The Mard-e-Momin as a form of national identity is overrated. So is the concept of the collective morality and the religious honor that gets everyone keyed up, ready to take up arms against an aggressor. The biggest aggressor, after all, remains poverty, bread within. Real tyranny is that which the state practices against its own citizenry, mostly by ignoring them.
Enough with the heroic machismo, I say. It hasn’t bought Pakistan any bread or butter, although it has surely strung us into becoming a state famous world over for its radicalism.
Zard Patto Ka Bann Jo Mera Dess Hai. Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) brews in his poetry a gentle reminder of a wilting nation, he calls each of the forgotten, by their own name: the weary armed mother who can’t calm her crying child at night, the postmen, the clerk, the railway driver and the factory worker. These form the majority of our nation – they also form a group that we don’t like to talk about. Our ‘national poet’ Allama Mohammad Iqbal for instance has no mention of these no-name people. Neither does he mention shame, which is what a realistic self-introspection deserves. How can we talk of a national poetry without the people who form its working class?
Nisar teri gallion mey aye Watan, Key koi na saar utha key chaley. Faiz has asked for a soul check, a delving into what brings real honor to the country: protection of the rights of its citizens, a level playing field and recourse to justice. As a member of the International Labor Organization he was astute about the rights of the blue collar workers. His concept of patriotism wasn’t a jingoistic one. Evident in his piece mourning the death of the founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah, he said: “Short-sighted fanaticism and heartless greed are preparing to plunge both the dominions into another suicidal devil-dance and the voice of the common man is getting feebler through exhaustion.”
Faiz’s nationalism focused more on the cultural aspects of what it was to be Pakistani, the art, the music, the folk tradition. In his compartmentalized life, between his work as a writer and his jail sentences, he was also the head of the Ministry of Culture in Islamabad where he established the Lok Virsa museum, chronicling the unique regional art embedded in our nationalism.
Umeed-e-Seher ki baat sunoo. Far from being a pessimist, he believed in the message of hope. Listen, he said to the dawn of the new morn.
What is missing today, especially among our youth is a concept to anchor them in. A cultural identity of what it is to be a Pakistani. Childishly we believe that fighting the other fulfills our need to congregate around a cause. Pakistan is in the search of Bulleh Shah, the Khudi of Iqbal, the voice of Reshma, the Horse and Cattle show, the Polo matches, the fashion shows, the billboards and the TV Serials, no matter how variant the spectrum, each contributant to the creativity form a mosaic of multiculturalism forms a piece of the modern Pakistan we have today. Anyone with a green passport can claim it as their own.
In the same eulogy Faiz adds that Pakistanis should, “complete the task that the Quaid-i-Azam began, the task of building a free, progressive and secure Pakistan, to restore our people the dignity and happiness for which the Quaid-i-Azam strove, to equip them with all the virtues that the nobility of freedom demands and to rid them of fear, suffering and want that have dogged their lives through the ages.”
The Pakistani cultural identity is infused with religious sentiment. It is important to divorce those two concepts because we have not one but many religious avenues which describe what it is to be a Pakistani, and these avenues cannot be excluded, because Pakistan was not created out of an exclusionary identity. Pakistan was formed for a minority community, through a democratic and constitutional process; it must therefore amongst all its principles uphold the protection of the underdog as its highest moral principle.
Tum yey Kehtey ho vo Jang ho bhi chuki, Jiss mey rakha nahi hey kissi ney kadaam. Vehemently anti-war, Faiz cautioned against those wars that were fought on the behalf of an unseen force, and lost at the cost of many lives and much blood. His focus instead was on educating the youth. As principal of a local school, he introduced at first education for women, brought enrollment to an all time high and instituted excellence at this school. His versatility as a nation builder was evident in the devotion with which he completed each assigned task, no matter what the field.
Bahar Aaee. Above all else, Faiz brought alive that Pakistan which bloomed endlessly, even after loss.
The obfuscation of any discussion about Jinnah is a direct result of confusion created by fusing ideas, timelines and happenings that did not happen in that order.
Jinnah was a complex man. A great man. He was multifaceted. He was neither a religious nut nor a secular freak. Both hated him. And both cannot capture him in a jar for display.
Jinnah was a middle of road Pakistani, like most of the Pakistanis truly are.
And so was the first amongst Pakistanis, the national poet of Pakistan, the Great Allama.
All attempts to label them this or that are not only irrelevant, they do not deliver clean water to Mai Jori Jamali!
This is a good charade of the “gitter-mitter” crowd. Deny equity and justice with fake encounters and debates.
But of course, if you still want to have a conference, let me know, I will arrange water from the village of Mai Jori Jamali!
My dear friend,
It seems that English comprehension is not your forte. You’ve linked excerpts to a book – (Jaswant Singh Jinnah India Independence partition)- which in the very chapter explains precisely what I wrote. So much for research by google. Jaswant Singh’s book concludes similarly.
I also refer to Jinnah’s interview to New Chronicle the text of which (with Jinnah’s corrections in hand) can be found Shamsul Hasan collection i.e. “Plain Mr. Jinnah”. The differentiation between national and territorial demands are precisely Jinnah’s words… not interpretation.
On the issue of religion as the basis of Pakistan you may wish to read my articles:
Was Jinnah secular?
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/was-ji nnah-secular/
Did Jinnah want a Pakistan?
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/did-ji nnah-want-pakistan/
Politics is the art of possible. You need to read more than “Gandhi-Jinnah correspondence” to conclude anything but then given your arguments, you don’t seem the type who would be able to think for himself any time soon.
YLH:
I am amazed how beautifully you distort historical facts to augment the secular agenda of eliminating religion as basis of creation of Pakistan.
You mentioned that:
>>>If that were true, Jinnah would not have in clear terms rejected Gandhi and Rajagopalachari’s formula for plebiscite in Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected it by saying that “ours is a national and not a territorial demand”>>>
This is a total misrepresentation of Quaid’s vision of the formula. Looks like you have read and reproduced only Gandhi’s perception of what Quaid’s response was to the concerned formula. You never cared to study what scheme actually Gandhi presented and on what grounds Quaid rejected the scheme.
The main reason behind rejecting the mentioned formula was that it proposed the process of demarcation of separate entities and determination of separate states through plebicite AFTER gaining independence from British and Quaid never trusted the Hindu dominated Congress for that matter. It was clear that if British left India without separation, Congress will be incharge and Hindus will be heavily dominating the decision making and the demand for Pakistan will never be met under such circumstances. So Quaid demanded “Divide and leave” in response to Congress’s “Quit India”.
For reference please see the transcripts of the correspondence between Gandhi and Quaid at http://bit.ly/fnbbaI
And YLH, again you distort the facts by giving selected words and hiding the context in which the words were said. Perhaps you based your arguments only on the following paragraph of Jaswant Singh‘s Book Jinnah India – Partition – Independence.
However, Jinnah did not want separation on the basis of a plebiscite in which all the inhabitants affected by it could participate; he wanted the issue to be decided on the basis of ‘self-determination’ confined to the Muslims alone. ‘We claim the right of self-determination as a nation…You are labouring under the wrong idea that “self-determination” means only that of a “a territorial unit” … Ours is a case of division and carving out two independent, sovereign States by way of settlement between two major nations, Hindus and Muslims, and not of severance or secession from any existing union, which is non est in India.’
But Infact you have again distorted the whole story by giving reference to teritorial unit and national demand. Here Quaid is referring to plebicite covering ONLY MUSLIMS OF AFFECTED AREAS as opposed to all adults of the affected areas and the nation he referred to were MUSLIMS. He never admitted to be a part of Inidian nation, the existance of which Gandhi failed to proved and what seculars of today propagate.
For reference study the whole chapter of the book related to Gandhi Jinnah talks reproduced at http://bit.ly/fwxr0w.
And thus I stand by my words that
>>>It was actually the MAJORITY community of present day Pakistan which was the focus of the concept, demand, struggle and creation of this homeland.>>>
This discussion also blasts your other remarks about Quaid envisioning Pakistan as a scular state. In all the correspondence with Gandhi, he was concerned with Muslims and their right of self determination. To him, a separate state of Muslims was the primary issue and minorities was a secondary issue, as Gandhi himself reported.
Thanks You YLH… As you pushed me to study the detailed story of Gandhi-Jinnah Talks, now I have a stronger belief in religion as basis of creation of Pakistan and Quaid being a Muslim nationalist.
Humaira:
The idea of a Pakistani identity should not be confused with the notion of the identity of a single people or community. So I don’t think I was claiming that being Pakistani means to focus on a single people as somehow being “the representative identity.”
Acknowledgement and celebration of diversity is indeed an inherent part of the “identity” I would imagine for what it means to be a Pakistani. This is analogous to one saying “I’m a Virginian” and “I’m an American” where each has its own meaning that is deeper and richer than the mere label. If I transpose the point to Pakistan, obviously one might say “I’m a Baluchi” and “I’m a Pakistani” and my challenge is to weigh the depths of each of those claims. (I’m not a Baluchi by the way).
My sense of things is that we will be more capable of ascribing richness and depth of meaning to the former claim than the latter, and my complaint directed to us all really, is that we haven’t done enough to imbue richness and depth to the claim “I’m a Pakistani”. This doesn’t dampen my sense of being Pakistani. But if we were to answer a question “What does it mean to be Pakistani?”, then I think as a nation, we struggle with it more than necessary because of the absence of a history of “investment” in the meaning through the development of a national narrative.
Creating such a thing does not require the dismantling of other identities. It goes alongside them and if done well, integrates their diversity into the fold of a national one.
I am not sure how Iqbal became so important to Pakistan. I am sorry but I don’t think he is our national poet. He was a good poet but he was not a Pakistani poet. Faiz on the other hand was a poet drawn from Pakistan.
I am a little surprised by the comments by Monano who seems to be utterly ignorant of the history of Pakistan that Ms. Sarwari alludes to:
“O really???? I thought it was other way round…. It was actually the MAJORITY community of present day Pakistan which was the focus of the concept, demand, struggle and creation of this homeland”
If that were true, Jinnah would not have in clear terms rejected Gandhi and Rajagopalachari’s formula for plebiscite in Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected it by saying that “ours is a national and not a territorial demand”. The two nation theory was not that Muslim majority of Muslim provinces constitute a nation… but rather Muslims of British India constitutes a nation which is in numerical minority in United India… and Pakistan was a settlement and division of assets between the two main communities where two new states/units etc were to formed – one with Muslim majority and the other with Hindu Majority- which would then come together in a confederation or treaty arrangements. Unfortunately that vision was not fulfilled… and left with a motheaten sovereign and limited Pakistan, Jinnah gave Pakistan a non-communal secular and constitutional vision to aspire to.
So perhaps people should dispense with the Zia’s distortion of history and familiarise themselves with the facts instead.