Books on the highway: Part - I

As we were moving from Tharparkar to Hyderabad, colleagues from Thardeep (a rural support organisation) stopped for tea near Mirpurkhas. And there it was – Vanjara Café with a small bookshop-cum-library, right on the roadside of the highway.

Like elsewhere in Pakistan, bookshops and libraries are a rare sight. Travelling across the northern districts of Sindh such as Jacobabad, Kashmore, Shikarpur, and even Sukkur - -the third largest city of the province after Karachi and Hyderabad – you will hardly come across a good bookshop. My only rescue in Sukkur is Kitab Ghar on Frere Road, to spend some time browsing books and at times coming across an unexpected gem.

So Vanjara Café owned by Shahid Khaskheli was a pleasant surprise. He is a concerned young man who wants to promote reading among the youth. He has a couple of hundred good books in English, Urdu and Sindhi on display, to be read by anyone who stops for tea at his shop. He lends and sells books at throwaway prices. The two books that I got hold of were more than a fair bargain. ‘Jesa Ke Mein Ney Dekha’ (As I saw it) is the Urdu translation of G M Syed’s book of hardly 200 pages, and ‘Pakistan Mein Jamhuriat aur Governance’ (Democracy and Governance in Pakistan by Tahir Kamran).

Both books challenge the dominant narratives about nationalism and religion in Pakistan. Everyone interested in the history of the country and the impact of religion on political and social issues must read these books. They deserve a detailed discussion but for the limited space in a column, I will briefly highlight the most salient points in two consecutive columns. First, something about G M Syed and his book. Ghulam Murtaza Syed was born in 1904 in Dadu and died in 1995 in Karachi. In his life spanning over 90 years, he penned dozens of books and articles and actively participated in politics.

He was one of the pioneers of the All India Muslim League in Sindh and became a member of its central executive council in 1940. In 1943, he became provincial president of Muslim League in Sindh, and in 1944 got the Pakistan Resolution approved by the provincial assembly. Soon he became disgruntled with the Muslim League leadership and for the next 50 years he played an active role in politics and influenced at least two generations of activists and intellectuals. His readings and understanding of political history, social developments and religious matters were immensely wide.

Here we will not discuss his political ideas as the book we are talking about is mostly about his religious wanderings. He begins by saying that he was always interested in religion and tried to fulfil all the obligations a practising Muslim must observe. He prayed five times, visited shrines, sat with the sages, encouraged other people to offer prayers, built mosques, and arranged sermons. He was highly influenced by the traditional interpretations of religion so much so that he considered infidels all those who did not agree with his religious and sectarian ideas.

But then a transformation occurred. He met with the followers of other religions and sects, read their books, discussed with them the tenet of their creeds and gradually his own prejudices lost their foundation. He got rid of his narrow-mindedness and hatred towards others. The impenetrable wall of religious purity that he had erected around himself started cracking. The credit for this transformation, he gives to the writings of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan whose religious ideas opened G M Syed’s eyes. He also read books of history, philosophy, and critically analysed sacred books and scriptures of all major religions.

This led him to believe that in today’s world a universal understanding of economic, political, and social issues is vital, and much more important than indulging in denominational and sectarian thinking. Without getting rid of parochial prejudices, the world cannot achieve a lasting peace. He recommends intellectual development with a strong passion for tolerance and human rights. G M Syed does not claim to have found absolute knowledge and eternal truth. He acknowledges and respects the right of other people to form their opinions based on their own experiences and knowledge.

G M Syed repudiates any claims of monopoly on truth and considers himself an ordinary human being who is prone to err. He thinks that ‘the ocean of truth consists of innumerable drops of diversity in thinking; and that the world is adorned with a cornucopia of colourful flowers’.

He was aware that his ideas would not be welcome by the devout and the dimwit. He was not afraid of being called a maverick who deviated from the traditional path. ‘The devout will call me a materialist, and the communists will call me a reactionary’, and that is exactly what happened.

He strongly believed and preached that religion was a personal matter and nobody had a right to impose one particular creed on others or use force in this matter. “All ideologies, philosophies, religions, and scientific knowledge are droplets of one wide ocean emanating from nature” and “if one can get some clear understanding of even a small portion of this massive sea of knowledge, they should consider themselves lucky”, he remarked. He was of the opinion that no faith or ideology could fight against the laws of nature, and no set of regulations can be termed the last word.

According to G M Syed, all creeds and denominations may have some truth in them as they emanated from historical and natural processes. But when they defy the changing realities of life and block the demands of liberty, they become anachronistic. The primary aim should be universal peace and human cooperation with each other and with nature, and that Syed says is the secret of progress. One should follow an eclectic approach, he suggests, and pick the best from all creeds, ideologies, and philosophies – on the way, taking advantage of the latest scientific developments, discoveries and inventions.

He calls himself a ‘non-aligned Sufi’ whose love for nature and its creations has no bounds. Syed wanted to pick all the best things and leave all undesirables as useless remnants of history. With his voracious readings, he had come to the conclusion that in thousands of years, human beings have accepted and developed a few strong beliefs and superstitions that have stuck to their minds as leeches, sucking all intellectual blood and depriving the humanity of healthy mental growth. Humans are capable of nurturing their thinking energy provided the leeches are either removed or cauterised by the heat of new learning.

Superstitious ideas resulting from a lack of understanding of natural phenomena have kept humanity in awe of the inexplicable, and G M Syed thinks that in the light of new comprehension of nature, there is no need to keep ourselves immersed in the same superstitions that prevailed in the past. He gives examples of totems and taboos that emerged in the times of savagery but prevailed over thousands of years. Even then he gives a leeway to those who still believe in totems and taboos as long as they don’t impose them on others.

In short, G M Syed’s book is a must-read for all interested in exploring ideas. I had this book in Sindhi, but with my broken Sindhi I could hardly get half of the ideas contained in it. With this Urdu translation, one can fathom the depths of G M Syed’s ideas. Sadly, this sage of Sindh was mostly misunderstood not only by the rulers of this country but also by the denizens of Sindh from both the Right and the Left. In the next part of this article, we will briefly discuss democracy and governance in Pakistan as analysed by Tahir Kamran.

To be continued

The writer holds a PhD from the

University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

Email: mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk