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No one quite knows how many Pakistanis, legal and otherwise, live in America. Their number, however, is sizeable with large concentrations in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, Chicago, Washington-Baltimore and California. But what do they read, one might ask? That is hard to know. In all my years in the United States, I have never once run into a Pakistani browsing in a bookshop, nor have I ever seen one in any of the great museums of this capital city.

So, the question is: what do they do? One thing they do do is to fritter away their hard-earned money on sorcerers, spell-casters, black magic-breakers, astrologers, amulet-dispensers, spirit masters, wizards, self-proclaimed saints and many other mountebanks who advertise their services in the pages of the dozen or so Pakistani newspapers distributed free. Gujranwala seems to have emerged as one of the leading centres of such tricksters. The editor of a New York weekly newspaper who carries the largest number of such advertising told me, when I asked if he billed the advertisers before or after publication, “You think I will trust these johnnies to pay later! No sir, the policy is cash in advance every time.”

That of course does not say much for the ethics of the newspapers that are a party to the duping of ignorant, superstitious and credulous people who are only physically living in America: mentally and emotionally they are in elsewhere.

The holy crooks list their mobile phone numbers and there is no question that they reap a rich harvest in the United States. Their business in Britain is said to be even better. Let us take a brief guided tour of what is being promised to the poor suckers who part with hundreds of thousands of dollars of their honestly earned money in search of the miraculous quick fix.

Alhaj Syed Wilayat Shah Bokhari, an old goat in a long beard (no moustache) wearing a white cloth cap, claims to come equipped with “an international reputation, a Syed lineage and spiritual scholarship” who can guarantee winning lottery numbers inside of one hour and who has been solving problems through just one phone call by supplicants form Saudia, Sharjah, Dubai, Europe and America. He says that the Bokhari family has been serving humanity for the last 163 years. He runs a “24-hour help line from Kechehri Chowk, Gujranwala.”

Then there is “Spiritual Scholar Allama Prof MA Jaffrey who offers “100 percent guarantee” of accomplishing whatever is desired by those who approach him. According to the “Professor,” he can accomplish everything, the only exception being defeating death. I am surprised he is unable to defeat death. Perhaps in one of his forthcoming ads, we will learn that he has overcome death as well.

And here is the celebrated Master Amar right here in New York state who declares, “Housewives who are living in misery because of the contempt in which their husbands hold them, or who are troubled by their husbands’ drinking, or their husbands visiting other women or husbands who pay no attention to domestic matters are advised to phone Master Amar today.” And one more of the miracles on offer is the “return of the loved one in just a few days through a phone call to Master Amar”.

Not to be ignored is Alhaj Syed Zakir Shah from Urdu Bazar, Lahore, where they once used to sell books. He can write for you an amulet that will ensure that your beloved or your spouse, as the case may be, will start “worshipping” you. He also has the antidote for the deadly spell that evil ones cast by writing a curse on you in an owl’s blood. Zakir Shah bills himself as the “resplendent lamp spreading spiritual light in a dark world.” He can also provide you with the winning numbers of international lotteries, including England’s Lotto lottery, as well as Prize Bond numbers that win. All he needs is five days’ notice. Zakir Shah performs his miracles through a number of obedient spirits who follow his orders. Jinns are terrified of Shah Sahib because he has in his grip 124 of the world’s most dangerous evil spirits. How does he do it? Through powers derived from “divine light”. He also treats disease and illness with the aid of “spiritual rays”.

The spiritual help field is male territory, but not entirely because we have Mohtarma Ayesha Bengalan of Galli Bengalian, Baghbanpura, Lahore, who specialises in making “heart-desired” marriages possible. She helped Shamaila of Lahore marry her beloved Irshad, despite opposition from both their families. Shamaila was about to commit suicide, she writes in a testimonial, when Ayesha Bengalan’s name flashed across the TV screen (a bit of TV before suicide does no harm). She went to call on the holy mother but so crowded was her “spiritual clinic” that she had to return with only a “token number” given to her by the holy mother’s son.

A few days later when lovesick Shamaila was able to meet the Mohtarama (no, not that one), she was told, “It is tough, but give me a week.” And lo and behold, a week later, Shamaila’s parents informed her that they had decided that she and former mortal enemy Irshad should be married.

I must not forget Baba Jinnan Wala Prizada Nazir Ali Shah of Allama Iqbal Town, Lahore, who is “the most perfect master of all perfect masters and who is Pakistan’s international award winner whose programmes have been shown on television and who is also a Gold Medallist, apart from being the bearer of Registration No. T-A-110.” A blurb in English in the half-page ad that appears in several New York Urdu papers runs as follows (verbatim reproduction!): “In condition of non workability 15 lakh rupees will be awarded to applicant and advance payment will be refund. Master epistiomology of astrology, big king of asirology only we have the master of super magical moutras, becquase we take assistance from noble ghost. We have 72 noble ghosts all the tune [sic!]. We have got these ghosts in heritance note.”

I believe every word of what Pirzada Nazir Ali Shah of Iqbal Town, Lahore, states but he would be well advised to summon the ghost of HW Fowler for a bit of help with his English.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Iqbal would have been pleased with Ilhan Niaz’s book, An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent , because it was he who prayed for the young to teach the old, which is what Niaz, a young teacher of history at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, has done. I am afraid, however, that those who have the most to learn from his book are the very ones who will not read it. I sometimes think if organising a survey of all “stakeholders” – Gen. Musharraf’s favourite phrase – in Pakistan with only one question to be answered. Which was the last book you read? The answer sheets should be easy to tabulate because so distant would the memory of the last book read be, that they would not remember its name. Our ruling class contains more ignoramuses and mountebanks than a colony of half-wits.

Niaz begins his survey of the culture of power and governance in Pakistan since 1947 with an excerpt from the Quaid-i-Azam’s August 11, 1947 speech, “The first and the foremost thing that I would like to emphasise is this – remember that you are now a sovereign legislative body and you have got all the powers. It, therefore, places on you the greatest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions. You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State.” Niaz writes, “The tone and content of Jinnah’s speeches and statements are rational, substantially reflect his grounding in liberal political thought and practice, and, in dealing with real problems confronted by the state, are refreshingly un-ideocratic.”

The Quaid hoped that Pakistan would establish the supremacy of Parliament and protect the permanent institutions of state from the arbitrariness of the government. A state of laws could only survive if it refrained from identifying its authority with divine sanction or ideological certainties. Niaz attributes the passing of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949 to Muslim League leaders’ lack of a base in West Pakistan, pressure from the ulema, the language controversy in East Bengal and a tense international climate.

The Jamaat-i-Islami, which ironically jumped on the “jihad” bandwagon in Kashmir four decades later, was the same party whose leader declared after the uprising in Kashmir that this war in Kashmir was not a “jihad.” In February 1949, the party held a large rally in Dhaka where it demanded the establishment of an “Islamic state” in Pakistan because it did not consider Pakistan an Islamic state nor did it take its leaders to be proper Muslims. In its eyes, the Quaid-i-Azam himself was an “infidel.” What a pity and a shame that this very party, these very forces that had fought tooth and nail to block the founding of the state of Pakistan became its ideological mentors. The so-far-unexplained phrase “ideology of Pakistan” was first bandied around by Yahya’s Islamist Minister of Information, Nawazada Sher Ali Khan “Napoleon.” I am willing to be corrected, but as far as I know, leaders of the Jamaat have studiously avoided visiting the Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum to say a prayer for him, although if there is one Muslim who must have been shown straight into heaven, it would have had to be Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Akbar Ahmed’s deplorable film notwithstanding, where the Quaid is made to answer for his actions with Shashi Kapoor “Fatso” playing God’s deputy.)

Niaz points out that a comparison of the Quaid’s August 11 speech with the Objectives Resolution will show that the latter represents a major step in the direction of the traditionalist vision of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan’s “reiteration of the standard apology that Islam, in theory, does not have a priesthood and so cannot lead to theocracy did little to assuage the fears of minorities that the Objectives Resolution had opened the door to theocratisation of the state.” He quotes East Pakistani member of the Constituent Assembly, Chandra Chattopadhya, who warned, “The State must respect all religions; no smiling face for one and askance look at the other. The State religion is a dangerous principle. Previous instances are sufficient to warn us not to repeat the blunder. . . What I hear in this Resolution is not the voice of the great creator of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam, but of the ulemas of the land . . . This resolution in its present form epitomises that spirit of reaction . . . But I feel it is useless bewailing before you, it is useless reasoning with you. You show yourselves incapable of the humility that either victory or religion ought to generate. I wish you saw reason.” They did not, and it has been one long slide downhill since.

One of Niaz’s best shots he takes at Zia-ul-Haq and the manner in which he tried to impose what he thought was Islam as if it were not a religion but one of his martial law regulations. We live with the consequences of what he wrought. The poison crop that he sowed is now blooming. According to the author, “General Zia’s eleven years in power witnessed the Pakistani State undertake a deliberate policy of medievalism.” And what about Gen. Musharraf, who has now been in power for seven and a half years and plans to hang in there, by hook or by crook – mostly the latter – for another five and a half (Guinness Book, please note). Niaz writes that since Musharraf’s takeover, “an uneasy calm punctuated by intensifying breakdowns of order, has fallen over Pakistan. The ability of the state to perform its core functions continues to deteriorate.” He notes that the district administration has been thrown into chaos by the NRB (thank you Daniyal Aziz “Gorbachev”) and the “colonisation of the civil administration by the military is now generating immense resentment.”

Niaz writes, “The Centre has repeatedly attempted to govern Pakistan as if it were a unitary quasi-imperial state and identified criticism of federal policies with treason.” While the Quaid is honoured on Pakistan’s bank notes and his picture is on every wall (and even behind military rulers when they address “the nation” on national hookup), everything that he advocated and stood for is violated. Writes Niaz, “No political speech, or college debate competition is considered complete unless it contains ample references to Jinnah and expresses contrition for having failed to live up to his example. And yet, Jinnah’s vision of a Pakistani state of laws governed by a sovereign parliament in a manner consistent with British state morality is as, if not more, distant today than it was when Pakistan’s founder addressed the first Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.”

And therein lies Pakistan’s tragedy.

No, this is not about the Bush presidency but about cartoons or funnies, as they are called. Most American newspapers — barring the venerable New York Times — distribute with their massive Sunday editions a special section in colour made up of popular cartoon strips.

Many of the cartoon characters thought up by American cartoonists have acquired lives of their own and are almost treated as if they were living beings. The cartoon strip has such wide popularity because, one, it does not tax the brain, two, it is either funny or exciting or heroic, and, three, it is in colour. It is a fact that we spend far too much of our time reading newspapers, which even if they had gone unread, would not have made us less smart than we are or better equipped to ward off the slings and arrows that life lobs at us. As for important news, Faiz Ahmed Faiz once said that one comes to know of important news anyway, even if one never looks at a newspaper.

I have in front of me the March 11, 2007 Comics section of Washington Post, of which I now proceed to conduct a guided tour. There is the strip called Zits. The yellow-haired kid called Jeremy had just scraped the ice off a friend’s car, which the latter realises to his horror, he has done with his favourite music CD.

Another strip called Opus devotes its current weekly appearance to the question being asked here, there and everywhere: How black is Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama? Is he black enough? Two little nippers are shown making a snowman and arguing whether he is basically white or black. “He’s not black enough to be black,” one says. “He’s plenty black,” his friend answers. After some back-and-forth exchanges, they agree that he is “at most 49 percent white.”

One strip called ‘For Better or For Worse’ this week features mom “shaving” her bedsheet, which she explains being old gets those fuzzy little balls. When a small crowd of kids gathers after learning that their friend’s mom is “shaving the sheets”, she shoos them out of the house by hollering, “This is my bedroom, OK? And if I’m shaving that you think is weird, at least let me do it in private.”

The strip called ‘Pearls Before Swine’ has a frog by the name of Euripedes. And why does he keep one eye closed? Because he believes that the world is filled with pain. By closing one eye, he shuts out half of it. And then there is this dog called Mutts, who refuses to move till someone gives him a belly rub. Another strip called ‘Watch your Head’, has two young African-Americans lolling on a couch. When the boy suggests that watching DVDs is cool but they should move to “the next level,” she asks if that means “we’re finally going out on an actual date where you’re going to spend some actual money on me,” he answers, “Whoa, babe. I’m not tryna get that serious so fast.”

The famous strip named Blondie, which used to run in at least one Pakistani English newspaper is about a flighty, slightly scatter-brained housewife and her husband, not to forget the dog. The strip called ‘Wizard of Id’ is about a king and his courtiers. Here is the king on his balcony taking the air with one of his generals when an arrow lands on a wall with the message ‘All arrows on sale at Acme Archery.’ The salesmen arrive soon after with their sales pitch, “Our low-bid weapons are better than your low-bid weapons.” “Ours come with an extended warranty,” they are told. “We’ve a money back guarantee,” the salesmen retort. “We’ve free replacement parts,” the general on the balcony shoots back. “We get volume discounts,” he is told. Next we see is the King sitting on the floor muttering, “I ask for Generals and I get bean counters.”

Beetle Bailey, one of the most popular military cartoon strips is about a GI named Beetle Baily, who is always getting into trouble. In the strip before me, here is Beetle walking down the street with his sergeant wanting to know why dogs chase cars since it is dangerous to life and limb. He asks if the sergeant’s dog Otto also chases cars. He does, the sergeant answers, then adds, “I just make sure he wears a helmet.” A helmeted Otto is shown on a scooter in hot pursuit of a car.

Another popular strip called ‘Hagar the Horrible’ features a Viking warrior. Here he is dining with his wife sitting across the table from him. “Pass the mashed potatoes,” he says, “You are supposed to say, ‘Please pass the mashed potatoes’,” she scolds him. So he does what she has asked, but when he still gets no mashed potatoes he asks what happened. The wife replies, “There aren’t more mashed potatoes. I just wanted to hear you say ‘Please’.”

And of course there is always Peanuts. “Good grief, Can’t I ever eat anything in peace?” screams Charlie Brown, turning to Snoopy the dog who is standing on his hind legs, “Why do you have to hang around all the time? Can’t you leave a person alone even one minute?” he wants to know. Snoopy tries to charm Lucy, who is not interested, so he returns to Charlie, on his hind legs again. “I can’t stand it!” Charlie says to himself. The temperamental cat named Garfield is another evergreen comic strip character. He is lazy, he loves to eat and he wishes to be loved. What can I say to that except, “Join the club.”

It is time we had a national comic strip running in all Pakistani newspapers. All the artist will have to is to draw what goes on in Islamabad on any given day. The strip could be called ‘Eyeless in Isloo.’

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Why are even otherwise well intentioned and fair-minded Indian writers incapable of being objective when it comes to Kashmir or Pakistan for that matter? Demystifying Kashmir, a recent book by Indian academic Navnita Chadha Behera provides yet another instance of this intellectual lack of honesty. Put under the looking glass by a number of leading South Asia experts in a review article published by the journal Asia Policy, it becomes evident that prejudice often gets the better of even Indian academics when dealing with Kashmir.

Noted Kashmir scholar Robert Wirsing writes that the first and probably most serious limitation is Behera’s occasional “lapse into national partisanship – a noticeable tendency to set objectivity aside when addressing the India-Pakistan adversarial relationship. This tendency implies in general a pro-India tilt, yet in a few instances also results in the naive acceptance as incontestable fact the lurid characterisations of Pakistan spun out by the world’s bustling anti-Pakistan propaganda industry. This tendency, which surfaces throughout the book, is most evident in chapters where Behera considers first India’s, then Pakistan’s, Kashmir strategy.”

He notes that Behera offers the “comforting observation” that “although New Delhi has now and then strayed from its democratic, federal, and secular commitments to the people in Jammu and Kashmir, over the years the Indian polity has developed a democratic resilience to learn from its mistakes.”

Wirsing points out that Behera “seems not to be bothered that this exculpatory comment wildly contradicts her own descriptions of New Delhi-imposed rule in Kashmir made later in the same chapter. Such descriptions include, for instance, Behera’s assertions that Kashmir’s political system, created by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad was “an undemocratic, highly coercive, and centralised state apparatus with a thoroughly corrupt administration that ruthlessly suppressed all political dissent” and that New Delhi’s appointment of Shri Jagmohan as governor in 1990 ushered in “a long spell of state repression” marked by routine “beatings, intimidation, verbal abuse and humiliation, widespread torture, rape, arbitrary detention of scores of youth suspected of being militants, and shootings by the security forces at public processions and in crowded market areas.” Instead Behera seems determined to represent India as a reactive state, with a “defensive strategic outlook,” “a non-aggressive cultural worldview,” a “non-coercive notion of power,” and with “no offensive military objectives in Kashmir.” When Pakistan’s turn for inspection comes, however, Behera’s tone changes. “Where India’s political strategy in Kashmir is risk-averse and practically void of military inputs,” she tells us, “Pakistan’s is quite the opposite.” Risk-prone, aggressive, militaristic, and with a “predilection for forcibly changing the status quo in Kashmir,” Pakistan possesses very little that qualifies as a political strategy. Behera’s enthusiasm for her subject mounts substantially when she turns her attention in this chapter to “Jihad as an Instrument of State Policy.” That her caution in sifting fact from fiction doesn’t mount along with the enthusiasm is unfortunate. Behera cites frightening – but frightfully inaccurate – statistics about Pakistan’s “descent into religious fanaticism.” Her figure of “jihadis” produced by Pakistani madrassas and the number of madrassas themselves, Wirsing describes as “grossly inflated.”

Teresita C Schaffer in her assessment of the book finds that while she agrees with Behera’s judgment that the Pakistan army has been a key player in Kashmir, the Indian academic “somewhat short-changes two other aspects of Pakistan’s strategy. The first is the strategy’s legal roots in the 1949 UN resolutions on Kashmir and those resolutions’ demand for a plebiscite; the second is Pakistan’s stress on Kashmir’s Muslim identity.” The case that has of late been made by Indian writers – and Behera makes it more strongly than others – is that Kashmir has a “multi-ethnic” identity but the issue has been projected as a “Muslim only” issue. Also that Kashmiri Islam is different from non-Kashmiri Islam. This clearly implies that while Kashmiri Islam or “Kashmiriyat” is non-communal, Islam is otherwise. Behera writes, “Both militants and the Pakistan establishment have used the Islamic card – but to no avail because the Valley Kashmiris have repeatedly rejected it.The Valley Kashmiris strongly resented the hijacking of their political movement by Islamic warriors who had no respect for the religious beliefs of Sufi Islam and debunked their political goal of azadi. Among the militants – especially the first generation of their cadre – many used the Islamic card out of a strategic and tactical compulsion to induce their Pakistani patrons to provide funds and arms.”

Behera also accepts without demur the legality and rightness of the State’s “accession” to India by the Maharaja, he having opted for “secular” India rather than “feudal” Pakistan. She also accepts without question that Sheikh Abdullah, by casting his lot with India, was only implementing the will of the Kashmiri people, when such an assumption is not valid. The will of the Kashmiris was not ascertained through any known democratic method. They were not consulted but sold down the river. Behera writes, “The rationale for Sheikh’s decision lay in the belief that Kashmir’s political future would be more secure in the democratic, secular, and federal polity of India than in the feudal state of Pakistan.”

Let me close by quoting Yusuf Buch on Kashmir’s “accession” to India which Behera and all Indian writers accept as legal and final. Buch wrote some years ago, “The ostensible accession of Kashmir to India is a fiction entrenched in the Indian position. The fact that the act was preformed by a feudal ruler who had fled his capital in the face of popular revolt is well established in the official record of the dispute. But the facts of the elaborate conspiracy are not so well known.” When the Maharaja, who had been in contact with Indian leaders months before the “accession”, offered it at a time when his authority over the bulk of the state had crumbled, “The erstwhile Kashmiri popular leader, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, who had become a cohort of Indian leaders, was installed in office for his support of the Maharaja’s accession. But this same person, when he insisted that the accession was provisional and depended on a plebiscite, was dismissed and put in jail in 1953 for the next 13 years.” To this day, Kashmiris have shown themselves unreconciled to India’s occupation and rule and therein lies the test. What kind of loyal Indian subjects, writers like Behera should be asked, are Kashmiris who have to be kept in a state of siege with the help of 600,000 Indian troops?

The power and majesty of public opinion was in evidence this week in America when the MSNBC and CBS networks were forced to fire the host of one of its most famous and lucrative shows because of racist remarks made by Don Imus, its long-serving host.

Imus, whose show ‘Imus in the Morning’ came under fire when he referred to black Rutgers University women basketball players as “nappy-headed hos”. In hip-hop lingo, “hos” means “whores”. His producer called them “hardcore hos”. The public outrage at this racist slur was like a jungle fire and Imus, who has powerful friends and whose guests have always included important politicians and journalists with national reputations, lasted less than a week. The apology he offered, saying he is a good man who did something bad, was found unacceptable. NBC axed him first, followed by CBS which means 70 radio stations will no longer broadcast the Imus show. The cancellations were triggered by eight major advertisers withdrawing from the show’s sponsorship.

Don Imus has been spewing out abuse for a long time but even those with a long rope get ultimately hanged by the same rope. For instance, the Council for American-Islamic Relations pointed out this week that a wounded Iraqi who was shot dead by a US Marine was called a “booby-trapped raghead cadaver” on Imus’s show, but he got away with it. In another Imus programme, Palestinians were denounced as “stinking animals” and it was suggested that they should all be killed. Imus, it should be said in his “defence”, is an equal-opportunity racist and foul-mouth, having once referred to “thieving Jews”, which was followed by what one commentator called a “fake apology”.

When President Bill Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he called her “old Bigfoot shaky Janet Reno”. When hundreds of Haitians drowned accidentally, there was uproarious laughter on his show. Hillary Clinton, who has never appeared on his show, was once referred to as “that buck-toothed witch, Satan” who is worse than Osama bin Laden. On Thursday, Imus said, providing an inkling into his raspy, irate persona that he had “apologised enough” and that he would not go on “some talk show tour”.

He went on to declare, “I’m not going to go talk to Larry King or Barbara Walters or anyone else. The only other people I want to talk to are these young women at the team, and then that’s it.” The young women, most of them in their teens, whom he called whores, still had the decency to meet him but what happened at the meeting is not known.

When The New York Times hired African-American journalist Gwen Ifill in the 1990s, Imus said it was nice of the paper to “let the cleaning lady cover the White House”. He also called Times sports columnist William C Rhoden a “quota hire”. Imus described Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz as a “boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jew boy” on his programme in 1998.

Three years later, Sid Rosenberg sports announcer on the Imus show, said he can’t watch tennis players Venus and Serena Williams because they are too masculine. He called Venus Williams an “animal” and said the sisters are more likely to be featured in National Geographic than Playboy. Rosenberg has also called the US women’s soccer team “juiced-up dykes”. While watching Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s funeral in 2004, Rosenberg referred to Palestinians as “stinking animals” and said, “They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill ‘em all right now.” In the course of a discussion with his bosses last year, Imus referred to the “Jewish management” at CBS Radio as “money-grubbing bastards”.

CNN asked its viewers what they thought of Don Imus and his remarks. The network got an earful. Marie Phillip of New York, wrote, “I do not think that the forefathers intended that we use the term ‘Freedom of Speech’ as a means of expressing our ignorance, fears and sheer bigotry, willfully and intentionally to demean another human being, especially in a position when one can influence the public. It is about time Imus and the other talk show hosts who spew hatred and despair to an audience who sometimes cannot think for themselves be responsible for their actions and if it is through demonstrations by the public, cancellation of advertisements and any other means to take them off the airways, so be it. We must as a nation stand up to this type of ugly talk and be brave to say ‘enough is enough’.”

Chris Bevers from Wisconsin told CNN, “These radio megalomaniacs preach to their own narrow-minded choirs in their own cathedrals”, while Kathleen Berry in Ohio pointed out that Imus has a history of disrespect towards others. He was condescending and humiliating towards his own wife on the Larry King show, speaking to her in a demeaning way. “The decision of what to do with this man is a no-brainer. He must be fired.”

On Wednesday, the New York Times published as many as seven letters on the Imus scandal. One correspondent wrote, “He can act in a way that is consistent with what America claims to be all about, or we can appeal to the lowest common denominator, as Mr Imus has.”

Ironically, among the few who had a good word to say about him was an Indian, Jamshed Batliwala, who wrote that he had been listening to the show for 17 years and Imus was no racist nor a bigot.

Imus, I should add, has done several good things too. Since the 1990s, he has raised $50 million for charity. He also hosts cancer-stricken children at his ranch. However, despite his good deeds, his CBS radio show may not survive. Civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who staged a protest rally outside CBS in New York on Thursday said, “If CBS follows suit as NBC has done, it gives a chilling message to those that will use the public airwaves in a way that is gender-biased and race-biased. Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media. We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologising and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we’ve got to stop this.”

Hours later, CBS announced that it would no longer be involved with Don Imus.

It did occur to me though that had Don Imus been a broadcaster in Pakistan, he would have been offered honorary membership of one or more of our thriving hate societies.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Abdulla Malik was the last of the comrades and although he lived long enough to see the demise of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of communism, to his dying day, he did not waver in his faith in socialism and in its power to provide justice to the deprived and the disinherited of the earth.

At the age of 81, Abdulla Malik published an account of the first twenty-seven years of his life. In a brief foreword to the book, Purani Mehfilain Yaad aa Ra’hi Ain , he wrote, “I am eighty-one years old now and I can declare with pride that I have spent my entire life wedded to the same commitment, the same set of beliefs, namely the establishment one day of a socialist Pakistan. It will not come as the negation of any religion or faith, nor a revolt against God. In fact, it will be a message of love for mankind, a message that transcends all religions, faiths and creeds.”

The most fascinating part of Abdulla Malik’s autobiography, which holds little back, are his early memories of the old city of Lahore. He writes, “I was born in the last years of the second decade of the 20th century, on 20 October 1920 in Lahore’s Koocha Chabukswaran, which was located in the heart of the city. Relying on my earliest memories, I can say that all the streets around ours, and in fact our immediate neighbourhood, the area bazars, the mosques, the takiyas, the public baths, were part of Haveli Mian Khan. This Haveli was built in Emperor Shahjahan’s reign by his Prime Minister Nawab Saadullah Khan, but it was completed during the time of Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir by the Nawab’s son, Mian Khan, governor of Lahore. This grand edifice was spread over an area of several miles and it was divided into three sections: the women’s quarter, the men’s quarter which was called Rang Mahal, and the Qalai Khana, whose walls touched those of Masjid Chinyaanwali.”

After the British occupation of Punjab, the first mission school in the city was established by a clergyman named Farmson. That school came to be known far and wide as the Rang Mahal Mission School. In front of the school stood the mosque named after Muhammad Hafeez Chabukswar. Since the mosque was situated in the Rang Mahal area, it became popularly known as Masjid Rang Mahal. Koocha Chabukswaran, where Abdulla Malik was born, took its name from the Chabukswar family, who were professional horse traders and who belonged to the Pakhtun Kakezai tribe that originally migrated from Afghanistan.

Abdulla Malik writes, “It is hard to outsmart a Kakezai. The story goes that a crow once spotted a Kakezai sleeping flat on his back on a cot in his courtyard with his eyes open. The crow thinking the man was dead, decided to feast on him. Swooping down, he landed on his face. The Kakezai opened his mouth and one of the crow’s claws slipped into the Kakezai’s mouth which the man immediately closed, clenching the claw between his teeth. Realising that he was trapped, the crow thought of a stratagem. He asked the man what his caste was. The idea was that the moment he opened his mouth with an answer, it would free the crow’s claw and he would fly away. ‘Kakezai,’ the man muttered.” The crow remained trapped because you can pronounce the word Kakezai without unlocking your teeth. Anyone who does not believe it is welcome to try.

Abdulla Malik recalls that the street next to Dabbi Bazar was called Ghaggar Galli, most of whose residents were Hindu. It was called Ghaggar Galli because the loose lower garment worn by its Hindu women was called ghaggra . There were also a few families of Kashmiri Pandits who lived there and Abdullah Malik’s grandfather, to whom he was far closer than he was to his father, had the most friendly relations with them. On the occasion of the festivals of Diwali and Dusehra, the Hindu families would send their Muslim neighbours gifts of sweetmeats, a gesture that was reciprocated by the Muslims when Eid came around.

In 1925, Abdulla Malik writes, Justice Shadi Lal became the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court. It was the same year in which Maulana Abu Muhammad Syed Deedar Ali Shah, the Khatib of Masjid Wazir Khan, declared Allama Iqbal a kafir and outside the pale of Islam. The Allama had earned the ire of the clerics because he had advised them not to interfere in the internal politics of Saudi Arabia. Maulana Suleman Nadvi declared the fatwa an edict born out of ignorance. This only shows how the mullah’s mind works. The mullahs of today are far more dangerous than the mullahs of eighty years ago because the mullahs of today are armed with deadly weapons and command suicide bombers. Abdulla Malik recalls that Lahore was plunged into turbulence when the British principal of the Mughalpura Engineering College was accused of having insulted the Prophet (PBUH). Syed Ataullah Shah Bukhari spoke all night at a protest meeting held outside Modhi Gate and when it ended in the early hours of the morning, so emotionally charged had become the crowd that it started marching towards Mughalpura to settle scores with the principal. Later it turned out that the only reason this fabricated charge had been made against the Englishman was his refusal to grant admission to a number of undeserving students.

Abdulla Malik remembers a memorable visit to Lahore by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for the annual session of the All India Congress, which was held on the banks of the Ravi. He writes, “When Nehru arrived at the Lahore railway station, he was received by milling crowds. Among those who were there to welcome Nehru, were men like Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, Abdul Qadir Kasuri, Chaudhri Afzal and Dr Satya Pal. Nehru was put on a shimmering white horse and taken in a grand procession along Circular Road and into the old city through Dehli Darwaza, Chowk Wazir Khan, Kashmiri Bazar, Sunehri Masjid, Dabbi Bazar, Bowli Bazar, and then into Anarkali via Rang Mahal and Machhi Hatta. Nehru was presented with a bag of money in Anarkali. According to another chronicler and lover of old Lahore, Pran Nevile, this bag of money – a theli – was presented by the owner of the famous Bhalla Shoe Company. Justice Shadi Lal was also seen among those out to greet Nehru. Next day when his presence was reported in the press, he issued a statement saying he had nothing to do with those who had received Nehru. The next day, the Sikh leader Baba Kharrak Singh, was taken through the streets of Lahore on an elephant flanked by dancing Sikhs waving unsheathed kirpans. That was the way things were in those days.

Abdullah Malik’s book is a moveable feast and I am unable to convey its sweep and its nostalgia in a brief column. So let me end it with another of his reminiscences. “The first film that I saw was Alam Ara (the first Indian talkie) at Regent Cinema with my father. After that I saw the drama Laila Majnun presented by Maiden Theatre Company. Majnun was played by Master Nisar and Laila by Kajjan. Some time later, the Maiden Theatre Company went into film-making and its first presentation was Laila Majnun, with Master Nisar and Kajjan in the lead roles. The movie was a sensation across India. However, after my father’s death, I lost interest in both the theatre and the movies. Much of my attention was now devoted to political and religious movements and public meetings whose political theatricality impressed me deeply.”

Abdulla Malik was a one-man movement of action and ideas. There was no one quite like him – and those who knew him would confirm that it was so.

Where there are Pakistanis, there is cricket, and that includes the United States. Although it is not a cricketing country, the game is played by clubs in areas where people from the subcontinent live in large numbers. The World Cup in the Caribbean had thousands here riveted to Cricinfo on their computers, while many watched the matches live on television. After the defeat at the hands of Ireland, Pakistanis first went into shock, then into mourning. They could not understand how we could have lost. Mishap was followed by tragedy. Bob Woolmar died and the mysterious circumstances in which he died made things even darker than they already were. The subsequent questioning of the team, the DNA tests, talk of gambling mafias, the harsh criticism of the players and the unceremonious manner in which they were constrained to return home to Pakistan turned what was to be a time of joy into a time of deep unhappiness bordering on despair.

Dr Nasim Ashraf, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, offered to resign, which was the right, the honourable course to take. That he was asked to stay and look into the causes of our poor performance has been criticised by some, while others have argued that under the circumstances, he may be the best person to undertake this task. A committee has been set up and a time limit set. It is only reasonable to suspend judgement till the report of the committee has been made public, something that has been promised.

It is of course not the first time that a strong, fancied team has lost to a weak side, in our case Ireland, a team of weekend cricketers. When Ireland qualified for the World Cup, it surprised many that Ireland could be good enough to be among the handful of nations that had won a place on cricket’s most select table. Nobody expected Pakistan to lose, least of all Pakistan and the millions of Pakistanis to whom cricket is like a religion. But we have got to put what happened in perspective.

I can never forget two things that my late and much-missed friend Farooq Mazhar, the doyen of Pakistan’s sports writers, said to me in Australia in the summer of 1992 when the two of us were there reporting the World Cup for our respective newspapers in Pakistan. The first thing he said was that the only joy the people of Pakistan had ever known had been brought to them by their sportsmen. We had all hoped that Inzimam-ul-Haq would bring us the joy that Imran Khan had brought to us fifteen years ago. That was not to be. But then not always do things turn out the way we want them to turn out. Life is a series of surprises.

We are not the only ones of whom much was expected and who failed to come up to their people’s expectations. India sent a fine, well-balanced team to the West Indies and there were many who expected India not only to cruise into the Super Eight but to make it to the final. That was not to be and more abuse has been heaped on the Indian team by its disappointed, frustrated fans than has come the way of the Pakistani cricketers.

West Indies, which had the advantage of home crowds and home wickets, is out and a pall of gloom has descended on the host nation, where cricket is a way of life. England, which many thought was good enough to emerge among the last eight, is out of the tournament. In other words, we are not the only ones who were expected to do well and did not. This is not the end of our cricket, just as it is not the end of the road for those others who find themselves in the same situation as Pakistan. The game will live and go on, outlasting both victory and defeat.

I remember Javed Miandad telling me in Perth after I expressed surprise at a most odd stroke he had made, “Bhai, these one dayers are not cricket; they are something else. Cricket we play in Test matches. One day cricket is catch as catch can.”

But let me return to Farooq Mazhar and World Cup 1992. The site: MCG, the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Occasion: World Cup final, Pakistan vs England. Farooq and I sat next to each other in the press box, our portable Olivetti typewriters in front of us — there was no email or Internet; we faxed our stories — the match having entered a most crucial stage. Farooq had covered every Olympiad since Tokyo and more international cricket and hockey tours than he could remember. I had done little if any sports reporting and I was very nervous. Then a wicket fell. I turned to Farooq Mazhar, “Farooq, what if we lose!” Farooq took a deep breath, paused, looked into the distance and said, “Remember, it is only a game.”

But we won and Farooq and I ran into the ground and stood feet away from Imran Khan holding that lovely crystal trophy high in the air, over his head, for the whole world to see. But it could have been the England captain also. After all, it was only a game, as Farooq had said. And that is something we must always remember as some call for the beheading of the players, the selectors, the board and even the poor guard who stands in front of the Pakistan Cricket Board headquarters in Lahore. I remember Imran Khan telling Omar Kureishi in Hobart, Tasmania, over dinner. “We have a great team but Pakistan has such abundance of talent, that I can raise two more just such teams.” I think that is something we need to remember. We are alive and well and we will fight and win another day. We should learn what lessons there are to learn from our experience, but we must not despair and we must not be bitter. There is world enough and time for Pakistan and Pakistan’s cricket. Let me end this on another Farooq Mazhar memory. He used to recall what the great Colonel Aslam of Islamia College, Lahore, one of the greatest sports organisers of our times, used to say in the event of defeat, “Perk up boys, that is one defeat less from the tablet that fortune wrote for us.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Mark Twain said that a sucker is born every minute. Had he lived in our times, he would have multiplied the number hundreds of thousands of times. The world is full of scammers and even larger is the number of suckers who get done in by them. If you are fool enough to be conned, then you are fool enough to be conned, and there should be no hard feelings, brother.

A couple of years ago I wrote what I thought was a funny column stating that at long last I had become a millionaire after winning a lottery for which I had never bought a ticket. Next thing I know people were phoning my sister Sorayya Khurshid in Lahore congratulating her on the great good fortune of her brother in America. I was sorry to break her heart and disappoint my other well-wishers, one of whom phoned from Lahore, when I told them the truth. I was still as poor as I always was.

The State Department here has just come out with a most entertaining 24 page advisory for American citizens warning them not to get conned through international financial scams, which the Department lists as Internet dating, inheritance, work permits, overpayment, and money-laundering. There are such categories as Gorgeous People in Trouble, The Damsel in Distress, Long-Lost Inheritance, Windfall from a Deceased Relative, A Job Offer You Can’t Refuse, Overpayment Refunds, Laundering Crooked Money etc.

The State Department says that while financial scams have always existed, the advent of the Internet has greatly increased their prevalence. Individual Americans have lost considerable money on these scams, ranging from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Department gets daily inquiries from victims of these scams.

The US Consulate General in Lagos alone received 3,000 inquiries from victims in one year, and posts in Accra, London, and Moscow have had their share of distress calls from those who have been “took.” Since all good Pakistanis are born with the desire to make quick and big money without ever having to work for it, I have no doubt that the number of my countrymen who have been taken for a ride by damsels in distress and inheritances discovered in Nigeria is large. While TFT readers are smart cookies, I cannot swear that some of them have not been gipped. What better news can there be for a person the moment he clicks the inbox on his PC that he has won big bucks?

The Department points out that all types of advance-fee scams have one point in common: the targeted person is led to believe that he or she has a chance to attain something of very great personal value, be it financial reward or a romantic relationship, in return for a small up-front monetary outlay. All the scammer asks is a small “processing fee,” so that the big sum can be freed and sent to its lucky rightful owner. The money was usually presented as illegally obtained funds in need of laundering. The overseas embezzler simply needed a willing accomplice’s bank account to which to transfer the funds, and in exchange would reward the person handsomely.

According to the State Department, more recent scams have migrated from simple greed to the promise of love or a more rewarding professional life. Scams involve one or more, sometimes all, of the following key signs: the scammer and the victim meet online, often through Internet dating or employment sites. The scammer asks for money to get out of a bad situation or to provide a service. Photographs that the scammer sends of “him/herself” show a very attractive person. The photo appears to have been taken at a professional modeling agency or photographic studio. The scammer has incredibly bad luck – often getting into car crashes, arrested, mugged, beaten, or hospitalised – usually all within the course of a couple of months. They often claim that their key family members are dead. Sometimes, the scammer claims to have an accompanying child overseas who is very sick or has been in an accident. The scammer claims to be a native-born American citizen, but uses poor grammar indicative of a non-native English speaker.

The most interesting of the scams is the Damsel in Distress scam. This is how it is set up for Americans. An American man meets an alleged American woman through an online dating service. After a successful online courtship, the two agree to meet. However, before they do, she must travel to Nigeria to attend to some important personal business. While in Nigeria, an unexpected tragedy befalls her. She is now feeling lonely and vulnerable, and is counting on him to help her through this difficult time. The traveler allegedly becomes a victim of a violent crime, and is robbed of all of her belongings. The manager at the hotel where she is staying has seized her passport and is refusing to allow her to leave the premises until she pays her outstanding bill. Alternatively, her mother who was accompanying her on the trip has suddenly fallen ill. She is unable to pay for the unexpected expenses, and needs assistance taking care of the hospital bill. Often, she claims that she has contacted the US embassy, but has been refused help. The man sends the damsel in distress money, but never hears from her again, which proves that the old saying that a fool and his money are soon parted is correct.

Then there is the long lost inheritance scam or a windfall from a relative who has passed on. A lawyer contacts an American citizen to inform him that one of his long-lost relatives has died overseas, often but not always in Nigeria. The relative allegedly was an oil industry worker who died in a car crash or had a heart attack. The deceased relative, according to the lawyer’s message, has left a large amount of savings in a bank account which needs to be repatriated to the next-of-kin in the States. Apparently, all closely related family members are also deceased or untraceable – hence the unexpected contact with the long-lost relative. The American citizen victim, to obtain the financial windfall, must first pay a money transfer fee of $200 and the lawyer’s fee of $500 to $1000. This solicitation comes by letter or through e-mail in the form of long, detailed messages. Adding credibility, the scammers customise the solicitation, tailoring the surname of the mythical dead man to match that of the targeted American victim. When the victim insists that he has never heard of such a relative, the scammer says that he has tried unsuccessfully for several years to find a real next-of-kin, and is on the verge of giving up. Some people send the lawyer his fee, which brings the curtain down. The promised millions never come and their attempts to make contact with the lawyer draw a blank.

Some people get taken in when they agree to launder money that has allegedly been made through corrupt means. They are asked to send a processing fee, and if they do, that is the end of the matter. The millions that were to flow into their bank account never materialise. Ultimately, it is greed that induces people to fall victim to scams. The rule of thumb is: never believe anyone who offers to give you something in return for nothing.

The Transport Security Administration maintains a ‘No Fly’ list. The Voice of America’s Urdu service has gone one better. It has come up with a ‘No Speak’ list. I don’t know who else is on that list, but I do know that I for one have been accorded that honour. And what did I do to earn it? I wrote something — and in this space too — that was considered infra dig. Result: the broadcast equivalent of ‘off with his head’, to borrow from Lewis Carroll, which appears appropriate since the goings on at the VOA do remind me of Alice in Wonderland.

So, here My Lord is what made the Voice from the land of the free that produces, among other things, twenty-two minutes of television for Pakistan, five days a week, thanks to the creative efforts of close to thirty local and foreign hires, spring into action.

The scribe who has been proceeded against at the express orders of Long John Silver is guilty of thumbing his nose at a programme broadcast to Pakistan for the “spiritual” uplift and guidance of the listeners. He put into print what was viewed as an uncalled for intrusion into the right of the Voice to broadcast what it will, including how to interpret your dreams and how to make sure that your offspring is paired off nicely, not to mention how to obtain gainful employment through holy spells.

My Lord, this is one accused who pleads guilty to the charge and confesses that he indeed is the author of the column to which exception has been taken by Long John Silver and the broadcast gods who occupy the Elysian heights of 4th Street and Independence Avenue in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, and who spend their time drinking nectar, eating Hungarian goulash and silencing long-standing VOA services to the world.

All I did was point out that the VOA’s Urdu service, that has for some time been going out under the newly-minted, though not very original, name of Radio Aap ki Dunya had gone into the business of offering advice from a Karachi-based mountebank who was promising divine cures for all that can possibly ail a human being. I expressed surprise that the Voice of America, which was expected to bring enlightenment to its listeners, was lending its facilities to be used for the propagation of such mumbo-jumbo as the interpretation of dreams. Not only that, but in one broadcast that I heard with my own two ears, the spiritualist’s phone number in Karachi was also provided so that if your cow got stolen or your son ran away with the neighbour’s cat, you should persuade them to return to the right path and repent. A free plug was also offered to the Mr Fix It’s book.

I wrote that the Karachi clairvoyant, who was interviewed from the VOA’s Washington studios by a staffer, who was obviously an admirer and a believer, stated that those who were unable to decide whether to take a certain decision or not, should take the following steps. Before going to bed at night, the supplicants should perform their ablutions and do various recitations. Having done that, they should lie down on their right side. “The connection is now working and you can talk to God,” the listeners were told. In the next three nights, he promised, clear guidance will come through in a dream. They were further told that if the dream showed clouds, rain, river, sea, green grass or mountains, that would mean, “Do it”. But if it showed darkness, evil spirits, beasts or blood, the message would be, “Don’t do it”.

Long John Silver’s decision to ban me from further VOA appearances — not that I make many or that VOA pays even a single cent if you do — proves once again the old adage: No good deed goes unpunished. Whereas I should have been sent a letter of thanks or at least taken to lunch by the chairman of the BBG — the VOA’s Broadcast Board of Governors — for having put them wise to the rubbish being put out in America’s name, I have been made PNG. Not that I mind because, frankly, making a broadcast for Radio Aap ki Dunya meant driving twenty miles each way from Virginia through thick traffic to yap for a few minutes and without even being offered a glass of water, forget cold cash.

What I find rather amusing is that instead of influencing Pakistanis — which is the general idea behind all the millions of dollars being spent — with American values, the traffic is running the other way. It is a given in Pakistan that those whom the government of the day does not like or approve of — for some or no reason — are banned from appearing on Radio Pakistan and PTV. But that was not the way it used to be here, at least until now. One can only conclude, therefore, that it is not America influencing Pakistan, but Pakistan influencing America.

I am sure L.J. Silver needs no translator to follow that good old Urdu proverb: Ultay baans Bareilly ko.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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