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Friday March 29, 2024

Minorities, maniacs and Dante

By Khayyam Mushir
February 16, 2016

At the Karachi Literature Festival, two sessions in particular, both on completely divergent themes, thoroughly captivated the audience’s attention. The first, a powerful, uncompromising dialogue on minority rights, had the large Aquarius hall of the Beach Luxury Hotel packed with members of the Parsi, Hindu, Christian and Ahmadi communities, and was unique in that did not deteriorate into the sordid state bashing affair most such dialogues are wont to.

The session’s highlight was definitely the Catholic priest, John O’Brien, who elegantly and succinctly argued the case for equality of rights for all minorities, dismissing the notion that minorities in Pakistan seek the protection of the majority Muslim community. The concept of a dhimmi, so benignly conferred in current day Pakistan by the organs of the state when debating matters of justice, is not only dated, he argued, but lends an unwarranted obsequiousness to the profile of the accused – in contrast with the spirit with which it was applied in Islamic history.

Minorities today demand equality, not protection said O’Brien, who has championed the cause of the innocent and the marginalised Christian communities of Pakistan over a career in Pakistan that’s spans 25 years, and which has spawned an acclaimed ethnography of Punjabi Christians, ‘The Unconquered People’. The right to equal treatment is after all the bare minimum to be expected by all citizens of any civilized democracy.

O’Brien brought to my mind another holy man, albeit of a different cloth, who represents the antithesis of Catholic priest’s struggle. I refer to Maulana Aziz of the Lal Masjid, who, one year into the APS attack, manages to live in peaceful seclusion in the heart of the capital, enjoying what one could almost liken to diplomatic immunity. And this inexplicable unaccountability the privilege of a man whose family resume boasts of nothing less than armed militant action against the state, whose anti-Pakistan invectives are matched only by the ravings of his not-so better half (who less than a few months before the APS tragedy professed her unequivocal devotion to Isis).

Granted pre-arrest bail for a pittance, recently, on two charges of criminal offence, Aziz – interviewed outside the district courts in Islamabad – lampooned the state yet again by declaring that he was ready to forgive Musharraf for the Lal Masjid operation; to add to the absurd comedy, his legal counsel later challenged the offer in mock public protest, warning Aziz of grave legal consequences were he to dare commit such heresy. Earlier Aziz’s nephews, sons of the slain Maulana Ghazi, were nabbed by police for possession of firearms and an army uniform in the Super Market area of Islamabad, only to be released a day later.

A better example of the state’s paralysis and, conversely, of the growing insolence of these known criminals and fanatics, one cannot recall. “The repository and the expression of the most virulent hatreds ever to corrode the human breast”. Thus did Churchill describe Adolf Hitler. The Nazis were vanquished, but evil endures, across centuries, geographies and generations. I would say that referring to Aziz as ‘holy’ would be an affront to the humanity and courage of those like O’Brien.

Why are we where we are? What has caused this decline, and why must the drift endure? For the erudite and mesmerizingly eloquent Dr Noman-ul-Haq, who headlined a session on the Iqbal-Dante question at the KLF, this state of affairs has much to do with the rupture we have experienced with our past, a unique feature of our post-colonial zeitgeist. It is manifest in our complete ignorance of our history, our literature, our culture, and the classical languages of the Middle East and the Subcontinent: Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Urdu. As a corollary, it is perhaps this void in our collective scholarship that also handicaps our ability to raise a bolder and unified voice to subvert religious fanaticism.

While his speech was immaculate as expected, I did notice that the good professor, on more than one occasion, appeared petulant: fixating on pronunciations, lamenting the preference given to English, and dismissing the odd repetitive question from the audience with uncharacteristic annoyance. Having had the privilege of first meeting him some ten odd years back, when he had just moved to Islamabad from the US, my memories recall a wittier, more engaging, and less disapproving man of the letters. Perhaps a decade of having to suffer the intellectual boorishness of the land of the pure is enough to exhaust even the brightest minds and the most sanguine personalities.

His counterpart in the session, a Dr Berrini from Italy, was supposed to recite a few cantos from the Divine Comedy in the poet’s native Italian, which the organisers felt would have engaged and captivated the audience with the musicality of the poetry and the language. Unfortunately, the good doctor forgot to bring his copy of the Italian text, and had to contend, instead, with looking peevish and delivering a muted, nervous and uninspiring speech on Dante’s popularity in Italy, giving the impression that perhaps the Pizza Margherita holds more cultural sway over the Italians, than the Divine Comedy.

All said, the Karachi Literature Festival was fun: well organised, well attended and with plenty to offer. Yes the donor and sponsorship money was apparent, and yes as a result, there were a few banal feel-good sessions for the well-heeled; but this did not compromise the honesty or the inclusiveness with which the sessions were conducted. The disgruntlement of the Left notwithstanding, I do hope the festival continues.

The writer is a freelance columnist.

Email: kmushir@hotmail.com

Twitter: @kmushir