Two Poems for Ghulam Ali

These are a few words that I wrote for Ghulam Ali, some time during our last year at LUMS. It's hardly a poem, but just a few broken lines that I penned down to express my feelings with a touch of melody. Ali was probably busy with some stuff and I just felt that wasn't as available as I would have liked him to be. I felt that his open door was not as open in those daya. Thus this poem, which I slipped under his door.

Soon enough, things got back to normal. Having come up with these half-melodic lines by some luck, I never subsequently lost an opportunity to remind Ali of the lengths which I had gone to win back his friendship. But during those days, he never really so much as acknowledged the existence of this "poem" or give it any credit.

More than a year later, however, when he had migrated to Canada, one evening, I received a gift from him. And in the gift pack was a letter in an envelope, which I still have in my closet in Pakistan. In that letter, Ali  he lovingly acknowledged this "poem" which I had once written for him and how special a thing it was for him.

Now as I was reading it again, it brought tears to my eyes. Ali was a special friend. . He will always be.He was one of the few people who ever understood me.

And then, I felt like resorting to the same vehicle once again for expressing my present feelings. Some things I just can't say in simple, solid prose. Thus, a few more broken lines of verse. Our mutual friend Shaheer always refers to Ghulam Ali as Ali Maula. Ali Maula was a transformative force in the lives of more than one person that I know of. One of things about him is that during hostel life, he was my dependable banker, lending me money for anything, ranging from tea to lunch to a Daweoo ticket. And sometimes, when I wanted to wear something nice, I would even borrow a clean kurta from that enviably clean and elegant closet full of kurtas. His kurtas fit me so perfectly. I wish I could have one of those forever - but then I don't know if I would want that. Anyways, that's the context of the poem.

I often hum whatever comes to me. And humming these words especially helped me shed the tears that I really needed to shed to lighten the burden of my heart. Now I feel much better. Grieving is natural. Since I now have the benefit of an iphone to record my voice, I  thought I might just as well share it too. Perhaps some friends, whom I cannot physically be with, will find solace in it. Ali had a good musical ear and his assessment of my singing abilities was harshly realistic; but I suppose, in the circumstances, even he wouldn't mind.

In ordinary circumstances, all this would have remained private. I versify and hum as do so many human beings, don't we? But I know I am no poet or singer. Yet, in this moment of grief, I feel a strong urge like to share my feelings with all who loved Ali, in the only ways that I know of sharing - through my pen and my voice. What good is a life not generously shared? What would we be without the multiple webs of love in which we are tied? Even for an intensely private individual, in the darkest and the brightest of hours, going public is perhaps only proper.

Ali Maula, khuda tum per meharban hoe. Sada ham per meharban hoe. Ameen!

The Book of the Chair

The Interiors of Masjid Wazir Khan, Old City of Lahore

The Book of the Chair[1]

In the name of the Lord whose throne to all heavens and the earth extends.

It’s difficult. Living the life of the mind is not all fun. It’s strange how sometimes a thing as simple as a chair is all that it takes to set your mind thinking deep, dangerous, insidious thoughts. A simple, four-legged, dark-brown, wooden chair. Straight, austere, cold in the sharpness of its figure and stern too. It’s a common sight. It seems innocuous.

Prototype of the Chair

Yet, let there be no doubt that this chair is the archetype of all modern furniture.

Look around yourself. Sofas, benches, stools, they are all derivatives. The chair is the concept beh

ind them all. And dinner tables, office desks, coffee tables, kitchen tops and the like are only responses to the turn-around brought by the chair’s conquest of our architectural imagination, as a result of which, what could previously be achieved on the floor must now to be accomplished at an elevation. If they can afford it, a chair is what anyone wants to sit on. In an office. A workshop. A factory. A shop. At school. In a car. In the bedroom. The lounge. Or the garden. And even in the washroom where the chair has discreetly assumed the disguise of the utensil known commonly as a “commode”.

The only place you will not find it in, if you happen to frequent it, is the mosque. You might just chance upon one or two fold-able ones, sulking around the corners, but they’re reserved for the physically handicapped and the disabled elderly. If you are intelligent, you may count the Imam’s masnad near the mihrab as a chair, because that is what it really is. But that too is reserved. Otherwise, no chairs in the mosque. What an oddity the mosque is, in this regard. Another such place, if you’re averse to visiting it, is the shrine, that cousin of the mosque. There too, you won’t generally find any chairs. On rare occasions, you might find one, but that’s the Pir’s gaddi. Reserved.

Everywhere, the chair reigns. Well, almost everywhere.

Interiors of Masjid Mahabat Khan, Old City of Peshawar

*****

Come to think of it, the whole set of human bodily possibilities comes down to a few basics: you are either still or moving. If you are still, you are either standing or bending or sitting or prostrating or lying down. This religion of ours prescribes acts of worship for all of these postures. The tawaf is the par excellence prayer of motion. And as for stillness, the Quran commands us to be in the remembrance of God, rukka’an, sujjadan, wa ala jumbin, that is, while bending, prostrating and even when lying on one’s side. That azkar have been prescribed for all bodily possibilities and not just one, and that different azkar have been prescribed for each possibility, might be more than a coincidence. May be, it is meant to reaffirm the Islamic creed which requires us to consecrate the whole of life and not just a segment it of. And may be, each possibility has a unique advantage which then ties up with the zikr prescribed for it. But we are now straying too far now from the basic issue.

If our body is capable of achieving this whole range of postures all on its own, why do we need artificial augmentation for sitting?

As a matter of fact, we don’t.

The healthy human being is quite capable of walking, standing, bending, sitting and lying down, all without any prostheses. In fact, while sitting, we are capable of an amazing range of postures – the do-zanu, char-zunu, ukrun, chaunkri and neem-ukrun and taek-laga-kar, being just a few that come to. The chair and its likes, we need only for a few postures – such as sitting with legs hanging or legs crossed. The whole multitude of other postures, we can achieve without needing any artificial support. .[2]

The Ottoman Sultan Muhammad a-Fateh, sitting char-zanu

No matter how ‘normal’ it may sound to us today, for most human societies that we know about, sitting on the chair was not the normal way of sitting.  The chair puts one at an elevation that cannot otherwise be achieved. So, rather understandably, it was understood by other societies as a symbol of power, a marker of status, a thing that set you apart from the normalcy of the human condition. For accomplishing most of the life processes that human beings accomplish, it was not considered necessary, or even helpful.  

A look at the historical evolution of the use of this word in language helps us comprehend the sea change that has come about in the last few centuries.

Today, the Arabic textbook begins with the rudimentary sentence: “Ma haza? Ha za kur see!” On the side, they show the picture of the four-legged thing, the one I described at the start of the essay, the one I’m talking about. But let us not forget that in the language of the Qur’an, the Arabic of the classical period, the word “kur see” refers to something rather different. It refers to the much more exalted “throne”. Wasi’a kur see yuhus sama waat e wal ard”. The scripture reminds us that to all heavens and the earth does the Lord’s Throne extend. The word “chair” in classical English once carried similarly lofty connotations.

The word “Chairman” gives us some clue of that erstwhile meaning. What does the “chair” in “chair-man” symbolize, if not power and exaltation? In universities, wherever everyone now sits on chairs, the phrase “holding a Chair” still refers to the unique privilege bestowed on the select of the select. Universalizing this symbol such that every man and every woman finds it necessary to be “chair-person”, every where and all the time, is a revolutionary change. In retrospect, it does not seem a very enlightened one.

Now look a bit further. Think outside the box of the modern condition and the strictures of global monoculture, this biggest of all boxes that so few can today hope to look beyond.

The “universal right to a chair” which we have come to concede, one does not seem to find in just about any other human society before the modern world. You won’t find it in classical Greek, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian or Germanic culture. Amongst the Jews and the Arabs, the great Semitic people, it is certainly conspicuous by its absence. [3] In the Islamic, Jewish and Buddhist ritual, the memory of this chair-less-ness remains well-preserved.

The form of the namaz, immaculately preserved since when it was first revealed upon the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, neither requires nor allows for any sacraments. In the sacred space, only the believer’s mind, body and soul, are permitted. When the namaz is being performed, no individual worshiper, not even the Imam, is allowed to adopt any artificial elevation, leave alone sitting on the chair. Even standing on a higher pedestal or step is prohibited for the Imam. The believers pray to God at one and the same level, directly and without any need for recourse to intermediation or bodily augmentation. As a result, the basic architecture of the mosque is completely devoid anything like chairs or benches.

A Statue preserving the memory of Mahatma Budhdha

Although I am not fully familiar with the architecture of the synagogue and the Buddhist temple, I assume that there too one finds a certain aversion to artificial elevation of the human posture. In all of those statues which preserve a faint glimpse of his saintly presence, the noble Mahatma Buddha, may he blessed, is shown sitting either do-zanu, char-zanu or lying on his side, that too on his right side with his hand under his head. Never would you find sitting on a chair with his legs hanging. Lovers of the Sunnah of Sayyidi al-Mustafa, the Imam of the prophets, cannot help but discern a similarity.

An architectural historian’s word would weigh heavily with me on this point. But even from this cursory and amateurish survey, we can comfortably conclude that the architecture of the ancients does not betray anything close to our modern romance with the chair and its derivatives. If anything, it seems to be a rarity.

Where then does the rise of the chair come from? So why can we no longer accomplish most of what we used to, sitting simply on the floor?

When you think about it, we do get some clue about the origins of the chair’s rise.

There is a place in the ancient world where you do find people - common people – sitting at an elevation. That place is the church of Western Christianity.

In all likelihood, the early churches, which were not in Europe, did not have benches. It is only when Christianity spread westwards and came to merge with the remains of the Roman tradition that the contemporary architecture of the church, which includes benches, began to take shape. More than a millennium later, we find the chair and its various derivatives becoming more and more popular in Protestant Churches.  And after that, the chair found its way to the schools and colleges that the clergy used to run. It was the Industrial Revolution which made the chair accessible, albeit in the West, to a larger-than-ever segment of the populace. Colonialism then brought the “chair culture” to where it previously did not reign.

It is not insignificant that in the colonies, the chair, at least its earliest designs, came to be closely associated in popular imagination with functionaries of the colonial and post-colonial state. Police stations, army barracks, and other government departments were characterized by a particular make of the chair used in them – the sarkari chair. Supported in mid-air by the chair, the officer of the state sat high and mighty, peering down at the subjects who squatted or crouched near by.

It is ironic that in schools where the masnad, if there was any, was once reserved for the teacher, it has now come to be considered a necessary instrument for cultivating a fine human being. The mat for pupils to sit upon, the infamous taat, once common between the best and the worst of institutions, went on to become the symbol of education backwardness.[4] It became a cause célèbre of the sense of deprivation amongst a whole generation of the colonized whose only memory of their alma maters seems to be the lack of chairs there. The memory of having gone to schools without chairs weighs heavy on the hearts of many amongst our elders. What this tends to obscure is the much greater misfortune suffered by the generation of their children and grandchildren who had to, and still have to, attend schools full of solid wooden chairs and tables but devoid of any devoted teachers and eager pupils. I really hope that when the cultural shock of our devastating collective encounter with modernity and post-modernity wears off, people will come to see the grand folly that our present approach to education really is. They will once again come to realize that a good school does not come about through mercenaries masquerading as part-time teachers, strutting amidst piles of needless and uncomfortable furniture. A good school comes about whenever and wherever young people humbly and joyfully sit down at the feet of older, accomplished, and socially respected figures, listen to beautiful things and participate in positive activities. But we are straying from the topic of the essay, once again.

The question to ask is: What does the journey of the chair from being a potent symbol of power to a near universal piece of furniture mean? Does it have any significance at all?

A statue of Gandhijee outside the Indian Parliament

This question can best be answered by those millions of young people who grew up without ever having had the chance to enjoy themselves sitting on the floor and assuming the multitude of sitting postures which their bodies are capable of achieving. When they first enjoy the likes of do-zanu or char-zanu postures, the spark of joy in their eyes is hard to miss. It is not entirely different from the experience of the elderly who undergo rehabilitation after having lost the ability to fully maneuver their limbs. It is bitter-sweet feeling of a human being experiencing his self, exploring his own true nature – sweet because of the sense of fulfillment it brings, and bitter because of remorse at the self-inflicted deprivation which one lingered under for so long. In recent times, the immense popularity achieved by yoga practitioners in the industrialized nations of the world, is not unconnected to this phenomena. The deprivation that chair culture creates, yoga practitioners make up for, at least partly so.

The thing is, the chair is not our natural way of sitting. It deprives us of the joy of life; and such deprivation, if extended, leads to diseases. Various studies link the office chair with back-pain, obesity, heart disease and diabetes. And the commode has been cited as a risk factor for constipation, hemorrhoids and even colon cancer. It may well turn out that the chair and its derivatives were a serious public health hazard all along; we just didn’t notice it earlier. Experts should explore this aspect of chair culture.

For the denizens of the Islamicate, however, the question is worth pondering from other perspectives too. Some of you may not know this, but back when our ancestors first encountered chair culture, they did not take very kindly to it. Never shy of sounding legalistic, they openly asked: Is this a permissible practice? Eating on the dinner table, just like eating with forks and spoons, became hotly contested social issues. Legal opinions were authored about this, which relied essentially on the rulings against imitating the un-believers (al-tashabbuh bi al-kuffar)

The majority of scholarly opinion at the time opposed the practice, deeming it an abdication of the Sunnah  and a symptom of mindless imitation of the colonial masters. True to the dialectical nature of our scholarly tradition, refutations also followed. And then retorts. And then rebuttals. And so on. In the scholarly circles, the debate has never really stopped, even though at the level of popular imagination, the question seems to have been abandoned as a petty one. In the year 1434 of the hijra I do not even remotely intend to stir up a legal debate that most of the ummah seems to have gotten over with. History is a reality. In our worldview, we human beings have not been given the option of re-winding the clock of time. As Gandalf said, echoing the thought of the Oxford don, “[w]e do not choose the times we live in. We only chose what to do with them.” Today, only a very extreme and uncompromising jurist would declare the practice of sitting on chairs and performing motley life-functions thereupon, as legally impermissible.

That said, in retrospect, it seems clear that the initial response of our ancestors to chair culture was based on sound insight. Today, we may no longer be able to accept their legal ruling on this issue; but one has to give it to them that their suspicion was not baseless; evidence is vindicating it. Their response reflected an intimate understanding of the Sunnah, the spirit behind which, as Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad, may Allah bless him, puts it, is to preserve of the historical norms of our species. These norms are worth conserving because, from our perspective, they cannot be entirely socially constructed or accidental. These norms are there because they respond to cues divinely planted in our nature, cues which have been explored and interpreted by generations who, in all honestly, lived closer to the Divine Being and to nature than we do today. They understood that the Sunnah represents the distilled wisdom of the ages; and it is therefore that deviations from it are to be viewed suspiciously. In the universalization of chair culture, they clearly saw one such deviation. We now recognize that their suspicion was justified: chair culture renders some of the greatest bodily gifts our race entirely redundant. And it makes us suffer, a slow and persistent suffering.

However, we may put the law aside for the moment.  The Sunnah, it may be recalled, has never been understood to be a source for legal inspiration alone. The increasingly juridical nature of our religious discourse may give that impression, but this is not the proper view or even the normal one. The Sunnah and the manner in which our ancestors practiced it over millennia is also a rich source for drawing all sorts of other inspiration - artistic, architectural, philosophical and so on.

I think only a very unfortunate community of Muslims would deliberately shape the architecture of their and their progeny’s lives around an archetype which is distinctly alien to the mosque. The utter simplicity of the mosque floor is a result of a lack of imagination or want of resources. It is the way it is, because it reflects the Sunnah’s ethos: primordiality, simpleness and naturalness. The sacred space transmits powerful architectural impulses to the believers, or, at least, to the aesthetically refined ones, every time they visit it.  Refusing to accept that impulse, and continuing to design our life spaces in mindless imitation of contemporary design fads seems permissible, though it is certainly narrow-minded and cowardly. If you eat on a chair, read and write on a chair, and do pretty much everything in your life on a chair, and the only chair-less environment you ever encounter in your life is the mosque, then you are setting yourself and your progeny for a kind of cognitive dissonance, a perpetual state of alienation with the sacred space. Not every reader is expected to appreciate this subtlety. But the aesthetically musical reader should note this point down somewhere.

Chinese Emperor sitting char-zanu in his study

And then, there is, of course, the terrible wastefulness of it all. Like most such modern departures from the historical norm of our species, chair-culture is a hugely costly venture. Now that there are no less than seven billion of us here on this planet, just imagine the wood and steel and plastic that would go into keeping us suspended in mid-air, twenty-four seven. We are not there yet, but that does seem to be the goal we have set ourselves. There is also the issue that once chairs and sofa and desks come in, they bring with them a specialization of space usage which, in turn, vastly increases the built-up space necessary per person. Previously, in a single room, you could simply roll out a dastarkhwan and turn it into dining room, then wrap it up and set up the sleeping mats, and then wake up next morning, roll back the bedding and use the place for work or study. Now each function requires a separate space. 

The toll that this civilization-wide wastefulness is taking from the earth’s resources is heavy. The earth is shrieking under the weight of our wastefulness. Hardly can it comprehend this obsession of the children of Adam with remaining afloat when they are themselves creatures of water and mud, not wind or fire. The earth, through its now obvious rumblings, urges us to accept the implications of our earthly genesis, which the Quran implores us to reflect on. : khalaq al-insan min salsaalin kal fakkhaar, was khalaqal jaan na mim marijim min naar. Fa bi ayyi alae rabbikuma tukazziban! Man was created from water and mud like the potter’s clay; it was jinn who were from a smokeless fire kindled. How many of these signs shall the two of you refuse to discern?

And let us not forget the therapeutic and ergonomic aspect of the problem. You see, “do-zanu”, “char-zanu”, “ukroon”, “neem-ukroon”, “chaunkri” and the like are earthly postures which, like other aspects of the Sunnah, come naturally to us and leave us a simple nameless pleasure. We like that pleasure but the chair, and the etiquette of sitting that has grown off it, alas, keeps us from it for most of our day. Stifled by it, our bodies are protesting and repeating the prophetic rebuke: kullu kum min adam was Adamu min turab! You are all from Adam, and Adam was made from dust!

*****

Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chairs. From the clutches of the chair, he must be set free.

Let us begin his emancipation by a frankly admitting that there is no reason why the legs-hanging position should be the only posture that commands respectability. If we are a truly free people, we should be able to sit as we please and not be branded as uncivil or brutish. Surely, we should be free to re-design the architecture of our life spaces in accordance with our own tradition, ideals and aspirations.

His Royal Highness, the Poet-Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar gracing the Throne of Delhi

The white man who branded us barbarous because of our life-style departed from this continent a long while ago. Why then do we, in our heart of hearts, still feel as though he still lords over us, sitting atop a lofty throne and peering down at us, a spark of contempt flashing in his eyes, every time he notices us do something that he doesn’t? Let us remember that his power has waned as all earthly powers eventually must wane. Yes, we can breath more freely now and begin to de-colonize our minds.

Only the Lord’s throne to all heavens and the earth extends.

Further Reading:

After having composed this essay, I came across a piece on the internet which is remarkably similar in its import: http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/against-chairs/.

The author of this piece writes:

It sounds absurd to claim that chairs are dangerous. They’re comfortingly ubiquitous and seem almost too boring to be harmful. But when one considers that the average Briton, for instance, spends over fourteen hours seated per day, relying on chairs for support while working, relaxing, commuting, eating, and sometimes sleeping, it’s easy to believe that chairs could have a serious impact on public health.

Footnotes

---

[1] This essay is dedicated to my father whose life-long aversion to dinner-tables and unflinching insistence on having our family dinner on the floor, despite pressure from other family members and the society at large, enabled me to grow up with an openness to life-styles other than global monoculture.

[2] If you doubt my honesty, consider this statement by an expert: “There are many ways to sit and many things upon which to sit, but the seat with a back and (most frequently) four legs is generally the Western concept known as a chair” – Random History and Word Origins for the Curious Mind

 http://www.randomhistory.com/2008/11/11_chair.html

[3] Leonardo’s famous mural “The Last Supper”, which shows Jesus and his disciples sitting on table and chairs, seems, in all probability, historically inaccurate. This is not reported to have been the prevalent custom amongst the Jews of the era. That said, I am in no position to say anything definitive; the definitive word on  the matter would belong to a Biblical scholar and not a lay person such as myself.

[4] I think it is quite possible now to imagine a petitioner arguing that since a school without chairs in not really a school, and since every child has a basic human right to be schooled under Article 25A of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, pupils who are going to such places are being denied a human right. The Court should order that they be supplied with chairs or else they risk growing up to be sub-humans. Fantastical as it sound, this argument flows logically from the cultural premises which many of us hold and are, unfortunately, not even slightly willing to re-examine.

Indus Waters: Changing Course, not just Tact.

(Full version of the op-ed that I submitted. The editors of The News just cut it up without without consulting me. It's hard for me to gauge how much of the meaning has been lost.)

My friend Zirgham Afridi, in his op-ed last Tuesday, notes that the Indus and her sister rivers, may God's blessings on them and through them, last long, are back in the discussion. His appraisal of the issue is excellent, being articulate and dispassionate. But it is dangerously narrow. His narrative needs to be complemented with a glimpse of the bigger picture of what is happening to our rivers, and indeed to our planet, even as policy-makers sit to deliberate on the Indus Water Treaty (IWT).  A glimpse of that bigger picture can be gainfully shared with the readers of this paper. But first, an anecdote.

Three-and-a-half year ago, while taking a course on International Law, and attending a class devoted to the Indus Water Treaty, I went in with ideas about rivers and riparian treaties, quite similar to those expressed by the learned Mr. Afridi. Legalistic, utilitarian and in a sense, purely rational. But then, there was something about the nondescript, humble-sounding visiting Lecture who taught that class, and the things that have I since read and certain intimate experiences I subsequently went through, that my perspective has changed entirely. This week, when Mr. Afridi invited me, as one of his readers, to examine the IWT's value as a framework "given the changes... since 1960", an entirely different set of images welled up in my mind, that what would have come up, three-and-a-half years ago.

I did not think of abstruse treaty clauses and their differing legal interpretations nor of yet-to-be-built dams and possible megawatts to be harnessed. I began to think, instead, about the once mighty and beautiful rivers, Ravi and Sutlej, the vast valleys once associated with each, and the thousand of species who lived off them. I juxtaposed this image of nature’s abundance with that of the now dead and parched river beds, and I felt sad. For thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousand of years, these rivers and the peoples who lived off them lived and breathed in great freedom. The sagacious savages realized that just as human life is not all about wealth, rivers are not just about water; and water, in turn, is not just about what it is worth to us humans. Somehow, in this last century, these eternal truths seem to have eluded us.

Mr. Afridi points out that any solution to the IWT imbroglio must start with the sober realization that "India as a country faces energy issues just like Pakistan does. It is only natural that India tries to extract maximum leeway on what it is allowed to do with the western rivers" He’s right. The problem is not just with India; it afflicts both Pakistan and India. Both neighbours, as almost everybody on the planet today, seem to be doing the same thing: mercilessly exploiting rivers at the altar of (energy and irrigation) greed. But Mr. Afridi is wrong to suggest that the “maximum leeway” or “unrestricted use” approach is “only natural.” In fact, it is far from so. How and why have come to accept this as “only natural”? Why do we, today, as almost everyone else on the plan, need so much water? How have we come to justify this no-limits-barred approach to natural bounties? Is it because, as a civilization, there is there something “wrong” with us?

Increasingly, it seems that we are not getting to any sustainable solutions to the IWT until we start asking these bigger questions.

The faith that most Pakistanis so proudly profess, tells us that God created the earth and its rivers not just for us but for all His creatures. I based this claim upon (an admittedly personal interpretation of) Surah Rahman Verse 10: "It is He Who has spread out the earth for (His) creatures." Yet, somehow, today we find nothing wrong with milking the rivers dry, eliminating their very existence and that of all the communities and species dependent on them, only because our mutual political and economic expediency demands this. I doubt if either Islam or Hinduism allow for the earth and its bounties to be so heartlessly distributed, as though they were the spoils of a war with nature. Islam, for one, obliges the human "khalifa" to cultivate the earth, and not cause it permanent and irreparable harm. We are allowed by the divine to cultivate a river's capacity to confer benefits on us and other creatures who share its barakaat, but should we construe that as license to simply 'kill' the goose for the golden eggs? By completely re-engineering the river system and eliminating several rivers altogether, are we upsetting  the ‘meezan’ that God had himself set upon the earth? Here, I do not intend to answer these questions definitively. But when talking about the IWT, aren’t these questions worth thinking about? 

PART II

Today the bigger picture in front of us is not the Indian threat; it is the imminent global environmental disaster, now staring all nations in the face. The picture that environmental scientists paint of the planet’s future is, to say the last, dismal. It might have been excusable to miss that possibility out in the 1960s when the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) was drafted. But it is criminal to do the same now - now when the Earth seems to be convulsing under the weight of our sins, manifesting in the form of unprecedented pollution, amassed by a civilization whose very basis seems to be the 'greed principle'. In 2012, when negotiating about river systems, the top-priority on both sides can no longer be the maximization of 'national self-interest'; that realist vision of public policy has, time and time again, proven itself to be a disaster. We have walked through hell in chasing this gold-rush vision. There has to be an end to this now. The priority now, particularly in questions such as the IWT, has to be the concept of doing 'least violence' to the eco-system – an ideal shared in the ethical traditions of both India and Pakistan, and possibly across the major religious communities of the world. Any treaty which fails to recognize this value seems to me unjust, possibly unIslamic and unconstitutional, call it what you may. This should have been obvious from day one. But perhaps we were blinded from seeing things that way, because of religiously-disguised nationalism or, alternatively, the secular ideology of popular. Even a little bit of intellectual integrity is sufficient to show that the 20^th century “maximum leeway” approach to nature’s bounties is neither in conformity with the edicts of religion, nor does it, in the longer run, maximize public utility. It is plain and simple greed, formally theorized and systematized.

 
Three-and-a-half years ago, when that nondescript visiting lecturer first planted these ideas in my head, I hated him for it. By waxing lyrical about his love for the rivers and the respect we owe to them, he upset the smug lawyer and calculating social scientist in me. He said the problem does not start with the rivers, not even with the treaty. It starts with ourselves – and the way we live. Later in the course of my education, I came to accept what the most profound thinkers of our modern time have long pointed out: at the heart of modern civilization’s most intransigent political problems are ethical problems, problem about ‘the ends worth striving for’ and not just those about the most efficient means. Similarly, at the heart of Indus waters imbroglio lies a similar ethical question which people on both sides of the border need to pose to themselves: Is it right to exploit our rivers so mercilessly, even if we are “legally” entitled to do so? (The legality here refers, of course, merely to legality under ‘positive treaty law’ and not some higher conception of legality.) Are we not heading to a position of irreconcilable conflict by forgetting the maxim that the “world has enough for everyone’s need but enough for anybody’s greed”?

Prevalent social science discourse often side steps such difficult ethical quandaries. May be, social science, like any other science, simply isn't structured to show us the 'ends'; it is all about determining the most efficient 'means' to ends which human beings have already agreed upon. Amidst what is no less than a global civilizational crisis, the ‘ends’ can no longer remain beyond the purview of examination. That has been our state for far too long. We are paying for it. It was almost a century ago, when the great, perhaps the greatest, sociologist of our times, Max Weber noted the retreat of values from public life. In perhaps the final year of his life, he observed this at a public lecture, in words which ring with an air of ominous finality: “the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations” The result of that retreat is a narrow, legalistic and scientistic vision of public policy, which has lead the human community to where we now stand – a civilizational crisis of which recurrent water crises are only a small manifestation. The same vision of public policy which has led us to the precipice cannot bring us back. If our problems are to be resolved at all, they have to be viewed not only scientifically but also once again in the light of ultimate and sublime values. This is why I must insist that we owe it to the public to hark our discourse back to the bigger picture, even if the exigencies of daily life scarcely allow for such a broad perspective.

I do not mean to suggest that we, at least the lawyers who are paid to do so, should stop discussing the 'means' for getting the best bargain out of present legal and political arrangements. But, the 'thinkers' amongst us have a higher obligation: to view problems in the light of a stated vision for the better world. If that does not go beyond winning Pakistan a better deal vis-a-vis India; it is suitable only for a cricket match. In the arena of life, it is not even worth having. As far as I can see it, the better world, for those of us who believe in God, is one where the will of the Lord is least disobeyed and the balance He has set on the Earth is least disturbed. It is a world where not just the human child, but all of God's creation, is allowed to live a life of peace, plenty and soulful prayer. And if have the courage to accept it, let us frankly acknowledge that this is not exactly the same thing as the developmentalist agenda of achieving highest average global “GDP” per capita. These are different goals to be aspiring to. And different goals, quite obviously, should manifest in different policies and considerations.

If India and Pakistan were to negotiate a treaty bearing the former vision in mind, rest assured the result would not be even remotely close to the IWT. We wont have as many megawatts or as many hectares of perennially irrigated land. But we also won’t end up with dead rivers and dying valleys. This statement might shock some readers. But it is as true as the cliché that if we, believers in organized religions all over the world, really lived the faiths we profess, the condition of the planet would not be even remotely similar to its pitiable modern condition. More than ever before, at this supposed ‘end of history’, these bigger questions are worth asking. It does not matter which side of the border you are on. The need is to be sure about the direction in which, we, as a civilization, want to head. The default direction doesn’t seem very sunny. Seers have been saying it for a while but even scientists now seem convinced. Today we are called upon by history to change course, not just tact. The gamut of tacts, IWT terms and conditions included, even lesser mortals can determine.

Author: Umer Gilani is a lawyer and researcher based in Islamabad.

The Rally That Took Us all by Surprise!

Look at it again. It must be the work of a master craftsman - that picture of Imran Khan standing tall in his elegant white round-collar shalwar kameez and black coat and addressing what has been rightfully described as a ‘sea’ of people[1]. Although the night’s darkness seems to have fully encircled the sea of people, there is still a halo that shines above them. It is as though the stars have descended upon them. The night’s darkness represents the despondency that has come to afflict so many of the sensitive souls in our times. Yet, our attention drifts quite naturally to the halo of light, which represents the glimmer of hope that still remains in our people – the glimmer that at gatherings flares up so easily into a blazing fire.

From the cameraman’s well-selected vantage point, right behind the great Khan’s solid shoulders, anyone who can  seep finer realities of the sort which I describe, can clearly see the coming of a new dawn. Sometimes I even wonder: how could some people be blind so as not to see it? How many eyes does one man need, before he can see the rising of the sun, and the break of a glorious dawn? No, you cannot miss the shine in the eyes of the crowd, nor the music in their souls. You cannot miss those glimpses of a new Pakistan. We will be so unfortunate if, for selfish reasons, we tried to wish it away. It’s a different Pakistan which is on its way, a project still in the making. We all have one reason or another to celebrate – and yes, it includes even those of us who, like myself, do not intend to vote for the PTI in the next elections. If we live to see those time, we will be fortunate to have lived that long.

The PTI’s memorable nightly vigil is a cause for celebration. But it shouldn’t be for the wrong reasons. No, it is not because the messiah awaited for has finally arrived on our political scene. Do I need to explain why it would be arrogant for anyone to say this? Sooner or later, you see, we Pakistanis will have to realize that this sort of exclusivist partisan thinking has no place in the politics of a constitutional democracy. Particularly where you have a first-past-the-poll system where the rule is that the winner takes it all, even by one vote. Don’t call me a cynic for saying this. But in set-ups like ours, politics is, and will remain, a rather pragmatic affair. Alliances and compromises with erstwhile political enemies, voluntarily passing the baton to them, these will all have to be a part of the game. And if the business of politics has to be run in this amicable manner, then leaders and followers alike would do well to avoid creating messianic expectations from their own parties, and to stop the demonic vilification of the other parties. Democratic regimes should know that in hard times like these, one’s survival depends upon one’s political opponents. Otherwise, we are in for another 1977. Or another 1999.

So, no, I don’t see in this rally the making of a new Pakistan because I think of Imran as our only hope. I don’t even think like this for the party and the leader whom I do vote for. I think no one should. It doesn’t’ bode well for the health of our democracy. Quite to the contrary, let me propose to to everyone a thought experiment. Imagine a party other your own finding itself in power in the coming elections. Imagine its leaders working as ministers and so on. Imagine them staying there for another five years. Try and get mentally comfortable with this idea. Think, for instance, of Altaf Hussain sitting in the presidency. Much as it revolts you, try to hold it. Or Nawaz Sharif, for that matter, if you don’t like him at all. Or Fazlur Rahman. Or even Zardari, all over again. Try this. Believe me, unless we, as a people, learn to think like this, we are calling for more trouble. Big trouble. Another 1971 of sorts. So you are free to repeat the mantra ‘Imran Khan [or substitute this with the name of any other political leader] is our only ray of hope’, but please don’t sound so damned serious about it.

Whether the kaptaan can ride this tide of enthusiasm generated by this Rally all the way to electoral victory is, for me, is a question that misses the whole point. What really deserves attention is simply all the energy and hope that the Rally has unleashed. Hope works in magical ways. It begets more hope. And it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The logic is simple. Hopeful people invest. Their money. Their time. Their emotions. Their lives. Their families. When the urban middle classes are hopeful about Pakistan and its political prospects, there’s a chance they’ll transfer less of our financial capital to Dubai and Malaysia and the likes. And they’ll exile less of our talent pool, leaving more behind. And talent and money are the potent mix that brings change which slogans and speeches, even rallies can’t.

Then there’s the hope that at least a few dozen of those hundreds of thousands who have suddendy turned into avid cyber-politicians and loud sloganeers will stick it through the thick and thin and mature – and sooner or later carve for themselves a niche in the big bad world of real, on-ground politics. Fresh blood could mean a solution for our long-standing bottle-neck oft exploited by the public relations machinery of the establishment: a chronic shortage of fresh, young, urbane and educated politicians.

Most importantly, in the wake of the Rally, I see Pakistan finally recovering from the debilitating impact of General Musharraf’s “Sab say pehlay Pakistan” project. It’s a little like belated de-toxification. We’ve taken a while, but finally we are recovering and coming back to being the sunny-sounding, starry-eyed, slightly megalomaniac people that we always were. Remember the people who, for decades, refused to treat their seven-times more populous neighbour as anything but an equal. Or the people who believed that their country was, like none other in the world, destiny’s own gift. People who had the glint of dreams in their eyes. That glint in the eyes was our greatest asset, not the atomic bomb, nor the fabled mineral fortunes which lie unexplored beneath our soil. Not even the demographic dividend which we are supposed to be at the cusp of; and certainly not the few hundred highly wanted individual that our armed forces have been opportunistically selling to foreign hunters for prize money. These assets may count greatly in other countries of the world, but our Pakistan was never about all this. The promise of Pakistan was always about its collective ideals and dreams. Dream of a collective reality that is better – not just materially, but in a host of ways – than what we have ever had. The greatest and damnest theft committed by General Musharraf and his powerful liberal fascist lobby was that they stole all this from us. They were a corrupt lot which stole things which cannot be valuated in dollars or rupees. Things which were, and remain, Pakistan’s greatest national asset, our promise. When the general, with all his talk of realpolik and utilitarianism-based public policy, drove our urban middle classes, particularly the younger generation, into the crazy rat races of individual consumerism, that is what he robbed us of. It made us self-hating, sad, and later, cynical. 

Fortunately, the great kaptaan seems to be slowly undoing just this. His achievement (and such things I believe are achievable only by the dint of divine grace) is to bring those same people back into the collective life of the country, who had successfully seceded in the General’s era into the sad world of short-run private plenty. The young ones from amongst the middle classes of urban Pakistan, particularly in the Punjab. That was the kind of people who were the pride of the Rally. The kind of people whom you would other see together and excited only on musical concerts with pricey tickets. Or in the enclaves of private colleges and schools. People whose dreams has collapsed into images of private cars, villas, iPods, foreign university degrees and jobs abroad. They are few in number but they count.

A passionate concern for Pakistan, and the collective destiny of its people including the working classes, seems to be back on their mental map. I consider this the harbinger of historic change. Perhaps, the greatest change that the rally which surprised us all, promises to bring about in its wake.

Of course, this change remains very much an unfinished project. Imran Khan and his army of sincere and well-meaning, though politically untrained enthusiasts now have an historic opportunity in front of them. But they need to be extremely careful as they proceed from here onwards, if they are ever to realize their chances. They need to remember that the shadowy forces which have haunted so much of our history are still around, although they seem to have temporarily withdrawn. But for the historical courage shown by the superior judiciary backed by the legal fraternity, civil society and students, and the equally staunch stand taken by Nawaz Sharif and his party-men for over a decade, those forces would still have been here. These were the same forces which hijacked the political process in the first decade of Pakistan, and which have never since ceased to hold sway. From behind the curtains, they are still watching things closely. And they don’t like the air of it.

For instance, they do not like the idea of an emerging cadre of Imran Khan attracting and training a cadre of popular politicians whom Pakistan’s urban middle classes can truly affiliate with. Because this means that when they do another Kargil, or another 1999, hoping to get another decade-long lease for power, they won’t have the tacit backing which counts at such moments. Instead, the politicians will. These are forces which don’t like the idea of you and me keeping a close eye on how we are governed, and dreaming up change. They’ve been in their comfy positions ever since the colonizers bequeathed us this system of governance where the people’s elected representatives are, at best, mediators between the bureaucratic administrator-rulers and the subjugated-ruled. They will try to jump back into the game at the first chance. Instead of casting other politicians as hate-figures, it is they who should be considered as the PTI’s enemy number one – an enemy which it shares equally with all the other political forces in the country, even those whom it considers incorrigibly corrupted. True that politics is all about alliances; but an alliance with the common enemy would be fatal. It would take the PTI down – and with it, all the democratic forces.

For now though, in the grips of the current euphoria, we can brush these concerns aside. Think about it. A few months back, none of these cynical, alarmist TV anchors (or their blogosphere analogues) who seem to know all, could have possible predicted that this day was coming. These pundits who build themselves lucrative careers feasting upon our hope, will dismiss me for a hopeless dreamer when I say this next thing. But I tell you that I see a brighter day coming. It’s already on its way. I’ve been saying this for a while now[2]. And now I have yet more reason to stick to it. To see what I see, you need look no further than that picture of Imran Khan at the Minar-e-Pakistan standing tall above his sea of supporter. Look at it again. Amidst the darkness of the night there’s a halo of light which surrounds the crowd. It’s the glimmer of hope is their eyes. Hope which is back. And which will help us pass the darkest hour of night, after which it’s going to be dawn. A glorious dawn, I tell you.  

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[1] The PML-N Senator Pervez Rashid’s statement in which he tried to undermine the scale of the gathering is a classic case of trying to spread disinformation, which is an unfair tactic by any standard, and the party would do well to avoid such silly things in the future. Such behavior is a far cry from the party’s avowed slogan of principled politics. That the picture has been photo-shopped is also an allegation which remains to be confirmed; doctored or not, either way, it is a beautiful picture and lavishly deserves the compliments heaped on it.

[2] Referring to my earlier post titled “The Roaring of the Lion and Glimpses into the Future” http://riseofpakistan.net/umergilani/2011/05/17/the-roaring-of-the-lion-and-glimpses-into-the-future/

The Roaring of the Lion and Glimpses into the Future

It is as though he has returned from the dead. Just a few days after destiny dragged him through the dark vale of death on the other side of the mountains of the moon, the Lion of Pakistan returned. And he was roaring. In a rare moment of mental concentration, our otherwise punch-drunk nation listened intently and agreed. We are a people who had almost forgotten what it feels like to listen to a leader who truly and eloquently voices our concerns. The all-too-frequent meek howls of jackals and the wily mutterings of foxes – they could never strike a chord with Pakistan’s aspirations. It was in the thunderous roaring of the engulfed Lion, that we finally found vindication for that basic right long denied to us – the right of representation in the highest halls of power.

When Nawaz Sharif came all out with his charge sheet against our praetorian overlords, who have yet again le the nation down, it was a great national cathartic moment. And more than that, it was a moment of destiny. Absolutely unpredicted by anyone. It wasn’t just the self-obsessed khakis who were taken aback. So inexplicable the whole episode was, that even after it has happened, the carrion-eaters who flourish on analyzing our multifarious miseries and misfortunes, the dementors who build personal careers and reputations by feeding upon whatever little is left of hope in our people, and the great political pundits, they are all dumbstruck. Bewildered, they are still trying “to explain the underlying factors” that might have “caused” this “political gesturing.” But they find nothing to support them; this time round, the Lion has roared and there is little that the misery-mongers can add.

The problem with the carrion-eaters is that their theoretical framework cannot accomodate a major factor which drives history - a factor that clearly does not hold complete sway over the unfolding of history but, equally so, can only be ignored at one’s peril. I am referring to the rare emergence of a moment of destiny accompanied by a man of destiny, who work in tandem to make history. This is what explains the roaring of the Lion. And it even offers us a glimpse into our national future – which turns out to be more promising that what the carrion-eaters would allow for.

At times like these, the professional cynics are left with little to say. By all rational calculus, the Lion of Pakistan had everything to gain by making his peace with the khakis, just like all the other political stakeholders did, even if this meant being treacherous to his temporal political sovereigns – the  People of Pakistan. Only a few weeks ago, as the Lion waged a personal battle for his life in a hospital in London, swinging every hour between life and death, back home, the carrion-eaters were predicting his political demise. And it was quite clear that the forces-who-must-not-be-named were making every possible effort to unite all those who stood against the Lion – so as to deny him an other expected landslide electoral victory, whenever the next elections are held. And yet it is that just two weeks later, when destiny offered the Lion a perfect chance to oblige the khakis for ever by saving them from the wrath of the plebians, he just wouldn’t do it. Right at a time, when the olive branch would make the greatest personal sense for him, risking further enmity and embracing political isolation, the Lion, true to his instincts, decided to roar. Some of his own aides tried to pull him back. But he went all out. Thankfully, the nation has listened, and stands mesmerized by this man of destiny.

The critics cannot make any sense of this because in their profane calculus, there is simply no room to account for a man of destiny and a moment of destiny, even when they do encounter one. This has happened before. It was not too long ago, when another man of destiny, surrounded by five towering men in uniform, trapped deep in the lair of the khakis, simply refused to bow down.  He stood. And the my people stood behind behind. That day, and long after that, the carrion-eaters couldn’t explain what was afoot. Yet, the man of destiny has not ceased to perform his daily share of miracles.

No less a man of destiny is the Lion. The People of Pakistan cannot agree more with him. He has taken a difficult stand and he will have to fight for it, paying a heavy price of blood, sweat and tears. Yet the People will stand with him, just at they stood, and even marched, not too long ago.

The critics still stare with disbelief. In the year 1999, the Lion took a stand. And then, in his hour of need, when he looked back, he found that there was absolutely no one standing behind him. He suffered long years of solitary imprisonment, exile and deceit. By all calculations, he should have learnt his lesson. And after all this, somehow he has again found the courage to become the Lion that he now is. What could possibly explain this? Destiny is one factor, clearly. But so, I dare say, is death.

Isn’t it amazing just how many times has death, both physical and political, engulfed him, and yet been turned back. In the early years of this decade, he seemed destined for the gallows, just like the equally popular and courageous ZAB before him. But in the last hours, destiny saved him. Then, in the opulent surrounding of a posh Jaddah neighborhood, isolated from his soil, he seemed destined for a slow political death – like a flower plucked from its roots. And yet destiny saved him. When the late Mohtarma returned to this country and made here NRO-guaranteed peace with the general and imperial powers, the Lion seemed destined for exclusion from the political process. And yet, just a day before the last date for filing nomination forms, riding on the wings of destiny, he touched Pakistani soil. Still, in the aftermath of Zardari’s election and being played around by the Dogar Court, under whose directions Shehbaz Sharif was disqualified, it again seemed that political death would finally get its long sought target. And yet again, he emerged unscathed. Now, just a few weeks ago, his failing heart seemed finally to be giving in to sorrows that surround my people. His enemies were multiplying, conspiring and consolidating. Yet, there he is. Back in the game. Repeated encounters with death have transformed him. And this is why, today, he is roaring. But where is destiny driving the Lion of Pakistan?

Here I can only share glimpses into the future which in the eye of the heart I beheld, even as I heard the Lion roar. This is the year two-thousand-and-fourteen. For all the critics’ warnings, Pakistan is still very much there. It has a more vibrant Parliament that ever before, now led by the Lion and his compatriots, both the young and fierce and the old and mellowed. Pakistan has the most civilianized executive it has so far had, and, in the wake of their embarrassment after the OBL debacle, the khakis are retreating, bit by bit, to their barricks, doing only that which they do best, leaving everything from governance to urban planning and education to those better suited for these jobs. And we also have the most independent and honest judicial system that we have so far had, since the cursed imperialists stepped in. I look back at 2004. Whatever I see there - a spineless judiciary, a corrupt executive led by khakis who worry about nothing more than their institutional interest, a pliant, King’s Parliament, a nation qietly digging itself a political and economic hole which it would soon plunge into – all of this seems history, by-gone, almost forgotten.

As the Lion roared, in the eye of the heart, this is the Pakistan I saw. The return of truth and courage in politics is an earth-shaking development. It is not just that we are seeing destiny at work, only amidst individuals and moments. My people are all a people of destiny. And it is their dawn, the spotless dawn which they are destined for, which has drawn nigh. Those ofus who can see things, can see it already. It is that close, I tell you. 

Raymond Davis, the man who was a nation...

Right under the daunting gaze of the monstrous Mugamma, in maydan-al-tahrir, the People of the Nile Valley have remained undaunted. And finally, they are winning their freedom. This is independence which should have happened  sixty years agon. But the fact is that it never happened. What happened instead was a dirty trick – actually, a long series of dirty tricks – which ended up further empowering that secular and modernizing fringe of society which the fleeing colonials themselves had fathered and through whom they found it so much easier to govern. In what should have been their moment of truth, what belonged to the vast body of the sha’b was robbed; they have since been struggling to find a footing in the resulting fiasco, even as the colonials went back home.

When the white men fled, he left behind his caricatures, these walking talking lies who are the white man’s revenge. For far too long, we have suffered them. Now, however, they are going, one by one. When Ben Ali fled Tunisia, he took his truck-loads of dollars with him. If only he had also taken his lies with him. Lies about a justice that never came, freedom which was rigged. The people of Tunisia and Egypt still have long battles ahead of them – a battle against the lies, and the walking talking lies. But the light that a man lit with his own life in Tunisia, has spread nonetheless to maydan-al-tahrir. And so far, against all odds, it only seems to spread, farther and wider. Grace has its moments and sacrifices are not all alike; some get acceptance, far and wide.

But here in the much less inspiring situation in Lahore, at the very mundane Mozang , we have just had our own fateful event – an even which tells a story, the gradually unfolding story of a tragic era.

Locked in a dungeon somewhere in Lahore, there is a murderer whose conduct bespeaks that ofhis country. I have been trained as a lawyer and hair-splitting, not generalization, is something close to my day-job. But I have my reasons for concluding that we have caught hold of a man who is a nation.

Raymond Davis’ undoing was his reliance on the doctrine of pre-emptive strike. He hit those two boys because he sensed that they had weapons which they intended to use against him. It’s not that they actually intended to do so. Nor is it that they had actually done anything to provoke him into thinking like this. It’s just that they had guns, and the white man happened to see them and he didn't particularly like it. The risk was small. But it was there. And since his own life was infinitely more precious than that of anyone else around, it was better to be on the safe side. So he shot them. Noot once, not twice. More than six times. It was 'pre-emptive' self-defence, American style.

Because Raymaond, as I said, is a man who is a nation. A nation which went to war against another much-smaller and poorer country on the other side of the globe, just because they thought that this little country had weapons of mass destruction which it might use. America also had weapons of mass destruction; but that didn’t matter because America  America and couldn't possibly ever use these weapons. Except in Hiroshima. And Nagasaki. But that's an old story. No, it wouldn't use its WMDs now. Now, it was Iraq which needed to be bombed and raided because it had WMDs which it just might use. Not against the US, of course. The US is way too far from Iraq. It might, and I stress the 'might' here, use them, if it has them, against Israel. The logic was perverse and contrived to begin with. But, as events unfolded, it would get even worse.

Under the shade of American flag, fire and death and hunger descended on Iraq and it have never really departed. The Americans went there looking for WMDs. And to dismantle a dictator whom they had propped just two decades ago, out of hatred from another familiar enemy - the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. But this was a bonus they would give the Iraqis, the gift of freedom, in addition to cleaning the WMDs. The dictator was duly dislodged; but the WMDs were never found. They could not have been found because, actually, they had never been there. Instead, the Americans found something else to keep themselves busy: regime change.

They weren’t happy with just dismantling the dictator; they wanted to create an altogether new state, something  more democratic, more to their liking. It was a risky thing to do but the risk was mostly Iraqis’, so it was worth taking. Millions of Iraqis would be made guinea pigs in the experiment of cultivating ‘democracy in the Middle East'. Democracy was probably thought of as any form of government which would condone the Israelis exploitation of the Palestinians, and also keep selling cheap oil to the global market until the last drop ran out - something like, perhaps, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. To build this new kind of government, the Americans would need to perform the risky task of dismantling the existing state structure. And that is precisely what they now started doing. They fired the army. And they fired the police. And, on the sides, they stirred up ethnic issues. It was a recipe for disaster.

And very soon, all hell broke loose. On the Iraqis, that is.

Of course, also on the sides, the Americans were busy in a grand day-light robbery, stealing everything precious that Iraq could offer. Oil, ancient artifacts, what not.

And here’s the worst bit. While the Americans has arrived there as the global champions of human rights and democracy, their soldiers were having a field day with innocent Iraqi prisoners. Supposedly freedom-loving and rights-respecting Westerners were teaching some lessons in modernity to their innocent Muslim captives. I use this epithet, “Muslim” not to evoke the feeling of comity which you may have with others in the ummah. That you should have, but it is a separate matter. Here I use the term innocent Muslim captives, because the soldiers who were torturing them were guided by official manuals and guide-books steeped in the worst form of prejudice directed against Muslims. The venom long incubated by orientalists against the followers of the Gracious Prophet was now finding its way directly into the field of combat. And its face was so ugly, everyone could immediately see it for what it is.

Even today, a mere look at the pictures from Abu Gharaib confronts us with another disturbing thought: if this is the fraction which spilled out, just how much ugliness must its perpetrators be harbouring in their hearts. The scenes from Abu Gharaib are a grim reflection on the human condition in desacralized modernity. When we lose our sense of the divine, and the element of the divine in each human being, the crux of essential sanctity which is the guarantor of rights, also dissolves. And without that appreciation, the remaining shell of human rights can easily collapse.

I refuse to believe that individuals such as Private Lynndie England and her collaborators represent a Christian conspiracy against the Islamic world. I am not Christian. But I’m even more adamant in my belief anyone who has even the remotest but real connection with Jesus Christ simply cannot do what they did to us in Abu Gharaib. These criminals are post-Christians – their spiritual condition has falled to this sad and sorry stage, centuries after Christianity lost its battle for the hearts and minds in its own heartlands.

It was bad what they did. But they didn’t stop there. What hurts more is that they also took photographs of it. And they didn’t even take much care to keep those photographs private. Perhaps they wanted to share this preserved evidence of their evil with other communities of evil.

But all of this brings me back to Raymond, the man who is a nation.

Raymond too killed his victims in what he believed was a pre-emptive strike. In his arrogance, he murdered Pakistanis who had no intention to kill him. That’s cruel enough. But he didn’t stop there and he didn’t flee. It seems that something about our prior conduct inspired in him the belief that we wouldn’t care; he could take as many of us down as he wished. So he went on to take photographs of his victims. It was on a busy road and it was mid-day. But it seems that he couldn’t care less.

It was only later that he attempted to flee. And this time, his fellows ran another Pakistan over. And again, they didn’t stop. They went on, dragging the dead body of the victim along with the car. You can never imagine what a Pakistani mother feels like when she’s told that white people have desacralized the dead body of her twenty-one years old in the very streets of her beloved Lahore. Only the sobs of one such mother give us some idea. What sort of a person could be so callous as to do this. Raymond, the man who is a nation.

The death of innocent Pakistanis at the hand of a murderer is in itself a human tragedy. And his trial should now take its due course, right here on our soil. But that is not what we, all one hundred and seventy million of us, need to reflect on.

Of all the questions before us, the one about his personal guilt or innocence, is about the least important. Raymond is just one of many. And, in one sense, his conduct reflect that of his country. The real questions which seriously need our collective attention are: Who does Raymond really work for? Why does he treat us the way he does and what have we done to deserve this? To how many more such people has our government granted visas? How many houses have they hired in Islamabad and elsewhere? Why are they doing all this? Why does our government let them do all of this, even as they function right under its own nose? Where is the Army which is supposed to keep ‘armed enemy combatants’(isn’t Raymond one?) out of our beloved homeland? General Kiyani, keeping in view all the unaccounted-for billions that we and our ancestors have put together to feed your establishment, is this not your failure? Or, for that matter, where is the ISI which was supposed to make sure that armed spies of other countries do not terrorize Pakistanis?

Just as the ugly face of the Iraq war should have been obvious well before the pictures from Abu Gharaib came out, these questions should have been vociferously raised much earlier. But Raymond, the man is a nation, has given us yet another chance to re-examine what we have become and how we are being treated.

Now, when so many of our brethren across the Nile have come together ask the right questions, the time is ripe. The moment is opportune. While Raymond should stay in the jail, his kin should pack up and leave, all of them. We should never have let them come here and take root. We should never have tolerated them in our cities, our neighborhoods and our roads. But even now, when change is everywhere in the air, may we have the courage to rid ourselves of them. May the hand that drives all affirm us in this endeavour. And may He give us the courage to lose what it takes to win, ultimately.