Indianguy
Voter (50+ posts)
Mohammed Hanif, journalist and author of the award-winning book A Case of Exploding Mangoes talks about how people on the other side of the
border view India's
great leaders with the same lack of understanding. Hanif, who has moved to Karachi after 11 years in London graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer, but left to become a journalist. He has worked as a BBC correspondent covering Pakistan, has written plays, and also the screenplay for the BBC drama, What Now, Now That We Are Dead? He believes that the Western media should stop writing endless obituaries about Pakistan, that Pakistan history should review its approach to Indian leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, and that, the people of Karachi seem to prefer secular chaos to the Taliban.
Q. Clearly, calling Jinnah a `great man' did not go down well in India and Jaswant Singh was summarily booted out of the BJP. How does Pakistan view Gandhi and Nehru?
A. As you can probably tell, Jaswant Singh has become a bit of a folk hero in Pakistan. Not that anybody has read his book. But everybody remembers Allama Iqbal's prophecy: Paasban mil gaiay Kaabay ko sanam khanay se. (Kaaba has found defenders in the house of idols).
In the popular imagination, which is basically fuelled by the right-wing Urdu press, Gandhi is some kind of a pervert Hindu fanatic who personifies the Muslim communalist's idea of a cunning baniya. We are frequently reminded of `baghal mein churi, moonh pe raam raam'. Nehru is seen as a suave seducer who managed to usurp large chunks of the Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir that should have been part of Pakistan.
There is some objective history which portrays them as great statesmen caught up in troubled times but we are never taught that history in schools.
Q. How faithful has Pakistan remained to Jinnah's vision, "you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques'', and how badly did General Zia-ul-Haq subvert it?
A. That quote comes from Jinnah's first speech to Pakistan's legislative assembly and they actually tried to expunge it from the records. So the subversion started way before Zia came on the scene. We haven't been very nice to religious minorities: Bhutto declared Ahmedis kafir, Zia brought in bizarre blasphemy laws which made it very easy to hound Hindus and Christians. That should leave us to go to our mosques freely, but no. Because of the Shia-Sunni conflict, and lately because of the Taliban, we have had a lot of mosques blown up. So right now in our Islamic Republic (named not by Jinnah but another military dictator Ayub Khan) mosques are the most dangerous places.
Q. Numerous obits on Pakistan have been written. Is the country really about to implode, as the doomsayers suggest, or is it carrying along just fine?
A. Pakistan implodes almost on a daily basis, then gets bored with its own miseries and goes to sleep hoping to wake up just fine. That has never quite happened. Someone recently said, what do you expect from a country where the Father of the Nation (M A Jinnah) happens to be a brother to the Mother of the Nation (Fatima Jinnah). So it's a bit of a dysfunctional family but then we tell ourselves, which family isn't?
Q. How do Pakistanis view India? The elite view? The mass view?
A. Pakistanis used to view India as a poor elder brother who would pick on the younger brother to feel good about himself. Now they see India as the newly rich older brother who hasn't lost any of its old habits. The elite feel competitive and want to maintain a kind of status quo. They only violate it when they can manage to go to Bangalore for a cheap heart bypass. Our masses are too busy trying to make a living and trying to find a safe mosque to pray in.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news ... 923304.cms
border view India's
great leaders with the same lack of understanding. Hanif, who has moved to Karachi after 11 years in London graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer, but left to become a journalist. He has worked as a BBC correspondent covering Pakistan, has written plays, and also the screenplay for the BBC drama, What Now, Now That We Are Dead? He believes that the Western media should stop writing endless obituaries about Pakistan, that Pakistan history should review its approach to Indian leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, and that, the people of Karachi seem to prefer secular chaos to the Taliban.
Q. Clearly, calling Jinnah a `great man' did not go down well in India and Jaswant Singh was summarily booted out of the BJP. How does Pakistan view Gandhi and Nehru?
A. As you can probably tell, Jaswant Singh has become a bit of a folk hero in Pakistan. Not that anybody has read his book. But everybody remembers Allama Iqbal's prophecy: Paasban mil gaiay Kaabay ko sanam khanay se. (Kaaba has found defenders in the house of idols).
In the popular imagination, which is basically fuelled by the right-wing Urdu press, Gandhi is some kind of a pervert Hindu fanatic who personifies the Muslim communalist's idea of a cunning baniya. We are frequently reminded of `baghal mein churi, moonh pe raam raam'. Nehru is seen as a suave seducer who managed to usurp large chunks of the Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir that should have been part of Pakistan.
There is some objective history which portrays them as great statesmen caught up in troubled times but we are never taught that history in schools.
Q. How faithful has Pakistan remained to Jinnah's vision, "you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques'', and how badly did General Zia-ul-Haq subvert it?
A. That quote comes from Jinnah's first speech to Pakistan's legislative assembly and they actually tried to expunge it from the records. So the subversion started way before Zia came on the scene. We haven't been very nice to religious minorities: Bhutto declared Ahmedis kafir, Zia brought in bizarre blasphemy laws which made it very easy to hound Hindus and Christians. That should leave us to go to our mosques freely, but no. Because of the Shia-Sunni conflict, and lately because of the Taliban, we have had a lot of mosques blown up. So right now in our Islamic Republic (named not by Jinnah but another military dictator Ayub Khan) mosques are the most dangerous places.
Q. Numerous obits on Pakistan have been written. Is the country really about to implode, as the doomsayers suggest, or is it carrying along just fine?
A. Pakistan implodes almost on a daily basis, then gets bored with its own miseries and goes to sleep hoping to wake up just fine. That has never quite happened. Someone recently said, what do you expect from a country where the Father of the Nation (M A Jinnah) happens to be a brother to the Mother of the Nation (Fatima Jinnah). So it's a bit of a dysfunctional family but then we tell ourselves, which family isn't?
Q. How do Pakistanis view India? The elite view? The mass view?
A. Pakistanis used to view India as a poor elder brother who would pick on the younger brother to feel good about himself. Now they see India as the newly rich older brother who hasn't lost any of its old habits. The elite feel competitive and want to maintain a kind of status quo. They only violate it when they can manage to go to Bangalore for a cheap heart bypass. Our masses are too busy trying to make a living and trying to find a safe mosque to pray in.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news ... 923304.cms
