The Irish claim that the emerald isle has forty shades of green. In 1924, the Irish Free State was born, shedding hundreds of years of English colonialism. It is 100 years since that incredible moment.
My grandmother, born Bridget Wren, in county Kerry in southern Ireland, was born during colonial English rule and saw this momentous occasion in her lifetime. In fact, the story in the family is that Michael Collins, one of the Irish Republican Army’s prominent leaders, was a relative of my great grandfather Johnny Wren.
Reading various types of literature on the 100-year anniversary of the Irish Free State and reflecting on my own Irish roots, so many thought come to mind. There are many interconnections between my Pakistani roots in Pishin and my Irish roots.
Both my grandparents were born and raised in colonized countries. They understood British occupation
My grandparents met at a ball in Oxford in 1939. I have a picture of the event on the Quad of Exeter College. It’s quite surreal when you think about it. A Kerry girl studying to become a nurse in war time London, meets a Pishin-walla at Oxford. What were their conversations, I wonder?
My grandmother Begum Jennifer Qazi Musa was born in a tiny village in Tarmons, in Tarbert in Country Kerry, in southern Ireland, in 2017. She changed her name to Jennifer when she moved to London. Bridget was one of ten children of a farmer’s daughter in Ireland. Bridget Wren was their fourth child who survived. Like many Irish folk at very young age, they were required to fend for themselves and if possible, their family. She followed her older sister Mary to London to become a nurse. Bridie as she was affectionately called, had an older brother Michael (Mick) Wren who was also sent to America when he was only 16, to make his own way in life. He returned perhaps twice in his lifetime to Ireland.
Both my grandparents were born and raised in colonized countries. They understood British occupation.
And yet, seemingly Qazi Musa and Jennifer Wren couldn’t have come from two more different worlds. They initially lived-in war-torn London where my father was born in 1942, as the bombs landed on too many homes. I think they planned to make a new and different life for themselves together in England. But fate had other plans.
Although Qazi Musa chose to live in England, he was constantly travelling back to Balochistan in occupied British India. As the Pakistan movement grew stronger, the visits became more frequent. The Quaid-e-Azam had asked his younger brother Qazi Isa to help convince the tribes and sardars of Balochistan to join the Pakistan movement. In that endeavour, he was asked to help as the older brother in a tribal society.
I can only imagine the conversations of my grandparents about struggling for independence from the British and the challenges of an impoverished society making sense of a modern world. The experience of the Irish struggle from Britain is fraught with tragedy.
Consider the case of Michael Collins, a leading figure in the Irish struggle and a founding father of the Irish Republic – a hero and yet he was gunned down by his own IRA supporters for accepting the division of Ireland in 1921. He was killed a year later in 1922. Freedom has its price and sometimes those who bear it are the most innocent. We have seen the Subcontinent gain its freedom from British rule, then get divided again into Bangladesh and Pakistan, stained with blood and horror which we have yet to come to terms with. Even freedom-fighting leaders were not spared the wrath of a people dispossessed and deprived for generations.
Rummaging through my grandfather Qazi Musa’s papers in Pishin, I came across a letter he published in the British newspapers in the 1930s about the dangers of creating a nation-state based on a historic claim of land and lineage. He was writing about his reservations about the growing idea of a “new Zionist nation state” on Palestinian lands. They were claiming Arab lands on the basis of a historical religious claim by European Jews. A new colonialism was being created while the world was fighting for independence in the southern hemisphere. He argued that creating a Jewish state for European Jews would open the Pandora’s Box for claiming descent and land all over the world, creating chaos and unrest not peace. There are several addresses that he made on Dhaka Radio as well on a variety of topics; these recent findings have revealed a side of my grandfather I had not known.
Bridget Wren changed her name to Jennifer in London. She told me that she did not like the name Bridget. Many years later, her relatives suggested that Bridget is a very typical Irish name; and London in the 1930s was particularly unfriendly to the Irish immigrants, so she might have changed it for those reasons. This really made me reflect on something that one rarely thinks about – the discrimination against other white people. The Irish understand racism and discrimination perhaps more acutely than any other western European nation. Another common point perhaps between my grandparents?
My grandparents’ worlds were not quite as far apart, after all.
After the death of my grandfather Qazi Musa in 1956 in a tragic accident on the road between Quetta and Pishin, Jennifer Musa chose to make her home in Pishin. Her lifelong commitment to defend and promote the rights of the most underprivileged makes sense. She understood what poverty does and the struggles of the working class and particularly poor farmers. She converted her privileged position in Pakistan into a vehicle of responsibility. Widowed young at 34, she joined the National Awami Party (NAP), a left-leaning and progressive party. She loathed bullies, whether Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or Akbar Bugti.
Although she had married into a family which was associated with the Muslim League of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid’s Muslim League had all but disappeared from the political landscape of young Pakistan. Moreover, she was a socialist at heart and her values matched the left-leaning NAP.
In my book I called her “the no frills granny” because she lived simply and did not believe in extravagance. Her focus and priorities always remained in investing in education and healthcare.
In 1972 she was elected to the Pakistani parliament on a NAP ticket. She was nominated as the representative of Balochistan on the constituent committee that was writing the nation’s third constitution (that is, the 1973 constitution). That process was fraught with differences of opinion. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a fascist and a manipulator. Having promised devolved rights and powers to the provinces, he undermined those clauses at every corner of the debates. I went to the parliamentary archives on the anniversary of the 50 years of the 1973 constitution to confirm all that I have grown up hearing. The records of the discussions in the constituent committee have been sealed, burned or destroyed – depending on which version you want to believe. All that is left for Pakistani citizens and historians is the debates on the floor of the house.
This nefarious erasure of our historical truths only confirms what I grew up hearing from elders who were witnesses to these times. The bullying and bulldozing of men on top constantly undermined the growth and development of Balochistan in the federation of Pakistan. Jennifer Musa Qazi on behalf of NAP insisted she would only sign if seven conditions and clauses were included in the 1973 constitution to protect provinces from federal overreach. In response, ZAB sent his foreign minister to persuade my father, Ashraf Qazi, a young diplomat at the time, to pressure his mother in parliament to heed to the prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s demands – or else. My father offered his resignation rather than ask his mother something he knew she would never listen too. Simultaneously, ZAB successfully divided the NAP by managing the NWFP (today KP) province’s branch of NAP, which had been led by Wali Khan. She still disagreed with the NAP leadership in NWFP. Only when five of the seven demands were met did she agree to sign the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, allowing the document to be passed with complete consensus.
Bhutto invaded Balochistan, removing the democratically elected NAP government in 1973 a month after the constitution was passed. He then also banned the most representative party in Balochistan in 1975, jailing as many of its leaders as he could.
My grandmother remained steadfast, although no longer in politics. There are many stories which can’t be published but the trust that was broken between the centre and Balochistan has never been addressed or redressed.
In the 1980s, martial law ruled Pakistan. My grandmother was not one to sit and watch life pass by. She threw herself into addressing the challenges all around her. She sponsored children for education; and spent much time with purdah-observant women to improve their sewing skills so that they might sell their products to earn money and develop self-worth and income for themselves. She saw an opportunity and established the first ice factory in Balochistan. The issues that she championed in parliament – population control, birth safety and education – became her mission in Pishin.
The details are in all the parliamentary debates records and papers in our ancestorial home in Pishin.
It makes sense that she chose politics and social work as her calling.
My sister and I remember too often being dragged to Afghan camps with refugees who had been pouring into Pishin in the 1980s. Our grandmother was working with the women for health and hygiene practices, and to teach them to stitch and sew clean embroidery for income generation products. Today, income generating projects are standard, but in her time they were not and she championed this well before the development sector did. She was affectionately known as Mummy Jennifer for a reason by those who knew her in Balochistan.
(to be continued)