Mallala Has Defined Our Future Course

 AYAZ AMIR , The News. Paskistan

 So Malala deserved to die. “We targeted her because she would speak against the Taliban while sitting with shameless strangers and idealised the biggest enemy of Islam, Barack Obama.” Thus the warriors of the faith, trying to justify the unjustifiable. What was the bigger crime, sitting with shameless strangers or idealising Obama? Wonders will never cease. The Taliban stung by criticism? 

This is something new. Inured to drone attacks and military action – things which they could fathom and in a way deal with – but grinding their teeth in helpless anger at this disaster of their own making, and not knowing how to get back at the growing body of criticism created by their action. So words have the power to hurt? But the Taliban retain the power to shock, first by the attack on the young girl and then by delivering, in the manner of religious injunctions, mind-blowing justifications. The attempted murder of a young girl justified in such terms? And there are people in our society, no shortage of them, with whom such reasoning resonates...if such warped thoughts can be given the name of reasoning. “Shariah says that even a child can be killed if it is propagating against Islam”...this again from the Taliban. Which Shariah and whose Islam? Forget so-called religious leaders. No point in exposing their contradictions. Come hail or sunshine expect them not to deviate from their chosen script, their path to bread and butter in this world and to heaven in the next. But what about other bright souls, no shortage of them either, who hold it as a self-evident truth that we should negotiate with the Taliban?

 Imran Khan would not be able to survive a day under the Taliban but it is fascinating watching him as he gets worked up about engaging with the Taliban. Malala’s ordeal has helped concentrate minds like nothing else. But to prove once more that we live in an imperfect world, it has also exposed our mixed up thinking...not so much the thinking of common people, less given to fanciful flights of logic, as of religious firebrands and political redeemers. Hand it to them for confusing the issue the moment they open their mouths, bringing in the United States, Afghanistan and jihad even as they denounce the attempt on the girl’s life. And whoever has seen fit to drag the possibility of a military operation in North Waziristan into the ongoing debate and outcry has done little to clear the mist. An operation there is for the army to decide, not the political government which has little say or even interest in the matter. And it should be decided or not decided on its merits, after cool calculation. An army is not worth much if it is pitch-forked into action by emotional pressure, whether coming from outside or generated inwardly by something like Malala’s shooting. But having said this, isn’t it high time we cleared the cobwebs from our minds and realised that regardless of whether the Americans are in Afghanistan or are getting out in a year or two, the mindset of the Taliban, their narrow interpretation of Islam, is a threat to us all...that what they stand for, the ideas they propagate, and for which they are not above targeting a 14-year-old school girl, are antithetical to the very idea of Pakistan as articulated by its founding fathers. Iqbal and Al-Qaeda, Jinnah and the Taliban...is it possible even to think on these lines? If an operation in North Waziristan is a matter of tactics and timing, of weighing the pros and cons, getting our thinking straight, realising the enormity of the danger we face, is something far bigger. Are we ready for this? Is this republic to remain a monument to confused and divisive policies or are we finally prepared to live like a normal country? Normality means the army high command reaffirming its loyalty to the ideas of Jinnah, begging forgiveness for the aberrations of the Zia and subsequent years. It means abandoning the false notions of strategic depth and throwing all the weight of our not inconsiderable energies on domestic problems. Setting our house in order, developing a sound economy and maintaining a valid defence...these should be our priorities. And settling the problems of Balochistan – we must take these seriously – and seeing to it that we have nothing to do with the politics of jihad, whether dedicated to the liberation of Kashmir or the winning of influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s strategic depth lies not in Afghanistan. Whoever gave us this idea? The generals responsible for this philosophy deserve an extended stay in purgatory. Our strategic depth is Balochistan. Take that away and what remains of Pakistan? Just an over-populated corridor running from north to south. Our so-called strategic location is because of that province. The choice is clear and should leave no room for confusion. Talking to the Baloch, yes, by all means...even if they have begun talking the language of independence. Talking to the Taliban, no, because the mediaeval kingdom they believe in has nothing to do with Pakistan. Let them conquer Afghanistan. Let them conquer Chechnya. We should be rid of the false ideas we have been nurturing these past 30 years if not more. Pakistan should not be any kind of safe haven for them. And then let America fight its own wars. And good luck to it. But let us not be under the illusion that our internal cancer, that of religious extremism and the nationwide network sustaining it, is dependent on or connected to America’s presence in Afghanistan. America may leave tomorrow yet this cancer will remain. We will still have to figure out how to fight it. The fight can be postponed, not abandoned if Pakistan is to be rescued. But no reason to despair. Better-organised societies have been beset by confusion at different times in their history. Recall the divided psyche of France on the eve of the Second World War. The Wehrmacht came as conquering heroes later. Defeat lay in the mind of France before the onset of hostilities.

 As for Britain, in the long run-up to the war opinion there was divided about the best course to adopt towards Hitler. There were those who advocated a policy of engagement, eventually turning into the bitter leaves of appeasement. Munich exposed the hollowness of their thinking. Churchill’s was the lone voice from early on which said that there could be no talking to Hitler because Hitler’s goals were not amenable to negotiations. Hitler revealed himself in Mein Kampf, much before he came to power. How many more self-confessions from the Taliban before a divided and confused nation can finally agree that they and their goals stand fully revealed and that there is no halfway house with them? It won’t hurt us if at this juncture we also started thinking about the larger problem besetting us. Isn’t it time we rethought the idea of Pakistan? The two-nation theory was good enough, indeed essential, for separate statehood. But haven’t events overtaken it? Proclaiming our Muslimhood is no answer to the problems of Balochistan. It helps us achieve little clarity about the threat posed by the Taliban. So what is the answer? History itself is throwing up the alternative, the need to recast the idea of Pakistan on what I can only call ‘modern’ lines, shying away as I do, for obvious reasons, from the word secular, turned into a red rag by the ideologues standing guard over the flickering flame called the ideology of Pakistan.

 Email: winlust@yahoo.com

Khuswant Singh

The more suppressed a society, the more it seeks outlets in what that society forbids. Salman Rushdie is absolutely right in holding that “pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it is difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need... while doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard bearer for freedom, even civilisation”. He chose Pakistanis obsession with pornography on the internet. I look forward to reading his essay ‘The East is Blue’. I expect the East includes India.

What is true of Pakistan is equally true about India. I cannot write as well as Rushdie, but I know both India and Pakistan better than him. Pakistan has had long periods of military rule when freedom of expression was severely suppressed. It produced more literature (including bawdy verse) and underground humour (including bawdy jokes) against its rulers than during short intervals of democratic rule. Likewise in India when Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency and gagged the press, it gave birth to a corpus of anti-Mrs G stories which did the rounds all over the country. My favourite one was about Mahatma Gandhi in heaven ruing the fact that no one in India remembered the founding father. He sent for Pandit Nehru and asked him what he had done. Replied Nehru, “Bapu, I had the place where we cremated you turned into a national monument. On your birthdays and anniversaries of your martyrdom, people gather and sing your favourite hymn. I did my bit for you.” Next Gandhi sent for Lal Bahadur Shastri and put the same question to him. Replied Shastri, “Bapu, I had a very short time as PM. But even in that short time I had your writings and speeches translated in all our languages and published. I had your statues put in cities, towns and villages. What more I could I do?” Finally, Bapu sent for Mrs Gandhi who was then ruling over India and asked her the same question. “Bapu”, replied Indira, “I have done more to perpetuate your memory than either my father or Shastri. I have made all Indians like you. I have deprived them of everything except their langotis (loincloths) and danda (stick).” Bapu was horrified. “Beti Indira, this is wrong. The people will rise in rebellion against you.” An unfazed Indira replied, “Bapu, I have taken care of that. I have tied their hands with their langotis and put the danda in their bums.” (The Hindi version is more earthy). Humour is one outlet, pornography is another. The more you segregate men and women, the more they get together in their fantasies. Where there is a strict purdah, there is more incest and child abuse. Where there are strict laws against pornography, there is more pornography. It is as simple as that. Translating Faiz I am engaged in translating some of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s (1911-1984) poetry into English. He was a few years senior to me in Government College, Lahore, but I did not get to know him as I was not admitted to the select coterie of Urdu savants at the time. It was during 1939-45, when he was a Lt. Colonel in the British Indian Army, that I was able to persuade him to come to my home.

He was a kindly, soft-spoken man and a heavy drinker. I have not known another man drink from sunrise to sunset, without showing the slightest sign of drunkenness. After Partition, I saw a lot more of him when I visited Rawalpindi. When he happened to be in Delhi I managed to get him to spend an evening in my home. By then, I had read quite a bit of his poetry in the original and the excellent translations done by Victor Kiernan. He had been put in prison many times for his trenchant criticism of dictatorial regimes and wrote some of his most moving poetry from prison. He had ardent admirers who included his jailors and their wives. I have no doubt they took good care of him. Another enigma about him was while he lived in princely comfort himself, most of his poetry was devoted to highlighting the abysmal poverty of the downtrodden masses exhorting them to revolt and claim their God-given right to a better life. A line of doggerel about him went somewhat like this: Faiz ik baraa shair hai, chaman mein reh kar maarey veeraney kee gaand. (Faiz is a great poet, he lives in a garden and buggers the wild wastes.) As in the case of many other great poets, so in Faiz’s case, it was after his verses were put to music and sung that they gained popularity. My friend, the late Kingsley Martin, editor of The Statesman and Nation, told me that once when he was visiting Lahore Faiz took him to the prostitutes’ quarters, Hira Mandi. There the girls sang Faiz’s ghazals and instead of asking for money loaded Faiz with gifts as they chucked them under his chin. The most famous lines of Faiz which appear first in all his compositions run as follows: Raat yoon dil mein teyree khoee huee yaad aayee Jaisey veeraaney mein chupkey say bahaar aa jaaye; Jaisey sehraaon mein hauley sey chaley baad-e-naseem Jaisey beemaar ko be-wajah garaar aa jaaye Last night your memory stole into my mind As stealthily as spring steals into a deserted wilderness As in desert wastes a gentle breeze begins to blow, As in the sick beyond hope, hope begins to grow. Illiterates The head of the mathematics department of Delhi University was travelling by Toofan Mail to Mumbai. The dinner bell was sounded. He left his seat and walked down the corridor to the dining car taking with him a book that he was reading. When he sat down at the table, he found that he had left his reading glass in his compartment. He called the dining attendant, pointed to a footnote and asked, “Be good enough to read this for me.” “I am sorry, sir,” said the attendant, “like you I cannot read or write.” (Contributed by R.N. Lakhotia, N. Delhi) Brevity, the soul of wit When I was in college, we had a competition of making a joke with the least number of words. The following joke in seven words was judged the best: “Geography of a woman tells her history.”