Pakistani Authors’ Books Launched in San Francisco Bay Area
By AbdusSattar Ghazali
The United Muslims of America (UMA) and The Sikh Foundation International hosted the launching of two books - Walking with Nanak authored by Haroon Khalid and Between the Great Divide by AnamZakaria. The book launching event was held at the Chandni Restaurant, Newark, CA on April 28, 2019.
TashieZaheer, President of UMA, in his welcome address pointed out that he was happy to see people from both sides of the India-Pakistan border present in the gathering. He said his mission was to promote amity and peace in the sub-continent.
Tellingly, a large number of Sikh community people attended the event.
DrPriyaSatia, Prof of International History at the Stanford University, was the moderator of the event. DrSatia has authored two books: Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East was published in 2008whileEmpire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution appeared in 2018.
Walking with Nanak, published in December 2016, is the third book of Haroon Khalid. His first book,A White Trail: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, was published in 2013. His second book In Search Of Shiva: A Study of Folk Religious Practices in Pakistan was printed in December 2015.
Haroon Khalid has an academic background in Anthropology and has been a travel writer and freelance journalist since 2008, traveling extensively around Pakistan, documenting historical and cultural heritage. His latest book Imagining Lahore: The City That Is, The City That Was, was published by in August 2018.
In Walking with Nanak, relying on oral retellings of history, Haroon Khalid endeavors to bring Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism to life. The authorseeks to retrace the steps of the great man on his 24-year journey of spiritual growth.He provides us valuable insights about the rich historical heritage of the Sikh tradition in Pakistan.
Haroon visited eleven cities of Pakistan in his quest to recreate the travels of Guru Nanak and his Muslim companion, Bhai Mardana. In his travels he was accompanied by Iqbal Qaiser, a leading authority on the history of Sikhism in Pakistan. Iqbal Qaiser has written a seminal book on Sikh heritage in Pakistan.
The author complains the lack of any literature about Sikhs in Pakistan and claims that Walking with Nanak is the first book of its kind. "There is still hardly any literature on the Sikh community in the country. In fact, my first book, A White Trail, which includes a comprehensive section on the Sikh community in the country, is the first such attempt to talk about the history of the Sikhs after the creation of Pakistan. Another important feature that is missing from this large body of work is how these places are interpreted and understood in a Muslim Pakistan, which has increasingly been identified in an Islamic framework. In that regard, I believe, Walking with Nanak is the first book of its kind," Khalid said.
Guru Nanak was born in 1469 in the Pakistani part of Punjab, and he passed away there in 1539. Along with his close Muslim disciple Bhai Mardana, Guru Nanak travelled widely, in the Punjab and far beyond, preaching his universal message: “No one is our enemy, none stranger and we get along with everyone.”
Haroon Khalid tells us that Nanak’s mother Mata Tripta had long yearned to have a child. She undertook arduous journeys to please the gods. On one such journey to a temple outside Talwandi in Punjab, she met NaulakhaHazari, a fakir who predicted her wish would soon be fulfilled.
The temple pandit would often try to shoo Hazari away but he would not budge saying “the entire world belonged to Allah and no one had any right to banish him from anywhere”. An Auqaf booklet available at NaulakhaHazari’s shrine states Guru Nanak was born after the fakir prayed for his mother.
In Walking With Nanak, Khalid takes his readers on a long journey to various places in Punjab as well as in the southern Sindh province where, over the centuries, Sikh devotees established gurdwaras. He
travels from one gurdwara to another and narrates incidents from the life of Guru Nanak as well as from other Sikh Gurus.
There are a total of eleven Gurus: Ten human-form gurus and the eleventh, or current and everlasting Sikh Guru, is the integrated Sikh scripture known as the Guru Granth Sahib. The Tenth Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, had bestowed the Guruship forevermore to the Guru Granth Sahib.
"I have always known that Nanak, like me, was a Punjabi, but his character became increasingly difficult to access in a Muslimised Punjab after the creation of Pakistan. There are hardly any references to him in popular culture. There was, therefore, a curiosity in me to learn about someone who is such an integral part of my culture yet blatantly missing from cultural representation," the author explained.
The format of Walking With Nanak is perhaps exceptional since it is part fiction, part history and part travelogue.
Between the Great Divide
Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-administered Kashmir is the second book of AnamZakaria. She is an author, development professional and educationist with a special interest in oral histories, identity politics and narratives of conflict. Her first book, The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians (HarperCollins 2015) explores the shifting intergenerational perceptions of the 1947 Partition in India and Pakistan. This book won the German Peace Prize 2017.
Anam has an academic background in International Development from McGill University (Canada) and has previously worked as a director at The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, collecting oral histories from the Partition generation and religious minorities of Pakistan and connecting thousands of school children in India, Pakistan and the US through a cultural exchange program.
The main objective or the central theme of The Great Divide is to show how people of Pakistan-administered Kashmir perceive the ongoing conflict, the Kashmir dispute. The author describes the peoples’ perspective as an unsung, uncelebrated, unacknowledged and unobserved aspect of the Kashmir “conflict,” which is obviously less known globally whereas things get more highlighted from the Indian side of Kashmir owing to the Indian army atrocities against the Kashmiris.
Whereas ample literature is available on the Kashmir conflict and the turmoil going on especially since 1989, it remains a fact that the focus continues to be more on the Indian side and the issues and challenges of instability, mostly remain untouched on the Pakistani side, Anam argues.
Tellingly according to CNN, since 1989 more than 47,000 people have been killed in the Indian-administered Kashmir. “This toll does not include people who have disappeared due to the conflict and some human rights groups and nongovernmental organizations put the death toll at twice that amount.”
In her book, Zakaria details her travels through Azad Kashmir to speak to the women and children living near the Line of Control. Here is quotation from her book:
“My name is Ayesha (the name has been changed to protect her identity). I’m a resident of Neelum Valley. I was born in 1992. Since I gained consciousness, there has been firing in Neelum... from as early as I can remember. Even during snowfall there was heavy firing. Wohkuchnahidekhtethae (they wouldn’t care who they were hitting or what the conditions were like). The firing could begin at any time and it would disturb everything. ……
“Everyone who was born in that generation, who lived through that time, is psychologically impaired,” adds another woman. ‘When we hear any kind of noise, firecrackers at a wedding or something else, we panic. During shelling, even if a person died in firing right in front of us, we could not come out. There was no one to cover his or her face, to read the kalma. Often we’d hear that a mortar had hit another house but we wouldn’t go there because the minute a couple of people gathered, they would fire again.”
In press talks, Anam acknowledged that this was a difficult book to research and write for a number of reasons. “The stories I have recorded are chilling and heart-wrenching, the trauma recent or even ongoing for many. Moreover, while researching for this book, the situation in Kashmir changed drastically. In the aftermath of Burhan Wani’s killing, India-Pakistan relations soured and the LoC became very active.”
“Through the course of researching and writing this book, the greatest revelation for me has been that there are multiple identities, politics, grievances and aspirations in the region and it would be unfair to reduce Kashmir to any one simplistic narrative,”Anam says. “However, on both sides of the divide, there is an overwhelming dissatisfaction over how the issue has been reduced to India-Pakistan bilateral politics and militarism. So many of the Kashmiris I conversed with demanded peace and stability in the region, which becomes a far-fetched dream in face of growing Indo-Pak antagonism and its repercussions on the Line of Control.”
In reply to a question about the founder of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front, Maqbool Butt, who was hanged on February 11, 1984 in Tihar Jail in New Delhi and buried in the jail premises,Anam told me that she has briefly mentioned about Maqbool Butt.
Maqbool Butt was my (this writer’s) colleague when we worked together in 1964-65 in the Peshawar Edition of a leading Urdu newspaper Daily Anjam which was mainly published from Karachi.
Since his death, the JKLF has been demanding that the mortal remains of the party's founder be handed over. Kashmiri leaders also call for shutdown each year, which is observed in the Valley to mark his death anniversary.
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