Adil Najam
These are distressing times. But this is not a time to be depressed.
This is a time, as Owais reminds us in his last post, to reaffirm our hopes for the future. True defeat would be to give up on those hopes. I have put up the splash image (on the front page) that I have to reassert and to remind ourselves that ultimately Pakistan will be what we make of it. Emergency or no emergency, no one can snatch our Pakistaniat from us. Not until we ourselves surrender it!
Back in May, at a moment of similar desperation, I had written a post where I had sought “solace in the one place where I always find it. In poetry. Especially in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry.” The video clip I had used there is worth repeating here.
I had written then – and it seems even more pertinent today to repeat it:
Here is Faiz – in his own words, in his own voice. The second half has the same poem masterfully sung by Nayarra Noor. Enjoy this rare find of kalam i Faiz, ba zaban i Faiz. But more than that, think about what he is saying and how it relates to what is happening today.
What I had to say (including about US role) I said at length in an NPR Radio show today (or here). But what Faiz has to say is far more profound.
The words of Faiz certainly cut deeper than anything I can say. They are an invitation to action. But they are also an invitation to thought. An invitation to responsibility. An invitation to continuing the struggle no matter what. An invitation to keep moving onwards despite the odds. An invitation to celebrate the spirit of defiance of those who will not give up.
I had ended that post by reaffirming ATP’s committment “to celebrating all the diverse trials and tribulations of being Pakistan … the mundane as well as the profound; the sad as well as the gleeful; the immediate as well as the long-term.” It is time, today, to repeat that commitment.
This is our commitment to Pakistaniat. We love Pakistan not because everything is right in it. But despite that which is clearly not right. And with a commitment to make right that which has gone astray. Ameen.
Rafay Kashmiri says:
November 6th, 2007 7:14 am
Please do not monopolise Pakistaniat to Faiz,
millions of Pakistanis do not agree with Faiz,
so we will not come out like old age Majnou
with iron chains around the ankles, we should
come out like muslims in Pakistan must do,i.e.
courage, tenacity, arguments, and no theatre
Pakistaniat Zindabad, Dehriate Murdabad
[sarcasm]So Rafay, what do you suggest the millions on non-Muslim Pakistanis do then? Or have you already condemned to death with your parting slogan of dehriate murdabad? Heck, might as well right… I mean we’ve already made them swear to our religious views on the passport form haven’t we?[/sarcasm]
I wonder when we’ll condemn religious bigotry with the same fervour that we reserve for leaders who we hailed yesterday and hate today. It’s a pity that Pakistanis seek acceptance and self-validation from every entity on earth, yet we are so rooted in our ethnocentrism that we can’t see beyond the mold we were cast from.
Found this on nytimes website….
Dear Editor,
I went to school in New York City. I spent almost 5 years in US and luckily experienced first hand the last US presidential elections. How I was impressed by the American democratic process. I felt that democracy is envied by the Americans. It is so important for them. And then the same Americans support dictators like Musharraf. He said in his speech that democracy is not for us? Democracy is a self refining process that grows and becomes strong with time. But regretfully it is not allowed to live and breathe in Pakistan. It is killed by dictators. You should know that supporting a dictator will simply not exterminate the Taliban or Al- Qaeda. It is for sure that it will give further vent to extremism and non-tolerance.What has hapened in the last 8 years? Has it subsided? It has grown and is growing further and has now clearly spread from the tribal areas to settled areas of the frontier province. I hope that the US policy makers understand this.
desi — well said — I am glad at least some people are seeing through what DT is doing on this issue
Judges do not need a handout. They can live hand to mouth.
Bhutto once said in a speech,” ……..we will achieve our objective. We will sleep on stones. We will eat grass. We will not compromise our dignity. ……….but we will make……….we will achieve our objective”. And then he asked:”…….mere saath chalo gay…..?”
So, here is another man asking:”mere saath chalo gay?’
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?193822
But he is asking:”sar utha key chalo gay?”
Matchless sophistry marks Daily Times’ backing of the Mush-BB deal and its soft line on Emergency. But I can see where Najam-Jugnu and Ejaz “ours-are-bigger-than-yours” Haider are coming from — they are ‘consensus is better than confrontation’ types. Unfortunately, there comes a time in the life of a nation when confrontation is preferable to consensus between kleptocrats, which is what is happening in Pakistan. Unless, the DT gang makes an unambiguous call on this one, one can only conclude that the belong to the same klepto elite — that their single malts are more important than the double whammy your pathetic commando is delivering to the country. Wake up, DT…your readers and constituents are ahead of you on this one.