Cricket and intolerance have become the two virtues to salvage our nationalism
the review
in Pakistan’s
Death of the White
Sunday, 13 March, 2011
flag a thoroughly useless discussion to begin with. The idea of Raymond Davis types orchestrating every blast in Pakistan’s territory was already rather popular before Davis’s moment of madness. But these mechanisms in our popular imagination are only ways to shirk responsibility of the internal production of events that have the possibility of fundamentally disturbing us. We don’t let ourselves be disturbed. We blame America and return to watching the next cricket match. No responsibility is ever accepted by us. For those still unconvinced, it must be brought to their notice that incidents of individuals being killed for alleged blasphemy are not an exception in Punjab. The idea that words can offend the Sacred has wider acceptance in Punjab than the rest of the country, though it may be that the effects of the current debacle shall have spillovers.
The production of an intolerant imagination
I
t was a strategic decision to wtrite this article a week and a half after Shahbaz Bhatti’s assassination. The biggest worry most had the day Bhatti was gunned down was Pakistan’s fate against Canada in the Cricket World Cup. So while you followed up on the cricket – and danced to Shahid Afridi’s wicket taking prowess (he is proving one very adept captain, I must concede), let me tell you the set of news that you missed. The captain that was hoping to steer the ship of Pakistan’s religious minorities from a dismal position was assassinated. More bewildering was that he was assassinated after he had forfeited the match. The battle to restore the dignity of Pakistan’s religious minorities had already been given up. Now they were trying to survive by laying low. ‘Avoid the follow-on,’ you’d chip in in Test match language. Yes, indeed. The religious minorities of Pakistan were trying to avoid ‘the follow-on.’ It was in this feeble, defensive state, with a night-watchman assisting the captain out on the pitch, that the captain was murdered. In broad day light, in front of the umpire! No one uttered a word. The religious
minorities in Pakistan had been bowled straight out of the field. And the Cricket World Cup 2011 and the fate of the Pakistan Cricket Team became our concern, again. Much has been written about dear Shahbaz after his murder. But nothing that will leave a lasting imprint as powerful as his assassination itself. Let me whisper the news to you: the religious minorities in Pakistan have (finally) been murdered. The White in the flag has been obliterated with the green of a very dark tint. The eerie silence that has followed proves it.
Strange ways of understanding events
When Shahbaz Bhatti was murdered I made the error of putting it up on Facebook and writing out a brief news report stating that a self-proclaimed Taliban group had left leaflets condemning Bhatti for seeking review of the Blasphemy Laws. Immediately I had a friend arguing with me over how I could rule out ‘American’ forces masterminding the murder. It took a 10-message conversation to explain to him how I, despite having the Aasia Bibi case files (and knowing their problems inside out), had refused to file a story on it. Then he did concede the point. But it was
The strangest of condemnations
After hearing Sunni Tehreek leaders orchestrate the struggle against the review of the Blasphemy Laws and popularise the idea that even someone who criticised the Blasphemy Laws (Salmaan Taseer, namely) was eligible for death, the condemnations that came from them after Shahbaz Bhatti’s murder on national television were common sense. Rather it was to strange to hear people saying, “it is a positive sign that the religious right has condemnded the act.” These folks had forgotten that the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti was only a logical conclusion of the madness set in motion by the same groups appearing to condemn it. To accept their polite shirking away from owning up the incident, saying, “We did not wish this to happen. It is a conspiracy against us and
Religion and cricket: in cahoots?
But just one more word. As we return to sell the soul of our nationalism to cricket – we must be reminded that we are in the footsteps of the Sunni Tehreek who declared that it shall not hold a set of conferences (I feign deliberate ignorance) scheduled for March 23 so that the Pakistani Ummah can watch the Cricket World Cup 2011 quarter-finals. It is such a strange world that we have created for ourselves as those who breed the most intolerant of ideas still ‘respect’ the love of cricket. What are we left with? Cricket and intolerance, as the two virtues of our nationalism! Is there any human form to salvage a human from the fetters of our national identity? First, we must reexamine partition. Second, we must reexamine the two-nation theory. Third, we must reexamine our independence narrative for a semblance of humanity somewhere within it – and then we must grab onto it. The worry though is: will we find it? No one knows. It is true that no one knows where we shall find the ink to paint the White back onto Pa k i s t a n’s flag. But then we should not worry about finding a painter. Who was Shahbaz Bhatti, anyway? Let’s all just settle down to watch the next cricket match – and forget this rather imprudent man. Why must we even ask these questions when we can say, ‘Great bowling, Shahid. Great bowling…’
2 Exhilarating new novel by brilliantly inventive writer 4 The lost monastery
By Hashim bin Rashid
It was also very strange when I returned to my home village Sangla Hill to study the status of minorities there that the power of the Khatam i Naboowat conference and the mass sprouting of madrassas was revealed to me. It was rather later that I came to discover that Sangla Hill had had its Gojra incident in 2005. When I took a friend who teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences to Itanwali (Aasia’s village) she was asked by the lady that accused Aasia to recite the first kalma and offer prayer. Their mother refused to shake hands with her before her daughters ‘confirmed’ to her that my friend was ‘Muslim.’ When my friend retorted, “Why do you not shake hands with Christians?” the mother of the accusing girls retorted, “If you were Muslim you would not have asked me this question.” Simple. The mother of the accusers had no qualms about stating that non-Muslims were not to be ‘touched.’ If it be reminded then ‘touching’ a glass is exactly where the Aasia case itself began. The idea that non-Muslim are below human dignity is a widely prevalent idea in the Pakistani landscape – and it has to do with the particular memory that produces our breed of nationalism and religion.
Pakistan,” is tantamount to allowing them to keep their control over our imagination. It is another trap for us to not see what has truly happened. The Pakistani flag has been painted green. Fully green. The white has been washed away. So it is best that we return to watching cricket. And when it comes to the suffering Christians in Pakistan let us declare, “there are no Christians suffering in Pakistan. There are no Hindus suffering in Pakistan, and no Ahmadis either.” Rather let us say what we’d rather say, “there are no Christians in Pakistan” and return to watching the next cricket match (who is it between, Pakistan and Australia, is it?).
the review
by brilliantly inventive
A love story from 18th century Japan confirms David Mitchell as the most dazzling British novelist of his generation
D
oes it matter what books a novelist has written before? Should readers need to know an author›s preceding works fully to grasp the new one? It might simply have been a parlour game for fans and critics, but a subsidiary pleasure of David Mitchell›s four previous novels lay in his weaving together of motifs, both within his stories and between them. In a typical manoeuvre, an incidental character from his first book, Ghostwritten (1999), would become a major one in his third, Cloud Atlas (2004). His fourth novel, Black Swan Green (2006), though more conventionally autobiographical than either, was littered with recurrences from, and clues to, both – as if worlds, both real and fictional, were endlessly intersecting. Reappearing characters, cartwheeling symbols, tantalising leitmotifs, coincidences across time and space: the structural gymnastics of Mitchell›s narratives made delightful play with what literary academics would call intertextuality. There was artistic continuity in this, but also the hint of an in-joke. You got it if you had read all the books – but not if you›d only read one. And what really made those books wonderful was not so much Mitchell›s intertextual cleverness as his native, underlying gifts as a storyteller. Now, however, with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, he has moved on, jettisoned the cross-referencing, and severed the overt links to his previous books. It is interesting but unnecessary to know that the author has lived in Japan, is the
father of half-Japanese children, and has set an earlier novel – number9dream (2001) – in the country. Equally, the fact that this new novel centres on a love story between a European man and a Japanese woman represents no more than the most elementary draw from autobiography. Beyond that, it is a self-standing historical novel, written in chronological order in the present tense, which conjures up a profoundly researched and fully realised world. It takes place at the turn of the 18th century, in Edoera Japan. The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) has requisitioned the 120 metre-long artificial island of Dejima, in the bay of Nagasaki, as a trading post. Theirs is the most significant contact Japan has had with the outside world since Portuguese missionaries were expelled by the Tokugawa shogunate, and Christianity eradicated. That closing-off of Japan was described in Shusaku Endo›s masterly and desolate 1966 novel, Silence, and Mitchell’s book – teeming where Endo was bleak – is, in some sense, its successor.
Dutch trade on the island is now the one opening Japan has to the outside world – a tiny valve for the exchange of goods and ideas. Jacob de Zoet is an uptight young Dutch book-keeper, charged with cleaning up the accounts of an operation riddled with corruption as Dutch power fades and English naval power looms. Possessing no navy of i t s
own, Japan is both fanatically insular and increasingly vulnerable. Encountering a beautiful but scarred Japanese midwife who has been granted some limited contact with European medicine, Jacob finds himself in thrall to a love forbidden by tradition, culture, politics and law. The object of this ginger-haired naive’s hopeless desire, Miss Aibagawa, is bound by the highly stratified social order of Japanese society and then purchased by the abbot of a secretive mountain shrine, where a form of sexual slavery is practised
David Mitchell
On fixing Pakistan’s education issues
W
Illustrated & Designed by Babur Saghir
Sunday, 13 March, 2011
02 - 03
Exhilarating new
hen one wonders about the lowest literacy rates in the world, Pakistan undoubtedly comes to one’s mind. Being a third world country ravaged by corruption and instability, Pakistan has become a breeding ground for terrorism. With its brutal history of wars and insecure relations with neighbouring countries, a question that recurs often: what can we, Pakistani citizens, do? Education on the Horizon provides some answers. It recognises the untapped potential Pakistan has and the lack of strategy and interest to make the most of it. The author feels the necessity of resorting to a pragmatic approach of bringing change and hence publishes her research on various education systems, their organisation and functioning along with the politics that play into each type
of school. Furthermore, she divides national and local leadership to improve understanding of who precisely plays a role in the education sector and to what extent. This is of much significance as the people need to know who they may hold accountable for the standard and quality of education they are receiving. There is no doubt that the national and local leadership face countless hindrances in terms of finances, interest, teacher participation, teaching programmes, religious inclinations, location and costs. Therefore, organising these problems in accordance with who can fix them is vital and coherently results in a politically viable solution. The book commences with an understanding of the current dilemmas that the department of education faces. Indeed, it makes it evident that it is up to this generation to bring about the
educational change Pakistan needs. The purpose of this brief book is to make accessible and conveniently comprehensible the types of schools Pakistan has and the political context within which they exist. Education on the Horizon analyses the disputed education systems and high gender disparity rates and identifies major hindrances in achieving education reforms. The book concludes with an expansive understanding of the education culture, highlighting knowledge requirements of the population in line with their religious and social associations. It ends with recommendations that could qualitatively improve the education department of Pakistan. It serves as a handy text for any progressive mind, which is eager to attain an equal and singular standard of academic curriculum in Pakistan so as to offer the citizens equal opportunities.
Title: Education on the Horizon Author: Aanya Niaz Publisher: Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons, Lahore. Pages: 58 ; Price: Not mentioned
novel
The Frontier of Faith
writer
by the monks. A rescue attempt, in the form of a samurai raid on the shrine, briefly makes you suspect the novel is going to turn on a thriller plot but, thrilling as this episode actually is, it rather turns on the murk of politics and the complex allegiances of a feudal society. Miss Aibagawa is no cipher of the mysterious “other”: her own medical gifts prove more useful to her than her would-be rescuers and, as a character, she is at least as fully realised as de Zoet. With Enlightenment ideas and European corruption washing up to the Japanese coastline, Mitchell creates, in Dejima, a single, dramatic gateway through which to observe the encounter between civilisations from both sides. There is no retreat, here, into the conventions of historical fiction. All Mitchell’s architectural wizardry and verbal intensity are at play – but now subordinated solely into the service of his subject matter. As translators from Nagasaki at-
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet By David Mitchell Publisher: Sceptre Price: £18.99
In effect, the book examines the history of Islam vis-à-vis the local Muslim clerics, in the North West Frontier region, now renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
tempt to deal with concepts rendered in Dutch, and vice versa, Mitchell renders communications and miscommunications in brilliantly supple and adaptive English. In the Dutch world you feel the Dutch-ness; in the Japanese world, you feel events taking place from within the consciousness of the Japanese characters. And when the English arrive, it takes a moment to realise that you are experiencing them as the aliens in the diplomatic triangle. I doubt there is another living English writer who is capable of such traversals of worlds and consciousness. A criticism sometimes fired at Mitchell is that, beneath the virtuosity, he lacks an authentic voice of his own. There may be something in that, but it misses the real potential of his ventriloquism. Here, in this recreation of a historical moment, his transmigrations of empathy become fully emotionally satisfying. Ironically for an experimental writer, it is this seemingly simple step into a third-person, chronological narrative that feels like his greatest imaginative leap. This is the novel that establishes his maturity. Which is not to say that it is faultless. So thoroughly does Mitchell saturate his world with the detail of his knowledge of it, that – particularly in the opening quarter – the labour of the writing can at times become a labour of reading. There are periods of stasis amid the brilliance, followed by sudden bounds of narrative momentum, which leave a feeling of unevenness. Descriptions of Nagasaki of the period are, at one point, lyrical to the point of – literally – rhyming. To feel the pleasure of this poetry, you have to extract it from its function and rhythm as prose. It is a very rare example in the book of virtuosity serving no other function than itself. But Mitchell, aged 41, has shown himself capable of sloughing off his earlier personas, digging deeper, going further, and staying new. This may not, quite, be a masterpiece, but it is unquestionably a marvel – entirely original among contemporary British novels, revealing its author as, surely, the most impressive fictional mind of his generation.
A pretty decent translation
T
he work of such authors and publishers should be acknowledged who take up the tiresome task to translate English literature classics into Urdu. The Rape of the Lock, a humorous indictment of the vanities of the 18th century high society in England, is one such endeavour. The story of The Rape of the Lock is based on a real event in Alexander Pope’s time when a young gentleman Rabert Lord Petre offended a young girl, Arabella Fermor by cutting off a lock of her hair. The family of the girl got furious over this indecent act. John Caryell, a friend of Pope, suggested that Pope should write something on the incident to laugh away the anger of the lady so that the cordial relations between the two families are restored. Pope’s social satire turned out to be a master piece, and savoured since by the aficionados of English literature. And its present translation provides an ample opportunity to readers in Urdu to learn and judge the social, moral and ethical perspectives of the elite then and also familiarize themselves with this great work of literature.
Title: The Rape of the Lock Urdu translation by: Prof. Sharif Anjum Publisher: New Kitab Markaz, Urdu Bazar, Lahore. Price: Rs:120.00; Pages: U.S $: 10.00
the mullas linked to the tribal living of Pakhtuns and their code of conduct (‘pakhtunwali’). The role and importance of the mullas gained importance in the peculiar conditions of Tribal Areas autonomy originating from their social, political and administrative segregation. The next chapter projects how this network of religious leaders was engaged alternately as a mode of regional liaison with the Pakhtun tribes. The last two chapters bring into focus “the major uprisings through the nationalist period – 1923-1930 and 1930-1950 – to consider the By Syed Afsar Sajid discourse, methods, and outcomes of mullaled uprisings”. The last section of Chapter 6 and he Oxford University Press in the epilogue relate to the post-partition period Pakistan, ably managed by Ms implying its continuity from the pre-partition Ameena Saiyid, is these days busy period. in reprinting a number of books The writer has urged the powers that be to on certain important themes understand the administrative status of Pakistan’s premising on theology, culture, Tribal Areas in the context of the present situation h i s to r y, obtaining in the region. anthropology, biography et The issues of increasing al. Frontier of Faith is one radicalization, militancy, such publication. It is based disenfranchisement, on a study carrying “an social inequity, economic examination of religious under-development organisation and mobilisation and the persecution of in the ‘Tribal Areas’ with an women confronting it, are attempt to analyse these in directly connected to this the context of the ambiguous phenomenon. administrative status of the The concluding region”. paragraph of the book In effect, the book tends to sum up its author’s (pasted with a variety of stance on the subject: “The maps and figures) examines disjuncture created by the the history of Islam visextraordinary events and à-vis the local Muslim destruction of the Afghan clerics, in the North West war disallows the drawing Frontier region, now called of direct parallels between Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. In the authority and initiatives this perspective it is a useful of the early twentieth “sourcebook detailing the century mullas and the intricacies of the Pakistan- Title: Frontier of Faith – A History of religious politics of the Tribal Afghanistan borderlands Religious Mobilisation in the Areas today. However, the today” and the function of Pakhtun Tribal Areas c. 1890-1950 terrain of the Tribal Areas the local Muslim clerics and Publishers: Oxford University Press, remains outside systems of Karachi, Pakistan their allies. national participation and The author Sana Haroon Author: Sana Haroon the protection accorded is a research scholar presently Pages: 239 - Price: Rs. 595/to the individual by state. working on the legacies The government pursues of early nineteenth century reformist thought, a policy of conciliation towards privileged elites and is also teaching at the Institute of Business who continually re-enforce a differentiated set of Administration (IBA), Karachi. cultural and political code and reject urban liberal Besides the introduction, epilogue, glossary, critiques of criminality and disenfranchisement bibliography and index, the book comprises six among the communities on cultural grounds. It chapters titled: 1. Ethnography, Cartography and is in this environment that power still accrues to the Construction of the North-West Frontier religious leaders as moderators of the north-west Tribal Areas; 2. Islamic Revivalism and Sufism frontier’s ‘tribalism’.” among the Tribal Pakhtuns; 3. Religious Authority Last word: It is an insightful study of an issue and the Pakhtun Clans; 4. Patrons of the Saints; that needs to be deliberated upon and tackled 5. Consolidating Autonomy 1923-1930; 6. patiently by national consensus. Confronting the Nation, 1930-1950 In the first chapter of the book, the writer narrates the history of the colonial cartographic (relating to the process of drawing maps) project creating the North-West Frontier Tribal Areas and binding it to the identification of Pakhtun ‘tribes’. The fraternity of Pakhtun mullas was “an organisational and ideological counterpart to the colonial management of the frontier … equally invested in the notion of regional autonomy and tribal social organization”. In the second chapter, the writer discusses ‘the structures binding this fraternity of mullas together’ and positing it as a ‘religious landscape’ overlaying the Tribal Areas region. These two chapters depict the ‘structural, discursive, and organisational’ features of the region. The third chapter carries a description of the religious authority wielded by
T
The lost monastery
The historic caves of Shah Allah Ditta
The old stepped well up on the hill
Sunday, 13 March, 2011
By Salman Rashid
S
ome time ago my friend Shahid Nadeem took me walking in the Margalla Hills above Golra village. There he had discovered a stepped well (baoli) which the locals said had been built by Sher Shah Suri. The baoli was there all right, but the item about the Suri king was balderdash for we are so conditioned to believing that the stepped well was invented by him and the minute we see one even in remote Australia or Greenland, we know it was built by Sher Shah Suri. Two years ago, Shahid left his car under the shade of huge mango and banyan trees outside the village of Shah Allah Ditta and we walked up the footpath leading to village Kainthla in the hills. About forty-five minutes later we were at the baoli. Small in size with a narrow flight of stairs leading into the murky water, the baoli was crafted with finely dressed stones. It was clear that the construction had not been paid for by donations but from the imperial purse and I estimated it was about three hundred years old. As we were walking to the baoli, we fell in with two elderly men. I asked one where the path led and he, simple man, said it ended at village Kainthla. I had to tell
him that there wasn’t a path in this great wide world that ended anywhere but at the edge of the ocean. When our ancestors walked, and they have walked since the beginning of time, they did not stop. Only the ocean thwarted them. This path, I knew then, led on to Taxila and beyond. The oldies did not believe me. My friend Shahid did and he went nosing around in the hill of the baoli again. On one of his visits, he ran into an old man who led him to the all but buried ruins. Some months ago Shahid called me again to say he had a discovery not far from our baoli. This time around we did not have to park near the trees by the grotto and spring of clear bubbling water. Road builders had bulldozed a fair-weather road all the way to the baoli and we suspected that when we return again, we’ll be able to drive on a tarmac surface. Thence it was just forty odd minutes to the ruins. We headed west to the ridge covered with pine trees and descended on the other side into a virtual forest of broad-leaf trees that looked rather like the familiar kuchnar. The leaves being exactly the same shape, it sported clusters of small white flowers that told us that this was a different species. The local name being puppar, the entire hill is called Puprala. The Gazetteer of the Rawalpindi District 1893-94 contains a list of trees found in the district. But there is no mention of a tree of this name. Shahid was returning to Puprala after several months. His last visit being in mid-winter, the area had been comparatively freer of undergrowth and the ruins easily visible. But now, at the end of a good monsoon, the hills were rank and we went stumbling about
the various hillocks. With the sun low in the west, just when we were about to give up, we happened upon the ruined walls. Here was a stone-lined water tank surrounded by several walls of good ashlar masonry that came into fashion in the 3rd century BCE. None of the walls rose above ground level and where in some places it seemed as if the buildings when they were constructed would have been sunken. But that could not be the case. After the buildings were abandoned, the long centuries of seasonal rains washed down soil from the higher slopes and deposited it around the construction. Over time the roofs collapsed and the interiors filled up with clay to give the impression of sunken rooms. But both of us being novices, we could not make out anything more of the ruins. The old man who had first led Shahid to these ruins told him of how he in his youth saw his father plundering this site for building material. And this was no solitary case. The man said people came from all around and carted off camel and donkey loads of dressed stones to build their own homes. Even he as a young man helped himself to this readily available material. The operation ended only when the upper, more easily detachable, stones were cannibalised and gone. What little remains of Puprala was saved because erosion had sealed the walls with tons of clay. To my untrained mind, the Puprala ruins appear to be a Buddhist hermitage by the side of the ancient road that connected Taxila with whatever town stood on the site of modern Rawalpindi. Here, far from the monasteries of Taxila – about three hours away by foot, the more devout would have re-
Pictures by the Author
When the archaeologist’s spade is finally applied here, there will be stories to discover
sorted to spend the days of their austere lives in secluded worship and contemplation. Occasionally the monks would trek to Taxila to beg for alms and food. At other times, travellers coming from or heading to Taxila by the monks’ road would leave an offering or two at the hermitage. Life would thus have gone on. Then one day early in the 6th century, alarming news would have reached the Puprala hermitage, brought in by refugees fleeing only with their lives: strange people on horseback, fair of skin and hair, their pates shorn and the hair of the temples and occiput falling in ringlets from under their helmets, their tunics sewn on with metal pieces as armour carried sword and fire into the peaceful land of the Sindhu River. They knew no mercy, neither for the young nor the elderly; man or woman they killed with wanton savagery. But who would wish to kill them, the monks would have argued. They were passive worshippers who wished no one any harm. And with this thought in their minds, even as the warners fled, the monks continued to chant their mantras in their tree-shaded hermitage. Not long afterwards, perhaps
on a day when the monks were setting out for Taxila, begging bowl in hand, they would have seen the dark cloud of crows and vultures that Pundit Kalhana tells us of in his Rajatrangini. The White Huns, writes the Pundit, left so many dead behind that vast hordes of these birds feeding in the wake of the advancing army followed them as a cloud. Then the hermits of Puprala would have heard the din of the butchery. A few might have fled; the rest remained ready to die for their faith. When the Huns moved on from Puprala, they left behind a charred ruin, blood-drenched slopes that were once green and rang with birdsong and the stench of burning human flesh. When the smoke cleared, no one returned. None were left to re-people this cloister. The elements took over and smothered the walls that once knew the echo of whispered mantras. All this is pure conjecture. But I believe it would have happened for the ruins of so many of Taxila’s monasteries tell a similar tale. In the case of Puprala, the Huns may or may not have destroyed it. It may simply have passed out of use for some other, perhaps less
Puprala is today what the ruins of Taxila were at the beginning of the 20th century: virgin, unexplored remains that hold secrets untold violent, reason. But this we can only know when the archaeologist turns his attention here. Meanwhile, Puprala is today what the ruins of Taxila were at the beginning of the 20th century: virgin, unexplored remains that hold secrets untold. When the archaeologist’s spade is finally applied here, there will be stories to discover. Interested? Puprala lies at North 53°-22.044’, East 72º54.605’. –Salman Rashid, rated as the best in the country, is a travel writer and photographer who has travelled all around Pakistan and written about his journeys.