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New rubais for the New Year
How long shall we be satisfied with the shapes and appearances of time?
How long shall we watch and smell existence?
I am tired of the materials and creatures of the present.
It’s time to see the Beauties of beauties.
But when I look at Him, I see my image;
And when I look at myself, I see His image. Read the rest of this entry »
Of saints and sinners
James Astill writing for the Economist says that the Islam of the Taliban is far removed from the popular Sufism practised by most South Asian Muslims
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“NORMALLY, we cannot know God,” says Rizwan Qadeer, a neat and amiable inhabitant of Lahore, Western-dressed and American-educated, eyes shining behind his spectacles. “But our saints, they have that knowledge.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Culture, Delhi, India, Lahore, mystic, pakistan, Saint, Sehwan, SouthAsia, subcontinent, sufi, Sufism
We shall overcome the trap of violence
As clouds of war hover in the skies of Lahore, I am missing Delhi and lamenting the relatively difficult venture to visit the city The December of . 2008 was a month of promise. I was meant to visit the Jawaharlal Nehru University, read a paper, participate in a conference and enjoy the environs of the campus that would have glowed in December sunshine. Not to forget that I was meant to pick up two books on Gulzar, the great modern poet and lyricist of India whose links with Urdu and Pakistan’s Punjab are as intractable as the nine centuries of our South Asian past. How keen I was to walk around the bookstores of Delhi and try out the unfrequented eateries hidden behind the mayhem of the urban life. Above all, I wanted to finish the book that I have been writing on Delhi. For that I have to do a little more exploring of its myriad moods. Alas! Certain things are not meant to be. My trip was scheduled right after the tragic Mum bai events which were equally mourned in Pakistan. But that terrorist event has now become a bone of contention, almost a drumbeat for war, between India and my country . Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Delhi, Dilli, Gulzar, India, JNU, Lahore, Mumbai, Nizamuddin, pakistan, War
Dark forces still potent year after Bhutto’s slaying
I was quoted in this piece posted below
The same dark forces that appear to have killed Ms. Bhutto on this day last year - Islamic extremist groups based in Pakistan - seem to be behind the carnage in Mumbai last month, an event that pushed Pakistan into an even deeper crisis. Read the rest of this entry »
GulJee - what was the harm to you if you had lived a little longer!
Jahane Rumi is priveleged to publish this exclusive piece contributed by Syed Naveed Abbas
It is the month of December and one’s heart weeps as one invokes the memory of Guljee. His work is a living testament to our times and the dignity of a proud nation. He was the painter from the day he was born. A profoundly earnest and sincere artist, he displayed a high seriousness tempered with tenderness and a love of simplicity. Nevertheless, he is perhaps best known worldwide for his abstract work, which is inspired by Islamic calligraphy and is also influenced by the action painting. The images that Guljee’s brush strokes produced are not only rich in symbolic meaning but visually so much variegated that the eye travels fascinated from point to point. His painting comes from a divine inspiration, giving it a dimension of space and movement. He carried the script with a flourish in all directions, giving it the power of space, vigour and volume. He has made the brush prove mightier than the sword, time and again, and with his brush on canvas he has earned accolades. Whatever Guljee had a hand in turned out to have an unquenchable spark of utter genious.
His paintings are bright and full of colour, but the paint is put on with great sensitivity, and paintings vibrate with intense feeling. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: art, artist, calligraphy, Guljee, Karachi, painter, painting, pakistan
Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night
Book Review by Sumaira Samad
Curfewed Night is the memoir of young Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer, recounting his youth in the troubled valley during the ’80s and ’90s. A harrowing look at the political strife and armed conflict that has torn Kashmir apart over the last 30 years, Curfewed Night is nothing if not personal. The people, places and events Peer describes are ones he encountered and experienced first hand. They are his parents and neighbours and friends. Yet, despite this intimacy, essential to any good memoir, Peer’s narrative is refreshingly honest, frank and unbiased. His is no polemic, and sentimentality, self-pity and melodrama take a back seat.
Beginning in the years before the struggle, Curfewed Night invites the reader into a beautiful, peaceful mountain paradise where the regular, slow rhythms of village life make up one’s existence. Peer lives a happy, uneventful childhood, surrounded by a loving family and tight knit community. But this apparent serenity, as it turns out, is merely the glassy surface, hiding a quagmire beneath. The shadow of Kashmir’s turbulent history and unresolved conflicts never quite goes
Tags: Basharat, book, Curfewed Night, freedom, History, India, Kashmir, memoir, militancy, militant, pakistan, Peer, Politics, violence
Remembering Benazir Bhutto
Raza Rumi retraces the bittersweet legacy of Benazir Bhutto (published in the Friday Times)
It was only yesterday that we were mourning for the loss of an icon of our times. The much loved, and passionately hated Benazir Bhutto whose tragic murder in broad daylight was the greatest metaphor of what Pakistan has turned into: a jungle of history, ethnicity and extremism. Little wonder that Bhutto’s worst enemies cried and lamented the loss of a federal politician whose life and times were as unique as her name. The populist slogan – charon soobon ki zanjeer (the chain of the four provinces, literally) could not have been truer than the most tested of axioms. As if her death were not enough, the state response was even more brutal. Why did she participate in public rallies? On that fateful day of December 27, 2007, why did she invite death by sticking her neck out – literally and metaphorically? This was tragedy compounded by invective and betrayal. After all, had she not received a tacit understanding from the then military President, General Pervez Musharraf?
The official machinery then went to work in a super-efficient frenzy. Within hours, the murder scene had been washed away, right opposite the Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi where Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was also shot dead. If anything history repeated itself with a bang – only to restate that Pakistani Prime Ministers are dispensable accessories of the power game. The misogynistic thirst for blood-letting once quenched, patriarchy dictated that the autopsy of a woman became an issue of honour, confusion and violation of the law. How telling, that the laws of the land remain subservient to the imperatives of culture and tradition. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ali Bhutto, autopsy, Bagh, Benazir, Bhutto, ethnic, Extremism, federal, Garhi Khuda Bux, General Pervez Musharraf, Liaqat, murder, pakistan, Pakistanis, Sindh, Suskind, terrorism, US, Zulfiqar
Say no to war
by Raza Rumi
Little did we know that the imminence of war between India and Pakistan would once again become a possibility, howsoever faint or misguided? The ruling political junta in India is talking war following the media frenzy over Mumbai carnage. Once again it is time to be ‘tough’ with Pakistan. This is a surprise given that the interlude of peace under General Musharraf and all the offers of conflict resolution were either stalled by the red-tapism of Indian bureaucracy or a victim of political inaction. At home, we have the air-force planes hovering the wintry skies of Lahore causing consternation not only to the peaceniks, shrinking each day, but to the overwhelming majority of the common citizens. After all what have they got to do with the power game in Islamabad and Delhi, the media hysteria or even the terror cartels?
True that circumstantial evidence points to the fact that the metaphor of our times, Ajmal Kasai socially upgraded as the Urduised Kasab, is linked to the little Faridkot in the Pakistani Punjab. However, much of the international community has reminded India that there is little or no evidence of any direct involvement of the Pakistani state let alone its fragile civilian government. Yet, the rhetoric of unilateral strikes by the Indian foreign minister and now the venerable Sonia Gandhi is having the right effect here. Of war mongering, preparedness assessments and the much trumpeted security strategy through the nuclear option. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ajmal, Gandhi, General, India, junta, Kasab, Musharraf, nuclear, pakistan, Sonia, standoff, violence, War
Unfillfiled Civic Longing
Writing for The Friday Times, Pakistan
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After Mumbai, I have stopped watching television. I will not participate in the senseless jingoism of the Indo-Pak media industries … most Pakistanis do not want war with India |
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Since my return to Lahore, my social life has resumed its Lahori normalcy except that I have changed. Alas. I just cannot go to random places and meet the same people over and over again. Life is not just tribes, clans and cliques. This is why Rafay Alam has become a saviour of sorts. A younger muse, Rafay is an enthusiastic urban explorer. Though we have hardly kept our plans consistent let alone punctual, the tours within Lahore have been fantastic. From the Mughal to the Raj eras, I have managed to fathom a lot – the evident and not so apparent tide of change that has engulfed Lahore. The people’s architecture is simply astounding for its social and aesthetic statement. Away from the self-conscious red-brick homes of the elites, and far from the kitsch sold as comfort in the Defence Housing Authority; the Mughalpura and Ghoray Shah areas have some interesting buildings and colours that one would rarely find amid the growing menace of high-rises and hideous sign boards that are thankfully being removed fromthe scene.
It was therefore great to be at my dear friend SA’s birthday bash that was a smallish affair but had an interesting mix of Lahore’s younger intelligentsia. Except that I got into trouble while arguing with a friend over the ethnic riots in the commercial capital of Pakistan. The exchange was heated and more so following the Mumbai attacks and the theories that are floating around as to who actually perpetrated the attacks. I was a little too critical of the liberal chattering classes who are pretty much responsible for the mess to start with. Their prognoses and diagnoses are all off the mark. For instance, when someone said that post-Mumbai, quick attacks were an opportunity for Pakistan to carry out surgical strikes and weed out terror, I nearly banged my head against their woolly wall of delusion. Such distance from reality can only be found in the well heated drawing rooms of Lahore with an odd painting of a Pakistani master hanging above their spurious theorisations.
Tags: civic, islamabad, Lahore, Muzaffarabad, pakistan, society
Is it just cricket? Indian team should have come to Pakistan
“The tour’s cancellation means that terrorists have won; this is what they wanted to achieve.”
I was quoted in a piece published by Hindustan Times
Cricket is not just a game. It is also a standard to measure the tense relationship between India and Pakistan at any given moment. With India’s tour of Pakistan being called off, fans have been deprived of a rollicking good time. But not many players are complaining. The reason being the Mumbai terror attack. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Cricket, game, India, pakistan, SouthAsia, team, tour
1971: the forgotten silence
The NEWS: Friday, December 19, 2008
by Raza Rumi
This week marks the 37th anniversary of the tragic events of 1971 that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh. This time the sixteenth day of that deadly December invited little attention in the mainstream media as the new Pakistan struggles to manage the multiple crises of statehood, governance and cohesion.
Whether we like it or not, history and its bitter truths have to be confronted. When the united Punjab was being ruled by the Unionists and the Congress and the NWFP had a chief minister from the congress-Khudai Khidmatgar alliance, and almost all the custodians of South Asian puritanical Islam were opposed to Pakistan, the peasantry and the intelligentsia of East Bengal were spearheading a movement for Pakistan. There were indeed economic reasons, but there was an unchallengeable mass support for and belief in Pakistan. What happened after 1947 is well known; and within two decades or so, those who wanted Pakistan in the first place were subjected to state excesses and brutal treatment by the groups and elites that had actually little commitment to Pakistan or its idea. Nothing could be more ironical.
It is of little significance to remember the exact chronology of events or to indulge in a blame-game. The truth is that we as a state and society lost our majority province after pushing its people into a situation where independence through a War of Liberation was the only choice. India, of course, played a huge role in transacting this deal, but the West Pakistani elites had prepared the ground, sown the seeds of mistrust to a great degree. Thus the Pakistan created by its founding members was no more in 1971, further subdividing the Muslims of the subcontinent. A bitter lesson of history was in the making. If only, we were capable of paying heed to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 1971, Bangladesh, Bengalis, Congress, History, India, Islam, Jihad, Liberation, Muslim League, pakistan, state, tragedy, War
“I have never become less from dying”
Rumi departed earthly life on 5 Jumadi II, 672 A.H (according to the Islamic lunar calendar; Dec 17, 1273 A.D., according to the Christian calendar). His death is referred to by Persians as “vesal”, meaning “union (with the Beloved)”, while in the Mevlevi Sufi tradition, the expression “shab-i aroos” (variously spelled “sheb-i arus”, etc., in transliteration) is used, a phrase meaning “the wedding night” — the night of Rumi’s marriage to the Beloved. (The Sufi tradition of referring to the death of a Sufi saint as “urs” — a wedding — predates Rumi, and is still used in Sufi circles.)
Over the next few days, the Sunlight mailing list will offer poems appropriate to the memory of Molana’s passing from this life, and touching on his teachings on the significance of death. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: anniversary, mystical, mystics, Rumi, sufi, Urs
Even Tamas is online now
My dear friend Bhupinder alerted me to his post that talks about Tamas, a great novel (and subsequently a gripping TV serial) on the Partition. Now the serial can be watched online. This is what Bhupinder wrote:
Thanks to the indefatigable AG, the TV serial Tamas broadcast by Doordarshan in the late 1980s is now available online. (including some commercial ads from those days!) Based on a novel by Bhisham Sahni on the partition of India, it hit the TV screens in the backdrop of Babri Masjid- Ramjanmabhoomi imbroglio and brings back memories of some very fine TV serials made at time- Shyam Benegal’s The Discovery of India, Gulzar’s Mirza Ghalib and Arvind N Das’s documentary India Invented based on DD Kosambi’s works. Happily all these are now available at youtube and/or google videos.
Tags: Communalism, India, novel, pakistan, Partition, Tamas, TV
A new book on the Partition saga
Changing mindsets by SYED ALI NAQVI
One might cry out, humanity is dead if there was any, in disgust and disbelief after going through the events of the partition of the subcontinent. It is hard to believe that hatred and instinctual savagery can derive men to the edge of morality. Politics, religious bias and ethnicity do have the poison to make men so vulnerable that they get ready to put everything at stake.
Partition of the Indian subcontinent is seen as one of the most brutal and unfortunate events in the world history. There are incidents of mass murder by every religious and ethnic community of each other as well as rapes and abductions of women, looting and separation of families during the Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Independence, India, migration, pakistan, Partition, Persian, violence
9 Is Not 11
I am completely under the spell of this fabulous piece of writing, brutally honest and eminently sensible.
essay: terror in mumbai
9 Is Not 11
(And November isn’t September)
ARUNDHATI ROY
We ‘ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11″. And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the ‘Bad Guys’ he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on ‘terrorist camps’ in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.
But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, Arundhati Roy, Hafiz, India, Lashkar, Mumbai, pakistan, Roy, Saeed, Taiba, terrorism, USA, War, X Arundhati Roy X India X Mumbai X Roy X terrorism X Pa
Na mai Sussi
Na mai sussi
Na mai sohni
Na mai heer sayal
phair we sajna
dil kyouN mera
Ja lagayaa teray naal Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Poetry, Punjab, Punjabi, sufi, Sussi
The best of Mumbai posts
My friend Annie’s post on Mumbai is a remarkable piece of writing. I am cross-posting it here:
The other day, I went shopping for veggies at the nearest supermarket, and found it almost empty. The girls employed there were kidding around with each other. I heard the word ‘terrorist’. One girl told another she’d set the terrorists after her friend. The other one alleged that she was one herself. Light laughter. Odd, somehow. Perhaps, necessary, somehow.
Yesterday, I’d stepped out with my own bag and a laptop, boarded a train and opened a book. My station arrived, I got off and ten seconds later, wondered why my shoulder felt light. I’d forgotten the laptop in the Ladies compartment.
In a mad rush, I turned back. I had no way of tracking down that same train even if I did follow it in the right direction. The train had started moving by then, so I jumped into the nearest compartment. I almost fell. A stranger reached out and grabbed me at the door, pulled me inside. Others asked me to sit down, catch my breath, relax. I was too worried to step away from the door. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bombay, India, Mumbai, pakistan, post, terror
Islamabad: “This too shall pass”
bemoans Islamabad’s fall from grace
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Many of the new roads in Islamabad have nothing to offer to those who do not own cars |
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The view outside the Diplomatic Enclave |
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Contitution Avenue, Islamabad |
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The Serena Hotel, an architectural gem, is no longer accessible to |
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| Today, sleepy Islamabad, with its clear skies and majestic hills, has turned into a classic capital under siege. It is not just under siege from Islamists; internal forces are also set to eat it up in pursuance of a suicidal streak that runs along the faultlines of Margalla-land | |
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Chiding me for returning to Pakistan when its end is nigh, this corporate type endlessly complained about what a s**t hole Pakistan had become. Predictions of decay and disintegration flowed out as his clean, nimble fingers played with a BlackBerry |
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Not long ago, Delhi and Lahore were vulnerable to hordes of foreign invaders. The Mongol fear was overwhelming and indeed Delhi, the capital of the Caliphate for nearly eight centuries, was time and again ravaged by Central Asian fortune hunters. The builders and beneficiaries of idyllic Islamabad may have forgotten the shrill lesson of history: once the central throne was weak and maladministration at its peak, invasions and insurgencies were almost a natural consequence.
Today, sleepy Islamabad with its clear skies and majestic hills has turned into a classic capital under siege. It is not just under siege from the Islamists; the internal forces are also set to eat it up in pursuance of a suicidal streak that runs along the fault-lines of the Margalla-land.
After a long time away, a day in the capital was a trip into a fear-zone. Although it was admittedly for work reasons, the experience was nevertheless insightful and a little melancholic, especially when one has lived in Isloo during peaceful times. It is not pleasant to see a loveable city turn into a ghetto of barricades, echoing of trepidation; and incessantly wobble on the slippery foundations of civilian power-sharing arrangements. Since the suicide bombing at the Chief Justice’s reception last summer, the slide of the city’s law and order into chaos has been remarkably swift and unrelenting. The Lal Masjid saga, its location, proximity to the invisible force of the power market and bungled operations were clearly reflective of the seething unrest within the polity.
My parents were locked inside the house and recounted those few days with curfews, blackouts, nightly explosions and panic in the air. This had never happened before and a new history akin to the mainland was being scripted for the capital. The rest is history as they say – from the targeting of foreign missions, restaurants, hotels and not to mention the excesses against the sitting Chief Justice and later the lawyers and the media personnel.
This has surely made the proverbially oxymoronic Constitution Avenue a no-go area. On the crisp Thursday morning when I arrived in the city to attend a meeting in the besieged diplomatic enclave, the multiplicity of barricades was astounding. The Serena Hotel, an architectural gem, is no longer accessible to the public; in fact, normal traffic cannot pass on the road that leads to Constitution Avenue. The diplomatic enclave, now proposed to be a gated hamlet within the capital, is also nearly impossible to enter unless you have passes, stickers on vehicles and various identifications ready for inspection.
I wonder what the inhabitants of the diplomatic enclave feel. Apparently, nervousness is rampant despite the sense of adventure that many an international staff share as a life trait. Once inside, life within the compounds replicates “home” with ex-pat clubs, festivals and international nights, or so I am told. My friend, LA, from Canada, is undaunted as she continues to attend parties and even sneak into local markets with Pakistani friends and acquaintances. Not all ex-pats are so lucky: most have sent their families back to the countries of their residence and are barred from going to local markets and restaurants. Essentially, they are limited to the securer circles of work and living.
The obvious question that evades the attention of foreign missions is how much are they, if at all, responsible for all that is happening to Pakistan, particularly Islamabad. If the NATO allies are unable to control Afghanistan despite the massive amounts spent on the war machine, then there is something wrong somewhere. And, if billions in relief, emergency and development aid have been unable to alleviate the miseries faced by Afghan people, then the aid architecture should be revisited or perhaps scrapped to avoid senseless technical assistance on sophisticated government machinery in a country where millions are maimed, hungry and shelter-less.
Tags: Capital, India, islamabad, Lal masjid, marriott, pakistan, secretariat, siege, terrorism
Who will win the game?
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Raza Rumi
I have been amazed at the reaction that my little piece, “Policy shifts not war” published on these pages on Dec 4 has generated especially from the other side of the border. My email inbox was inundated with a wide variety of views and comments, some of which were quite unsavoury and abusive. However, the silver lining is that there were many voices from the other side that called for regional cooperation and finding alternative solutions to mindless jingoism. Most Pakistanis, while disagreeing with my interpretation of partition, expressed their sadness at the Mumbai mayhem and reiterated that a war had to be avoided at all costs.
The media factor has been much analysed over the past few years. As a powerful player in the game, the role of Indian, and to a great extent, Pakistani media industries has been far from satisfactory. As another formal institution with charitable rhetoric, it is emerging as yet another tool for reinforcing conformity, boundaries and the famed refuge of the scoundrels.
Media polls with shady sample sizes are confirming that the ‘public’ in India wants revenge thus isolating the sensible Indian leadership that has tried to undo the legacy of the past. Similarly, the prediction of surgical strikes and eliminating the so-called hideouts for terrorists in Pakistan is a magic bullet that would create a terror-free region. Nothing could be farther from reality, if only the lessons from US misadventures, bloody at that, are kept in view. Aggression and violence breed further violence. The relative degree of failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are rude reminders of how the neo-con, or its ideologically equivalent Hindutva strategy, is bound to create more problems than solving anything. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: History, India, Mumbai, pakistan, terror
Policy shifts not war
Raza Rumi
The dastardly attacks in Mumbai have irritated the old wounds and replayed the familiar, jingoistic tunes across the Indo-Pak borders. The Pakistanis, clamouring for friendship with their larger and problematic neighbour, have condemned these attacks in no uncertain terms. Who could be a worse victim of terrorism than Pakistan in these extraordinary times? Yet, the Indian media and sections of its establishment are quick to involve ‘Pakistan’ as the key perpetrator of the terror regime. This has obviously angered some and allowed a few Cold-War practitioners to call for self-defence and fighting with India till the last. The truth is that much of Pakistan does not want war. Hopefully, the Indian citizens are also not looking at war as a solution, or so it seems.
It is almost a cliché to state that war is not a solution to the current imbroglio despite the hysterical calls by the Hindu right to ‘neutralise’ Pakistan. The saner elements in India have already pointed to the implicit and deep-seated issues of misgovernance, short-termism and the mess of Partition that were neither carefully deliberated nor rectified during all these decades. The non-state actors in both India and Pakistan have gained ascendancy due to the power distance of the Raj induced steel-frame structures of governance. If there are dozens of districts in India that operate beyond the writ of the formal state, there are areas in Pakistan that are not just outside the scope of the formal state but in a state of rebellion due to the war on terror. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Asia, Azad, India, Indpendence, Mumbai, pakistan, Partition, South, state, terror, terrorism, violence, War