with the Halloween hobgoblins, witches and Draculas.” When she bought a Mercedes-Benz she wrote, “When I start the motor, I get the feeling that I have activated a company of Teutonic knights, with spears atrembling and shields at the ready. I say, ‘Hey, guys, cool it. We’re just going down to the paper’.”

When President Bush scampered out of Washington secretly on the day of the 9/11 attacks, Ms McGrory wrote, “He allowed himself to be hauled about the country like a fugitive to bunkers at air bases in Louisiana and Nebraska … Bush said the attack was a ‘test’ for the country. It was also one for him. He flunked.”

The only time she disappointed her loyal friends and readers on the left was when she expressed satisfaction with Colin Powell’s speech before the UN last February. She wrote that he had convinced her that war may be the only way to stop a “fiend”. A month later, she apologised. “I did not make it clear enough that while I believed what Colin Powell told me about Saddam Hussein’s poison collection, I was not convinced that war was the answer. I failed as a writer to take time to make myself clear … I hope now that all is forgiven and I can come home again.”

Her last column appeared on 16 March 2003. Taking off from the phrase “shock and awe” that Bush and his men were promising the Iraqis, she wrote, “Spring has a little shock and awe up her sleeve, too. Always does. The slopes off Rock Creek Parkway will soon be carpeted with daffodils. The crocuses and hyacinths will perfume the air. Wait until the stand of azaleas starts blazing along Klingle Road. Spring really is inevitable.”

I am glad I met her once at a reception arranged by Maleeha Lodhi at her residence. We exchanged a few words as I shook her hand, but what they were, I do not remember.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

It is now customary in Pakistan to begin every event with recitation of verses from the Quran and to start every speech, even on the least elevating subject, by invoking the name of the Creator, “the most benevolent, the most merciful”. At some events, the recitation from the holy book is followed by a na’at, sung without instrumental accompaniment, something I fail to understand. If singing is not sinful, otherwise the na’atwould be declaimed or intoned, not sung, why are musical instruments considered unacceptable? Official stationery also bears the kalima, as does the building where the National Assembly is housed. A stranger would take it to be a seminary, unless told otherwise, because nowhere is the building identified as the seat of the national legislature.

These marks of what is considered piety and the ascendancy of the faith had no publicly-expressed affirmation until the catastrophic arrival of Gen Zia-ul-Haq on the scene. He even rewrote the Quaid-e-Azam’s great slogan ‘Unity, faith, discipline’ by reversing the order to make it read ‘Faith, unity, discipline’. This editing of the Quaid’s rallying call to the Muslims of India was ordered under the quite mistaken belief that by ‘faith’ the Quaid had meant Islam. In Zia-ul-Haq’s limited village pesh imam understanding, it was sacrilegious to accord second place to Islam and first to unity. He did not know that by ‘faith’ the Quaid had meant reliance and trust and belief in one’s mission. Had he meant Islam he would have said so, because he always said what he meant and meant what he said, something that lies interred with him in the earth of the city where he was born.

Zia-ul-Haq’s understanding of Islam and its history was simplistic and no deeper than one would expect of a lay rural preacher. He had no clear concept of an Islamic state, nor of the powerful political and spiritual currents that have shaped the Islamic ethos. His favourite word “Islamisation” was an insult to both Islam and Muslims. He spoke of adal-au-ehsan and rizq-e-halal and taqwa but his conduct as the ruthless military ruler of Pakistan for eleven long, dark years negated every fundamental Islamic value. He did not promote religion but religiosity. I have a letter that Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote to me from Beirut where he then was, living in exile as editor of a quarterly journal called Lotus. I had written to him about Zia and the great harm he was doing to Islam. Faiz had answered, “Neither military rule is our destiny, nor do people want it to be so. Islam is not an impediment in the way of progress. One should distinguish between appearance and reality.”

Zia-ul-Haq is long gone but a good deal of what he left behind has stayed, spearheaded by the armed mullah and his fake, piety-ridden, retrogressive and distortion-ridden version of religion that preaches hate instead of love and violence instead of peace. The trappings of religion have taken the place of religion and few have the courage to stand up and say so. One person who did so – and in America of all places where no martial law has ever been declared and no Zia-ul-Haq has ever ruled – is in trouble with the community of the faithful.

Syed Nadeem Ahsan, editor of the journal of the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA), was forced to resign recently for writing an editorial titled ‘APPNA’s God’ in which he argued for doing away with the practice of reciting the Quran at the beginning of APPNA-sponsored events on the ground that APPNA was a secular organisation, incorporated in a secular country and not all of its members were Muslim. He wondered how we would feel if symbols of Christianity began to be openly displayed on public buildings in the United States. This well-argued suggestion triggered an uproar among the members of the largest and oldest organisation of Pakistani physicians in America and Canada whose annual conference attracts thousands.

Kalim Irfani, an APPNA member, told me: “I have been a witness to the ‘desecularisation’ of the association during the Zia era (such as the last-minute cancellation of a scheduled and paid-for music programme which was part of the annual banquet in Islamabad) followed by the creeping Talibanisation of our scientific sessions in more recent years.”

Azhar Shaheryar, one of the members who was not swayed by the tirades that followed the publication of what many considered a sacrilegious piece of writing, said: “Muslims must and will emerge into modernity but only after a lot more evolution – and I am afraid a lot more spilt blood, mostly self-inflicted. If we look around, we see that the recent history of Muslims has been shaped more often than not by liberal-thinking men and women like the Quaid-e-Azam, Allama Iqbal, Ataturk, and Syed Ahmed Khan (who was dubbed a ‘kafir’ by the Islamists of his time).” He argued that some of these great men may have had flaws, but “they understood modernity and used its tools to give a fighting chance to their struggling people.” These men had the right ideas and equipped with a strong and indomitable will, they put their progressive ideas in the service of their people “In modern times, it is secular people like Asma Jehangir and Abdul Sattar Edhi who are performing admirable service to the causes they have devoted themselves to,” he added.

Shaheryar pointed out that any combination of religion with the secular issues of education, governance, individual rights, justice, etc, only opens the door for tyranny and repression. The Europeans realised that after centuries of tearing each other apart. The Muslims have a choice; they can wander for another millennium butchering and suppressing each other or they can try to follow the successful example of the West: reform, modernise and take religion out of politics. He wrote, “How will modernisation come? Softly and without struggle or otherwise? That’s not in our control. What is in our control is the clarity of our vision that we bring to inform our actions. We can see clearly that there is no way out but to modernise. The journey may be long, ugly and bloody, but our destination should never be in doubt. We shall emerge into modernity and we shall provide a more hopeful future for Muslim societies.”

Syed Nadeem Ahsan was moved by his friend’s message and wrote: “‘APPNA’s God’ has generated much rancour and more debate than any other article published recently in the APPNA Journal. Unfortunately, very little of what’s been said and written actually addresses the point that the editorial and the editorialist were trying to make. While the thrust of the article was to try and hold up a mirror to our less-than-pristine faces, all that’s been accomplished has been the strengthening of the resolve of the more conservatively inclined. Sadly, this is another battle that the reformists are not winning. The absence of centralisation of religious authority in Islam is not helping our collective cause either. With the political leadership of almost every Islamic community made up of self-serving, horrifically despotic oligarchies, there is no one to help guide the Ummah towards modernity and its associated liberal values. The onus, therefore, is on Muslim individuals to throw up a new, more representative leadership that would redefine Islam to conform to the modern notions of freedom and progress. But this is not happening. I am no longer the editor of the journal, which is now squarely in the hands of the obscurantists. With my last editorial serving as the proverbial straw, my ouster was inevitable, for I have always wielded a liberal pen and this is not the best way of ingratiating oneself with the larger group of Muslim Pakistanis.”

This, I add, is your correspondent reporting on the state of the Ummah in the United States. Pass me the sick bag, Mickey.

Tanks don’t think. They just roll forward and flatten everything in front. In Washington, one thing I have not seen is tanks, but that has been more than made up for by the abundance of think tanks that mushroom in the better quarters of the District of Columbia, parts of which you should only walk at night if you have commando training.

In Pakistan, when someone retires from public service, unless he has an uncle or a cousin in the right niche, the rest of his days on earth are spent trying to pay his bills, tracing his lost pension papers, running after taxis that do not stop and taking walks, one of the more reliable ways of getting hit by a thundering four-wheeler that, more likely than not, has been smuggled from our wild Islamic Northwest.

In Washington, people of ability and experience are not thrown on the slag heap, but offered positions in one think tank or the other, unless they prefer to sit in a gently rocking boat in the middle of a placid lake or on the bank of a stream, waiting for some luckless fish to bite what looks like a toothsome morsel of raw herring but, in fact, is a mean mini-harpoon. Judging by the number of fish that get caught, it can be safely deduced that this particular creation of God needs help in the brain department.

There is a think tank in Washington for anything and everything. Some of them have more money than a dozen African countries put together. They have all kinds of fellows, some senior, some not so senior, some in the visiting category, others of the resident type aka permanent fixtures, who sit in their individual cubicles to spin out learned theses on the problems of the world.

They hold conferences and seminars, undertake ambitious studies, both at home and abroad, offer grants and scholarships, and circulate and publish the fruits of the intellectual labours of their alumni. It is to be assumed that the federal government and its agencies make it a point to remain informed of the work that goes on in these think tanks. Some of the studies may even be sponsored or initiated by official or quasi-official quarters, including the nine or ten intelligence outfits that we know about. Those we don’t know about, we don’t know about, but there can be no doubt that they exist.

What it is impossible to understand is why the government of the United States repeatedly makes wrong, often disastrous decisions when it has the benefit of receiving massive amounts of intelligence, the intellectual product of dozens of highly competent think tanks, the research produced at the nation’s universities and institutes, the assessments of its home-based civil servants, the recommendations of its diplomats scattered around the world, the advice of its allies, the opinion of newspapers and journals published in this country and abroad, and, above all, information produced by the state-of-the-art computing and technological facilities, on ground and in the stratosphere.

Take the decision to invade Iraq. It was a disaster and with each day that passes the situation gets worse. Vietnam, Iraq may not be — though the fact that it is being compared with Vietnam is significant and sobering — but a catastrophe it is rapidly turning into. Six hundred young Americans have died. Why? What for?

Thousands of Iraqis have been killed. No number has ever been provided by the government, though it must have a fairly good idea of how many have perished. Those who were killed were mostly civilians who had nothing to do with war and who could not be held accountable for Saddam Hussein’s misdeeds.

The question every sensible American must ask himself is this: why does the best informed, the best briefed, the best equipped, the best positioned government in the world, time after time, take decisions that any half-wit would have seen to be wrong. Perhaps a new think tank should be established to work this one out.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

That India has arrived in this city and indeed in this country, and in a big way too, can only be ignored by those who to this day think that everything bad that has happened to Pakistan since independence, including the massive defeat in the first test against India at Multan, was the outcome of a conspiracy. Since they are happy in that pink cocoon, it is best to leave them there. For those who have their feet on the ground and who don’t inhabit cuckooland, the way India and all things Indian are marching ahead should be sobering.

The other day, by way of more evidence of India’s growing clout in America, it was announced here that an India caucus was to be established in the US Senate with Hillary Rodham Clinton as co-chairman. Mrs Clinton, one should add, many Pakistanis claim is one of their great supporters. I recall attending a glittering fund-raising event organised at his large home by a Pakistani doctor who has done well for himself both here and in Pakistan.

Why funds should be raised for Mrs Clinton in a Maryland suburb when she was running from New York for the Senate, it is hard to understand. Mrs Clinton some days later returned the money contributed by a Pakistani group as she wanted to have nothing to do with ‘sponsors of Islamic terrorism’. No Indian has had his money returned, either by Mrs Clinton or by another American politico.

The Senate caucus — the first for any country as far as I know — will include such heavyweights as Sen Ted Kennedy, Sen Joe Lieberman, Sen Paul Sarbanes, Sen John Cornyn and Sen Barbara Mikulski. The announcement came at the annual dinner of the American Physicians of Indian Origin, an increasingly influential lobbying group, active both on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch of the government, including the White House. And what do our physicians do? They open hospitals in Pakistan for the elites.

I read in the papers that a Pakistani-American business delegation was home recently where its members broke bread with no less than His Heaviness in person (which also shows how much serious work the ‘elected prime minister’ has). I will urge Humayun Akhtar Khan to do a bit of tabulation after a few months to verify how much trade for Pakistan was generated by these distinguished gentlemen. Their declarations as to what they were going to achieve for the country may kindly be referred to while undertaking the exercise. I promise him that thereafter he will have no difficulty understanding what the expression ‘yawning chasm’ means.

But I stray. I want to write about our friends, the Indians settled in America. They are everywhere. Their hold over the technology industry is now old, very old, news. Some of the top business executives here are Indian, such as the head honcho at Pepsi Cola. Too boot, she is a woman, which should make all Pakistanis feel even more insecure. No major American newspaper or TV network is without its Indian-Americans, some of them star performers like Rajiv Chandrasekaran of Washington Post, now in Baghdad.

One of National Public Radio’s principle newsreaders is an Indian, so is one of the presenters of a major TV channel. One of the hottest movie directors in Hollywood, Night Shyamala, is an Indian. In a week or two, Broadway will see the resplendent opening of what could turn out to be runaway musical, namely Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Bombay Dreams with music by AR Rahman and an all-Indian cast.

I am not suggesting that we should match India run by run, they being a bigger country and there being more Indians here than Pakistanis, but even in proportionate terms, Pakistanis have failed to match their rhetoric with their performance. They say in America: money walks while BS talks. If you want to test the truth of this bit of unprintable folk wisdom, all you have to do is fly into New York — provided you are not arrested by Homeland Security or sent to Guantanamo Bay or Karachi — and see it enacted in life.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The other day Strobe Talbot, the number two man at the State Department during the Clinton presidency, said at a meeting in Washington that the only solution to the Kashmir problem was division along the Line of Control. He said that was both his private and his public view, and obviously one he had held while in government. My years in Washington have taught me that in certain matters there is bipartisan consensus which, though not publicly acknowledged, remains effectively in place.

Talbot is no longer in government but there can be little doubt that the Bush administration also believes that a division along the LoC is the “only” Kashmir solution. This is regrettable, as most real politick is. Talbot did not say on the basis of what principal his formula was conceived, nor what the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir tragedy were, nor what (if any) role there was for the people of Kashmir to play in their eventual fate. All he said was that the settlement of the Kashmir dispute lay in the acceptance of the LoC as a line of permanence. It can be assumed – and there have been repeated indications of it – that President Bush and his band of advisers are in agreement with Talbot.

The question is: have the present rulers of Pakistan also come round to this solution? In Talbot’s words, whereas in the past Pakistan rejected such a view, “that may not still be true. Who knows if Musharraf backs away”! One can only hope Talbot’s hopefulness on this issue is misplaced and Gen Musharraf will not back away, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors between the two countries? When Gen Musharraf said that Pakistan could move away from the Security Council resolutions on Kashmir, he took everyone by surprise. One should remember that in certain matters it is very difficult for countries, no less than for individuals, to go back on their words.

The American position on Kashmir has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. It is sobering to remind oneself that it was less than 10 years ago when Robin Raphel, then responsible for South Asian affairs at the State Department, questioned the validity of the instrument of accession India claims as the legal basis of its annexation of Kashmir. I was present at the press conference where she said that. The official American position until the Kargil fiasco was that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir was “disputed” territory and its future was to be decided by India and Pakistan in accordance with the wishes of the people of the state. No longer will you hear such a formulation from the lips of an American official. If one event can be said to have sealed the fate of Kashmir for Pakistan, it was the mindless, and politically and militarily disastrous, Kargil misadventure. The unravelling of the original principled Pakistani position on Kashmir started with the catastrophic decision in Islamabad to aid and promote armed intervention on jihadi lines in Indian-occupied areas. This short-sighted policy shift turned what until then had been a democratic struggle for self-determination into violence and terrorism. I wonder whom history will hold responsible for the deaths of thousands of Kashmiris after 1989: India or Pakistan?

The shift in the American position on Kashmir makes me want to recall the role played by the great powers in Kashmir. M Yusuf Buch, the greatest living authority on Kashmir, whose knowledge, intellectual honesty and understanding of this question no one I know can match, has written that lapse of British supremacy in 1947 should have meant discontinuance of the maharaja’s rule, since the ruling Dogra dynasty had been installed by the British. He observed wryly, “That India with a straight face derived its claim to Kashmir from nothing but an act of rulership which it knew to be illegitimate shows the topsy-turvy character of the dispensation imposed on Kashmir.” He pointed out that the Soviet stand on Kashmir at the Security Council remained neutral in effect up to 1958, although Moscow backed Indian occupation, with Khrushchev and Bulganin going to Kashmir in 1955 despite Pakistan’s plea that they stay away. However, Moscow did not veto the two 1957 Security Council resolutions that invalidated the endorsement of the state’s accession to India by the Constituent Assembly in Srinagar. Ayub’s thoughtless reference in 1959 to “danger from the North” finally ended Moscow’s flexible attitude to Kashmir. The high point of US concern came in 1958 when Eisenhower said, “I’d be ready to welcome and entertain the prime ministers (of India and Pakistan) simultaneously. I would even go out there.”

Nehru rejected Eisenhower’s offer. “This was the stage at which Western diplomats began to counsel bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan – which was, and is to this day, diplomatic code for letting the Kashmir issue remain unresolved,” wrote Buch. Between 1958 and 1966 the Soviet attitude hardened while US support to Pakistan on Kashmir weakened. The Indo-Chinese war in 1962, a great opportunity for Pakistan, was frittered away by Ayub, succumbing to Anglo-American pressure. Private assurances were conveyed to Nehru that Pakistan would not take advantage of the position. “This removed the one element in the whole situation which could have compelled India’s willingness to accept a fair settlement of the Kashmir dispute,” according to Buch. The sop for Pakistan was the US-staged Bhutto-Swarn Singh talks that ran into six rounds and ended without agreement. Washington moved to the sidelines and refused to put any pressure on India to soften its increasingly hardening position.

Tashkent defused the Kashmir issue to the delight of India. With Tashkent, the US ceded ground to the Soviet Union and washed its hands of any future role in Kashmir. Earlier, Johnson had told Ayub: “Get it (Kashmir) out of your system.” Buch argued that the US is a “status quo power” and views with suspicion any movement that seeks to change an existing dispensation, unless that change is seen as serving the American interest. It is motivated into action only when its own or Western interests are challenged. Buch wrote: “With the marginalisation of the UN, there is now no centre of reflection, no non-academic place, no matter how messy, where the long view can be developed. In the sphere of international relations … justice loses not only its obligatory character but also its relevance, if the small space that has been created for it is not scrupulously guarded.”

I can only add that those who once guarded that “small space” are now foot soldiers in the “war against terrorism”.

Until recently, one of mankind’s current obsessions was unknown to most of its members, except doctors here and there whose findings remained confined to medical journals or papers read at erudite congresses. However, knowledge like murder must one day out and so there we have it, a world where people are less worried about where their next meal is coming from than what their cholesterol count is. Ignorance, it has been said, is bliss and so it is. Wasn’t the world a better place and people far less worried about how well or unwell they were before they were felled by what can only be called cholesterol consciousness?

These days, it is not uncommon to have two friends meeting after years asking each other what the other’s cholesterol count is. Pakistan is no exception. The chattering classes are especially adept at the cholesterol game, as they are at most others that do not involve their doing anything for anybody except themselves or their first cousins. Its well-heeled members, half of whose life is spent trying to fatten their bank accounts and tyrannising household help, have for some years been worried about their cholesterol which is good news for doctors who will bill their own mothers as long as they could be assured that nobody would ever know.

I am not an inventor but I claim copyright for inventing the word ‘cholesterati’ some years ago after looking at a picture in a newspaper that showed eight leading lights of the Pakistan Muslim League, the once and forever king’s party, their arms raised high over their heads and their rounded bellies jutting out at least 30 inches in front of where they should have been in a fitter world. One look at these rotund gentlemen and I knew that none of them was likely to make the next Olympic squad despite their high connections.

Others have their glitterati; we have our cholesterati. Others set up workout gyms; we lay out Food Streets. If I were Gen. Pervez Musharraf, I would seriously consider adopting the Lahori slogan ‘Khao piyoo te jaan banao’ (eat, drink and fatten up) as the nation’s battle cry in the 21st century.

In America, cholesterol and what to do about it is serious business. This is the most health conscious and also the most obese nation in the world. In most American restaurants, it is not possible to finish the meal you have been served except by brute physical will, as the late Prof. Eric Cyprian once put it. Obesity or the state of being fat has now been declared here as the nation’s number one health concern.

Not all fat people are high in cholesterol, but they are more likely to be so, compared to their leaner brothers and sisters. The winners in this game, as always, are not so much those in need of chemical rebalancing but the drug manufacturing companies. A massive advertising campaign costing more money in one year than Pakistan will spend in decades on opening new schools has been bombarding American viewers and newspaper readers with claims of the miraculous powers of a certain cholesterol-lowering drug. The message seems to be this: lower your cholesterol and proceed to conquer the world. That of course, like all advertising, is baloney.

But what is good and bad cholesterol? That is a question which is causing much confusion here these days, advertisers notwithstanding. A major cholesterol study released in March shows, according to Don Campbell writing in USA Today March 29, “It’s clear the medical profession is even more confused than I am.” While the study found that LDL or ‘the bad cholesterol’ should be lowered and balanced against higher HDL or ‘the good cholesterol’, a couple of days later another report found that HDL shouldn’t be counted upon to offset LDL.

One cardiologist said, “There is so much confusion about this that it is unbelievable.” Meanwhile, they keep lowering the cholesterol bar which now stands at 175, or miles higher than where most people are. The bad cholesterol, it is recommended, should be below 100 which means that this year 25 million more Americans will go on statins, or cholesterol-lowering drugs, their pack leader being one called Lipitor which already has a $22 billion market in this country.

Don Campbell who wrote the USA Today article has a sister whose cholesterol count is in the 300s. After she was put on statins by her doctor, she felt so bad that she did not want to get out of bed in the morning. So one day she declared that she had had enough of experimentation with C-lowering drugs. “I’m going to live my life. I’m going to drink as many chocolate milkshakes as I please. And I’m going to die happy,” she declared for the benefit of her doctor, friends and family.

Food Street, Lahore, therefore, can continue in business with a clear conscience. After all there was life before cholesterol and there will be life after cholesterol. Pass me on those fried trotters, Mickey and dish of brain masala.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

In Pakistan, few people seem to be interested in facts. Most of us have our version of events which reflects opinion rather than reality. Some of the confusion that prevails in our country is a by-product of this convoluted thinking. There is also much myth-making and what is astonishing is that there should be myths even about events that are part of living memory. This is one reason there is no agreed version of either history or politics. To this day, over six decades after the passage of the Pakistan Resolution in Lahore, there is still a debate going on as to why Pakistan was demanded and what brought it into being. Since most of us already believe that our version of history is correct and all other versions are not only wrong but possibly unpatriotic, if not downright treacherous, it is only natural that almost all discussions involving history and politics should become shouting and slanging matches.

I have written this long preamble to distinguish between Chaudhry Rehmat Ali as he was and as some imagine him to have been. Recently Ihsan Aslam, who lives in Cambridge and in his own words is “interested in biography and history” (he also writes periodically for Daily Times), wrote: “With the passage of … time, it seems that the contributions of the likes of Rehmat Ali have been obliterated from Pakistan’s history. Pakistan chooses to forget its national heroes, or turns heroes into zeroes, but Cambridge remembers.” A meeting held there recently to pay homage to the man who is said to have coined the name Pakistan also credited Rehmat Ali with having championed the Kashmir cause after independence (though of that there is no record). Aslam Khattak, Rehmat Ali’s contemporary at Cambridge, has repeatedly rejected Rehmat Ali as the man who invented the name Pakistan, insisting that it was he and not him who thought it up.

My theory that what appears in newspapers has little lasting effect is once again proved considering that what I am about to write, I have written on at least two occasions in the past. It is obvious that those who are celebrating Chaudhry Rehmat Ali as a great and unsung hero whom the country he helped create has failed to honour, do not allow facts to stand in the way of their imagination. So let me make another attempt at setting straight the record. In 1933, Rehmat Ali wrote a pamphlet called Now or Never; it bore three signatures, one of the signatories being Aslam Khattak. He criticised Iqbal for proposing an Indian federation in which the Muslims would be a minority. He castigated other Muslim leaders whom he called camp followers of British imperialism and blind imitators of Congress who had placed the Muslims at the mercy of British imperialism and caste Hindu nationalism. Since all Muslim leaders had failed, he wrote, “Allah has assigned that fateful task to me, that He commanded me to do it; that He wanted me to challenge the might, to oppose the Indian federation, to propose the Islamic federation.” He called his mission divinely inspired.

Rehmat Ali’s concept of Pakistan was nebulous, impractical and fantasy-ridden. It was to include the entire northwest of India, Kashmir, the Kathiawar peninsula, Kutch, several enclaves deep within UP, including Delhi and Lucknow. There were to be two independent Muslim states besides Pakistan: Bangistan comprising Bengal and Assam in the east and Osmanistan in the south. These two were to form a federation with Pakistan. The 243 principalities or Rajwaras were to be divided among caste Hindus and “others” and then herded together in a ghetto called Hanoodia. As for the Sikhs, they were to be pushed into an enclave called Sikhia. Other races and religions were to inhabit an encampment by the name of Hanadika. Every non-Muslim was to remain subservient to the master race he called “The Paks”. And yes, the subcontinent was to be renamed Dinia. He did not say how he was going to bring all that about.

Exactly six days after the Muslim League’s acceptance of the June 3 Plan in 1947, Rehmat Ali denounced the Quaid-e-Azam in venomous language. Ten weeks later, he published a pamphlet called The Greatest Betrayal condemning the Quaid and the League for having written “the most shameful and treacherous chapter” in Muslim history. He said Mr Jinnah was responsible for betraying the Millat and for having committed “the blackest treachery” by re-enacting the fall of Islam in Spain 455 years earlier. He wrote, “Mr Jinnah has acted the Judas and betrayed, bartered and dismembered the Millat, animated by ambition for recognition as the Quisling-i-Azam of Pakistan and Bangistan.” He said the Quaid was a “far worse traitor than Miss Janki in 712, Mir Jaffer in 1757 and the Muslim aristocracy in 1857.” He said Mr Jinnah had shattered the foundations of Muslim nationhood and sabotaged the future of 100 million Muslims living in the “continent of Dinia and its dependencies”. He called on all Muslims to rise against Jinnah and “repudiate and nullify his treacherous plan”.

Rehmat Ali said Mr Jinnah had dealt six “deadly blows” to the Muslims. He had destroyed Muslim unity, and paralysed and battered Bengal and Assam, turning them into dominions bearing allegiance to “the King of Britain”. Mr Jinnah had abandoned the Muslim seats of learning, Muslim forts and citadels and Delhi, Agra and Lucknow. He had left the Hindus free to plan the “division, degradation and exploitation of the Millat”. Mr Jinnah had surrendered Muslim shrines and mosques to the Hindus and turned Muslim victories of the past into defeats. He said the Quaid had perverted the verdict of history and was making “desperate attempts to whitewash the betrayal”. According to him, Mr Jinnah “is asking the Muslims to treat Marg-i-Millat as Jashn-i-Jinnah,” adding, “Little does he realise he is adding the smear of shame to the sorrow of disaster suffered by Islam.” He wrote that Mr Jinnah had not accepted Pakistan but “PASTAN, the shadow of Pakistan”. He denounced the founder of Pakistan for having “done British and Bania bidding” and “playacting” throughout to divide the Millat.

Rehmat Ali called the creation of Pakistan “the blackest and bloodiest treachery in our history”. He denounced Pakistan as a “slave state” which owed allegiance to a foreign master, as did Mr Jinnah, whom he called “a loyal, glorified servant of the King of Britain who is witless, powerless and weaponless”.

Dr Ashiq Hussain Batalvi used to tell me in London in the late 1970s that in Pakistan Rehmat Ali used to spend most of his time abusing the Quaid and calling him names that even his worst non-Muslim detractors had never called him. The Quaid ignored both the abuse, of which he was aware, and the man who was heaping it on him. It is ironic that Chaudhry Rehmat Ali chose to return to the land of the very imperialists whom he had denounced. He died in anonymity, a bitter and unhappy man. It is best that his bones rest where they lie and those who are trying to resurrect him as a hero, at least read what he wrote.

Comments