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.
Secular Jinnah
The Pakistani Intellectuals (PI) have three National Heroes : (1) Sir Allama Iqbal, (2) Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah and (3) Dr. Qadeer Khan.
Allama Iqbal was (and is) a great poet and philosopher. He died in 1938 before the existence of Pakistan. He belonged to the nation of British Indian and not to the Nation of Pakistan.
Dr. Q. Khan is venerated because of the Atom Bomb. He is a great Nuclear Engineer and not a Scientist as the PI claim. The science is the study of natural phenomena through observation, experimentation and logic. A scientist adds some new knowledge to our understanding. An engineer uses this knowledge to transform it in practical objects (bombs!). The only great Pakistani Scientist is Dr. Abdus Salam who is totally ignored by PI and Pakistani Establishment.
Mr. Jinnah was a great Lawyer and Political leader. Without him Pakistan would not have seen the day. The PI members attribute a liberal and secular qualities to these three Heroes. Mr. Jinnah is on the top. They claim that Quaid-e-Azam wanted to establish a Secular Democracy in Pakistan.
If the Secular Democracy was real aim of Mr. Jinnah, then he had enough popular support, enough political power and docile and dwarf (Yes Sir Men) collaborators to declare Pakistan, as a Secular Democratic State, as Indian leaders did on 15th. August 1947.
The secular intellectuals forward many political and legal arguments in favour of the lack of the courage of their Hero. The simple fact is that he did not declare Pakistan as a Secular State because he had some other vision. His hesitation is a sign of his doubtful sincerity in secularism.
The Secular Scholars cite very often the 11th. August, 1947 speech of Mr. Jinnah where he guarantees the complete religious freedom to the citizens of the state and declares that State has nothing to do with the religion. The problem is that it is only half definition of a Secular State. The other half is that “the religion has nothing to do in the state affair (the system of the government.)”. He always ignored this other half of the secularism. It is a clear indication that Mr. Jinnah wanted the religion in the state (Government) to govern the people in the name of Allah without the interference of the religious authority. He simply did not want “theocracy”.
There is another class of Secular Scholars which claims that Mr. Jinnah was indeed a Secular Politician because:
“Jinnah never wore his religion on his sleeves. In fact, he never wore it anywhere. It is known that he did not offer his daily prayers, did not fast, did not perform Umra or Hajj, and never started his speech with the ritualistic “bismillah”
All this proves that he was not a practicing Muslim. He was not a religious man. But it does not prove that he had no religion. He could be a good serious Sufi??
Any religion is regarded by the common people as TRUE (1), by the wise as FALSE (2) and by the rulers as USEFUL (3)”
He belonged to the third category. He used the religion to divide India. The “Objectives Resolution” was to establish an Islamic state. Liaqat did not have the courage to take any personal initiative. He was a “Yes Sir” man of great Jinnah!
In his personal life he had a deep root of his religion. He married his only Parsi wife when she converted to Islam. He wanted her daughter to marry a Muslim husband and not a Parsi boy. It is certainly a conservative religious attitude.
In any case the religion and secularism in a state can exist as parallel components without meeting or crossing each other which Mr. Jinnah failed to realise in the State of Pakistan.
And my “hatred” for Iqbal is not on account of Faiz who admired Iqbal himself.
My hatred for Iqbal, if you can call it that, is on account of the fact that Pakistan’s pro-military nuts have tried to make him a founding father at par with Jinnah… which he was not.
Monano mian….
I am neither left nor pro-soviet nor pro-USSR. I am actually that precise creature called a “Burkian conservative” or a “Morley liberal”…. that Mr. Jinnah was.
My admiration for Faiz is for his humanism not his economic ideology.
I am a big fan of Jinnah…. so I am not sure how I abused him.
Ofcourse I am a fan of the real Mr. Jinnah…. not the cardboard Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan Studies that Pakistanis in general seem to revere.
My claim for secular elite’s hypocrisy has been proven by YLH himself.
I had said that after the fall of Berlin Wall, communists of the past (represented by FAIZ) quickly changed their Mecca from Moscow to Washington by talking a 180-degree turn of their toungs. Previously they were singing the mantra of red revolution and now they are sticking to western secular agenda.
Previously, they struggled against American influence, now they compete each other to get maximum funds from USA.
Previously, they strived to send students to USSR (as opposed to USA) now they never want to wear red colour nor they want a Russian visa on their passport. What a hypocrisy.
Needless to mention the latest Wikileaks, according to which Richard Boucher feared those politicians who are closer to Islam… yes he used the word “ISLAM” not “Mullahs” or “Extremists” or “Militants”. So again its proven that USA and the western secularism propagated here is actually anti-Islam rather than anti-extremism or Pro-Pakistani or favouring Pakistanis.