Adil Najam

I wish I had heard of Samuel Martin Burke before he died at age 104 a few weeks ago (on 9 October, 2010).

He was, by everything I have now found about him, a remarkable man. I am sure there are other Pakistanis who have also never heard of him. For them, I wanted to write this belated obituary post so that they may be introduced to him. I hope there are also those amongst our readers who have not only heard of him but know more about him and his life. I write this belated obituary post for them too; in the hope that they may share their own thoughts and rememberances of Samuel Martin Burke with us.

Aisha Sarwari

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?

Mast Qalandar (MQ)

It was the summer of 2006. I was in the US on a short visit, but my stay, unexpectedly, stretched a bit too long, and I started missing Islamabad, my home for the last 12 years. A friend told me to look up this new blog, All Things Pakistan (ATP), started by Professor Adil Najam, then at Tufts University. It was interesting, he said, and talked about things I might like.

Frankly, then, I didn’t quite know what a blog was, or how it worked. Nor did I know Adil Najam. I knew of him, though, as a TV show host in Pakistan, many years ago. On the show, he came across as a ‘quant’ or nerd. Remember those smart, young college students who wore round, wire-rimmed glasses and could align the Rubik Cube in no time? Perhaps it was the round glasses he wore (unless my memory is playing tricks on me), or the efficient manner in which he conducted his TV program that led me to form that impression. Later, I also found that Adil was a graduate of MIT. “Quants” always impressed me, particularly so when they had been to MIT, the Mecca of  “quants.” (Another member of the then ATP editorial team, Bilal Zuberi, was also an MIT  “quant.”)