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It is Star Wars time in America. The last I heard, the movie had grossed over $160 million, enough to keep countries below the Sahara eating caviar on toast and sipping Moet et Chandon champagne all day long for a year at the very least. It is not children alone who are filling America’s auditoriums to watch Obi-Wan Kenoby and Analin Skywalker slug it out with those phantom swords that light up. By the way, can’t these space aliens be made to take names that our raven-haired spokesman for all ministries, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, can pronounce? I suppose not, because if Mustansar Hussain Tarar has remained Mustansar Hussain Tarar all these years, what reason is there to hope for simplicity in life?

Well, as I was saying, it is not children only who are lined up to watch the anti-galactic antics of these creatures: a good deal of the audience is made up of men and women not exactly in the first flush of their youth. They were of course kids when the first Star Wars hit earth in 1977, so maybe they are reliving their childhood twenty-eight years later.

Bruce Snyder, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox has been jumping up and down with joy. He declared, “It’s an international record, a domestic record, and we also set the intergalactic record.” Good for you Mr Snyder and your employers. The first showing of the movie was at midnight last week and some of the fans had come dressed for the occasion in Star Wars costumes. There were enough Darth Vaders in every queue to cause Homeland Security a heart attack. It is just as well that none of them thought of walking in front of the White House or he might have been shot from the air by an F-16, considering that orders to shoot down that poor Cessna, a toy of an aircraft, had been issued the other day by Don “Carleone” Rumsfeld (he has since denied it but who believes denials!).

Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith is the sixth and “final” instalment of George Lucas’s intergalactic yarn. Final, we can be sure, it is not, since no person in his right mind will stop making movies that spin out millions in less time than it takes Skywalker to jump from one galaxy to the next. The first Star Wars was released in only 43 American theatres, earning $1.6 million in its first weekend. Since then, it has raked in $461 million at home and $798 internationally. One of the sequels, the 1999 Episode I: the Phantom Menace brought in $922.8 million. Movie theatre owners who were rejoicing because they felt that other releases would ride Lucas’s movie piggyback and recover below-target revenues, received sobering advice from none other than the president of their national association who said the movie business was cyclical. “We know it goes down and we know it goes back up,” he added.

It was left to the highbrow New Yorker magazine to take the mickey out of Star Wars. Anthony Lane in his review of the movie wrote, “Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. It sounds to me like the noise that emerges when you block one nostril and blow through the other, but to George Lucas it is a name that trumpets evil. All those who concoct and populate worlds must name them, and the resonance of those names is a fairly accurate guide to the mettle of the imagination in question.” He went on to list some of the names Lucas has dreamed up for his creatures. Palpatine (sounds like drops you put under your tongue to stop the heart from racing like a Derby winner nearing the finish line.) Another name, Sidious, could be a cross between seduction and asinine which everyone will agree is a most unusual predicament for anyone to be in. And what about Mace Windu? “Isn’t that something you spray on colicky babies,” Lane asked? Then there is Bail Organa which could be an organ donor who needs to be bailed out as he was caught for drunk driving on Intergalactic Freeway 696.

The New Yorker reviewer said that since Lucas made American Graffiti, he has “swung out of orbit, into deep nonsense, and the new film is the apotheosis of the drift.” There are of course those who have found parallels between the movie and the Bush administration. There is a line in the movie that echoes Bush’s 9/11 challenge (If you are not with us, you are against us) that brought about an instantaneous change of heart all along our own Line of Control, which is how Syeda Abida Hussain refers to GHQ, Rawalpindi. No wonder they found something the matter with her electricity bill. “We get the movies we deserve,” wrote Lane. That goes for governments too, I suppose.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The 1947 massacre of the Muslims of Jammu city, its neighbouring areas and the farther reaches of the province, remains one of the most poorly documented of the human tragedies with which the subcontinent’s major religious communities greeted independence. With the passing of years, the memory of those who were killed has all but faded.

Every year, the Muslims of Jammu who remain or those of their children who still care, mark the anniversary of the great Jammu killings. But these sombre gatherings have diminished with time. In another ten or twenty years, no one will remember the Muslims of Jammu who were killed because they were helpless before an organised force made up of the RSS, the Maharaja’s own forces and “help” from Punjab’s Sikh States.

I made a small attempt to preserve the memory of Jammu’s fallen Muslims through a book of 1947 memoirs. Originally published in Urdu, I later translated it into English and it appeared under the title Memory Lane to Jammu . I visited Jammu in March this year and it was there that my friend and host, Ved Bhasin, the editor and publisher of the independent English daily Kashmir Times , who was born in Jammu and has lived there all his life, told me of a memoir of those days he had once recorded. It is a document of great worth because it comes from the “other side” and what follows are excerpts from Bhasin’s vivid account, written with admirable honesty. He was 17 at the time and in college.

He writes that Jammu’s politics was polarised on religious lines, as was its student community. The Maharaja was wavering as independence approached. There were rumours that his guru, Swami Sant Dev, had predicted that he was destined to be the sovereign of a large Hindu state. Ram Chand Kak, his prime minister, favoured independence. Pressure on the Maharaja was growing from both sides when Gandhiji visited Srinagar, apparently to urge him to join India. Kak was removed and replaced by Maj Gen Janak Singh, a Maharaja loyalist.

Communal tension had begun to build up in Jammu after the June 3 Plan was announced. Hindu and Sikh refugees had also started pouring into Jammu from areas that were going to become Pakistan.

The Maharaja’s administration had not only asked all Muslims to surrender their arms but also demobilised a large number of Muslim soldiers serving in the State army. Muslim police officers, whose loyalty was suspected, had also been sent home. The Maharaja’s visit to Bhimber that summer was followed by large-scale killings. In some areas of Poonch, Muslim ex-servicemen staged a revolt. Clashes between Hindu soldiers and the ex-servicemen followed. In Jammu, meanwhile, false rumours that city Muslims were arming themselves were spread to justify the carnage that followed. As the situation worsened, Muslims from the rural areas flocked to Jammu or fled to Pakistan. The last train from Sialkot to Jammu brought a larger number of Hindu and Sikh refugees.

There were reports of large-scale killing of Muslims in Udhampur district, particularly in Udhampur town, as well as the Chenani, Ramnagar and Reasi areas. The RSS played the lead role in these killings. It was joined by armed Sikh refugees who paraded Jammu streets with drawn swords. The riots that followed were planned and executed by the RSS. Thousands of Muslims were killed in Chhamb, Deva Batala, Manawar and other parts of Akhnoor. In Kathua district too there was large-scale killing of Muslims with women raped and abducted. In the Bilawar area, the same grisly story was repeated. Instead of trying to prevent the killings, the Maharaja’s administration helped and even armed the killers. Jammu’s Muslim mohallas, Talab Khatikan and Ustad, were besieged and the residents denied water and food. Most Muslims outside Muslim-dominated areas were brutally killed by armed gangs that moved freely in vehicles even when the city was officially under curfew. Bhasin and some of his friends once managed to carry some food grains for the besieged Muslims of mohalla Ustad. By now, troops from the Patiala state forces had also joined the killers.

Mass killing of Muslims in and around Jammu now got underway. Hundreds of Gujjar men and women, who used to supply milk to the city from surrounding villages, were massacred while they were on their rounds. The Ramnagar game reserve was littered with the dead bodies of these men, women and children. Sheikh Abdullah arrived in Jammu on 16 November and a refugee camp was set up in mohalla Ustad. The worst carnage took place some time later when Muslims in mohalla Talab Khatikan were asked to surrender, which they did. They were shifted to the police lines at Jogi Gate and encouraged to go to Pakistan. The first batch of several thousands was loaded in about sixty lorries escorted by troops. When the convoy came close to Chattha on the Jammu-Sialkot road, waiting RSS men and Sikhs attacked it. People were pulled out of the vehicles and killed mercilessly. The soldiers either joined the killers or simply stood aside watching the carnage. The next day, another batch of Muslim families was similarly put into buses, only to meet the same fate. Some managed to escape to reach Sialkot. In the absence of any record, it is difficult to say how many were killed, raped or abducted, but there is no doubt that their number ran into thousands.

Bhasin writes that though the State administration denied any involvement in the killings, he witnessed two incidents that prove official complicity. After he as general secretary of the college student union issued an appeal for communal harmony, he was summoned by Jammu Governor Lala Chet Ram Chopra who told him to desist and instead work to defend Hindus and Sikhs. He also told him that Hindu and Sikh boys were being trained in the use of arms and he and his friends should join them. The new prime minister, Mehr Chand Mahajan, told a delegation of Hindus that now when power was being transferred, they should demand parity. When one of them asked how that was possible, given the huge Muslim majority in the State, Mahajan replied, pointing to the Ramnagar forest that lay below, and where dead bodies of Muslims were still lying, “The population ratio too can change.”

Bhasin also records that in the towns of Rajouri and Mirpur and the Mirpur district, Muslim gangs resorted to mass killings, loot ing and rape. Hindu refugees, moving on foot without food and water, were killed and their women raped and abducted. Hindu and Sikh killings also took place at Alibeg. Bhasin concludes, “While expressing my sense of shame for the orgy of the 1947 violence, I can raise my head with pride that the enlightened and politically mature people of Jammu have preserved perfect communal peace and harmony after those dark days of communal violence.” To which I add, “And may it always stay that way.”

The America that existed before 9/11 exists no more. Orwell’s vision of the future is coming to pass, about twenty years later than predicted but what of it. America is now Fortress America. Its unsmiling minders — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Negroponte, Card — have set in motion processes which, if allowed to proceed unchallenged, will create conditions dark enough to inspire George Lucas to shoot yet another sequel to Star Wars.

Anything that moves is now suspect. In Washington, there are cameras everywhere, ostensibly to catch those who run red lights or make U-turns, but who knows what else they photograph and where goes the stuff they record. Stores have cameras, shopping malls have cameras and a friend swears there are cameras in the trees facing his home. He is either right or he is going mad. As for the skies, it is safer not to look up too often. Who knows what satellite may be passing overhead.

People are longing for the pre-computer world. It ran quite smoothly and there were no hassles as there are today. When you presented a credit card, the sales clerk picked up the phone and called to see if it was yours or stolen. But that was in the past. Today, everything is lodged in some monstrous database? You punch a key and the screen flashes enough material for a biography of the person punched.

My friend Omar bin Abdullah has sent me a transcript that had me in stitches. Author unknown, but here is a peep into the future:

Operator: Thank you for calling Pimlico Hut. May I have your national ID number?

Customer: Hi, I’d like to place an order.

Operator: I must have your NIDN first, sir.

Customer: My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it’s 6102049998-45-54610.

Operator: Thank you Mr Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland Drive, and the phone number is 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number is 266-2566. Email address is sheehan@home.net. Which number are you calling from sir?

Customer: Huh? I’m at home. Where’d you get all this information?

Operator: We’re wired into the HSS, sir.

Customer: The HSS, what is that?

Operator: We’re wired into the Homeland Security System, sir. This will add only 15 seconds to your ordering time.

Customer: (sighs) Oh well, I’d like to order a couple of your All-Meat Special pizzas.

Operator: I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.

Customer: Whaddya mean?

Operator: Sir, your medical records and commode sensors indicate that you’ve got very high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National Health Care provider won’t allow such an unhealthy choice.

Customer: What?!?! What do you recommend, then?

Operator: You might try our low-fat Soybean Pizza. I’m sure you’ll like it.

Customer: What makes you think I’d like something like that?

Operator: Well, you checked out ‘Gourmet Soybean Recipes’ from your local library last week, sir. That’s why I made the suggestion.

Customer: All right, all right. Give me two family-sized ones, then.

Operator: That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four kids. Your two dogs can finish the crusts, sir. Your total is $49.99.

Customer: Lemme give you my credit card number.

Operator: I’m sorry sir, but I’m afraid you’ll have to pay in cash. Your credit card balance is over its limit.

Customer: I’ll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your driver gets here.

Operator: That won’t work either, sir. Your checking account is overdrawn also.

Customer: Never mind! Just send the pizzas. I’ll have the cash ready. How long will it take?

Operator: We’re running a little behind, sir. It’ll be about 45 minutes, sir. If you’re in a hurry you might want to pick ‘em up while you’re out getting the cash, but then, carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little awkward.

Customer: Wait! How do you know I ride a scooter?

Operator: It says here you’re in arrears on your car payments, so your car got repossessed. But your Harley’s paid for and you just filled the tank yesterday.

Customer: Well, I’ll be a #%#^^&$%^$@#

Operator: I’d advise watching your language, sir. You’ve already got a July 4, 2003 conviction for cussing out a cop and another one I see here in September for contempt at your hearing for cussing at a judge. Oh yes, I see here that you just got out from a 90-day stay in the State Correctional Facility. Is this your first pizza since your return to society?

Customer: (speechless)

Operator: Will there be anything else, sir?

Customer: Yes, I have a coupon for a free two litres of Coke.

Operator: I’m sorry sir, but our ad’s exclusionary clause prevents us from offering free soda to diabetics. The New Constitution prohibits this. Thank you for calling Pimlico Hut.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The first time that I saw Ahmed Bashir was at the premiere of his one and only movie – the box office disaster Neela Parbat . It was not that the movie was ahead of its time, or experimental or daring. It was none of those things. It was just not a very good movie. After all, it is not necessary that everyone who believes he has a movie or a great novel in him should actually produce them. Most of the time, they either keep talking about it and in the rare case where the movie gets made or the novel gets written, more often than not it sinks without trace. Such failure should not to be seen as that of the director or the author because success is an unpredictable, flirtatious goddess. Good movies and books fail and bad movies and books become successful. No one has been able to say why.

Ahmed Bashir was not the only man of talent in Pakistan to have believed that he had a great movie in him. Ashfaq Ahmed made a movie whose premiere I attended in what was then a new cinema in Mozang. The film ran not even a week. Javed Jabbar, whose talent lies in not one but several directions, made a movie called Beyond the Last Mountain . It was a lemon. Ashfaq Ahmed never made another, nor did Javed Jabbar, though there can be no doubt that the yen to get behind the camera one more time never left them.

A year or two ago when I recalled in a column what a “dabba” Ahmed Bashir’s Neela Parbat was, Ahmed Bashir not being the kind to take one on the chin, reacted by publishing a sharp, very Ahmed Bashir response. He was a fighter, a pugilist. If you hit him with your right, he would hit you right back with his left. And if you floored him, he would get up and start swinging. He was perhaps the last of Pakistan’s angry intellectuals who put their money where their mouth was and their mouth where their money was, except that he never had much interest in money and never gave a damn whether he had it or not. Today, we have people who call themselves journalists but whose only interest in the profession is the access it gives them to those in power. Once you have access, residential plots and other money spinners are only a matter of asking. Ahmed Bashir hated such people and fought them all his life. In the process, of course, they kept getting richer and Ahmed Bashir kept getting poorer.

Ahmed Bashir never held back what was on his mind and he did not keep to himself what he thought about people, including friends – and especially friends. In the bargain, he could sometimes become insensitive, almost cruel, and even slide into bad taste. He once wrote a nasty piece about Kishwar Naheed, which she to this day has not forgiven. Never once in a long writing career, did Ahmed Bashir take back what he had put down on paper. His saving grace was his honesty and intellectual integrity.

In January 2003, he wrote a short piece for Pakistan’s only genuinely left and liberal journal, Naya Zamana from Lahore, that sums up his personality and beliefs superbly. He wrote – I hope he would have approved of my English translation – “I speak of a time when this scribe was an editorial writer on Jang (its first issue from Lahore was put together by this man of little consequence). Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman said to me, ‘Ahmed Bashir sahib, you do not know how corrupt our journalists are.’ I replied that if he knew they were corrupt, why did he not fire them? His answer was that corruption brought no harm to the institution. In fact, thanks to such people, quite a few things that the institution needs to get done, get done.

“It was said in those days that certain journalists – and they included subs, reporters, editorial writers, columnists, and feature writers – apart from the salaries they drew from Jang , were also to be found on the payroll of Jamaat-i-Islami. The more adventurous of them spied on politicians and their fellow workers for the benefit of the special police and the intelligence agencies. And although today Mir Sahib has given considerable salary raises to staff, given the escalating cost of living, the tradition of pocketing not one but two, even three, incomes continues. And that is why every Sunday a certain gentleman openly blackmails the bureaucracy through his column.

“But to return to my conversation with Mir Sahib, I said, ‘Sir, I know how corrupt journalists are, because I belong to that fraternity. I have seen their dirty linen being washed in public. I also know how corrupt our proprietors are, and I am sure that is not news to you.’

“Now, you tell me who will employ a person as impertinent in a newspaper? I must say however that the two times Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman threw me out of Jang and the same number of times from Daily News was not because of my impertinence, but on account of phone calls from Gen. Mujibur Rehman. It was either he (Shakeel), or the late Mir Khalilur Rehman whom some bigwig called. After the last such call, it was the peon who told me that my entry to the Jang office was banned and that a notice to that effect had been posted at the front gate.

“Thanks to my impertinence and lack of tact, half my journalistic life has been spent in a state of unemployment. I have witnessed Pakistan being looted. I have seen Ayub looting the country. And then Zia-ul-Haq; and Benazir; and Nawaz Sharif. As for myself, I have never auctioned my politics, or my conscience or my integrity. Today I am a tired old man of eighty who is sick, stricken by a plethora of painful diseases. I now lie here waiting for the awesome blast of that trumpet that will make birds fly out of trees. I have no property, no money, no regrets but my soul is at peace because I know I have never done anything bad knowingly.”

Ahmed Bashir was the George Orwell of Pakistan. No one had his courage and his conviction. He was the only intellectual who faced the Mullahcracy head on. At one time he was under a sentence of death awarded to him by the bearded brigade. And how did Ahmed Bashir deal with such people? Read on: “They are the ones who, ensconced in Murree, drafted the Objectives Resolution behind the people’s back, awarding to God, who is the supreme ruler of the universe, the overlordship of Pakistan so that the people of Pakistan should be robbed of the right to rule, so that they would become the pack animals of maulvis , bureaucrats and feudal landlords. It is they who declared horse racing, which is blatant gambling, to be in accordance with the dictates of religion. These people call for the Islamic system, but they are unable to say if their Islamic system contains anything other than fatwas and punishments under Hadood laws. They do not say how that system will resolve the problems of unemployment, rising prices, class conflict, crime, graft and oppression. They do have a solution though: anyone who speaks up should be killed. But is that an Islamic solution to the problem? They do not have as many swords as there are Muslims whom they have declared as deserving of death. It seems these warriors of Islam, clutching their beards between their teeth, their swords drawn, their horses on the gallop are on the loose to shed the blood of anyone who stands in their way.”

Ahmed Bashir is dead; long live Ahmed Bashir.

Even the knee-jerk reaction to the Cessna that innocently strayed into Washington’s forbidden air space, causing the White House and Congress to run for cover, may not have caused as much amusement here as the Pakistani reaction to that dog cartoon in Washington Times, a newspaper owned by the Moonies, which is what folks who follow the Rt Rev Moon of Korea are called behind their backs.

As far as I recall, it is the first time the Government of Pakistan and the parliament in Islamabad have considered a newspaper cartoon worthy of such high-level reaction. Cartoons are meant to be funny. They do not express a newspaper’s editorial opinion, nor anybody else’s for that matter, least of all the cartoonist’s. By hitting every panic button that we could reach, we only ridiculed ourselves and showed what a short-tempered, ill-humoured and under-educated lot we are. Governments have to show more dignity than that. Parliaments have to be a little more intelligent than this. As for politicians, they should really find other means of getting even with Gen Pervez Musharraf.

No one takes cartoons seriously. Cartoons are what they say they are. Cartoons. No more, no less. Ever since President George W Bush came to office, Toles, the Washington Post cartoonist, has drawn him with long, protruding ears that make him either look like a rabbit, one of whose parents was a mouse, or a mythological animal with a big, bulbous head and a triangular lower face. What is more, the president is generally shown with a most idiotic grin on his face. He is also made to say the most mindless things. All men are vain and like to see themselves depicted as God’s most dashing creation, so there is little doubt that the president of the United States can’t be too pleased with the way he appears on the editorial page of the capital’s most important newspaper. But has he had Washington Post burnt down?

Let me narrate a Bhutto story. A day after we arrived in Simla in 1972 for the Simla Conference, one of the major Indian English dailies published a cartoon that showed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as a monkey. I pasted the cartoon on a sheet of paper and sent it to Mr Bhutto. He looked at it, laughed and scrawled in the margin, “I think I am better looking than that.” I still have that yellowing piece of paper.

For the berserk Pakistani reaction to the Washington Times cartoon, I hold, the Embassy of Pakistan, responsible first and foremost. The ambassador was in Pakistan and the store was being minded by the gent who answers to the name “DCM Sadiq”. He went ballistic. He told United Press International, which is also owned by the Moonies, “We are disgusted with the insensitivity of the editors of the Washington Times. They have insulted the 150 million people of Pakistan. This is not a mal-intent (sic) attempt to undermine Pakistan’s efforts in war on terror (sic), it is an extremely regrettable and poor judgment call by the newspaper. This betrays the mindset of the editorial board.”

He also said that the cartoon detracted from Pakistan’s role in the war on terror. As if that were not enough, he accused the Washington Times of strengthening the hands of extremists. He expressed the hope that the cartoon will not “provoke a wider reaction in Pakistan, and it will be ignored with the contempt which it deserves.” And that was funny. The contempt that he was hoping the people of Pakistan would show he was unwilling to show himself.

The Foreign Office spokesman issued a statement of condemnation, which was most curious because the foreign minister, the immaculately outfitted Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, had earlier dismissed the matter as being of no consequence. The National Assembly did not cover itself with glory when it passed a unanimous resolution against the cartoon. The Sindh Assembly followed suit. As for the MMA what else could one expect from the Bearded Brigade! And out there in Jeddah, Nawaz Sharif fired off a hell and brimstone statement.

The Washington Times was absolutely taken aback by the Pakistani reaction and wrote a very funny editorial the next day captioned ‘A dog’s life’. Bill Garner, the poor cartoonist, was distressed. He called the whole thing an “unfortunate cultural misunderstanding”.

As for President Musharraf, he being a dog lover — one under each arm though not in front of the cameras — said nothing.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Although everyone says what a superb lawyer Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was, rarely does one get to read anything about the court appearances that earned him that reputation.

I remember years ago in Lahore, Safdar Mir, the great Zeno of Pakistan Times , telling me about the Quaid’s contribution to the “Indianisation” of the British-led and officered army. Though I never made the effort to look up how and where the Quaid had made his contribution, what Safdar Mir has said remained engraved in my memory.

The other day, while reading the autobiography of the late Maj. Gen. Ajit Anil “Jik” Rudra, who originally came from Lahore, served in three armies, fought in both World Wars and died in India in 1997 at the age of 93, I came upon an episode that showed that the Quaid’s reputation as a brilliant lawyer was not a Pakistani myth but a fact.

The Government of India appointed a committee of the legislature – I am not clear about the year – to study the question of Indianising the army. British officers were unabashedly racist when it came to Indian officers being posted to purely British officered units. Curiously, British officers invariably enjoyed close relationships with the men and ORs (other ranks) who served under them. The Subedar Major, for instance, used to be known as “Kala Karnail.” But when it came to officers serving with them as their equals, juniors and, especially, as their seniors, or dining with them in their all British messes, or frequenting their clubs, they found it unacceptable. Col. Ronny Datta, a retired Indian officer, told me that he had seen a sign at the front door of the once all-British Fort William Club in Calcutta that said, ‘Indians and Dogs not allowed.’

The Committee appointed to study the sensitive Indianisation question included Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Lt Rudra who had been commissioned in England during the First War and who fought gallantly in the trenches in France during one of the most brutal military campaigns of all times, was asked to appear before that Committee. He was presented to the Committee that included Pandit Motilal Nehru by one Gen. Skeen with the words, “Gentlemen, here you have a young Indian King’s Commissioned officer. He served in the ranks of the British Army during the Great War and is now serving in an Indian regiment. You have just heard his commanding officer’s opinion of him. Please ask him any questions you may have of him.”

Rudra recalls that Mr Jinnah was the first member of the Committee to address him. He began by asking a number of questions about his conditions of service, including what commands and appointments he had held. Then he said in a “more serious tone,” “Mr Rudra, I must warn you that the proceedings from now till I finish will be in camera. I want you to understand that clearly.” Rudra writes that although he did not have the foggiest idea what “in camera” meant, he replied, “Yes, sir.” Mr Jinnah then asked the Chairman of the Committee if he could send for one Colonel Pope again, a British senior officer he had obviously questioned before Rudra had been brought in. The Colonel was the commanding officer of the 4th Hyderabad Regiment, an Indianised battalion in which Thimayya (one day to become the commander-in-chief of independent India’s army) and some other Indian officers had been serving for the past two or three years.

Mr Jinnah’s opening question to Col. Pope was, “Col. Pope, in your evidence earlier you said that in your opinion, no Indian is fit to take the place of a British officer.” “Yes,” the British officer answered. The colonel then looked Rudra “full in the face and repeated those very same words.” Mr Jinnah’s next question was, “Colonel, could you please give us your reasons for holding such an adverse opinion of Indians?” Pope hesitated for a while, then said, “Well, er… for one thing Indians are not impartial in the matter of promotions. They tend to favour their own kith and kin… and that would be disastrous. Secondly, they can’t be trusted in money matters. That’s the general Indian weakness. In fact, they are totally unfit to hold the King’s Commission.”

“Thank you, Col. Pope,” Mr Jinnah said, “You have of course had instances where your Indian officers have promoted their own kith and kin overlooking more suitable personnel?” Col. Pope hesitated before replying, “Er… well, no. But I know that that’s what they would do if given half a chance.” Mr Jinnah’s response was immediate, “So, it is just prejudice – you have no concrete fact, no particular case to back up your statement.” The trap that Mr Jinnah was laying for Col. Blimp was exactly what he walked into. “I know I am right,” he replied.

Mr Jinnah then asked him calmly, “I see. Now, as regards money matters, how many cases of mishandling money by Indian officers and untrustworthy behaviour in financial dealings have you had to deal with?” Col. Pope was now fully trapped but he remained arrogant, “Well, er… there have been no actual cases. They wouldn’t dare while I am their commanding officer. But if left to themselves, they can’t be trusted.” Mr Jinnah’s response was razor sharp: “But these are merely opinions and prejudices. Can you not back them up with facts?” The Colonel remained silent and, as Rudra recalls, “he was beginning to turn a little red in the face by then.” Mr Jinnah now went for the coup de grace . “Colonel, I must ask you to be more specific. Why have you formed these opinions? You must have some reason.” Col. Pope replied, “Well, my Subedar Major holds these opinions too, He is quite definite about them.”

At this point, Mr Jinnah went for the kill, “I see, so you are merely voicing your Subedar Major’s prejudices. In that case, we might be better off asking him to appear before us instead of you. Thank you Colonel. I have nothing further to ask you.”

I suppose this was how the Quaid-i-Azam won the case for Pakistan, though had he known who was going to inherit his great legacy, he might have developed second thoughts.

Pakistan’s first ambassador to the United States, handpicked by the Quaid-i-Azam himself, was MAH Isphahani. He it was who procured the chancery building on 2315 Massachusetts Avenue, in the heart of Embassy Row, that now lies abandoned, awaiting the generosity of Pakistani-Americans to be reborn as Jinnah Centre.

That day appears to be no closer than a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The Pakistani-American community is not known for putting its money where its mouth is. The Pakistani economist Shahid Javed Burki told a meeting at the Woodrow Wilson Centre on April 16 that the earnings of the Pakistani Diaspora were equal to 30 percent of Pakistan’s GDP. That is a mind-boggling amount of money and most of it sits in American banks, stocks and securities. There are scores of millionaire Pakistanis out here, but barring a few exceptions, there is little they have done, except talk. And then more talk.

The old chancery needs a couple of million dollars to become functional. Everything that was rottable in it — wires, pipes, heating, what have you — has rotted or if it has not rotted, it will rot before long. Since the move to the new location, the old chancery has remained locked up. Any building or machinery that remains out of use for a length of time deteriorates. It is a couple of years since the shift, but there is no sign of any movement on Jinnah Centre. At this rate, the intended project will remain about as close to realisation as the handing over by India of the Quaid-i-Azam’s Malabar Hill, Bombay, residence to Pakistan.

On the website of the Embassy of Pakistan, Washington — more about it as you read on — the “possible sources of funding” are said to be “many”, including the Pakistani-American community, the World Bank, American foundations and American and Pakistani companies. The last on the list are “individuals in Pakistan”. One look at this list of “possible” donors, and you know you are looking at a non-starter.

Riaz Khokhar, who served as ambassador to Washington for an unjustifiably truncated period — proof that palace intrigue works — went from city to city across America, hat in hand, wherever there was a Pakistani community. He used all his powers of persuasion to generate pledges for Jinnah Centre but returned empty handed. After his early and uncalled for departure, there was no serious effort made to raise money. Since we are getting buddy-buddy with India, why not take a leaf from their book? The Indian government decided to establish an India Centre in Washington with its own money. That is what Pakistan should do. It will cost less than the tail of an F-16.

But we are getting into heavy weather here, so let me regale the readers of this column with the adventures of the second-in-command of our embassy here. Mohammad Sadiq, who now carries the permanent prefix of DCM (stands for deputy head of mission, for the benefit of those who had no knowledge of this earth-shaking fact) to his name — for details please click the embassy’s website –is, what my friend Zamurrad Malik would have called, “a guy who is very sentimental about himself”. Of the 14 photographs that the website carries, eight feature him, including two with President Bush. No, there is no photographic evidence that Ambassador Jehangir Karamat has met Mr Bush. There are two biographies on the website: the ambassador’s and the DCMs. Other embassies so far do not appear to have cottoned on to this although all of them have deputies who remain unknown. I have no instrument with which to measure DCM Sadiq’s ego, but it would have to be a very big instrument.

What brings the house down is the following item on the embassy website.

DCM SADIQ FIRST DIPLOMAT TO LAND AND TAKE OFF FROM NUCLEAR POWERED AIRCRAFT CARRIER.

“The acting Ambassador of Pakistan, Mohammad Sadiq Monday visited the Norfolk Naval Base, attended a briefing by officers, landed and took off from the nuclear powered Harry S Truman Aircraft Carrier in the open seas.

“The landing and take off on an Aircraft Carrier is seen as a singular honour and an unusual friendly gesture. Mr Sadiq has become the first diplomat to be invited to experience the arrested landing and catapulted take off from an aircraft carrier …

“The ‘arrested landing’, as it is called, and the ‘catapult take off’ are simply amazing, precise and minute. The landing process is effected through deceleration which brings the aircraft to touch and halt position in two seconds, from a speed of 105 to zero mph; while the take off takes place by acceleration from zero to 128 mph, in three seconds- an experience to feel and tell.”

I have been making discreet inquiries since if the US Navy would like to have our Amazing Superman Diplomat on permanent loan.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

There isn’t a sadder city than Srinagar. I have a deep, almost mystical link with it, having been born there, and I have often dreamt about it in strange, disjointed ways. The last time I was there was in 1983. Another twenty-two years were to pass before my stars would take me there again. It is less than three weeks as I write this since I was there and though I have spoken about what I saw of it and what I experienced, this is the first time I am trying to write about it.

One of the most eerie experiences I have ever had was being driven in a car through the streets of the city at around 10.30 at night and finding them utterly deserted. Srinagar had turned into a ghost town. The city shuts its doors soon after nightfall. All one came upon in the streets were packs of howling dogs that chased the car for varying distances and then gave up. The inside lights of the car had been kept on, that being the regulation laid down by the Indian security forces that patrol the streets night and day. A darkened car runs the risk of being fired on. There was no sound at all except the noise the tyres made on the metalled road and the dogs which barked dementedly. And why were there so many stray dogs in the streets? Because the security forces let them prowl around as an early warning of intrusion.

When I went to Srinagar in 1983, which was six years before the uprising, even then the city was practically crawling with Indian soldiers. There were bunker-like structures everywhere. You couldn’t walk a hundred yards without running into Indian military presence. This alone, it occurred to me then, was enough to debunk the myth that the Kashmiris had reconciled themselves to living under Indian rule or being an integral part of India. If you need armed troops to keep control over people you call your citizens, then you might as well let them go. All nation states in the end are the result of a social contract. There never was any social contract in Kashmir and there is not going to be one. It is not true, as India maintains, that but for Pakistani interference, the Kashmiris would be happily living as happy Indian citizens.

Srinagar is a ravaged city. It is also one of the most dusty cities that I have been to, which makes no sense because it is a city that lies beside one of the world’s most beautiful lakes and on either side of the meandering Jehlum river. But the city has crumbled. Fifty-seven years of conflict have taken their toll. There is no road in the Srinagar that is whole. When I mentioned this to Mehbooba Mufti, the chief minister’s daughter and a member of the Indian lower house, she said that was because of the snows, but it is not true. People told me that even before the snows came, it wasn’t much different. The Dal Lake is overgrown with weeds and seriously polluted. It needs to be dredged and there have been efforts to do so but their impact remains minimal. Some people said a great deal of the money for this gigantic project had disappeared into the pockets of dishonest officials and politicians. Perhaps.

What is sold on the streets of a city tells you a great deal about that city and its people. In Srinagar I found seller after seller of second-hand clothing, their none-too-attractive wares placed on the footpath. Most people you see on the street look harried, ill-at-ease and tense. There are few signs of prosperity. Unemployment, especially among the educated, is said to be high. The shops are poorly stocked and what they stock is of poor quality. The two main bookshops of the city have more old books than new. There are no more than a couple of proper restaurants that you can eat at, the best, I suppose being the old Ahdoo’s overlooking the once elegant Bund.

The old houses, of which Srinagar is full, look as if they are about to fall. Anywhere else they would have been pronounced unfit for human habitation. The once picturesque bridges over Jehlum look ramshackle. Srinagar no longer is a city of gardens. The trees of Wazir Bagh and Gol Bagh have made way for urban ugliness. The Nagin Lake, one of the world’s most beautiful, is a cesspool. The grand maples of Nasim Bagh still stand but there used to be far more of them than there are today. Next to it stands the University of Kashmir and not far from there lies Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah in a marble grave. He is gone but the Kashmiris believe he it is who is responsible for their misfortunes.

Kashmiris are deeply suspicious of the India-Pakistan peace process. They are not sure where it will leave them. They feel that some kind of an understanding or arrangement has been made between the two countries over their heads and, once again, as in their long and sad history, they are going to be bartered away without being asked. The Hurriyet is fragmented and people hold the ubiquitous ISI responsible for that. They say the ISI wants to control the movement as it controlled the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Everyone believes that Abdul Ghani Lone was killed by the same outfit because he wanted the Kashmiris to be “left alone.” The alienation with India is total. No Kashmiri sees himself as an Indian. When I say Kashmiri, I mean the Muslims of the Valley. Nor do they want union with Pakistan as they once did. There is great disillusionment with the policies followed by Pakistan at their expense. Everyone you talk to wants “Azadi”. What that means is not quite spelled out. They are realistic enough to know that neither India nor Pakistan will even entertain such a possibility.

I asked one Kashmiri if he would spell out what he wanted. He said what he and what the people of the Valley wanted was simple. They wanted to be demilitarised. All troops, all fighters no matter what side they belong to, should quit Kashmir. Normal life which the Kashmiris have not known for over half a century should be restored. Kashmir should be rebuilt and rehabilitated. As you stand on the streets of what was once a paradise on earth, you wonder if that would ever come to pass. No matter how it is to be brought about, it is time that the sufferings of the Kashmiris came to an end. The Kashmiris have been crucified over and over again. Whatever it takes, it is the first moral duty of the governments of India and Pakistan to bring this tragedy to an end and let the Kashmiris live without the barrel of a gun staring them in the face, every time they step out of their homes.

The reality of Kashmir today is the graveyard of the martyrs where almost all graves are those of young men cut down in the first flower of their youth. It is a shattering experience. In one corner, there stands an empty grave but it has a headstone that says this is where “Shaheed-e-Azam Maqbul Butt” will one day find rest. Right now he lies in the compound of the Tihar Jail in Delhi where he was hanged. How many more graves do the Kashmiris have to dig before their persecution comes to an end, I keep asking myself.

All movements for freedom start out as dreams. Most of them fall by the wayside and the world moves on, inexorably, uncaringly forward. The movement for the independent Sikh state of Khalistan may have died for those who speak for the Government of India but not for Simranjit Singh Mann, the firebrand Sikh leader, now in the States on a mission of political revival. There are over half a million Sikhs in North America and, true to form, wherever they live, they retain their traditional vibrancy and good humour.

On the face of it, most Sikhs are part of the Indian mainstream but it is difficult to believe that a single one among them has overcome the great trauma of the 1984 assault by Mrs Indira Gandhi on the Golden Temple or the butchery of innocent members of the community after her murder. Such events are not forgotten, no matter how much time has passed. It is going to be the same story when it comes to Kashmiris.

Those who have started saying after the “cricket summit” that the fate of Kashmir has been settled between the two men whose names start with the letter M, will not say so were they to be taken to the hundreds of graves of young Kashmiris who lie in the vast Martyrs’ Graveyard in Srinagar. No Kashmiri is going to forget his fallen, as no Sikh is going to forget his. Such deaths are not in vain, history has shown time and again.

Simranjit Singh Mann spoke at the National Press Club on Thursday and he spoke with great feeling in an even, confident voice that could only have sprung from deep conviction. In 1984, when the Golden Temple was attacked, he resigned from the Indian Police service because he felt he could no longer serve a state that killed its own citizens and savaged its religious minorities. He was thrown into jail where he spent five years, but they could not break him though he was subjected to torture, he says. He was elected to parliament while still in prison and had to be released. He spent five years in parliament and spoke up for the rights of all minorities. He was one of the leading voices of protest when the Babri Mosque was razed to the ground by BJP hoods.

On Thursday afternoon, there he was at the National Press Club, standing ramrod straight and speaking in perfectly modulated English of the great suffering that his community had endured. He said the Sikhs were fighting for their rights and they would never give in. He rejected the view that the Khalistan movement was confined to only some in the Sikh Diaspora. He said the Sikh dream of a buffer state between India and Pakistan was alive and would never be given up. He said in 1947, the Sikh leadership had been misled and Master Tara Singh was duped into opposing Pakistan. He said the offer of an autonomous region within Pakistan that Mr Jinnah made was below Sikh expectations, at which point Dr Amirjit Singh, who leads the Khalistan movement in Washington, intervened to say that the Sikhs should have accepted Mr Jinnah’s offer.

Mann, who is president of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Amritsar, said he wanted to thank the US government for refusing a visa to Narendra Modi of Gujarat, whom he held responsible for the 2002 pogrom in his state. He found it ironic that no one had been found guilty so far. He said what happened in Gujarat had happened in the “state-supervised” slaughter of Sikhs in 1984 and no one had been found guilty of those killings either. He said the “Nehru dynasty” had ruled India for half a century and Rahul Gandhi was now the “young pretender” to the “throne” in Delhi. “Some democracy, India!” he observed sardonically. He called for an international investigation of the pogroms of 1984 and 2002, as well as the 1985 midair bombing of the Air India flight, which he called a “horrendous crime.”

To lighten the gloom of what was a grim news conference, I suggested that there was one thing common between the BJP and the Khalistanis, namely, the colour saffron. Khalistanis are often to be seen wearing magnificently tied saffron-coloured turbans. Mann replied that he himself was wearing a blue turban, a colour favoured by Guru Gobind Singh Ji, but he would quote Chairman Mao who said that it did not matter if a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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