Tales of torturous times

The Partition of the subcontinent in 1947, which resulted in the creation of Pakistan and India, forced millions to leave their homes and head towards an unknown destination. It is the largest mass migration recorded in history with billions crossing the line that divided the two states, while more than half a million lost their lives in the aftermath of hostilities. Tales of Two Cities is a reflection on those torturous times. Two leading journalists, Kuldip Nayar from India and Asif Noorani from Pakistan, attempt to give a personal perspective on the tragedy.

Both men and their families were uprooted from their homes in the events that followed Partition. Kuldip Nayar, who was 24 at the time, was forced to flee his native Sialkot suddenly "leaving the food on the table untouched." Being politically conscious, Nayar's recollections present a detailed picture of not only the leaders and politics of the day but also personal vignettes that elucidate the fear felt by an entire people.

Asif Noorani, on the other hand, was only eight when Partition affected his family. His family moved from Mumbai (Bombay then), three years after Partition, and was shielded from the communal carnage that broke out during those times. He retains his sense of humour throughout the narrative and manages to find a tune from Bollywood – his true vocation being a film and music journalist – to add to his unique description of events.

Nayar, a verteran journalist, was separated from his family while fleeing to the Indian Punjab and vividly describes the pangs of uncertainty separation and felt by him, as if "crushing beneath one's shoes the embers of memory." He experienced the cold brutality of the times first-hand as trains turned into abattoirs and a "story of brutal murder or gang rape did not move me any more."

Noorani had a comparatively safe passage aboard a steamer that docked off Bombay, while he looked forward to the new land with a child's excitement. His essay dwells more on his revisits to India after Partition; the problems faced by Pakistanis traveling to India and vice versa and the reception that he received.

An interesting snippet from one of his visits was during the 1965 war, when the young Bollywood aficionado enjoys the cinema in Bombay while his family back home fears that he might be a prisoner of war. During the visit, he befriends an Indian intelligence officer, Takle (roughly translated into Baldie), and the episode establishes further the latent goodwill that still exists between the two people.

The writers also talk about the metamorphosis of their adopted cities. Both Delhi and Karachi have turned into megacities – a far cry from half a century ago when they were small cities with limited opportunities; however, as both writers point out, the cities were clean back then and did not face so many environmental problems.

The Delhi that Nayar migrated to was inundated by Punjabis, and saw a pre-dominance of the "crudeness and indiscipline" of Punjabi culture over the "dainty, decent culture of Delhi". With population growth, Delhi has experienced infrastructural problems as it grows without any planning; the malls and skyscrapers, in Nayar's words, are destroying the soul of Delhi.

Noorani also fondly remembers the Karachi of yore and its people, especially the rousing reception given to Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru when he visited the then capital to sign the Indus Water Treaty.

He celebrates Karachi's cosmopolitanism and pays tributes to the various people and organisations working for its betterment. He acknowledges Karachi's multi-faceted problems, but makes a frank confession through Milton's quote, "With all they faults, I love thee still", a sentiment shared by many other Karachiites.

The two writers – both life-long campaigners for better relations between the two countries and its people – also point out the problems faced by Pakistanis and Indians alike to travel to the other country and make suggestions for the same. Nayar could only visit Sialkot after being elected to the Indian Parliament.

Also included in the book is Nayar's revealing interview with Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the man in-charge of drawing the boundary between the two countries. The resources at Radcliffe's disposal and the time-frame in which he delivered are a telling indictment of Britain's attitude in deciding the fate of the subcontinent.

In most Indo-Pak collaborations, one comes across divergent views. While this book also highlights different points of views, the authors are joined together by similar concerns. Both lament with equal measure the state of Urdu. Nayar contends that Urdu lost its case with Partition, and has been its biggest victim.

He bemoans the fact that chaste Urdu is no longer heard in Delhi. Noorani's concern has more to do with the new breed that tries to flaunt its English at the expense of Urdu.

Both the essays, part of a single book edited by David Page, is the fourth in a series that attempts to establish cross-border dialogue. Other titles include Diplomatic Divide, Divided by Democracy and Fault Lines of Nationhood.

The two stories, which unravel in essay form, flow like gentle tales narrated by two wise old men; and serve as an apt reminder of the pain and agony suffered by our forefathers for the deliverance of the Promised Land.

Book : Tales of Two Cities

Author : Kuldip Nayar & Asif Noorani

Karachi Diary -- Meri ball do!

Violence has been an existential reality for our city. The waves of violence are etched in most memories, whether it be the ethnic clashes of the 80s and 90s, the sectarian clashes of mid and late 90s, or the spill over from the ‘War against terror’ of the last decade.

However, back in the 90s, when I was a zealous teenager, cricket was a religious ritual that commenced at 4.30pm each day – during mild winters and excruciating summers – regardless of the city’s law and order situation.

Playing cricket on the streets and dreams of emulating the Imran Khan’s cornered tigers (of 1992 World Cup fame) was a dream everyone nurtured irrespective of skill and ability. The greatest threat, then, was an irate uncle or aunty who would try to clear us off in order to enjoy the siesta; or those rare loathsome grouches who would refuse to return the tennis ball if it landed in their house or apartment. But they were a minority, and our cricket teams often had local patrons who would finance our equipment; a few lucky teams even had their portable set of stumps with bails.

It was unheard of back then to think twice before stepping out of the house and walking unconcerned towards the de facto cricket pitch that was usually in one of the lanes, with at least one boundary stretching upto the main road.

Maybe it was because there were no cellular phones back then, and we only had enough money to get us a drink or the tape for the ball.

Nowadays, stepping out requires certain considerations. Duration and mode of travel, kind of location (whether main road or lane) and the time at which he step out are variables that have to be considered to ensure that no untoward incident takes place. Paranoia also features as those who have had been held-up often believe that they are being followed.

The fear of the unknown has crept into our collective psyche; we are forever wary of the ‘other’.

Even playing cricket with the same people on the same streets is no longer the same. Back then, the setting of the sun would end our cricket, but the teams would usually cool off at the local general store and discuss matches against teams from other areas.

Now, wrapping up begins just before sunset as everyone prefers to be off the streets even before darkness begins its descent.

In the 90s, the threat of ethnic and sectarian violence was much closer. Every couple of months, there would be a funeral in the area in which the person had either been a victim of target killing for his beliefs, or ‘collateral damage’ during an upsurge in violence.
Such developments, however, would not disrupt our routine for more than a day. In present times, the violence is often far-off; and pitched battles are fought in the peripheral localities of the city. But fear has gripped everyone.

While cricket continues to thrive on the streets, especially on holidays, there has been a change in approach: one has to be on the look-out at all times.

The worst reaction has been of the elders. Their solution for all problems is to stay at home. Those residing in the vicinity, too, have turned against street cricketers; and the most common point of conflict comes when a ball now lands inside someone else’s residence. Invariably, the response is ‘go away’; whether this is due to the fear that those asking for the ball could be ‘someone else’ or it is part of a new philosophy of ‘minimum interaction’ remain moot points, but one thing is clearly established: the balls would not be returned no more.

Karachi Diary - I

Surveillance begins at home

The culture of bribery has sometimes been justified – by those brazenly demanding it – as a consequence of the poor pay-scales prevalent in the police force. However, former Inspector General (IG) Sindh Police Niaz Ahmed Siddiqui unequivocally stated that the incidentals of serving in the police force – which includes residence, utilities, education and health care for the entire household – make up more than enough for the pitiful salaries, especially of the lower cadres.

Despite that, it has been confirmed through multiple sources that no effort is spared by the police, including maltreatment, intimidation and even torture, to coerce complainants into making illegitimate payments for even registering a First Information Report (FIR).

For the majority of citizens, the police apparatus is a hostile body and suggest that one should only venture into a police station if one enjoys any political influence or has the right connections. Only then is one treated in an appropriate manner. Seeking assistance from the police is often written off as hopeless but being the upholders of law, one is left with no choice but to approach them; which raises the question whether there is any solution that can remedy the behavior and performance of the forces.

And there is a solution: Surveillance. It implies installation of security cameras at various vantage points inside the police station to monitor the behavior of the officers and the events taking place inside. Considering the current state of the force, many think it is only through vigilance can the reformation of these vigilantes brought about.

The incumbent Capital City Police Officer for Karachi, Mr Waseem Ahmed, welcomed the suggestion – along with the review board formed of members of civil society – and stated that it would surely enhance the efficacy and performance of police stations provided the government provides the finances to implement such a system.

While former IG Mr Siddiqui agreed that the idea would help improve the performance and efficiency of the police force, he opined that 'surveillance' was a misnomer and 'in-house supervision' was a more appropriate term. He was also opposed to the idea of a separate body serving as a watchdog and suggested that the central or main police station should review the footage. He insisted that the objective of any such exercise should be to help the police and to bridge gaps between the local community and the police force, removing malfunctioning and malpractices rather than to create a body that could in anyway compromise the authority of the police force.

While the top tier of the force has acknowledged the possibility of such a project, a sub-inspector expressed reservations over the possible benefits of such a project. Chaudhry Muhammad Atta, Sub-Inspector posted at the Artillery Maidan police station, contented that the resources could be put to better use for the benefit of the

forces rather than creating an unnecessary supervisory body that would have little impact on performance.

But do we have the resources and wherewithal to implement such a system? Mr Muhammad Faheem Qureshi, whose firm GCS has installed cameras across various routes of the city for the City District Government Karachi, says that such a project could be implemented; he also pointed out that the technology also provides the option of on-site recording or recording at a dedicated central location, which in this instance could be the main police station or any other location as per the modalities of the project.

Ordinary citizens also say that it could drastically alter the treatment meted out at police stations. Qasim, a university student, said he would be willing to champion the idea on his university campus if such a need arises. His fellow students, too, welcomed the idea and said it should be implemented at the earliest. Furqan, a lawyer, opined that it would save a lot of time and trouble for citizens as policemen would be aware that their actions are under scrutiny. Qurut-ul-Ain, a journalist, while calling it a step in the right direction, said that more than surveillance is required to improve service at police stations. Mehreen, a developmental worker, emphasized the need for a transparent supervisory body and said that if the project is effective, it could be replicated at other public sector offices as well.

The private sector has benefited through surveillance in terms of efficiency and also as a superficial archive of employee behavior and performance. Surveillance cameras at police stations, irrespective of locality, can result in a modicum of respectability and hope for aggrieved citizens. While enterprising soldiers would surely find corners to carry out their misdemeanors, complainants will at least know that Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) will serve as a repository of visual evidence against any unnecessary demands made or problems created by the officers on duty.

While it is foolish to expect an overhaul of the system, such an implementation would be testimony of the willingness of those in power that they desire positive change. And it is not necessary to plant cameras in stations across the city. The experiment could be started with a few stations: the best and the worst performing ones. If there is any improvement in performance, then the proposed solution can be implemented further until the entire city's force is under scrutiny.

Obviously, such an undertaking requires a huge budget overlay. But many believe it would be a worthwhile investment and one which could have a possible ripple effect; and eventually result in the transformation and possible reformation of the entire public sector – and cameras under the table.

Karachi Diary -- More

Hand it all over!


Karachi is justifiably notorious for street crimes. My peers and I have had frequent encounters of hold-ups, while every few days someone at the workplace narrates a harrowing-yet-quick ordeal which left them without a cellular phone or without a car for a night or two after which the car would be found minus the speakers and music system, the CNG kit and other removables.

While I have heard the most outlandish of robbery stories, nothing braced me for what was in store. Recently, a friend had told my group of how a couple sat in his car and made him drive around while they had alcohol. They left off my friend after having made him drive around for three hours and hitting him not so hard once with the pistol’s butt. There were other stories, too, in which invariably the cellular phone was taken away.

Having heard the story, I was being overly cautious while driving, especially in comparatively deserted streets. It was a summer evening, and I was in Defence Phase VI, turning on a street off Khayaban-e-Mujahid, when I was hit from behind by a silver Cultus. I cursed myself for ignoring my driving in trying to be vigilant against robbers. Two seemingly apologetic young-men got off from the car and I was about to get off when they suddenly got in my car and showed me the gun.

I acquiesced. They asked me to hand over the wallet and then drive around. They extracted my two debit cards and directed me towards the closest ATM. I did their bidding. Gently, they relieved me of my limit of Rs.10,000 each from both the cards, took my cellular phone and took possession of my removable music system. Out of generosity, they let me have the Rs200 lying in my wallet.

I was asked to drive back towards a commercial area. As soon as we reached the market in Defence Phase VI, they directed me into various lanes. There were a couple of cars waiting at the turn ahead and they coolly ordered me to follow a blue car driven by a single female. Once we reached a comparatively deserted route, they asked me to bump in the car ahead of me in the same manner as they had bumped into my car.

With so much already lost, I was not going to protest for the well-being of my car’s front bumper. I bumped into her car. My two tormentors got off with the same seemingly apologetic smile, as the other driver turned around and I was given an exasperated look.

I noticed her expression change to that of bewilderment first and then horror as she drove off with my two erstwhile passengers. I shrugged and drove off to my initial destination.

Karachi Diary

The valley of brutes

On a scorching hot afternoon, I was headed towards work after having lunch with a friend who resides in Bath Island. While I was taking a left as I emerged at the ‘Do Talwar’ roundabout, the signal opened for the cars coming from the direction of Schon Circle’s underpass.

A new Honda Civic screeched and raced forward. The sound made me instinctively turn, and what I witnessed in that milli-second defied logic. The car crashed into a lady who had started crossing the road from in-front of me as she came out of Hilal-e-Ahmer hospital and headed towards Chartered Accountants avenue, but the white Civic did not offer her much opportunity and knocked her out before she could even finish crossing the first half of the road.

On impact, the lady flew straight up around 8-10 feet and landed back on the car’s bonnet. A traffic sergeant was at the location and I, from my position that had become static due to the shock, could see him haranguing the car owner.

I was about to get off to go help the lady, who seemed to be in her late forties, when she got up and walked to the pavement that divides the road into two. Simultaneously, the Civic was allowed to go by the traffic sergeant.

What transpired between the sergeant and the Civic driver would remain a mystery, but my eyes keenly followed the wobbly movement of the lady as she shakily sat down on the pavement to regain her wits. I could not understand how she managed to stand up and walk even such a short distance after the battering her legs must have had felt on impact. Plus, she flew up and then landed on the car’s bonnet. While her landing did not appear awkward, it was still a major fall and she must have broken a few ribs.

Kudos to that woman who got her bearings in order, made sure her chador continued to cover her and walk with dignity to the closest place to offer some respite. I drove off thinking the same when I caught up with the same Civic on the Clifton Bridge.

Indignant as I was, I decided to glare at the callous driver who had driven off after possibly paying off the sergeant. Expecting to see an unruly teenager, I was shocked even further to see a woman in her late-20s driving the car – something in her reminded me of the suburban SUV driving football moms that have emerged of late in US popular culture.

However, I was still appalled by her decision to not stay behind and check with the lady if she had any serious injuries. Despite being of the gentler sex, this woman chose to save herself from the hassle of hospitals, police stations, insurance etc., albeit at cost of another person.

I can only assume that there is something alienating in being type-cast as a ‘driver’ on the roads of Karachi that turns the most kind of creatures into complete brutes.

The Protesting Hypocrites

Over the last few days, the moribund civil society has sprung into action; clamoring support for and expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine. They have taken the admirable step of abandoning cushy arm-chairs and even brought their parakeets onto the streets.

In all likelihood, a befitting culmination to hours of fulmination against Zionist aggression; and the modest turn-out a reflection of the penetration of the electronic medium – the organizers relied on facebook, mass e-mailing and sms-es to gather support.

In a snapshot review of the protest march in the words of the organizer reproduced verbatim: “The streets of downtown Karachi reverberated on Saturday with slogans condemning Israeli brutalities in the Gaza Strip and the international community’s double standards, especially those of the United States, which have already claimed hundreds of innocent Palestinian lives in the besieged territory.

A large number of peace and human rights activists, political party leaders, trade union leaders, lawyers, doctors, journalists, show-business personalities, students and teachers of all genders and age groups, carrying Palestinian flags and banners and placards condemning Israeli brutalities and the US’s alleged abetment in the crime, marched from the Karachi Press Club to Regal Chowk, Empress Market and back to the KPC…”

And so on. Pakistanis have shown a tremendous spirit in recent times for exhibiting a global conscience; and exposing double standards which is the flipside of international diplomacy. However, it is in the side-stepping of their own glaring double-standards that they manifest a hitherto unknown spirit. While a catastrophe of the magnitude as is unfolding in Gaza right now would split asunder the conscience of even the brutally heartless, what belies belief is that the atrocities being perpetuated in the Northern Areas, particularly in Swat, no longer seem to prick the conscience of the concerned gentry.

Collective amnesia has for long been the malady of choice of our thinking citizenry, but Swat – a battleground for nearly 2 years now – appears to have been consciously expunged from memory. In the world of hackneyed clichés, it was the ‘Switzerland of Pakitsan’, the tourist destination of choice of all those who could not afford going abroad and those rarities who find in nature the serenity that consumerist life cannot procure.

Other than in op-ed pieces, this tourist haven has vanished completely from the drawing-room discourse of these social revolutionaries; barring a digression on those rare occasions when wall chalkings threatening Talibanisation are spotted from the arm-chair vantage point.
While numerous welfare funds for the Gaza residents have been established over-night, a blanket or two donated for the nearing a hundred-thousand homeless in the numbing winter of Swat would be a pleasant surprise.

Online portals and unsuspecting inboxes have been inundated in efforts to gather support against Israeli actions, while Swat does not even have a functioning online petition on the famous website of the same name.

Going as far as terming such demonstrations (against Israel) an exercise in futility I will leave to the cynics, no matter how miniscule or negligible an impact it has or none at all. What gets me riled up is that these bastions of civility remain unperturbed by the atrocities being committed in our own backyard. While Kashmir was in arms and street protests were in full sway, there was merely a sound from these self-proclaimed practitioners of universal rights. While Baluchistan has burned and smelted over the course of Pakistan’s existence, they had no qualms in using up its natural gas; never sparing a thought for its ramshackle infrastructure and non-existent educational set-up.

They protest because protests are going on the world over. It fits into their philosophy of jumping on the band-wagon of popular dissent.

Another case in point, which says a lot about the hypocrisy of these patrons of civilised society, was the readiness with which students at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan’s premier humanities university, joined hands with the protesting lawyers. Scions of connected families, these protesters were safe in the knowledge that the invisible hand would come to their rescue if they were ever to end up in the fists of the law. However, the region of Swat and the scenic Malam Jabba, visited twice annually by LUMS students, did not elicit even a word of protest from these future leaders of ours. Despite having a much stronger link with the Northern Areas, which hordes of students visit come the time of the quarter break, all ties were forgotten once it was in the claws of obscurantism.

No groups – from among students or the civil society – have stepped forward with ideas or policies that would in some way ameliorate the plight of the nearly one-third of the 1.5 million of Swat who have rendered homeless. No suggestions have been made for setting up of refugee camps and girl schools nearly 200 of which have been clamped upon and closed down.

Let alone present any creative or even practical solution for the misery-addled residents of Swat, our civilised society cannot even streamline its effort – even when it would further their own cause.

Separated by only a couple of days from the protest against Israeli atrocities of the self-proclaimed silent suave intellectually endowed minority, which goes by the sobriquet of civil society, was another protest against the same Israeli brutality. Students associated with Jamaat-e-Islami also expressed solidarity with their Palestinian brethren.

While reluctance on part of the two groups to synergise their efforts is understandable, if not quite rational, but it was the uncanny similarity in the modus operandi of protesting of these two groups that blows to smithereens the pretence of difference that the civil society clings on to.

The intensity of anger, the sloganeering, the haphazard nature of the procession, the clubbing together of Israel and the United States, blaming it all on a Zionist agenda left one with a feeling of déjà vu. The burning of the Israeli flag proved beyond doubt that no matter how different the social, economic and educational backgrounds are but when it comes to venting anger against their favorite punching bag, we are all the same.

Giving a literary spin to this debate, Big Brother of Orwellian fame appears to be watching; pulling the strings of earthly minions – civil society included. However, there is another similarly somber view of the totalitarian nature of modern reality espoused by Aldous Huxley in ‘Brave New World’. While Orwell feared that modes of information and knowledge will be controlled and stifled such that people will no longer know what the pressing issues of the day are, Huxley prognosticated that there will be such a glut of information that people will fail to discern the relevant from the frivolous; that the level of mass information will reach such a level that the real issues will be buried in the mass of trivialities.

As protests against Israeli aggression gather steam, now a regular feature in major metropolises across Pakistan, while Swat, Northern Areas, Baluchistan, Kashmir and other issues that plague our society lie forgotten or placed on the back-burner, it is Huxley who stands vindicated. The age of mass information lays bare the superficial expression of concern of the civil gentry, if they must be absolved of their hypocrisy.

Gleaning Wisdom Interlude

62. "In your despairing, you are a free man (hurr); but in your coveting, you are a slave ('abd)."

70. "Infer the existence of ignorance in anyone whom you see answering all that he is asked or giving expression to all that he witnesses or mentioning all that he knows."

The Judge. - He who has beheld anyone's ideal is his inexorable judge and as it were his bad conscience.

The human lot. - He who considers more deeply knows that, whatever his acts and judgements may be, he is always wrong. 

"The scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant." - Timur Fazil

"If you want to be with the Teacher when he wants you to be apart from him, you must obey him or shun him. If you argue about it, you are worse than disobedient." - Halqavi

302. Preference for specific virtues. - We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total lack of absence in our opponent." 

444. War. - Against war it can be said: it makes the victor stupid, the defeated malicious. In favour of war: through producing these two effects it barbarizes and therefore makes natural; it is the winter or hibernation time of culture, mankind emerges from it stronger for good and evil."

459. - Full of character. - A man appears full of character much more often because he always obeys his temperament than because he always obeys his principles.

516. - No one now dies of fundamental truths: there are too many antidotes to them.

531. - The life of one's enemy. - He who lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in seeing that his enemy stays alive.

220. "Do not attest to the validity of an inspiration (warid) whose fruit you know not. The purpose of rainclouds is not to give rain; their only purpose is to bring forth fruit." 

227. "If you do not want to be dismissed, then do not take charge of a post that will not always be yours."

"A friendless man is like a left hand without a right." - Hebrew proverb

"Though I am different from you, We were born involved with one another." - Tao te Ching

"Kabeer, we are puppets of clay, but we take the name of mankind. We are guests here for only a few days, but we take up so much space."

"Kabeer, the world is a room filled with black soot; the blind fall into its trap. I am a sacrifice to those who are thrown in, and still escape."

"Kabeer, all the strings of the instrument I played are broken. What can the poor instrument do, when the player has departed as well."

"When she is a virgin, she is full of desire; but when she is married, then her troubles begin. Fareed, she has this one regret, that she cannot be a virgin again."

"First, the bride herself is weak, and then, her Husband Lord's Order is hard to bear. Milk does not return to the breast, it will not be collected again."

"Fareed, I was worried that my turban might become dirty. My thoughtless self did not realize that one day, dust will consume my head as well."

"Fareed, a stone will be your pillow, and the earth will be our bed. The worm shall eat into your flesh. Countless ages will pass, and you will still be lying on one side."

"Fareed, if on that day when my umbilical cord was cut, my throat had been cut instead, I would not have fallen into so many troubles, or undergone so many hardships."

SIFTING

O Pedant! Sift, all your life, the writings and the sayings of the Wise. But first of all learn one thing: you are using a sieve which lets through chaff and discards the nutrient, the wheat. - Shab-Parak

GIVE AND TAKE

The Chief takes less then he is given

And gives more than he has taken.

(Kitab-i-Amu Daria)

51. "No deed is more fruitful for the heart than the one you are not aware of and which is deemed paltry by you."

260. "Meditation (al-fikra) is the voyage of the heart in the domains of alterities (mayadin al-agdo naahyar)."

209. "That part of your life that has gone by is irreplaceable, and that which has arrived is priceless."

160, "Sometimes ostentation (ar-riya) penetrates you in such a way that no one notices it." 

294

Copies. - We quite often encounter copies of significant men; as, as also in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.

311

Against the trusting. - People who give us their complete trust believe they have this acquired a right to ours. This is a false conclusion; gifts procure no rights.

303

Why we contradict. - We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it was expressed.

413

The shortsighted are in love. - Sometimes it requires only a strong pair of spectacles to cure the lover, and he who had the imagination to picture a face, a figure twenty years older, would perhaps pass through life very undisturbed.

496

Privilege of greatness. - It is the privilege of greatness to give great delights with meagre gifts.

564

In danger. - One is most in danger of being run over when one has just avoided a carriage.

568

Confession. - One forgets one's sins when one confesses them to another, but the other does not usually forget them.

Amusing Ourselves To Death

by Neil Postman

Courtesy, BT



We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity arid history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies ([Huxley's sense stimulating movies], the orgy porgy [group sex in the novel], and the centrifugal bumblepuppy* [a child's game in the novel; see description at end of essay]. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain, In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

The Huxleyan Warning

There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first - the Orwellian - culture becomes a prison. In the second - the Huxleyan - culture becomes a burlesque. No one needs to be reminded that our world is now marred by many prison-cultures whose structure Orwell described accurately in his parables. If one were to read both 1984 and Animal Farm, and then for good measure, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, one would have a fairly precise blueprint of the machinery of thought-control as it currently operates in scores of countries and on millions of people. Of course, Orwell was not the first to teach us about the spiritual devastations of tyranny. What is irreplaceable about his work is his insistence that it makes little difference if our wardens are inspired by right- or left-wing ideologies. The gates of the prison are equally impenetrable, surveillance equally rigorous, icon worship equally pervasive.

What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

In America, Orwell's prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley's are well under way toward being realized. For America is engaged in the world's most ambitious experiment to accommodate itself to the technological distractions made possible by the electric plug. This is an experiment that began slowly and modestly in the mid-nineteenth century and has now, in the latter half of the twentieth, reached a perverse maturity in America's consuming love-affair with television. As nowhere else in the world, Americans have moved far and fast in bringing to a close the age of the slow-moving printed word, and have granted to television sovereignty over all of their institutions. By ushering in the Age of Television, America has given the world the clearest available glimpse of the Huxleyan future.


Those who speak about this matter must often raise their voices to a near-hysterical pitch, inviting the charge that they are everything from wimps to public nuisances to Jeremiahs. But they do so because what they want others to see appears benign, when it is not invisible altogether. An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us. We are not likely, for example, to be indifferent to the voices of the Sakharovs and the Mandelas and the Walesas. We take arms against such a sea of troubles, buttressed by the spirit of Milton, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe and Jefferson. But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter? I fear that our philosophers have given us no guidance in this matter. Their warnings have customarily been directed against those consciously formulated ideologies that appeal to the worst tendencies in human nature. But what is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology. No Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto announced its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology. This, in spite of the fact that before our very eyes technology has altered every aspect of life in America during the past eighty years.



For example, it would have been excusable in 1905 for us to be unprepared for the cultural changes the automobile would bring. Who could have suspected then that the automobile would tell us how we were to conduct our social and sexual lives? Would reorient our ideas about what to do with our forests and cities? Would create new ways of expressing our personal identity and social standing? But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the printing press to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.

Aldous Huxley believed, with H. G. Wells that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.

The World as I see it or A Catalogue of Death

ow oortaOr the world as I want you to see it. Both statements, according to me, are the same. You might disagree. Which is important. But not to me. Or maybe it is. Or it remains to be seen, as most print/electronic reports say in conclusion.


Traversing across the world of information, news and reports, one come's across more appalling phrases than the one mentioned above, and even worse, there are details of death and destruction. Anywhere you look, there is a calamity waiting to be noticed.

Hurricane Ike, that battered Central American Countries, is now on a rampage in coastal states of America. Rescue teams had found 500 corpses, while another 1 million have been left homeless. Cuba has also been ravaged, and so are smaller Islands in the Carribean.

The mayor of Turks and Calicos island says more than 80% of the houses have been destroyed. Yes, we have never heard of the two islands, but we can still imagine how it would be like when 80% of homes in a locality are destroyed.

Feel the shiver when you are inside a multi-storey house which is shaken from its roots, knowing this isn't the end of your misery, and you can't get out unless prepared and able to raft or wade across shoulder-deep waters.

While in the U.S., evacuation saved thousands from premature death. But nature showed how little consideration it gives to differences of real-politiks. The Gulf Coast suffered equally devastating destruction; floods wiped across with as much gusto across Haiti as across Texas.

But this is just nature reminding mortals of it's powers which dwarf all else. Human follies too play their part - resulting in more death and more misery..



This picture is not from the Gulf of Mexico, but from Indonesia, where stampede during a Zakat ceremony resulted in the death of 21 people.


Soon one will be reported from your city, if not your neighbourhood.

One occurs each year, caused not by pious hunger, but by the piously hungry; at Mecca, as they run helter-skelter during the Stoning of the Devil.


Another stampede, another 13 killed, this time at a soccer match in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The goalkeeper of one of the teams tried to use Witchcraft to influence the outcome of the game.




Another 88 people perished in a Russian jet crash in the Ural mountains. Just like the Talibans are spread criss-cross across the mountainous Pak-Afghan border, the Ural mountains had Imam Shamyl and his brigade of asetic followers; fighting the mighty Russian Empire. But they, too, perished, one after the other.

Meanwhile, in good old homeland of Pakistan, hundreds are slaughtered each day. The altar differs, though. Sometimes its for national security, sometimes to establish the writ of the state, sometimes because the US-led forces want to, sometimes to establish the writ of the militants, but never in anyway to benefit the residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or the once scenic Swat valley.

While there are conflicting reports on the number of the dead, this report catalogues the number of casualties in Pakistan.

A staggering 2900 casualties since March, 2008 alone.

Another report puts the number of security personnel killed in combat since Pakistan's alliance with the U.S. in the War Against Terror at 730 - discounting the injured and the maimed.

Every day a headline stares you in the face citing a number, usually in double figures, that are killed. For an entire week, everyday 10-15 civilian casualties were reported only from U.S. airstrikes within Pakistan. Thousands others have become collateral damage in the war of attrition that rages on in Pakistan's once-scenic-now-rugged mountainous north.

Suspected Al-Qaeda militants are not confined to Pakistan, though. According to this report, Al-Qaeda suspects were behind the killing of eleven members of the Mauritanian Army. Mauritania is a small country in North Africa which had its democratically elected leader removed in a coup. One wonder's if Al-Qaeda wants to kill an African dictator, what love he had for the Pakistani one for so long. Tacit support, I reckon.

And then there's the Battle of Baghdad and the Killing in Kabul, which goes on all-year round. Also, numerous others, one-off deaths or in small groups, anonymous victims of hit-and-run, albeit on a much smallter stage, but of the same (in)consequence.

But I will come back again, cataloguing more.....lives as often as deaths.

Another start

As umpteen times before, I am once again committed to a new start. My commitment to blog regularly as fickle as God's commitment to the parched lands of Sindh....

Just like intermittent rainfalls, my thoughts rain in spurts and then dither away, as if they never were. Did not exist. And not like some God particle scientists are trying to unearth through a billions of dollars experiment, but just like the hunger of the homeless. Inconsequential.

But I will try to be consistent. Infuse discipline. Just like cricketers with a religious bent infuse discipline in their lives. I will strive.

To this new beginning, a toast.