Page 23 - Pakistan Link - August 21, 2020

COMMENTARY
n By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
B Chicago, IL
reaking Links is the English translation
of Razia Fasih Ahmad’s Urdu novel Sadi-
yoon Ki Zanjeer (Chained Centuries)
based on the chain of events that unfolded as
a result of the political clash between West and
East Pakistan. She did the translation herself. It
is perhaps the first book that focuses on the hu-
man suffering of the conflict: how families got
affected and how politics affected human rela-
tionships. The author has put in considerable
effort to get the facts and details of events right.
She traveled to Bangladesh and talked to people
of different viewpoints and gathered facts re-
lated to the 1971 tragedy. She has presented a
true picture of the violence and bloodshed: the
horrors of war. In Breaking Links, Razia Fasih
Ahmad has very eloquently juxtaposed history
with romance.
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and de-
stroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys
and happiness God has granted us in this world; to
fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our
neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this
beautiful world.
- General Robert E. Lee (letter to his wife,
1864)
War indeed is a cruel thing. Politicians and
generals, who consider winning war as easy as a
“slam dunk,” declare war; and in the process ordi-
nary people and families, who never seem to know
much about the intricacies of politics and war, get
torn apart.
The breakup of Pakistan and the emergence
of Bangladesh in 1971 is a sad saga of South Asian
politics. Many eminent scholars and historians
have addressed the key questions for the Dacca
debacle: Could the disintegration of Pakistan have
been avoided by statesmanship and moderation
on the part of three parties (General Yahya, Mujib
and Bhutto) involved in the final dialogue? Was
Indian involvement surely for humanitarian con-
sideration or did India exploit an opportunity to
destroy its archrival Pakistan? How did the super-
powers of the day support their key constituents?
But writers and academics have failed to address
the magnitude of human suffering and human toll
of the 1971 tragedy.
There are many similarities between the
American civil war and Pakistan’s civil war of
1971. In the American civil war there was the
North versus South divide. In 1861 the young and
struggling nation of the United States was divided
into two opposing political, cultural, and econom-
ic ideologies. The North with its industries, finan-
cial institutions, universities, rail transportation, passes through the areas which presently make
and newly-arrived skilled European workers was
a forward-looking region. In contrast, the South
with its agriculture-based economy, aristocratic
mindset, and institution of slavery was a backward
looking region. The Southern aristocracy, rooted
in the past, promoted a slave-based society and
was ready to die to defend its lifestyle. The cost of
the Civil War was enormous in terms of human
lives and destruction of resources. But in the end
wisdom prevailed, the forces of truth won and the
country remained united. Many books have been
written about the history as well as the human suf-
fering.
In 1971, Pakistan was also a young country
that was hijacked by a military dictatorship. The
military generals and politicians failed to live by
democratic principles and to promote social equi-
ty and justice. The East Pakistanis perceived West
Pakistan to be rich and not giving them the fair
share of national resources for their development
and growth. The West Pakistanis failed to under-
stand the genuine demands of the East Pakistanis.
The Pakistani leadership lacked wisdom and vi-
sion. There was a complete leadership failure in all
domains. The situation was exploited by Pakistan’s
archrival India.
Indian propaganda machine was effective in
sowing the seeds of hatred and mistrust; it cre-
ated a perception among East Pakistanis that the
revenues from their cash crop jute was being used
for the economic growth of West Pakistan. It was
an internal conflict but the resolution of the con-
flict was shaped by the politics of the Cold War.
In contrast to the Soviet Union’s full support of
India during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, Pakistan’s
main “friends,” China and the US, failed to offer
any meaningful assistance to resolve the conflict.
The end result was the disintegration of Pakistan.
Book & Author
Breaking Links
East Pakistan broke away and emerged as the new
nation of Bangladesh. In contrast to the American
civil war, for Pakistan’s civil war of 1971, unfor-
tunately, writers, scholars and academics wrote
mainly focusing the politics and history, and they
failed to shed light on the human suffering of the
war in an unbiased manner.
Breaking Links is the English translation of
Razia Fasih Ahmad’s Urdu novel Sadiyoon Ki Za-
njeer (Chained Centuries) based on the chain of
events that unfolded as the result of the political
clash between the West and East Pakistan. She did
the translation herself. It is perhaps the first book name, the government sees it as if we are creating
that focuses on the human suffering of the conflict:
how families got affected and how politics affected
human relationships.
The author has put in considerable effort to
get the facts and details of events right. She trav-
eled to Bangladesh and talked to people of differ-
ent viewpoints and gathered facts related to the
1971 tragedy. She has presented a true picture of
the violence, rape, murder, and bloodshed: the
horrors of war.
In Breaking Links, Razia Fasih Ahmad has
very eloquently juxtaposed history with romance.
The plot is like a complex mosaic of events and
characters. The author has used beautiful meta-
phors to describe the economic and geographical
disparities of her characters.
The novel consists of two parts. The first part
deals with West Pakistan’s present and past, and the
concept of national integration, and tells a story of the necks of the bearded Sikh soldiers, and hugged
romance and marriage. The second part presents
the sequence of the changing political climate that
led to the disintegration of political and personal
relationships. The author tells a story of two main
characters - Zari, belonging to West, and Shams, to
East Pakistan. Shams and Zari, who work together
on tourism projects, fall in love, and end up mar-
rying each other hoping that their union will pro-
mote national integration, but their marriage gets
deeply affected by the political violence that grabs
the country and results in its dismemberment.
The author begins the novel with an in-
troduction to the Turkish soldier, Qasim Khan,
who centuries ago came to India as a soldier with
Bakhtiar Khilji. The author traces the lives of the
descendants of Qasim until the 1970s. Qasim
first lands in the region of Bengal (former East
Pakistan, presently Bangladesh) where he mar-
ries a local girl, Mukul; Shams is her descendent.
Qasim yearns for his homeland and decides to
go back to Turkey. In his journey back home he
the northern areas of Pakistan, where he marries
Suzan; Zari is the descendent of Suzan. The locals
out of respect start calling him Miyan Sahib. Many
generations later the descendants of Qasim and his
two wives, belonging to West Pakistan and East
Pakistan, crisscross their paths again.
The author has used simple but power-
ful language to portray the agony and trauma of
events. Her descriptions and narratives of events,
spoken through her characters, are rich in detail,
and she has succeeded in giving the reader a true
sense of the message she wants to convey. For ex-
ample, through one of the main characters, Shams,
she presents the perceptions of the East Pakistani
people: ‘Turning away from the truth doesn’t solve
www.PakistanLink.com
the problem. We East Pakistanis think that people
from West Pakistan do not try to understand our
culture and our customs. Instead, we are ridiculed,
though we were, and still are, more educated than
them. People have now started saying that just as
India has not willingly accepted the partition, the
West Pakistanis haven’t accepted the majority of
Bengalis in Pakistan. Otherwise, they would not
have hesitated in declaring Bangla as the second
language along with Urdu. That’s not all. Other
provinces have their names, for example, there’s
Punjab, Sindh, Frontier, and Balochistan. But our
province has no name. When we try to give it a
a separate state.’…. ‘So you have started the Ban-
gla Nationalist Movement. Is it going to be a real
danger?’… if certain things are not taken care of it
might. I know there is much poverty here as in the
East wing. But when visitors come to West Paki-
stan, they are given tours of the neat and clean sub-
urbs of Karachi and Islamabad. They are shown
big factories in Lahore and Faisalabad. This is bad
strategy. They get the wrong impression of West
Pakistan being rich and prosperous while East
Pakistan is getting poorer day by day.”
Through the eyes of another character the au-
thor vividly presents the image of the surrender of
the Pakistan Army: “Yes, I have seen the tragic cer-
emony… At first General Niazi signed the papers
then he took out the revolver from the pocket and
gave it to General Arora. As he turned away, some-
one from among the crowd hurled his shoe at him.
Local people lifted General Arora over their shoul-
ders. The Bengali public threw garlands around
them. The caps of Gurkha soldiers were decorated
with flowers, and petals of marigold flowers were
scattered over their heads.”
What led to the fall of Dacca? The author
presents the answer through the dialogue of an-
other character: “Pakistan government has been
hiding things from public … they were hoping
that conditions might change. Not only the public,
but the soldiers, intellectuals, politicians, and mili- plication is that war is not the answer, war is the
tary officers, even the commander of the Eastern
AUGUST 21, 2020 – PAKISTAN LINK – P23
Command General Niazi were kept in dark. They
were hoping that help was just about to arrive from
friends, meaning China and the United States even
when that hope was gone, they kept it secret to
gain more time for the representative of Pakistan
to seek mandate from the United Nations. They
also kept the people of West Pakistan under the
illusion that if East could bear the brunt of war for
a few more days, the Pakistan army would capture
Kashmir.”
Razia Fasih Ahmad has also presented a
deeply touching account of how war affects and
victimizes human beings, especially women. When
Zari, the main character of the novel, after giving
birth to a baby boy a day before the fall of Dacca,
finds out that her baby has died, she expresses her
sorrow and agony: “Why do such things happen
to us women? Why do women have to pay the
heaviest price of wars and revolutions? ... Because
we are not taught to hit back, that’s why. We are
taught to take the beating…I say if all the women
of the world decide not to give birth to a child un-
less all deadly weapons were destroyed, and peace
restored, wouldn’t men come to their senses? But
who’s going to teach them such wisdom, and make
them realize their strength?”
In the Finale of Breaking Links, Zari, in re-
sponse to her husband’s invitation of reconcilia-
tion, reflects on her dilemma: “Yes, she wanted to
be with him too. But she was from Pakistan, Sham
would be alien in Pakistan, while she would be an
alien in Bangladesh and they would both be aliens
in any other country, although they were both de-
scendants of same Miyan Sahib who had come to
India with Bakhtiar Khilji centuries ago.”
Breaking Links, published by Oxford Univer-
sity Press, is a powerful novel that deals with the
human aspects of the 1971 tragedy. Embedded in
the plot of the novel are the historical accounts of
the misperceptions and realties of peoples about
each other, India-Pakistan hostilities, and cold war
politics which eventually led to the disintegration
of Pakistan in 1971. The book is a must read for all
those who want to learn from history, and those
who want to promote peace, justice, and social
equity. It offers wisdom for policy makers: the im-
highest form of human ego. The use of military
force to solve global problems arising from differ-
ing viewpoints, economic interests, and ideologies
is as futile as drinking lemonade to tame the in-
flated ego.
Author’s Interview
Dr. Ahmed S. Khan conducted a short inter-
view with Razia Fasih Ahmad (RFA) about Break-
ing Links.
Q: When and how you decided to write Sady-
on Ki Zanjeer?
A: I visited East Pakistan during 1965 and
again in 1967 to receive the Adamji Prize for my
novel Abla Pa. These experiences were very dif-
ferent. In 1967 I could feel the rift between East
and West Pakistan as the Bengalis were extremely
reluctant to speak with West Pakistani writers in
Urdu. They made it clear that if we did not speak
Bangla language they would prefer to talk to us in
English. My experience in the Army cantonments
was that in every gathering there were separate
groups of West and East Pakistani officers and
families who never shared their thoughts, griev-
ances, and misunderstandings. This attitude at
every level resulted in misgivings and animosity.
After the 1971 war and my husband’s retirement
from the Pakistan Army, I met many Biharis in
Karachi who had fled from East Pakistan during
the turmoil. Their stories were totally different
from what we had heard in the West Wing. After
getting this insight and not finding any significant
writing on the subject at that time, I decided to
write this novel.
Q: What led you to translate the novel into
English?
A: One lecturer in India translated it but the
scholars did not think it to be up to the mark. It
was not accepted by the publishers and so I decid-
ed to translate it myself. Oxford University Press
(OUP) wanted it abridged so I cut it short and the
OUP got it edited.
Q: You traveled to Bangladesh to do research
on your book. Based on your interaction with
BOOK, P24