From Sultan Abdul Majid to PM Gilani
By Asif Javed
Williamsport , PA
There is no end to the depressing news coming out of Pakistan recently. Most of us have become quite used to the absurd behavior of the men who govern us. What has led me to write this letter is a very moving plea from Irshad Hussain Haqqani — one of the most respected journalists in Pakistan -- -to prime minister Gilani. It is reported that the prime minister of our country — heavily in debt and currently at war — has given a very expensive gift to a singer whose name I cannot recall. Mr. Haqqani has asked the PM to reverse this decision. If history is any guide, Mr. Haqqani is going to be disappointed.
As we, the citizens of the land of the free and the pure, endure this reckless extravagance, it is very proper to look back at our history. This will be painful but appropriate. Late Gen. Gul Hassan (the last Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army) had served as ADC to the Quaid-i-Azam after independence. In his memoirs, he writes about a cabinet meeting at the Governor General House. The staff was in the process of getting the meeting room ready. Mr. Jinnah noted that arrangements for serving tea during the meeting were already made. He was visibly upset at that and had the staff remove the crockery. His exact words, as quoted by General Gul Hassan, escape me since I no longer have that book. But he made a statement that said some thing like: ”The cabinet members are able to afford tea at home. I do not want to burden the treasury of Pakistan for this”. There, you have it.
Now for the real history buffs, let us go back a bit further to the 1840’s. The Ottoman Empire was floundering. The treasury was almost empty. Sultan Abdul Majid was on the throne of an empire surrounded by hostile neighbors. During his reign, the empire was continuously shrinking and had lost most of its European territories. And what did he do? Let me quote from a superb book, “The Ottoman Centuries” by Lord Kinross. He writes: Increasingly seduced by the life of the harem, his procreative activities aroused the amazement of an English traveler and investigator, Charles McFarlane. Before he —Sultan Majeed — was twenty years old, he was the father of eight children, born to him by different women in the imperial harem.
Lord Kinross continues: Oblivious of the treasury deficits and dire warnings of impending bankruptcy, the Sultan, crowned his extravagance with the building of the huge modern marble palace of Dolma Bahche. This cost him a fortune. Its marble halls glistened with gold leaf; its ceilings were painted by French and Italian artists; its throne room contained the world’s largest mirrors; and in the Sultan’s bedchamber, the bed was made from solid silver.
Lord Kinross narrates adds:”Here Abdul Majid entertained with lavish ostentation in the European manner. He imported European actors, ballet dancers and other performers, building a theatre attached to the palace in which they staged their entertainments. Meanwhile, the finances of the Empire were heading downhill, through inertia, in the direction of chaos”. And this, was just before the start of a long and bloody conflict with Czarist Russia — the Crimean war.
So as is obvious, our current PM has plenty of company in history. It is regrettable that he and his ilk have more in common with Sultan Abdul Majid than with the Quaid. This is our misfortune.
