Khudaya dasey tanha na kei souk pe gham kei,
laka ze da yaar pe gham kei yum tanha!
Na ba ma ghundei shaheed wi pe jahan kei,
ne ba ta ghundei dilbar shi bal paida!
Lord, do not make anyone lonely in sorrow
like I am alone in grief for my beloved!
Never will there be on earth a martyr like me,
Nor a beloved like you be found!
Enemies of Pakistan are at it again. After blowing up girls schools in North West Pakistan, forcing traffic to drive on right hand side instead of left in Malakand, digging up the grave of a minority sect leader and hanging the already dead person in the public square in Swat, militants have now started blowing the resting place of those who are already dead.
Is there any limit to this insanity?
Pashto’s language’s famous poet Rehman Baba‘s mausoleum was severely damaged by militants in the early hours of March 5, 2009.
Believe it or not; probably like some of our readers, I am now reluctant to open newspaper to avoid reading any bad news about Pakistan. It hurts. It simply hurts. This is such a bitter pill ‘jo na ugli jaaye hai na nigli jaaye hai’ (which I can neither swallow nor throw out). I have now become numb to bad news and I try to avoid it but then every few days a bigger and worse bad news like the one above comes by which I have to write about. This is despite the pain I feel in writing these sentences.
According to Dawn newspaper:
The shrine’s watchman had received a threat from suspected militants on his cell phone three days ago. He told police that the attack took place to crack down on the tradition of women making pilgrimages to the site of the grave of Rehman baba; a 17th century poet, revered for his message of love and peace.
The high intensity device almost destroyed the grave of the Rehman Baba and the gates of a mosque, canteen and conference hall situated in the spacious Rehman Baba Complex. Police said the bombers had tied explosives around the pillars of the tombs, to pull down the mausoleum.
The entire area was covered with thick smoke and dust soon after the blast,’ said the president of the volunteers of the shrine association of the complex, Sardar Khan, who was busy in removing rubble of the damaged portions. He told Dawn that he was the first one to reach the shrine after the blast. ‘I saw major portion of the grave was blown up and the building was badly damaged but no one was present there,’ he said and added that he informed the local police and some media persons about the incident.
The Dawn newspaper gives more information on the mausoleum complex in following words:
The tomb was a part of the spacious complex housing a conference hall, library, mosque, canteen, guest house, small shrines of some other saints, Tawoos Baba, Syed Sattar Bacha and Syed Sultan Bacha.
The work on construction of the complex was initiated on November 17, 1991 and completed in 1994 with an estimated cost of about 15 million rupees.
Rehman Baba’s full name was Abd-ur-Rehman and he lived 1632 to 1707 AD. He enjoys the same fame in Pushto as Shirazi does in Persian.
I, along with our editorial board as well as our readers sincerely hope and pray for peace in Pakistan and hope to get our lovely country back from the clutches of these ‘zaalim’ people who could do acts like the ones shown in photos here.
God bless Pakistan and here is our prayer to peace !
I want to end this post with a couplet from Rehman Baba’s poem ‘Agony of Love’.
ATP’s Earlier Post: Two Poems by Rehman Baba
Photo Credits: Riaz Anjum at Associated Press of Pakistan
References:
1. The first Pushto sher of Rehman Baba is from the website here
2. Pashto Academy: University of Peshawar: Nightingale of Peshawar
3. Poetry of Rehman Baba at Learn Pushto
Arjun, your last paragraph starts “Indians should very very carefully see…” I guess you mean the few that visit this blog. By the way, if somebody came and told you that your house was on fire or that your neighbour’s house was on fire, what’s the difference?
(Late) Eqbal Ahmad saw this in 1998: “The Taliban is as retrograde a group as it is possible to find. Last year, I spent two weeks in Afghanistan. One day, I heard drums and noises from the house where I was staying. I rushed out to see what was going on. There was a young boy who couldn’t
have been more than twelve years of age. His head was
shaved. There was a rope around his neck. He was being
pulled by that rope. There was one man behind him with
a drum. He slowly beat the drum.
I asked, “What has the boy done?”
People told me he was caught red-handed.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“He was caught red-handed playing with a tennis ball.”
I went off to interview one of the Taliban leaders. He
said, “We have forbidden boys to play with balls
because it constitutes undue temptation to men.” So
the same logic that makes them lock up women behind
veils and behind walls makes them prevent boys from
playing games. It’s that kind of madness.”
@Arjun
Very well put.
And may I also point out to you and other right-minded fellow Indians another example, a glorious one, from Pakistan that is worth emulating, today, now: their Lawyers’ Movement. We need to channel our increasing sense of the danger from the examples that you quoted in your post into action by concerned citizens.
One example is to be found here: http://www.baware.in
We need many more.
We need to take the best from each other. There is much to take of this sort if only we look.
They have not attacked a mazar. They are not interested in that.
The Taliban are the true devils of our time. Their mission is to destroy Muslims everywhere and to destroy Islam. They are replacing it with their own doctrine of hatred.
The irony is that their biggest supporters are other enemies of Islam who are helping them by making acting as if they were the real “muslims” and their version of hatred was about religion.
Part of the reason these people get away with it is because there is no immediate reaction to this. If steps are taken at the first instance then lessons can be taught.
whoever these ppl are, they most certainly are not believers in Allah and the last day. most likely thugs and hitmen hired to destabilise pakistan. say what you like about conspiracy theories, but one can’t be so politically naive these days to rule out sinister strategic interests from outside. remember pakistan has nuclear capability and is allied to china. it’s neighbour also nuclear capability and is an enemy of china and now a new friend of usa and israel.