The way we were

Islamabad diary

Two books have been with me this past week: former bureaucrat Munir Hussain’s ‘Surviving the Wreck’ and veteran journalist Muhammad Al I Siddiqi’s ‘Pakistan – From religion to fascism’.

Here’s a passage from the first. It is about Quaid-e-Azam and it was related by the Khan of Kalat, then governor of Balochistan, to Munir Hussain then the provincial chief secretary (CS). The Khan was in Kalat and sent a message to the CS that he must see him that day. The CS drove 96 miles to Kalat with his driver and gunman.

The Khan received him and took him to his drawing room which he said had been occupied by Quaid-e-Azam on his last visit to Kalat. He had called the CS because he was mentally perturbed and had been unable to sleep as he recalled what had occurred during that visit.

“The Quaid-i-Azam came with his valet to stay with me in this annexe as my guest,” the Khan related. “That day I had invited sixteen leading Baloch Sardars to meet him. After some rest, he came out of the bedroom in a pick-and-pick double-breasted suit and white gum brown shoes. 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 he need not take the glass with him to the meeting room. He stood standing solemn, very angry, put on his monocle and said in great temper in Urdu: ‘Whatever I am inside, I am the same outside. What business have you to advise me like this?’ His personality was so gripping that I was speechless. I profusely apologized. At once arrangements were made for the Sardars to come inside where a table was laid in front of them. The Quaid-i-Azam sat and placed the glass right in front on the table. He addressed them on national issues and hoped that by the grace of God, Pakistan would be established as an independent sovereign Muslim state. The Sardars, awed by his personality, were petrified and hardly any questions were asked.

“He went straight to his bedroom after the meeting. He did not have any dinner and I did not know how to apologize further to mollify him. My own night was a very uncomfortable one. The following day he was to leave Kalat. At breakfast time, I had a novel idea to appease him. I knew he was fond of pet dogs. I had imported a pedigreed pup which was silently pushed through the door into his room. His mood changed and while taking leave he said, ‘Thank you very much for your gracious hospitality and showing this lovely pup.’

“Besides this, I had verbally assured the Quaid-i-Azam that I would accede to Pakistan as soon as it was established. When the time came to accede, I started vacillating and I was conscious of the fact that it had caused great anguish to the Quaid-i-Azam, particularly in the last days of his life. I was misguided by some Baloch leaders (such as Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo). I continue to regret my behaviour and when I am in low spirits such as today, the whole thing haunts me. That is why I requested you to come to me so that I could open my heart to you.”

Is it possible to imagine something like this today? Is it possible to imagine a leader like Jinnah? We have become used to hypocrisy – saying one thing and meaning something else. Does Jinnah beat about the bush in his August 11 speech to the Constituent Assembly? He speaks from his heart and leaves his listeners in no doubt about what he means. If we choose not to understand his words, that is our problem.

Siddiqi sets out his credo early on in his memoirs: “From the benefit of hindsight I can say that what the (Jamaat-i-Islami) rhetoric did was to introduce a new idiom that would later become popular even with newspapermen, ‘scholars’, and religious elements not necessarily belonging to the JI. This marked the beginning of two negative and highly destructive processes: one was the erosion of the moral basis of the state of Pakistan; the other was the transformation of Islam into an exclusively political doctrine.”

What Siddiqi laments is the loss of normality…. “Pakistan’s slow but definite descent from a normal country into a state where barbarism would rule under the cover of religion as interpreted by semi-literates.” The scorn in the use of the word ‘semi-literates’ is almost palpable.

When Siddiqi with his family arrived in Karachi from Hyderabad Deccan life in Karachi was “slow, peaceful and agreeable.” There is a nice touch about “the sartorial degeneration of the middle class…(it) had not yet begun, and the educated invariably wore shirts and trousers.”

About the Goans he writes, “The men were in the professions, while the women worked as teachers, secretaries and telephone operators. Generally, they wore long western dresses without fear of being derided, much less attacked. During Yuletide, the so-called Christian district in Saddar came alive with boys dressed as Santa Claus riding bicycles and families, women or girls in twos and threes, going to church – scenes hard to visualize today.” Indeed.

But despite the outpouring of anguish Siddiqi’s patriotism is of the high-voltage kind. There were only two persons, he says, who loved Pakistan more than he did: Jinnah and Bhutto. A third would never be born. He admires Ayub, Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. The one leader for whom he reserves his undisguised antipathy is Gen Zia whose rule he says was tyrannical and barbaric. Musharraf, as he correctly points out, was no dictator in the Zia mould.

This is an account of his life – arrival from India, the initial tough times in Karachi, passion for study and learning and steady rise as a journalist, and vivid portraits of the colleagues and personalities he met along the way. It is also a very readable and perceptive history of Pakistan – the early, civilised years when despite cabinet dismissals and other setbacks politics was not the polarising experience it was to become later.

I have seldom read a clearer and more convincing account of Pakistan’s standpoint on Kashmir. Not surprisingly, there are extensive quotes from Bhutto’s speeches to the Security Council during the 1965 war. Why the reaction to the Tashkent Agreement was so hostile, and why public opinion felt let down, is also clearly brought out.

The ceasefire which brought the war to an end he does not support, quoting Clemenceau to the effect that war should be total, not a half-hearted affair as our 1965 venture was… and ill thought out too (these last being my observations and not his). By his own description an ultra-nationalist, Siddiqi makes no bones about the fact that revanche, in the literal meaning of revenge, for India’s annexation of Hyderabad has been one of the abiding passions of his life.

The last chapter ‘Brother Arabs’ is a history-packed exposition of the different ways in which Arabs and South Asian Muslims look at Islam and Muslim brotherhood. For its many insights it can be read on its own. It certainly was an education for me.

In my infrequent contacts with Siddiqi over the years I found him to be a somewhat distant figure. I would have found it hard to imagine then that churning in him would be this gripping tale.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com