Adil Najam
This picture is carried today by both Dawn and Daily Times. Dawn’s title is “Still Heroes” and the caption reads: “Bronze statues of Quaid-i-Azam, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Allama Iqbal put on display at the Science and Technology Expo-2007 being held at National Memorial Museum in Shakarparian in Islamabad.”
A visit to the Museum is on the top of my ‘To Do’ list when I return to Islamabad end of the month. I hope they are still there.
My first thought on looking at the picture was to note how both Jinnah and Iqbal are wearing suits here (this penchant of ours – me included – to dress up these guys in the garbs of our desires has been has been quite a remarkable historical see-saw!). My second thought was to wonder what the folks at Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa might have to say – or do – about this. I hope there is significant security against vandalism here.
But even more than that, I wonder what these three men are sitting there thinking about what is happening today in the country they helped conceive. Late at night when the museum is closed and the statues come alive and walk about, what is it that they sit together and talk about?
From “Mulka ka Buut” to the statues of the Fathers-of-Nation—-we have come a long way. Today in the museums, tomorrow may be in the town squares. And Iqbal a ‘mureed’? Come on Brother Jabar. You are not serious? Are you? And Sulman, you too are entitled to your opinion no matter how contrarian. Long live Pakistan.
why is syed ahmed standing like a bera (bearer or butler) while the sahibs mohammad iqbal and mohammad ali jinnah have sofas attached to there bottoms
(in addition to being dressed differently as adil noted syed ahmed seems to have taken less bronze and looks quite slim).
i think they are, to answer adils musing, at a stage in their conversation where iqbal and jinnah have stopped listening to syed ahmed,
perhaps saying that he wants to appease his masters in the government, while they have a different politics (however much it may seem like today’s drawing room politics)
which pits the ordinary mussalman between the compulsions of the mulla and the caverns of modernism.
LOL. I had no idea this blasphemy was being allowed to happen in watn e aziz. Iqbal, Jinnah, dividers of the united India, British conspirers against islam, now clad in them suits and made idols out of em? In the holy land of pakistan? (which btw shouldn’t have been founded like I just said :P) Someone please call my friendly neighborhood suicide-bombing, gun-totting, civilization-pillaging honest and true Muslim brethren squad of bearded turtles please!
YLH, Iqbal used to be a western thinker in all aspects, and then one nazar of a sahib-e-kashf changed him forever. He became his mureed and that proved to be the pivotal point for him. Ishfaq Ahmad went through same transformation, in his last days he used to make fun of his ‘roshan khayal’ philosophical era, literally calling it crap. Lucky them. As Bulhay Shah said:
ilm bass karayn o yaraa
The level of freedom offered by this one verse should not be underestimated. Try understanding it sometime.
In all I what I am saying is after his qalbi transformation, Iqbal ceased to be a fan of western culture.
And Quaid renounced his only beloved daughter for the sake of Pakistan. That one jest is enough to tell what he had in mind regarding the Islamic identity of Pakistan.
I am afraid Jabir… Neither Jinnah nor Iqbal ever stopped wearing the western dress…
Jinnah’s approach against British economic imperialism was different… he fought for tenders to be in Indian rupees than British pounds… a move that was much more effective than Gandhi’s dhoti-only Xenophobia.