Utopia For Me.. Pieces Of My Heart

Posted on March 12, 2008
Filed Under >Raza Rumi, Disasters, Politics, Religion, Society
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Raza Rumi

Karta hun jama phir jigare lakht lakht ko
(I seek to gather the scattered pieces of my heart)

PakistanNot long ago, say two decades ago, we the Zia’s children yearned for a country that treaded the Malaysian path for prosperity; and somehow were to transform a tolerant, inclusive society. Such were the dizzying dreams. We wanted the Hudood laws to vanish, the witch-hunt under the blasphemy laws to end and sectarian-ethnic monsters buried. We were inspired by the likes of Mohtarama, for some the charitable cricketer appeared the redeemer. The road to utopia also emerged when a bus took off from the other side of the border and landed in Lahore. The brothers Sharifov became new faces of a moderate, booming Pakistan. Mr. Vajpayee’s chant on the ancient roads of Lahore,

“ab jang nahee ho gi”

was enough to willingly suspend our disbelief. For many a precious day, we forgot the corruption stories, the political squabbles and incompetence all around.

And then the utopia signs dwindled as the battles on the white peaks of Kargil turned red, a VVIP plane hijacked re-invoking the sorry state of martial rule. We could not live without the dream however. So the new goals — accountability, devolution and economic miracles — weaved a new chador of delusions. Like that mythical chador, this new age of globalised Pakistan made reality invisible. We had technocratic solutions spun once again and the opening up of imperial coffers gave us a false sense of moving towards the dream-path.

Yet again, the ideal was snatched and smashed as the myriad myths of unequal development started exploding with imported and local bombs.

This time my utopia seems painfully distant, blurred. I have forgotten what it was. It slipped from the vision when the suicide bombers started visiting the idyllic Islamabad. I now suffer from a mild amnesia. I don’t know what I hoped for in those naive, uninformed days when Faiz’s Hum dekhain ge outlined its contours; and the daagh daagh ujala was destined to transform into sheer resplendence of a vibrant society future.

How do I gather the slipping grains of what was the cherished utopia. I had heard that human memory vistas theoretically are seamless and clear. But that vision of those vast green fields is now blood-stained. Suicide bombers are omnipresent and my dear friend in Waziristan tells me that the queue is long and restive. The streets of Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi are potted with excess blood choking the civilization arteries. The vacant Liaquat Bagh a haunting shrine where many come to share the loss of a vision. A vision, tainted by cynicism, slander and murder, not once but twice over.

The floating limbs of ticket-holders to heaven have created a temporal hell. First, it was the mosque, then the eid-gah and now a janazah prayer. It used to be the army post, then a bazaar and now it’s under the banyan tree where Gautama and his followers found peace; and Khanqahs thrived on its lasting shade. The paths with Ashoka’s footprints are infested with land-mines. Indus, the mighty nourisher, is mixed with suffering. Urban life has turned into a quest for personal security — the ‘ideal’ existence where one is simply not dead!

But this fear of death does not bother me. What haunts me is the deeper decay of a polity that started with a high note. The old has crumbled and the new is not there. But then pessimism is useless and nihilism is nothing but the ultimate denial of being.

The recent awakening of urban Pakistan now provides the silver lining. It points towards a long road towards my utopia that will comprise a country with enough oxygen, expression and free of scary little gods. It would also mean that poverty will have to be eliminated, not just reduced, alleviated or targeted. Here inequality would be unacceptable and not a way of life (as I have grown up with it).

In this world, heritage would not be dismissed or reduced to food streets. In this Utopia, citizenry would be at the forefront and will lead the country into a new era where the bitterness of the past would be nothing more than lessons for the days to come.

And I want to walk freely. Pray in a mosque when I am required to without the fear that someone would enter with dreaming of the other-world. I want my children to grow up in an environment that is not plagued by the toxicity of consumerism and emptiness of a historical world. I don”t want those old trees to disappear taking along the music of koels and calls of enlightenment. I want my utopia to be free of de-humanisation, devoid of nuclear balances and imbalances and cacophony of jingoism.

Above all, my utopia is where the centuries of mystical thought, bhakti and love for fellow human beings are paramount. Only such a world can be free of greed, revenge and terror. This is a utopia where Mohammad’s egalitarianism backed by the hama-oost of the Sufis shall reclaim the footsteps of Gautama, Nanak and Bulleh Shah.

Is it possible to dream again when the memory has to be rediscovered and dreams re-scripted. When will those pieces of my heart gather together?

A version of this article earlier appeared in The Daily News

Photos for this article are taken from flickr.com

34 responses to “Utopia For Me.. Pieces Of My Heart”

  1. Salman says:

    Well said Nimi.

    This article was vey touching. I like and endorse Rumi’s Utopia. When will his Utopia come to life? I don’t know. But for that to happen, Pakistanis will need to share Rumi’s Utopian vision , and the onus is on the Pakistani intellectuals to spread the word.

  2. Nimi says:

    To Ali and LOTA love,

    Personally I am against this politics of division and “move out and leave us alone”. This attitude has led to the division of muslims in the subcontinent, though some muslims have conserved their riches in the name of Pakistan and haven’t done wonders for the wellfare of other muslims.

    This is an escapist attitude. Facing and solving the collective problems is much more difficult.

    About the conservative nation you are talking about, having lived in the 60s, let me tell you that this nation was much different before Zia (maulvi, heroin, kk, insecurity, terrorism…) came in.

    There is a whole damn history behind it. All punjabis, with village background, above 45 shall tell you that in our villages, respected were syeds and walis, and sufis. The least respected guy, who had a functional role to play in some ceremonies and who lived on the alms of others was the maulvi. This was our culture. Love and tolerance based, not dogmatic.

    Our ancestors lived on the land of five rivers where most of the people came from outside. Even Islam got integrated into this melting pot of cultures. This civilisation has survived over centuries.

    Go to Lahore “daata darbar”, everyday the God is praised over there in music and poor people eat to their full and this for last….1000 years. Why? because when this great guy came to the land of five rives, he noticed that the music was a great tool to attract people to his message. He didn’t say, hey! got prayers?

    Who funded the supermacy of the maulvi? Who made him so omnipotent by making him “nazim-e-salaat” and giving him authority to punish. Who imposed this conservativeness? This fascism. Who took away the passion and heartwilling religious practice. What is God if He is not love and humanism? A prison warden?

    Please don’t make Zia the precurssor of our whole damn civilisation. It started some 5000 years ago. Aren’t you proud of it? Don’t you want to own it? Do you have anyother choice?

  3. Only_Me says:

    Dear Raza,

    Your post is from the heart. Staying quite is not the solution infact I believe the average Pakistani does not want anything more than a decent life for him/herself and a chance to live life in peace. The misguided idiot brigade, the minority, who think otherwise in the name of religon or what ever else have taken it upon them to enforce their version of beliefs and all these years of staying silent have just made this minority think they can do as they like and the rest of the country will follow them to their man made hell. You can either take the country back from them or become like them, you have to make that choice and stand up and be counted for once in your life.

  4. Arjun says:

    By the way, that last picture of the Neelam Valley (I think it’s the Neelam) looks out of this world. Pakistani landscapes are truly a wonder.

  5. Arjun says:

    As an Indian, I’ve always wondered what holds Pakistan back. India has so many problems that Pakistan doesn’t. First and foremost, Pakistan has a very small and manageable population, ample natural resources, a cohesive unifying religion and a language that the majority speaks. As opposed to this, India has unmanageable population pressures, a diverse conglomeration of cultures, languages, religions and peoples that are at many a time at odds with one another.

    A country of 140 million people should be able to easily zoom through the economic ranks and improve its per capita income and standard of living. And yet, from my biased Indian perspective, Pakistanis keep shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on the Indian threat or lusting for Kashmir waaay too much for their own good.

    If they simply focused on education, economy and living standards of their own people, they would easily be an example in the region. Two facts are stark: no country can invade or attack Pakistan with the whole world watching (let alone the fact that India is hardly likely to attack), and secondly, smaller administrative units always do better economically, and Pakistan is definitely much smaller than India is. If they realize this, Pakistan would truly be a heavenly place. You’ve got way fewer natural problems (population first and foremost) than us, but you keep creating problems for yourselves for no understandable reason. Islam should be your way of life, not your way of death. The Army should quietly be protecting your borders and elected govts, not running the country and interfering abroad (whether Afghanistan or India). But of course, all of you already knew this. If India had the natural advantages Pakistan has, I’m sure we’d be much better off than we are.

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