The Scatter Here is Too Great by Bilal Tanweer

(First published 2013)

In a nutshell, it’s a collection of disparate short stories that converge on a single incident of a bomb blast that happens outside a railway station in the city of Karachi.

The protagonists come from a range of ages and professions; a disgruntled old Communist grandpa, a small time successful businessman, a wayward student out on a romantic rendezvous, an ambulance driver who suffers post traumatic stress disorder due to the blast, another wayward young man who works for a private security company that repossesses cars whose bank installments have not been paid – all of them are caught in the explosion in one way or the other.

A common thread runs through the many narratives: The quest to make sense of the beloved city through a period of turmoil and turbulence; a place that once was but that no longer is. The personal failures in the lives of its many protagonists are superimposed on the failure of the city to give them peace and provide succour.

As a whole, the book fell short of my expectations. Some portions of the stories make for an interesting read in an otherwise rather lacking-in-depth collection of tales that failed to pique my interest.

The circumstantial similarities between a few characters (i.e; their alienation with their fathers) left me rather confused half way through the book as to which character’s story I was actually reading.

The division of the book into 5 main chapters with further sub-chapters without any clear delineation of stories/characters gets one’s head all muddled up, moreso because some stories are broken into two or more parts and told at different places in the book.

For instance the opening and the closing stories, and the one in the middle, are told by the same protagonist. It can be treated as one story divided into three parts. So it can be said that the book falls somewhere between a novel and an interlinked collection of stories but it is neither.

The story (Good Days) of the employee of the private security firm is overrun by ill-used swear words. Whoever said it’s a good idea to use such words in abundance (fuck, fucking, motherfucker, sisterfucker, chutiya, chut etc) in a tight space of a few pages obviously gave a bad piece of advice.

I do realise it’s a debut effort and therefore I must not be too harsh with my criticisms. But the author has been promoted as the “up-and-coming” voice of Pakistani English fiction, a new talent “to watch out for” and thrown into limelight thanks to his impeccable social networking skills, long before he produced his first book. Naturally, dedicated readers of South Asian, particularly Pakistani, fiction have been waiting for his debut work with high expectations.

However, there are a few instances in the book deserving of recognition and, yes, appreciation.

The last story particularly stands out. It’s told by the adult voice of the child protagonist of the opening story: A quest to make sense of the beloved city that has overgrown through the time to become a degenerated and violent place, and that through the life of his deceased father-writer who spent his last days spreading happiness among the people to atone for his own disappointments.

Another story that of the wayward student out on a romantic escapade in his mother’s battered car was good to read. It’s punchline, for me, was the high point of the book. The protagonist takes his mother’s car without her permission. The blast occurs when he’s driving on the bridge with his girlfriend next to him. Luckily they survive the ordeal. Later when they halt on the beach, the guy “cleaned the blood with a rag dipped in the car’s radiator water” because he “couldn’t afford to have anyone find out.” Thus, a very public episode of mayhem and destruction juxtaposed against the personal need to hide the evidence of the blast from his car was amusing, unsettling and ironical.

I’d rate the book 50/50. So 2.5 by 5.

Short Story: Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hassan Manto

Below is the full text of Saadat Hassan Manto’s short story “Toba Tek Singh” variously titled as “The Exchange of Lunatics” and “The Insane Asylum”. Manto wrote this short story in the wake of the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent at the time of Independence from the British Raj. It is considered one of the most important works that set the tone for future sub-genre that came to be known as the Partition Literature.

Toba Tek Singh
by Saadat Hassan Manto
Translated from Urdu by Frances W. Pritchett

Two or three years after Partition, it occurred to the governments of Pakistan and Hindustan that like criminal offenders, lunatics too ought to be exchanged: that is, those Muslim lunatics who were in Hindustan’s insane asylums should be sent to Pakistan, and those Hindus and Sikhs who were in Pakistan’s insane asylums should be confided to the care of Hindustan.

There’s no telling whether this idea was wise or unwise; in any case, according to the decision of the learned, high-level conferences took place here and there, and finally a day was fixed for the exchange of lunatics. Thorough investigation was made. Those Muslim lunatics whose relatives were all in Hindustan were allowed to remain there. As for the rest, they were sent off to the border. Here in Pakistan, since almost all the Hindus and Sikhs had already left, the question of keeping anyone didn’t even arise. As many Hindu and Sikh lunatics as there were, all of them were conveyed, under police protection, to the border.

No telling what was going on that side. But here in the Lahore insane asylum, when word of this exchange arrived, major discussions began to take place. One Muslim lunatic, who every day for twelve years had regularly read the “Zamindar,” was asked by a friend, “Molvi Sa’b, what’s this ‘Pakistan’?”; after much thought and reflection he answered, “It’s a kind of place in Hindustan where razors are made.”

Having heard this answer, his friend was satisfied.

In the same way, a second Sikh lunatic asked another Sikh lunatic, “Sardarji, why are we being sent to Hindustan? –We don’t know the language of that place.”

The other smiled: “I know the language of those Hindustaggers– those Hindustanis go strutting around like the devil!”

Saadat Hassan Manto

One day, while bathing, a Muslim lunatic raised the cry of “Long live Pakistan!” with such force that he slipped on the floor and fell, and knocked himself out.

There were also a number of lunatics who were not lunatics. The majority of them were murderers whose relatives had bribed the officers to get them sent to the lunatic asylum, to save them from the coils of the hangman’s noose. These understood something of why Hindustan had been partitioned and what Pakistan was. But they too were ignorant of the actual events. Nothing could be learned from the newspapers. The guards were illiterate and crude; nothing could be picked up from their conversation either. They knew only this much: that there’s a man, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, whom people call the “Qa’id-e Azam.” He has made a separate country for the Muslims, the name of which is Pakistan. Where it is, what its location is– about this they knew nothing. This is the reason that in the insane asylum, all the lunatics whose minds were not completely gone were trapped in the dilemma of whether they were in Pakistan or Hindustan. If they were in Hindustan, then where was Pakistan? If they were in Pakistan, then how could this be, since a while ago, while staying right here, they had been in Hindustan?

One lunatic became so caught up in the circle of Pakistan and Hindustan, and Hindustan and Pakistan, that he became even more lunatic. One day he had been sweeping– and then climbed a tree, seated himself on a branch, and gave an unbroken two-hour speech about the subtle problem of Pakistan and Hindustan. When the guards told him to come down, he climbed even higher. When he was warned and threatened, he said, “I don’t want to live in either Hindustan or Pakistan. I’ll live right here in this tree.”

When after great difficulty his ardor was cooled, he came down and began to embrace his Hindu and Sikh friends and weep. His heart overflowed at the thought that they would leave him and go off to Hindustan.

In an M.Sc.-qualified radio engineer, who was Muslim, who used to stroll all day in silence on a special path in the garden entirely apart from the other lunatics, the change that manifested itself was that he removed all his clothing, confided it to the care of a warden, and began to wander all around the garden entirely naked.

A stout Muslim lunatic from Chiniot who had been an enthusiastic worker for the Muslim League, and who bathed fifteen or sixteen times a day, suddenly abandoned this habit. His name was Muhammad Ali. Accordingly, one day in his madness he announced that he was the Qa’id-e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In imitation of him, a Sikh lunatic became Master Tara Singh. In this madness it almost came to bloodshed, but both were declared ‘dangerous lunatics’ and shut up in separate rooms.

There was a young Hindu lawyer from Lahore who had been rejected in love and had turned lunatic. When he heard that Amritsar had gone away into India, then he was very sad. He had fallen in love with a Hindu girl from that very city. Although she had rejected the lawyer, even in his madness he hadn’t forgotten her. Thus he abused all those Hindu and Muslim leaders who had connived together and made Hindustan into two fragments– his beloved had become Hindustani, and he Pakistani.

When talk of the exchange began, then some of the lunatics comforted the lawyer, saying that he shouldn’t mind about it, that he would be sent to Hindustan– the Hindustan where his beloved lived. But he didn’t want to leave Lahore, because he thought that in Amritsar his practice wouldn’t flourish.

In the European ward there were two Anglo-Indian lunatics. When they learned that the English had freed Hindustan and gone away, they were very much shocked. And for hours they privately conferred about the important question of what their status in the lunatic asylum would be now. Would the European Ward remain, or be abolished? Would breakfast be available, or not? Instead of proper bread, would they have to choke down those bloody Indian chapattis?

There was one Sikh who had been in the insane asylum for fifteen years. Strange and remarkable words were always be heard on his lips: “Upar di gur gur di annex di be dhyana di mung di daal of the lantern.” He slept neither by day nor by night. The guards said that in the long duration of fifteen years he hadn’t slept even for a moment. He didn’t even lie down. Although indeed, he sometimes leaned against a wall.

Because he constantly remained standing, his feet swelled up. His ankles were swollen too. But despite this bodily discomfort, he didn’t lie down and rest. When in the insane asylum there was talk about Hindustan-Pakistan and the exchange of lunatics, he listened attentively. If someone asked him what his opinion was, he answered with great seriousness, “Upar di gur gur di annex di be dhyana di mung di daal of the Pakistan Government.”

But later, “of the Pakistan Government” was replaced by “of the Toba Tek Singh Government,” and he began to ask the other lunatics where Toba Tek Singh was, where he had his home. But no one at all knew whether it was in Pakistan or Hindustan. If they tried to tell him, they themselves were caught up in the perplexity that Sialkot used to be in Hindustan, but now it was said to be in Pakistan. Who knew whether Lahore, which now is in Pakistan, tomorrow might go off to Hindustan? Or all of Hindustan itself might become Pakistan? And who could place his hand on his breast and say whether Hindustan and Pakistan might not both someday vanish entirely?

This Sikh lunatic’s hair had grown very thin and sparse. Because he rarely bathed, the hair of his beard and head had clumped together, which gave him a very frightening appearance. But the man was harmless. In fifteen years he’d never quarreled with anybody. The longtime custodians in the insane asylum knew only this much about him: that he had some lands in Toba Tek Singh. He was a prosperous landlord, when suddenly his mind gave way. His relatives bound him in heavy iron chains, brought him to the insane asylum, got him admitted, and left.

These people came once a month to see him; after checking on his welfare, they left. For a long time these visits took place regularly. But when the confusion over Pakistan-Hindustan began, the visits stopped.

His name was Bishan Singh, but everyone called him “Toba Tek Singh.” He had absolutely no idea what day it was, what month it was, or how many years had passed. But every month when his near and dear ones came to visit him, then he himself used to be aware of it. Thus he used to tell the custodian that his visitors were coming. That day he bathed very well, scrubbed his body thoroughly with soap, and put oil on his hair and combed it. He had them bring out clothes that he never wore, and put them on, and in such a state of adornment he went to meet his visitors. If they asked him anything, then he remained silent, or from time to time said, “Upar di gur gur di annex di be dhyana di mung di dal of the lantern.”

He had one daughter who, growing a finger-width taller every month, in fifteen years had become a young girl. Bishan Singh didn’t even recognize her. When she was a child, she wept when she saw her father; when she’d grown up, tears still flowed from her eyes.

When the story of Pakistan and Hindustan began, he started asking the other lunatics where Toba Tek Singh was. When no reassuring answer was forthcoming, day by day his agitation increased. Now even his visitors didn’t come. Formerly, he himself used to be aware that his visitors were coming. But now it was as if even the voice of his heart, which used to tell him of their arrival, had fallen silent.

His great desire was that those people would come who showed sympathy toward him, and brought him fruit, sweets, and clothing. If he asked them where Toba Tek Singh was, they would certainly tell him whether it was in Pakistan or Hindustan. Because his idea was that they came from Toba Tek Singh itself, where his lands were.

In the insane asylum there was also a lunatic who called himself God. When one day Bisham Singh asked him whether Toba Tek Singh was in Pakistan or Hindustan, he burst out laughing, as was his habit, and said, “It’s neither in Pakistan nor in Hindustan– because we haven’t given the order yet.”

A number of times Bishan Singh asked this God, with much pleading and cajoling, to give the order, so that the perplexity would be ended; but he was very busy, because he had countless orders to give. One day, growing irritated, Bishan Singh burst out at him, “Upar di gur gur di annex di be dhyana di mung di dal of hail to the Guruji and the Khalsa, and victory to the Guruji! Who says this will thrive– the true God is ever alive!”

Perhaps the meaning of this was, “You’re the God of the Muslims! If you were the God of the Sikhs, you’d surely have listened to me!”

Some days before the exchange, a Muslim from Toba Tek Singh who was his friend came to visit him. He had never come before. When Bishan Singh saw him, he moved off to one side and turned to go back, but the guards stopped him.

“He’s come to visit you. He’s your friend Fazal Din.”

Bishan Singh took one look at Fazal Din, and began to mutter something. Fazal Din came forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve been thinking for a long time that I’d come see you, but I just didn’t get a chance… All your family are well; they’ve gone off to Hindustan…. I helped as much as I could…. Your daughter Rup Kaur…”

He stopped in the midst of what he was saying. Bishan Singh began to remember something. “Daughter Rup Kaur.”

Fazl Din said haltingly, “Yes… she… she too is fine…. She too went off with them.”

Bishan Singh remained silent. Fazal Din began saying, “They told me to check on your welfare from time to time…. Now I’ve heard that you’re going to Hindustan…. Give my greetings to brother Balbesar Singh and brother Vadhava Singh…. And sister Amrit Kaur too…. Tell brother Balbesar that those brown water buffaloes that he left behind, one of them had a male calf…. The other had a female calf, but when it was six days old it died…. And… and if there’s anything I can do for you, tell me; I’m at your service…. And I’ve brought you a little puffed-rice candy.”

Bishan Singh confided the bundle of puffed-rice candy to the guard standing nearby, and asked Fazal Din, “Where is Toba Tek Singh?”

Fazal Din said with some astonishment, “Where is it? Right there where it was!”

Bishan Singh asked, “In Pakistan, or in Hindustan?”

“In Hindustan — no, no, in Pakistan.” Fazal Din was thrown into confusion.

Bishan Singh went off muttering, “Upar di gur gur di annex di be dhyana di mung di dal of the Pakistan and Hindustan of the get out, loudmouth!”

Preparations for the exchange had been completed. Lists of the lunatics coming from here to there, and from there to here, had arrived, and the day of the exchange had also been fixed.

It was extremely cold when the lorries full of Hindu and Sikh lunatics from the Lahore insane asylum set out, with a police guard. The escorting wardens were with them as well. At the Wagah border the two parties’ superintendents met each other; and after the initial procedures had been completed, the exchange began, and went on all night.

To extricate the lunatics from the lorries, and confide them to the care of the other wardens, was a very difficult task. Some refused to emerge at all. Those who were willing to come out became difficult to manage, because they suddenly ran here and there. If clothes were put on the naked ones, they tore them off their bodies and flung them away. Someone was babbling abuse, someone was singing. They were fighting among themselves, weeping, muttering. People couldn’t make themselves heard at all– and the female lunatics’ noise and clamor was something else. And the cold was so fierce that everybody’s teeth were chattering.

The majority of the lunatics were not in favor of this exchange. Because they couldn’t understand why they were being uprooted from their place and thrown away like this. Those few who were capable of a glimmer of understanding were raising the cries, “Long live Pakistan!” and “Death to Pakistan!” Two or three times a fight was narrowly averted, because a number of Muslims and Sikhs, hearing these slogans, flew into a passion.

When Bishan Singh’s turn came, and on that side of the Wagah border the accompanying officer began to enter his name in the register, he asked, “Where is Toba Tek Singh? In Pakistan, or in Hindustan?”

The accompanying officer laughed: “In Pakistan.”

On hearing this Bishan Singh leaped up, dodged to one side, and ran to rejoin his remaining companions. The Pakistani guards seized him and began to pull him in the other direction, but he refused to move. “Toba Tek Singh is here!” — and he began to shriek with great force, “Upar di gur gur di annex di be dhyana di mung di dal of Toba Tek Singh and Pakistan!”

They tried hard to persuade him: “Look, now Toba Tek Singh has gone off to Hindustan! And if it hasn’t gone, then it will be sent there at once.” But he didn’t believe them. When they tried to drag him to the other side by force, he stopped in the middle and stood there on his swollen legs as if now no power could move him from that place.

Since the man was harmless, no further force was used on him. He was allowed to remain standing there, and the rest of the work of the exchange went on.

In the pre-dawn peace and quiet, from Bishan Singh’s throat there came a shriek that pierced the sky…. From here and there a number of officers came running, and they saw that the man who for fifteen years, day and night, had constantly stayed on his feet, lay prostrate. There, behind barbed wire, was Hindustan. Here, behind the same kind of wire, was Pakistan. In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.

The Rebel’s Silhouette: Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali

(First published 1991)

Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) should not need a formal introduction. He is the most revered of all Urdu poets in the modern tradition of Urdu literary corpus. Lionized in the Subcontinent and the world over for his struggles against injustice and inequality, his poetic craft lay in redefining the Urdu verse with new subjects and themes and for reworking the old and worn out metaphor and imagery to give new life to modern Urdu verse and wider literary expression.

Agha Shahid Ali, the translator, in this slim volume has selected and translated poems of Faiz which relate to his political struggles, his feud with the ruling capitalist-dictatorial elite and the time he spent in jail for being a persona non grata in the eyes of the rulers. His pain-filled voice lamenting the state of affairs is echoed in every selected poem; a romance with idealism gone wrong and the dejection (albeit not without hope) that followed is loaded in every nuance of his lines.

The poems are mostly in the nazm form; ghazals are very few and they have been translated not as sets of two lines as the original Urdu form requires but in free verse, making small stanzas out of a couplet of a ghazal.

The translations are nicely done to convey the voice and mood of Faiz’s verse. Yet as it is with all translations, something is always lost. My rating 4/5. Get it from AMAZON.

Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

(First published 1975; expanded edition 1997)

The saga of Subcontinent’s independence from Britain and the creation of the states of India and Pakistan told through a collection of interrelated stories about major events and important personalities that influenced the history of the independence episode.

This is a case of interesting history writing that doesn’t present events in the dry, matter-of-fact chronological order (although the semblance of chronology have to be and is maintained in the narrative) as we find in usual history books. This particular quality of the book makes it a very engrossing and thrilling read.

All qualities of the book counted, however, this book almost comes off as portraying the successful and functioning British Raj which sadly had to go due to extenuating circumstances. It also happens to be quite a biased account in so far as it deals with major figures involved in the freedom struggle.

The consensus among historians of British Raj and Partition put much blame on the short-sightedness of the last British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and fake urgency he created (for his personal reasons) to  “get over with it” by dividing the country. This urgency to finish the job as quickly as possible led to decisions that ripped apart the social fabric of the country, echoes of which can still be heard in contemporary Indo-Pak political discourse.

This book in the most part is written by using Mountbatten’s archives and his direct interviews. Not unsurprisingly, he comes across as some sort of helpless and powerless spectator of consummate madness, rioting, killing, rape, pillaging and plundering that swept India at the time of Partition and continued into many months after independence. Mountbatten is almost absolved of failing to make right decisions even though he himself later admitted to historian Stanley Wolpert, confessing, “I fucked it up”.

Gandhi gets good coverage as he deserves. He was the only major politician to see through the horrors of Partition and the bloodshed it would unleash. No one listened to his warnings, neither Jinnah nor Nehru-Patel duo and they like everybody else were flabbergasted when large scale killings began as Partition and Independence were formally announced.

For the first time, by using the then recently declassified British archive this book also reveals that Nehru as a close friend of Mountbatten’s from the time they had spent together in Burma influenced the latter’s appointment to the Viceroy’s office in the hope that he would be able to influence him to Congress’ ends. Later, Nehru took favours from Mountbatten in the demarcation of borders and distribution of state assets. On both counts Pakistan got an unfair deal.

Most importantly, Nehru enrolled Mountbatten on a program to give in to Jinnah’s demand of dividing India which the previous British viceroys tried to avoid. Nehru egged on by Sardar Patel believed that Jinnah’s seemingly unviable state with no geographical contiguity and no resources will fall back into Congress’ arms in a year or two. It didn’t happen, though. This thinking of Congress, rather than trying to talk to Jinnah and reach on a settlement, is attested by Indian ex-foreign minister Jaswant Singh in his new book when he claimed that Nehru and Patel were as much responsible for the partitioning of India as Jinnah and as a consequence got stripped of his party post.

For what it’s worth I will give 3 out of 5. Find it on AMAZON.

Muqaddamah Sooba Saraikistan by Muhammad Akbar Ansari

مقدمہ صوبہ سرایکستان – محمّد اکبر انصاری

Muqadammah Sooba Saraikistan by Muhammad Akbar Ansari

(English title: A Case for the Saraikistan Province)

(First published 1989; This edition 2009; Language: Urdu)

Why it is absolutely necessary to carve out the province of Saraikistan out of preset-day Punjab? The author lays out his reasons with great gusto in this fiery polemic.

This is a case for a province for the Saraiki people who boast a unique language and distinct ethno-cultural ethos. This people inhabit the lower plains of present-day Punjab, the area which is informally known as the Saraiki Belt and includes parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh where sizable populations of Saraiki speaking people are native to those lands.

The argument kicks off with the refutation of objections found in the current political discourse on the creation of a Saraiki province. The author briefly brushes off each objection as unfounded, dishonest or sensationalist and goes on to make a case for the separate linguistic and cultural identity of the Saraiki people which necessitates a separate province.

The book rejects the claims of those who object to the name “Saraikistan” fearing it would lead to further fragmentation of the country.  The author points towards provincial nomenclature current in Pakistan, which are, as they are, already named on ethno-lingual basis, that is, Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh, and now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

It concludes that Saraikis do not demand something unique and new; their demand is in line with well established and existing principles of geographical organisation. Since Pakistan is divided into provinces on ethno-lingual basis, it only makes sense to give Saraiki people their due historical share and thus a province of their own.

There is a further and informative argument from history. A Multan province had long existed alongside Punjab since the times Delhi Sultanate up until when Ranjit Singh invaded Multan province and annexed it for Punjab. Then British came along but they kept the former Multan province within the boundaries of Punjab. It has remained in Punjab ever since.

The book states that provinces were created in British India on the basis of ethnical and/or linguistic identity.  Then it proceeds to give examples of multi-lingual countries like Belgium and Switzerland where every language is accorded state recognition and given equal status in the constitutions of those countries. In former Yugoslavia too, geographical entities were based on language and/or ethnicity and so was the case in former USSR.

When the rights of a people are not given, they resort to violent means. There is a grim warning of the inevitable with the aid of the examples of Hungary and Bangladesh. Hungarian people carved out their own country when Austrians refused to accord equal status to their language, and by extension, their culture. Bengalis who were patriotic Pakistanis, says the author, rebelled against the status quo when Urdu was imposed on them, causing them to separate from Pakistan in favour of preserving their separate linguistic and cultural identity.

A good chunk of the book deals with assessing the demand by some Saraiki circles of the restoration of former Bahawalpur province. It is a bad idea in the view of the author. What Saraikis need is a unified province which includes all Saraiki-majority areas. If former Bahawalpur State’s provincial status is restored, it would leave out half of the Saraiki-majority areas inside Punjab. This would be divisive and counter-productive.

Successive waves of Punjabi migration before and at the time of Partition have caused a population shift in the cities of former Bahawalpur State. A census would reveal that settler Punjabis are actually in majority in most cities which means their political control on Bahawalpur will remain even if Bahawalpur province is created. To counter this, Saraikis across the board will have to unite and demand a unified Saraiki province if they want to end their exploitation at the hands of Punjabi settler elite who now rule the roost in Saraiki-majority areas.

A good picture is sketched of the systematic plunder of agricultural farms in and around Cholistan during Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship. It was a time when a potent and active movement for Bahawalpur province existed. Military and Punjabi bureaucratic elite from Upper Punjab were allotted large chunks of lands and made to settle in Bahawalpur to dilute the political influence of native Bahawalpuri families. They succeeded in gaining access to local votes through state patronage and thus weakened the movement for the restoration of Bahawalpur province.

He cites various examples of discrimination faced by Saraikis in their own lands at the hands of Punjabi elite, who prefer their own kind for civil jobs and appoint officials from Upper Punjab to exploit Saraikis whenever they have a chance. This, he says, goes back to relative underdevelopment of Saraiki areas.

This feeling of alienation and exploitation of the Saraikis at the hands of mostly Punjabi elite forms the core of the argument and the biggest reason, in author’s opinion, that why a Saraiki province is needed. Funds meant for Saraiki areas are diverted and spent on Punjabi areas of the Punjab. This is why Saraiki region, despite being the bread-basket for Pakistan, is impoverished and has high illiteracy rate relative to Upper Punjab. Every medium town in Upper Punjab boasts a state university but there are only two state universities in Saraiki Belt (a third university has been established recently in Rahim Yar Khan) even though the populations of Punjabi and Saraiki-dominated areas are relatively equal. This has led to a situation where civil service jobs mostly go to Punjabis simply because they are more educated. This is worst form of exploitation.

Having laid out the multi-layered argument in detail, let me also add that it’s a political polemic with sweeping generalisations, strong language against Punjabis, knee-jerk rejection of the objections of intelligentsia, and an unwavering faith in the efficacy of Saraiki province as the only and ultimate solution to fix all social and political ills of the Saraiki people.

Movie: Bol (2011)

(English: Speak; Country: Pakisan; Language: Urdu)

This movie depicts social fissures at the heart of contemporary Pakistani society. It’s about a conservative religious family, it’s acute financial troubles causing loss of ancestral prestige, and the father’s troubles to come to terms with a transgender child in a society which is deeply prejudiced towards transgenders.

A prisoner on death row, who is about to be hanged, pleads with the authorities to tell her story before media representative as her last wish before she’s hanged. She is granted permission. The film goes back in time to tell the story of the prisoner.

The father is a traditional hakim-doctor who has sired 7 daughters one after the other in the hope of having a son. Finally a son is born to his wife but it turns out that the newborn is actually a transgender. The father is unable to cope with the “shame” of having a “eunuch” because he, too, would inevitably have to join the community of transgenders whose only way of survival in Pakistani society is to take up street dancing for profession.

The transgender kid now in his teens is murdered at the hands of the father when it becomes too much for him to bear. Police are silenced through bribery against the wishes of the eldest daughter. A painful ordeal for the family kicks in when one of the daughters rebels and the father tries to keep things in order, in vain.

The father, in the wake of conflict at home, tries to shore up his finances so that he can marry off his daughters with izzat (honour) of a respectable man. He ends up teaching Quran to the children of Red Light District, a job he was offered previously by one of his patients but which he angrily refused. There he is sucked into a plan to sire a baby girl through sleeping with the pimp’s so called “granddaughter”. He agrees to do that provided a nikah is recited.

The father is accidentally killed by the eldest rebel daughter when he tries to kill the little baby girl he sired with the courtesan. The baby girl is hidden by the family from being taken away by pimps. There ends the story of the female prisoner about to be hanged. Journalists try to stop her hanging but authorities fear of sensationalism and public anger if her story along with her is let out.

A dialogue in the film became famous. “Agar khila nahin sakte tou paida kyun karte ho“. Translation: Why do you give birth if you cannot feed (your children). It shows anger and disillusionment at having to bear with the pain and suffering of poverty and all the family conflicts it engenders. Humaima Malick, in the role of the prisoner on death row, has been wonderful.

This film captures an array of problems as well as vices of the Pakistani society and repackages in a commendable whole. I’d give it 4/5. IMDb Link

A Letter to Pakistan by Karen Armstrong

(First published 2011)

Karen Armstrong attended the Karachi Literature Festival 2011 and spoke on themes of religious harmony and inter-faith dialogue. Her speeches were largely based on her latest book “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life“. She took the opportunity to write a compressed version of her book with particular reference to Pakistan. Being a den of terrorists and their large support among the religiously demented people, Pakistan’s socio-cultural mess was the obvious choice for the special attention.

Reading the book, or rather booklet, I was reminded of something a Muslim guy said while listening to a non-Muslim about how peaceful Islam was. “We Muslims love to be told that our religion is one of peace.”

Her efforts are well meant and she raises some very important aspects of our religion which Muslim societies have either forgotten or stopped believing that they make up the core of their religion. It is about the ethics of being human and about compassion. She takes the reader through 12 steps to lead compassionate lives; of how we should look at ourselves and the world and try to form a response which is in line with Islam as well as our humanity. The purpose is to improve things through self reflection and action rather than condemning the other and resorting to acts of violence.

She makes an interesting point about Jahiliyah, the primal condition of mankind. She argues that jahiliyah is very much alive today in every society in the world. She says she see jahilyah in her native Britain, recognises it and makes an effort to engage with jaahils to change their attitude. There is also jahiliyah in Muslim world and that we Muslims should also make an effort to correct it at home. Her point is that we should start correcting ourselves at home before we can point fingers to others.

Some of the twelve steps to compassionate life is learning about ‘compassion’, ‘looking at your own world’, ‘compassion for yourself’, ’empathy’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘action’; it ends at ‘recognition’ and ‘understanding your enemies’ so you don’t hate them for hate’s sake but for the sake of justice. I don’t like the term she uses because it sounds characteristically Christian and is open to misunderstanding, i.e. ‘loving your enemies.’

In short, it is an attempt by a renowned scholar of religions to make Muslims practice the core of their religion instead of succumbing to the view of religion as a demarcater of difference and as a political tool to wrap up all grievances in. My book rating 3/5

PUBLISHER’S LINK

Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia by Ayesha Jalal

(First published 2008)

It is a brilliant exposition of the concept of Jihad in Islam, its theological origins, various manifestations and the way the concept was understood and acted upon by the believers with particular reference to the Muslims of the Subcontinent

It is not one of those feel-good apologia for Jihad that try to hammer out the “true” meaning of the concept in Islamic scriptural canon. It is more an attempt to put the concept in its proper context and explain how Muslims of South Asia throughout history have understood and implemented it.

Jalal argues that Jihad is a concept central to Muslim theology. It forms the basic core of Islamic ethics. She called Jihad “a struggle to be human”. She identifies the trends that led to different understandings of Jihad expounded by different Muslim theologians and rulers with reference to the reality of time and place they lived in.

The Indian Subcontinent, says the author, presents an interesting case study because here the power rested in the hands of Muslims but the population which they ruled was, and is, overwhelmingly non-Muslim. So in order to coexist successfully with the “infidels” and to rule the land in relative peace, Muslim rulers and theologians understood the concept of Jihad on a different level than by their counterparts in predominantly Muslim regions such as Arabia, Persia and Central Asia.

The social and political conditions in the Subcontinent before and during the British Raj form the background of this study. Muslim rulers and theologians, owning to the difficulty of ruling a non-Muslim population, tended to understand Jihad as ethical struggle to be good rather than putting the non-Muslims to constant warfare. There had been divergences in this approach with disastrous consequences. For instance in the case of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and theologians like Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi, both of whom leaned toward harsher measures against the non-Muslims.

The policies of Muslim rulers of the Subcontinent, in general, since the days of Delhi Sultanate, were in contrast to the Muslim rulers of Afghanistan, Persia and Arabia who emphasized the more militant aspect of Jihad, and launched military attacks on non-Muslim lands. This behaviour can be seen in the various incursions of the Muslim lords into the Subcontinent. Jalal holds that all of them conquered India under the pretext of Jihad though their real purpose was money and land (For instance, the devastating attacks of Mahmud Ghaznavi, Nader Shah, Ahmed Shah Abdali etc all were labelled Jihad). This the author sees as subversion of the concept of Jihad and a departure from its theological meanings. Rightly so.

The book then moves on to the subject of Jihad in colonial India. There is a detailed chapter on what is now being called the first incident of modern Jihadist terrorism. A group of Muslims led by Sayyid Ahmed and Sayyid Ismail waged an armed struggle against the “infidels” during the years 1826-1831. All of them were killed. These men were deeply affected by the theology of Shah Waliullah Dehlavi, who spent some years in Makkah when Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was still alive, and got acquainted with the rising Wahhabi ideology in the peninsula. Thus the Jihad of Sayyid Ahmed and his followers is seen as the first manifestation of modern Wahhabi jihadist extremism in the Indian Subcontinent.

The next section details the lives and works of some Muslim intellectuals who understood and explained their anti-colonial nationalism in the colours of Jihad. For them it was a noble thing to do and perfectly in line with Islam. Figures like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Ubaidullah Sindhi, Muhammad Iqbal, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and Jamal al-din Afghani (though Iranian but the one who left a deep mark on the thinking of some Indian Muslims during his sojourns in India) is discussed in detail.

Finally, the last section, which is instructively titled “Islam Subverted: Jihad as Terrorism?”, gives a lot of pages to the man who is rightly called the architect of modern Jihad: Sayyid Abul ‘Aala Maududi; His philosophy of Jihad, his antics and his politics are analyzed in great detail. Almost all modern Jihadi groups and their mentors intellectually go back to Maududi and before that, to Shah Waliullah.

On the scale of 1 to 5, I will give this book 5.

AMAZON LINK

A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by Atiq Rahimi

Translated from Dari by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari

(First published 2006)

It is a work of fiction from an Afghan expat which has been translated neatly into English. The regime of Hafizullah Amin and Nur Muhammad Taraki, who deposed Daoud Khan, the president of the short lived Republic of Afghanistan (1973-1978), forms the background of the story.

Two friends who are not involved in political activity are taken for rebels when, one night, in a state of merry drunkenness, they are found in breach of the curfew hours in the city of Kabul.

The narrative starts with a confused, nauseous and nightmarish monologue of the main character, Farhad, who regains consciousness at a strange place but cannot make out where he is and what has happened to him.

After a painful attempt to make sense of his surroundings, he begins to piece together his thoughts as he rewinds the events of the last night. He remembers being rescued from a sewer by a woman and taken to a dark and quiet place. The woman has a young son who thinks his father has returned after a long absence. In fact, as we later learn, the husband of the woman was killed in a political upheaval a few years ago.

Farhad wants to leave the place and return to his family in the other part of town. His mother and siblings must be worried about his sudden disappearance. But he cannot leave the house as the street outside is strewn with jackboots in search of would-be rebels.

The woman and her somewhat irritating but endearing child take care of Farhad. The mysterious and quiet posture of the woman intrigues him as he wants to know more about her. His heart kindles with amorous feelings for her as he learns about her plight. He wants to do something for them, but in fact, it is he who needs to be done something about as his life is in danger.

His mother is informed and she arranges for a trafficker to escort him to Pakistan where his father, who walked out on his mother with a second wife, lives. Farhad is forced to leave the country against his will. He has no choice; he must go in order to save his life.

He is rolled up in a carpet and put in a jeep and a long and perilous journey to Afghan-Pak border begins. He arrives at the border town where he is supposed to spend the night before crossing over to Pakistan. There, due to his being a clean-shaved, jeans-wearing Kabulite, he is mistaken for a “godless communist” by the devout village-dwellers. They chase him out of the mosque and subject him to torture till he bleeds. The novel ends there.

It is an emotional saga of Afghanistan’s war torn families, their broken dreams, wasted aspirations and a life of continued war and famine which is now in its fourth decade. The most important character in this novel is that of the rescuer woman. She comes across as extremely determined to do anything it takes to help the suffering, often to the point of putting her own life in danger.

My rating: 3/5. Find the book on AMAZON.

Chero Hath Na Murli by Ashoo Lal Faqir

چھیڑو ہتھ نہ مرلی – اشو لال فقیر

(First published 1989; Language: Saraiki)

A fascinating collection of poems in Saraiki, the language spoken in central Pakistan*. I was unprepared for the immense referential scope of the poems which, despite their modern dress-up, are steeped in the classical metaphor of Saraiki poetry. Many poems are peppered with folkloric and mythological references, which demands a good knowledge of the Indic classical world to fully comprehend them.

Most strikingly, there are many poems referencing and modeled on characters and stories from the Hindu mythology, linking the troubles of the present to that of the past, tied to the terrestrial scope of the land where today the language is spoken, the land which once was a very important part of the ancient Hindu civilisation. Multan, the old cosmopolitan Mulsthana , was the city where the famousSun Temple had stood in ancient times, on whose imaginary ruins still lie the ruins of another, latter-day, temple. Although it is no more than a mound today and archaeologists have failed to unearth any historical evidence of the lost temple, it is alive in the collective lore of the city, through the legends that have come down to us.

I digress, but Ashoo Lal Faqir, our poet, by bringing the past into the present socio-political milieu, seems to position himself as a keeper and reminder of the tradition which has all but forgotten under Muslim influence, and particularly after the Partition of British India. In that respect these poems represent a unique and lone voice in modern Saraiki poetry and one that I cherished as I read these poems with great relish, understanding some metaphors and missing others, under the grip of a newborn nostalgia for the past long lost.

*Indo-European language, today written in Persian-derived script, although a small number of speakers in India also use Devanagri. I’m a native speaker of the language.

Re-read and rewritten the review July 2016