Dreams of peace in a world of conflict

Karachi

Paradoxically, while the world and the powers that matter are always talking about the dawn of world peace, there are constant preparations for war and countries try to steal a march over the other in war-readiness with a scramble for the most destructive weapons to inflict the maximum damage on each other.

All this while never realising that in the ultimate analysis, it will be humans on both sides who would be obliterated as, in a modern war with the most deadly of war paraphernalia, neither the victor shall survive to savour the fruits of triumph, nor will the vanquished last to taste the humiliation. The planet will be turned into a mass graveyard with no distinction of victory or defeat.

This, in short, was the crux of the function held at the Readers’ Club to discuss the subject matter of “Umeed-e-Sehar Ki Baat Suno” by Zahida Hina, the title being a line from a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Author Zahida Hina quoted a warning by a group of US, Russian, and British scientists which went like this; “We want to warn mankind of the disasters of a nuclear war and shall continue to warn the human race of the horrifying outcome.”

She quoted the case of a movie that ran in the Karachi of yesteryear, “Third World War”. The movie gives a hypothetical scenario where a computer operator most unintentionally unleashes a nuclear war by pressing the wrong button.

Hina said that what mattered was not who won or lost, but that mankind had been destroyed. The book also quotes the internationally acclaimed Indian intellectual Arundhati Roy on the Indian nuclear blasts of May 11, 1998, to the effect that man was endowed with wisdom but never learnt to use it.

Her book quotes another book, “Subcontinent bent on suicide”, which paints a scenario of an Indo-Pakistan nuclear clash, and said, “Could we see our oozing rich cultural and literary heritage go up in a mushroom cloud, the mausoleum of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the Ajanta and Alora caves, Ghalib, Hali, the Taj Mahal?”  Her reading was followed by a heated question and answer session.