The First Column to appear as Quantum Note
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Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
Published
as Painful National realities
"I love it
here--the fresh fruits and vegetables, abundant sunshine, glorious weather,
friendly people and no parking meters, where else can you find it all?"
This is how an American acquaintance, who has spent a year in
This caveat is neither
new nor surprising. A large number of Pakistanis share this uncertainty with
the outside observer. This is one of the most striking elements which has emerged in our recent history--this strange and painful
question mark about the future of the country. High officials of the
government, mill owners, teachers, intellectuals, writers and a majority of
citizens harbour this unhealthy and bitter doubt about the future existence of
the country. Those who are more cautious believe that the country would hold
on, but they are worried about the state of its society. Would it be a place
worth living if one had to constantly live under the threat of gunmen, robbers
and dacoits? What about their children? Do they want them to grow up in a
society which has lost all sense of direction and which is heading toward
anarchy?
The most glaring fact
about Pakistan toward the close of the century is that it is in a state of
explosive instability and no measures are being taken to correct the situation.
The government if merely trying to cope with the day to day
business. Policy planners have lost all faith in planning. Adhoc
decisions, quick-fix solutions, inefficiency and sycophancy are the governing
principles in the corridors of power and each new tick of the clock brings us
closer to a catastrophe from which there would be no escape.
Drive around the
capital and see the long queues in front of the foreign missions. These
unending queues speak of the anguish and the hopelessness of a citizenry which
has lost all hope of ever living an honourable existence in the land which
their fathers obtained after unimaginable sufferings just fifty years ago. For
a young nation to lose its sense of hope and direction in just one generation
is an indication of some fundamental flaw at the very
base of the whole edifice. But no one is interested in going so deep into the
core of our haphazard existence during the last fifty years. Where did we go
wrong? What happened to the great ideal, to the lofty ambitions an^d
immense hope which impelled millions of Muslims in the subcontinent to wage a
war against the British and Hindu dominance. What went wrong and where?
The most distressing
element of our existence which stands out today is none other than the
agonizing fact that in fifty years we have made mockery of all high principles,
ideals and goals upon which nations are built. So much so
that we have not even spared the most fundamental element of our ideological
existence: Islam. During a recent visit to Jabal al-Noor, I was
stupefied when an Indian Muslim said to me: If someone kills a Muslim in India,
we start
rioting and set the whole country on a collision path. But what do you say to
the killings of Muslims by Muslims in Pakistan and that too inside the mosques?
But let us not forget
that the most glaring failures have been at the level of political
institutions. The lack of a stable political existence and accompanying
corruption has eaten up the social fabric with the result that honesty, pride
in being a Pakistani and importance of higher values of existence have just
disappeared from our society. The unstable political situation has been so pervasive
that it has penetrated all other spheres of life. Civil institutions which
could have prevented this corrosion, or at least curtailed its effects, did not
emerge and whatever thin veneer was present from the pre-partition period has
been destroyed. One seldom hears about endowment funds anymore--something which
has been the hallmark of Muslim civilization throughout centuries. Thousands of
waqfs and charitable foundations ran schools, hospices and social
welfare centers throughout the Muslim world; these existed as late as the
nineteenth century.
The fundamental crisis
of our polity today is not the immediate problems of debt financing and the
short term borrowing: these are the painful realities of our existence which
will force their solutions on us whether we like them or not. The nation will
keep on paying for the luxurious existence of its past and present rulers,
willnilly. The pattern has been set, the die has been cast: the donor agencies
will keep on sending their missions for us to host them in five star hotels. We
will continue to give splendid dinners in their honour. The aid workers will
keep on coming to suck even the last drop of blood from our deprived and plundered
nation. No, these are not the basic questions.
The fundamental crisis
has to deal with the basic malady--the cancer which has been spread throughout
the body. Where did we go wrong? What was that fundamental flaw in the very
conception of our existence as a nation which became the spring board of
perpetual tragedies: the massacres during the partition; the abortive attempt
at regaining Kashmir, the sudden inversion of values in the newly created
country; the large scale corruption and dishonesty in Partition claims; the
loss of a sense of direction for the nation in its infancy; the factors
responsible for the lack of emergence of an honourable political culture; the
factors responsible for the emergence of one man's rule and the debacle of East
Pakistan. Then, closer to the present political culture, one needs
to go into the roots of the failure of the only political party which really
reached out to the masses in the post-independent period the PPP.
What was it that
stirred the masses at such a fundamental level that the late Z. A. Bhutto could
boast of an inseparable bond with the masses and what was it that made the same
people so indifferent that no one came out when he was hanged except for a
handful of diehards who were quickly forced to retreat into oblivion by the
cruel hand of the General who was going to become the longest ruler of the
country--the one who profaned the last fresh water spring of the national
existence: the religion. In one of the official meetings during the General's
rule, a proposal was presented by one of his ministers that before Islamizing
the whole country, the government should make a model Islamic city. The General
reportedly laughed at this proposal and his laughter, which by then had become
a language in itself, silenced the propagator of the idea, once and for all.
The cosmetic veneer of
Islam which was forced on our nation during the eighties has left deep scars on
the collective psyche of the nation. It has alienated a large portion of the
society from Islam itself and it has, forever, discredited all those who flout
the banner of Islamization. This does not mean that Islam is any danger in this
society. It will never be in danger, for its roots are so deep in the psyche of
our people that they know of no other existence but the one fashioned by Islam.
At the individual level, Islam will always remain a source of guidance for our
people. The tragedy is that this everlasting spring of fresh water has been
despoiled by politicians and by its self-proclaimed defenders to the extent
that the nation, as a collective body, can no more draw inspiration and
guidance from it.
Whether
one sees the picture in religious context or not, has become immaterial.
A few years ago, it was not so. Then, it was not unusual for conversations on
domestic issues to end on the hopeful note that God will send someone to rescue
us. Because then the vision which had given birth to the country was still
lucid in the collective memory. But now, no one bothers about such fanciful
thoughts. Even the apocalyptic versions which warned of a great calamity if we
did not mend our ways have disappeared. The profane reality of everyday life
has itself become a metaphor of destruction and terrible punishment.
What is needed is a serious national debate on these fundamental questions. But those who are in charge of state institutions today are totally unaware of such a need. Their concerns are merely with the effects of the maladies which appear way down the cause and effect chain; they only see the fever and try to cure it with fever-suppressing drugs. We do not have a single statesman among us today; just politicians for whom pragmatism, expediency and apparent writ on the wall is the sum total of political and social reality. But those who are really concerned with the future of our country need to come forward with an iron resolve to take charge of the situation and initiate a serious and thorough analysis of the past failures-- a debate which would, hopefully, lead to certain solid and permanent solutions.
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Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
Living with the Reality of the Bomb
Published as The bomb
Factor in Life
Within the short span of two and a half weeks, life has
forever changed for 132 million Pakistanis, 967 million Indians and 125 million
people in
By conducting nuclear tests,
The Indian leadership has had experience of the power of
fait accompli. No one speaks of Hyderabad Deccan, Junagadh, Manavadh, Sikkum
and
The flow of events, once again, brought Nawaz Sharif's
government to an important threshold. Last time, it was the Gulf war. Then, the
Nawaz Government had failed miserably to play an active role in the conflict;
it merely followed the American agenda against the wishes of its people.
Instead of making an all out effort to mobilize Muslim countries and OIC to
effectively intervene in the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait before the US led
coalition could jump in to harvest the riches, the Nawaz Government then played
a passive role. It waited and let the events take a course which led to the
destruction of two Muslim countries, millions of dollars of contracts for the
American and European companies and long term misery and deprivation for the
Iraqi population.
This time around, the decision making process concerned
us directly. The government had to decide and decide quickly. Unlike the last
time, the decision came swiftly and in accordance with the wishes of the
majority of people. The fact that
The folly committed by
Now that the dramatic events of the fateful May are fast
becoming an old tale and the headlines reporting the reaction of various
countries to the Indian and then Pakistani tests are gradually being replaced
by other, more gripping events, the people of South Asia have to wake up to the
reality of the nuclear bombs and be ready to pay the price.
At present, it is hard to imagine any admirable futures
for
So much has changed in the recent weeks for both
But the glimmer of hope has not died completely for
behind the loud commotion and deafening slogans, there are muffled voices on
both sides of the border, calling for a renewed effort for peaceful
co-existence. Now that both countries have demonstrated their ability to
annihilate each other, it has become even more important to settle the scores
at the negotiation table rather than have no scores at all. One whole generation
has already lived with the horrors of bloodshed, hatred and fear created by the
horrendous mistakes committed during the process of Partition. The next
generations need not live in the shadow of a nuclear cloud. There has to be a
mature realization that both countries need a space of their own to come out of
the shadows of their past and reconstruct new futures.
For those in the position of leadership on both sides of
the border, time has come to seriously think about the collective future of the
South Asian people. There is no escape from the reality that their geographical
location has bound them to a common future. The May explosions have further
integrated their common fate and one can no more think of destruction of one
country without the imminent destruction of the other. On both sides of the
border, enough voices are needed which can bring to the forefront images of a
healthy future toward which the population can aspire to move. The political
leadership on both sides of the border has harvested a rich bounty of instant
popularity but as soon as the collective body of both nations exhausts itself
through shouting slogans it is bound to look for clean drinking water and
finding none, it will either perish or become limp. Then the economic realities
will hit, and harder than ever.
It is high time that leaders on both sides of the border
realize that the bombs have not changed the stark economic and social realities
faced by their people; if anything, they have further reduced the possibility
of an economic and social transformation which alone can guarantee an era of
peace, prosperity and honourable existence. By conducting the tests,
The News
The overseas Pakistani
Recent events
and their economic impact has once again made the overseas Pakistani a precious
living entity for economic planners of the Nawaz
government. The prime minister's recent foreign tour was
especially designed to tap the resources of overseas Pakistanis. Torn between
two different worlds, unhappy about the situation "back home" and in conflict
with the inner self, the typical overseas Pakistani is used to such occasions
when passionate appeals are made to him. All of these appeals are meant to entice
him to send his hard earned money back home to help resolve a crisis which is
not of his making. This time around the lure of plots, especially designated
for the overseas community, has been added to the emotional content of the
appeal.
Whether
or not such an appeal would find a response is yet to be seen but this column
is not about the immediate effect of the Prime Minister's appeal; it is an
attempt to create a living metaphor out of the dilemmas and travail of an overseas
Pakistani living in North America whose life represents thousands of others in
the same situation.
Unable to
live with the agonising realities of his native land, our protagonist left his
country in search of a professional career. He is highly educated and dedicated
to his profession but he could not survive in
in a very competitive environment. His successes have
earned him an enviable reputation and it has provided a high level of material
comfort; but there is something missing in his life.
Because
of the years he spent in
The world
of the ancestors carries with it a fragrance of the bygone centuries bringing
into sharp relief the rich mosaic of the civilisations and cultures which have
gone into the making of Pakistani society. This splendid world is made up of middle eastern folklore, Indian myths and customs, rituals
and rites of Islam and the living sufi
traditions which have flowered in the subcontinent. It is a
world composed of the elements of human experiences spread over centuries and lived
in a land in which people have employed some of the most enchanting forms of
creative expression in poetry to articulate their hopes and desires, sorrows
and joys: the 'ghazal', the 'qasida' and the 'marthia'.
The hues
and shades of the civilisation inherited by
through this region have further helped in the synthesis
of a civilisation which blended the Middle Eastern and South Asian folklore, legends,
myths and tales.
The
overseas Pakistani carries all this in their blood. But his world also contains
the memories of a colonial past and the humiliations and terrible suffering of
his own life which forced him to abandon his homeland. However, time has
blunted his own agonising experiences and whatever is left is enormously
important to him; without his personal history, memories and experiences, he is
prone to lose his identity. He is also keen to transfer all or some of this to
his children. Therefore,
his attachment to his native land has a strong
emotional content.
The
thought of going "back home" is constantly present in his mind like the
cosmic background radiation. He is always thinking of the ways in which he can
help his country and community on the other side of the ocean. He has seen how
the system works in
His
dilemma is the fact that he lacks a viable means to put into practice all these
schemes he has dreamt up over the years. He knows that what he has learned in
But in
spite of this knowledge and information about the experiences of fellow
expatriates, he cannot stop making plans about the day he will return to
But over
the years, the overseas Pakistani has also learned that the sacrifices he would
make in response to any appeal would amount to nothing. Hence his dilemma is
irresolvable. He shares this with millions other Pakistanis who have abandoned
their homeland for various reasons.
green dollar; they have little or no concern with the
terrible price overseas Pakistanis have to pay for earning these dollars. This
attitude of the policy planners and economists in
Pakistani. He was not treated like a human being when he
lived among his people and he is not being treated like one even in his
absence.
Friday:
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Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
The
Legacy of Betrayals (I)
[The
recent freezing of the Foreign Currency Accounts is a betrayal of the trust
posed by the citizens in the State. Unlike the Cooperative scam and the Taj
Company fraud, this time around, citizens have been deprived of their savings
by the state in a move which has no legal or moral justification. This betrayal
is, however, only one more in a series of betrayals which the citizens of
Sitting around a candle, which was
quietly melting down from all sides as if silently weeping, hardly anyone
noticed the effects of excessive alcohol in the habitually drunken voice that
announced over the transistor radio that the nation will fight to the end.
"The soldiers on the war front,
the peasants in their fields, the workers in their factories and the students in their schoolsCeveryone will fight until the last enemy soldier has
been driven out of the sacred land," the voice announced. The volunteers
in the civil defence post heard the announcement with a mixture of exhilaration
and zeal and went out to guard the streets. The voice was that of the President
of Pakistan, General Muhammad Yahya Khan. The listeners in that civil defence
post in Lahore in that dark night of December 1971 were a group of college and
university students who had spent the previous weeks patrolling the streets at
night and getting first aid training during the day-time, all the time praying
for the victory of their army which was fighting to save the country from
dismemberment.
The announcement was heard with a sigh of relief; rumors
about the fall of
Less than twenty-four hours later,
most of them were shattered with the news of surrender of their army to the
Indian forces. The taste of betrayal was new to this generation. Born after the
Partition and raised in the relatively stable environment of the early sixties,
this generation had no personal memory of betrayals of another kind, which had
shocked and shattered a previous generation.
Most of these young people were also
unaware of the travail of the man who had conceived the name of their country
and who had spent all his life in a doomed struggle to go against the current
of his times. That man was to write the first account of the betrayals in that
agonizing book, "The Greatest Betrayal" which no one reads today.
Perhaps no one among that group even knew that having given the name to the
un-named dream held by millions of Muslims of the subcontinent, Chaudhri Rahmat
Ali was not even granted six feet of land for burial in his dreamland; he died in a
nursing home in England and was buried in a nameless grave number B8330 in the
New Market Road cemetery in Cambridge. Today, no one celebrates his birth or
death anniversaries; no one cares to remember him. No, that extraordinary life
and the bitter taste of betrayal he tasted was only
shared by a few of his own generation. The sweep of political events quickly
buried that first betrayal deep in the collective consciousness of the nation
and no one has time for digging up that ghost.
Those who tasted the bitter taste of
betrayal on that December night belonged to a different generation. They were
to be heirs to a "new
The "adopted son" had
stirred up a social revolution with his fiery speeches and with his cat-in-the-bag
tricks; and the nation had shown no appreciation of almost ten years of steady
progress and social stability.
During the sad autumn of the
Patriarch, the streets of the pure land had become filled with angry rioters,
the plunder of national wealth by twenty-two families had become a hot topic on
every tongue and the ungrateful nation had no time for the old, upright man who
had outlived his times. He wept bitterly on the eve they brought out a dog with
his name hung around its neck. Having seen that dog, he called it a day and as
a punishment to the ungrateful nation handed over the reigns to the man whose
passion for wine and women was to hasten the dismemberment of the country in an
agonizing, death-like process during the next thousand and one nights.
Shattered but not broken, this
generation was to see the emergence of a "new
But the rising prices of the oil and
the new found wealth in the
Those who were left behind, saw the rapid and shocking transformation of civil
society. They were subjected to successive experiments by rulers who could not
think beyond the outdated paradigm of nationalization. As a result, this
generation witnessed a sweeping and chaotic process of nationalization of the
economy at a time when the nations of the
Those who stayed behind during the
early seventies also saw the rapid deterioration of the social norms and values
which had kept the moral fabric of the society intact during the first quarter
century of the country's existence. The institutional
structure, which still had a flavour of that long and terrible legacy of
colonial rule, started to breakdown. Nationalization of banks, industry
and educational institutions gave birth to one white elephant after another.
Instead of the notorious twenty-two families, now a gang of upstarts started to
play havoc with the lives of millions of people who had deposited their trust
in the hands of a charismatic leader who could not stand any opposition to his
self-assured ways of doing things. This was the beginning of a betrayal of
another kind.
Instead of rotti kapra aur makan,
those who had been in the forefront of the new wave found themselves face to
face with state terrorism. The new social contract which some had dreamt during
the struggle of late sixties turned out to be just a daydream. Dreamers like,
Miraj Muhammad Khan and J. A. Rahim, were soon removed from the scene; one paid
the price for dreaming with his eyesight which was brutally snatched from him
during a long solitary confinement, the other escaped with a few scars. Those
who were left behind had nothing but flattering words for the ears of the
charismatic leader who now could not stand any opposition to his self-created
designs for the "new
Soon the crowd of sycophants whose
hats could be pulled down any time, in public or in private, confounded the
charismatic leader with their chorus of sycophancy. This chorus was also a
double betrayal of yet another kind: at one level to their own inner selves and
another against the nation.
This betrayal was to lead the
charismatic leader to death but during those heady days, no one dared to stand
up to him and no one could stand in the way of the man who had stirred the
hopes and aspiration of a generation which had tasted the first personal taste
of betrayal on that cold December night when the country was dismembered.
(to be continued)
For Friday:
Published on
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Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
The Trail of Betrayals
(II)
[First 3 sentences changed a bit, look carefully to
decide which one to keep]
Not
everyone believed the charismatic man from Larkana. But those who believed him
were ready to die for him. He had appeared on the national scene with a
potpourri of tricks which enthralled millions of people who had never before
had a voice in the national affairs: peasants, labourers, unskilled and
semi-skilled workers of industrial units owned and operated by a handful of
industrialists.
He had a message for everyone. They opened their
hearts to his voice. In a short span of time, he traversed the whole length and
breadth of the country and reached out to millions of human beings in such a
personal way that those who heard him speak felt that he was directly talking
to them.
He spoke
that universal language of the heart which binds human beings in a bond
stronger than death. He had learned this
language of the
heart by abandoning the comfort and indulgence of the life of a rich landowner.
He had given up the life of luxury for a grandeur far
beyond his own reach. But those who heard him speak for hours under the burning
sun had no idea of the complexity of emotions he experienced during those
extempore speeches which carried thousands to ecstatic states of complete
abandonment. The citizens of
But he was
not destined to attain an untainted glory; the country had to be dismembered
before he could enter the corridors
of power.
But as luck would have it, he entered the corridors of power by creating
history: he was the first civilian to become
Chief Martial Law Administrator. But that was not all; he was also to be the first to hold the high
offices of the President and Prime Minister of the country. But he was not
interested in titles, not yet. He had the Herculean task of re-building a new
He
embarked upon this task with a zeal and commitment which was unheard of in the
history of the country. He worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Everything
had to be done in a new fashion and he could not entrust tasks to others; he
had to oversee
everything himself. His passion for grandeur drove him to insomnia.
But the long, sleepless nights were the best for
work and he could summon his ministers and friends at anytime of the night;
they all came with tired bodies and sleepy eyes but as soon as they entered the
sphere of his passionate creativity, further heightened by the heavy intake of
hard liquor, they would warm up to the grand schemes which his mind churned out
at an astonishing speed.
These were the initial years of his reign; the
grand dream was still alive, his vision was sharp and he was pushing bills
through the parliament legislating reform after reform: education, industry,
agriculture, science and technology... everything needed urgent attention. He
created new institutions, addressed meetings of the high officials of the
government, fired and hired senior bureaucrats as he pleased, kept a watch on
international affairs, established trade and cooperation with countries of the
eastern block of the now defunct
Amidst
all this, he did not forget the peasants and the workers, students and clerks,
lawyers and haris who had brought him to power. He continuously kept a close
relationship with them, going to places in the country where no head of state
had ever set foot. He knew the old peasant, Allah Bukhsh of Vehari, who needed treatment
for his failing eyesight as well as he knew chairman Moa and Gamal Nasir.
His
opponents stood back and watched him as he moved from one glory to another.
They could not resist him. He charmed them. They all came and signed on the
document which was to add a new feather to the crown of achievements he was
wearing: The signing of the 1973 Constitution in a remarkably short time gave a
solid constitutional foundation to new country which was being carved out of
the debris of the post-dismemberment period.
But the
ink was hardly dry on this historic document when the dream started to turn
sour. Those who had been watching him from the side lines could not wait any
longer. He was moving fast but steps he had taken so far had not produced the
results he had promised. The sudden rise in the oil prices and the resultant inflation
in the country, failure of the nationalized units to produce economically
beneficial outputs and a strong opposition to his brand of
"socialism" started to worry him. There was something fundamentally
wrong with the country. He had put all his efforts and energy in creating a new
He
invented crimes to implicate his opponents in unending trials. He sent men in
khaki to fight against their own people and he bombarded his own country with
bullets and bombs bought with the blood and sweat of his own people. This
betrayal of the trust and faith posed in his being was violated because he
wanted more power than the poor people of the country could give him.
Those
who did not believe in him found themselves in the terrible stone buildings of
the Lahore Fort where the sadistic
Goeblers of his regime subjected them to electric
shocks, pulled their nails and put their naked bodies on slabs of ice. They
were forced to confess crimes they had not even dreamt about. The new apparatus
of oppression set up by the cronies of the charismatic leader broke all past
records and produced the legacy of state crimes which no one had time to
document. The untold suffering of the young men who disagreed with the
charismatic leader echoed in the stone corridors of the Lahore Fort and then
disappeared into oblivion.
Amidst
the crumbling dream and unsatisfied with what he had attained, the charismatic
leader looked out, first toward the third world and then toward the Muslim
world. He wanted to lead a greater entity than the truncated state of
the
country; they only looked at the quick money which could be made. The
charismatic leader himself found the new avenue alluring.
There was glory in the vast, uncharted territory of
the Muslim world's leadership.
But
before his dreams of a glory beyond his reach could materialize, he fell victim to a betrayal which ranks equal to the Shakespearean
tragedies: the humble man with black eyes and white teeth struck during the
summer night of July fourth. This betrayal was to be the beginning of yet
another era for the nation. The man who chose to depose the charismatic leader
from Larkana was under oath to abide by the Constitution which had been signed
by even
those who
were outside the influence of his charisma.
This
betrayal of the sacred oath was the beginning of a new era for the country
which was to fundamentally transform the social, political and economic
structures of the country through a series of betrayals.
(to be continued)
[The Trail of Betrayl part III, was not published by The
News; this remains the only Quantum Note denied publication by the News due to “the
critique of military”; it is presented here for general reading for the first
time.]
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Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
The Unfulfilled Dream
Homeland, a
footloose darkness
On the banks of
brooks--
racing down from craggy uplands--
has become the smoke