Partition and beyond

This week I present three reviews. The three represent quite distinct perspectives and concerns but I shall argue that they are nevertheless connected and together capture the overall picture of our times.

Surviving the Wreck: A Civil Servant’s Personal History of Pakistan

Author: Syed Munir Husain

Lahore: Ilqa Publications, 2016

Syed Munir Husain’s Surviving the Wreck is a civil servant’s perspective on how and why Pakistan could not emerge as a progressive and modern democracy. Training at the Civil Services Academy for the once highly coveted Central Superior Services (CSS), Husain’s first assignment as assistant commissioner was in 1954 in the Frontier province (now called Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa). His last posting was as Principal Administrative Staff College in 1990. During his long career he held many key positions.

It was the imposition of martial law in October 1958 which the author identifies as the turning point in the power structure of the state. The military became the dominant entity while civil servants had to play second fiddle and routinely faced humiliation at the hands of the martial law officers. The situation in the Frontier Province was bad for Husain, but it improved when he was posted to Karachi as Deputy Commissioner in 1961. We also learn that already the ulema were creating problems by disputing the sighting of the Eid moon and thus spoiling the popular Eid festival while the Muharram procession was the occasion for heightened Sunni-Shia tensions.

The strict abstentious morals at school induced a lifelong reaction in Pran Nevile

In 1964 the author was posted as Information Secretary for West Pakistan and transferred to Lahore. Back home he had to deal with the press to ensure that relations between the journalists and Punjab Governor Malik Amir Mohammad Khan remained peaceful because the governor was known to be very sensitive to criticism in the press and was known for being vindictive. The most important events during his stint as Information Secretary were the 1964 presidential election and the 1965 India - Pakistan War. In the former case his intervention prevented a ban being imposed on the Nawa-i-Waqt and Millat newspapers which were supporting Miss Fatima Jinnah as the combined opposition parties’ presidential candidate against Ayub Khan.

With regard to the 1965 war we learn that the Information Secretary and other relevant officials had been kept completely in the dark about India’s attack on Lahore on 6 September 1965. The author then served as Director General of Radio Pakistan during 1966-69. He was sent to East Pakistan for a visit. There he learnt how great a resentment existed in that wing of the country over the complete neglect of the defence of East Pakistan while the West Pakistani ruling elite had provoked a war over Kashmir. After the 1965 war those grievances had only deepened. In any case, the troubles of the Ayub government started when on the advice of the Information Ministry headed by Altaf Gauhar the idea of a ‘decade of reforms’ was announced to bolster the image of Ayub Khan. It turned into anticlimax and resulted in his ouster and General Yahya Khan taking over. He too axed civil servants, complains the author.

The author provides interesting information about the merger of the princely states of Swat, Dir and Chitral with West Pakistan. He asserts that in Swat the system of justice based on ‘Islamic law’ was swift and efficient and the people were satisfied with it. He remarks that a military dictator had no right to order the merger of the princely states.

The sections on the civil war in East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh - and earlier on the 1965 war - are astonishingly uncritical and supportive of the nationalist narrative, which blames India entirely for both confrontations. Such an attitude contrasts sharply with his critical remarks on the misuse and abuse of power and authority by military and civilian rulers. With so much evidence now available on how the two wars went wrong primarily because of the Pakistani ruling elite’s own wrongdoings it is surprising that Husain takes no notice of the complex nature of both those conflicts.

The section on his tenure as Chief Secretary Balochistan provides interesting insights into Baloch politics. He reports that the Khan of Kalat told him that he wanted to join Pakistan from the outset but Mir Ghaus Bux Bizenjo persuaded him to declare independence, which he regretted. About Mohammad Ali Jinnah who was visiting him just before the Partition, the Khan told him:

“The Quaid-e-Azam came with his valet to stay with me... That day I invited sixteen leading Baloch sardars to meet him... After some rest, he came out... he was followed by his valet who was carrying a drink in a tray for him. As the sardars were waiting in an outer room to meet him, I politely suggested that he need not take the glass with him to the meeting room. He stood solemn, very angry, put on his monocle and said in great temper in Urdu: “Whatever I am inside, I am the same outside. What businesses have you to advise me like this?”

Husain points out the duality in Prime Minister Bhutto’s personality - on the one hand, a brilliant modern man and on the other a vindictive feudal lord. However, his worst remarks are reserved for General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who emerges in his book as a complete hypocrite who drove Pakistan towards extremism and radicalisation. On the whole, the book is a sincere attempt to review the events which transpired during his career as a civil servant in Pakistan.

Carefree Days: Many Roles, Many Lives

By Pran Nevile

HarperCollins: New Delhi, 2016.

The celebrated chronicler of pre-Partition Lahore, Pran Nevile, is already famous for his seminal book, Lahore: A Sentimental Journey. He has now published his memoirs which cover his very eventful long life. The author was born in a Hindu household of Lahore in 1922 in a rented house in Mohalla Mohlian inside Lohari Gate of the walled city. In those days there was no electricity. Water was drawn from wells and delivered in large vessels by men who charged six paisas per vessel. By 1930 electricity had arrived. He writes:

“Lahore boasted of a friendly division of occupations. The entire vegetable and fruit trade, the bulk of milk supply to the city halwais (milk and sweets vendors), mostly Hindus, were handled by Muslims who were also skilled craftsmen. An enterprising Muslim lady in our mohalla ran a tailoring shop at her house and womenfolk of all communities, wanting to avoid male tailors, flocked to her. Kite making, a big business in Lahore, was dominated by Muslims who were experts in the art.”

The most exciting thing in his childhood was his admission to the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (DAV) high school founded by the Arya Samaj. Here, he was instructed to cultivate high morals and stress was laid on Brahmacharya (celibacy). It seems such strict inculcation of abstentious morals induced a lifelong reaction in him. Beginning with his first visit in Lahore with his friends to a brothel - from where he and his friends at the last moment chickened out and ran away - he continued to have an abiding interest in dancing and singing women wherever he went as an officer posted with Indian foreign missions: Japan, Poland, the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, Eygpt, Greece and elsewhere. His first book as an author was unsurprisingly about the nautch girls of India.

For ordinary Indians and Pakistanis seeking cross-border visas, the state bureaucracies show no flexibility

The second factor which impacted his life in a profound and lasting sense was the Partition of India and of the Punjab. However, it did not generate any bitterness in him. On the contrary he took a philosophical, mystical approach to it and has spent his life trying to heal the wounds inflicted on both sides through his indefatigable efforts to promote shared India-Pakistan culture, especially music. The chapter on Partition in the book is written in a mild manner when reporting the safe exit of his parents from Lahore on the 14th of August 1947. He was then in Delhi, working with the Information Bureau. He and a Sikh gentleman saved the Khan family because they got to know that a mob was planning to raid their house.

The greatest inspiration in his life has been Government College Lahore, now a university. He obtained a First Class in Economics from there in 1943. He has vividly described the six years he spent there (1937-1943), which he tells us exposed him to cosmopolitan views and values. The atmosphere in the college was such that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and others studied together and established lasting friendships. Of course in the student hostels there were separate Hindu and Muslim kitchens, but he notes that the students freely exchanged dishes. The teachers were role models of academic excellence as well as of liberal, progressive views. Such grooming converted Nevile into a true cosmopolite: a citizen of the world. Consequently, when he describes his postings in Japan and a host of other countries he presents the native cultures in a balanced and appreciative manner. His life as an author after retirement too is reflective of his cosmopolitan worldview. His highly appreciative works on the British Raj too are reflective of an open mind willing to acknowledge the achievements and contributions of the British in the making of modern India. He notes that while the rest of India was up in arms against the British in response to Gandhi’s ill-fated Quit India Movement, Punjabi men were flocking to the military and civil departments seeking jobs in the expanded British Indian Army and several other branches of government.

The book begins with his life in Lahore and ends with a chapter describing his first visit to Lahore in 1997 - half a century after Lahore became a foreign city in the aftermath of the Partition for its former Hindu and Sikh citizens. Since then he has visited it several times a year.

It was a most touching occasion when Pran Nevile’s book was launched from his alma mater, Government College Lahore, on the 19th of April 2016. I was one of the speakers. In the end I said, “Pran Nevile sahib you are a great man. Keep on writing!”

I would like to add here: “And keep coming to Lahore. Lahore is as much yours as it is mine.”

Anhi Mai Da Sufna

Written by Shahid Nadeem

Directed by Usha Gangoli

Ajoka Theatre: Lahore, 14 April 2016

Ajoka Theatre are by now an internationally acclaimed theatre group who have performed in Pakistan, India, the UK, USA and many other places. Conceived as a peoples’ or street theatre ensemble, Ajoka tends to depict deep human emotions and tries to take up the cause of the deprived and downtrodden in society. The creation of Pakistan raised many hopes in Syed Munir Husain while for Pran Nevile it meant forced migration from his beloved Pakistan but as a famous writer he is always able to visit Lahore whenever he wants.

The ugly truth is, however, that the Partition shattered the lives of millions of ordinary Punjabis, as this play tries to show. Mai Janki (Samira Butt) is a blind old lady who thirsts to visit her native village, Prem Nagar. The desire and hope to visit it become an obsession and she threatens to kill herself by refusing food and any other nutrition. On the other hand, Ustad Rangu Rang Saaz (played by Arshad Durrani) was a Hindu who lived in Rang Mahal Lahore at the time of Partition. He just could not bear to part with Lahore and all his friends. So he let his wife and children migrate to India. He converted to Islam but people continued to call him Rangu. One day he receives a letter from his granddaughter that she was about to get married in Amritsar but would refuse to take part in the wedding ceremony if her grandfather did not come.

The family of Mai Janki and the friends of Rangu apply for visas but are refused: the Pakistani embassy in New Delhi takes the position that without Mai Janki getting a letter from some relative she could not be granted a visa while the India embassy in Islamabad rejects Rangu’s visa application because the letter he receives is addressed to a Hindu and not a Muslim - which Rangu has become.

The family of Mai Janki pretends to take her to her village where she visits the grave of her childhood friend Zulekha and pours out her heart. It remains a riddle if they were able to dupe her or if she deliberately lets herself be taken on a fictitious visit to her native village. On the other hand, Rangu, in a flight of imagination, comes to Amritsar and partakes in the wedding celebrations of his granddaughter. As always the play moved me to tears. And that is the point. For ordinary Indians and Pakistanis seeking cross-border visas, the state bureaucracies show no flexibility to consider their pleas while those belonging to the privileged sections of society can almost always have their applications accepted.

The writer and director collaboration was indeed a great success. Shahid Nadeem and Madeeha Gauhar have for years now being providing excellent entertainment-cum-food-for-thought. Usha Gangoli came all the way from Kolkata to direct the play. She is Hindi-speaking but could manage a Punjabi play with impressive dexterity. Together the writer and director have weaved a very moving plot. The performance of all Ajoka actors was commendable. By now they are seasoned actors with a strong commitment to confronting social issues. An additional attraction was the accompanying song and music interspersions, which greatly enhanced the quality of the play.

Ishtiaq Ahmed is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Stockholm University; Visiting Professor at Government College University, Lahore; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, at the National University of Singapore