The Dawn by Night Half-devoured
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
Florida
Woh intizaar tha jis ka, yeh woh sahar to nahin
Yeh woh sahar to nahin jis ki aarzoo lay kar
Chaley they yaar key mil jaegi kahin na kahin
Falak kay dasht mein tarron ki akhiri manzil
Kahin to hoga shab-e-sust-gaam ka saahil
Kahin to jakey lageyga safina-e-ghum-e-dil
(This blemished light, this dawn by night half-devoured/Is surely not the dawn for which we were waiting/This cannot be the dawn in quest of which, hoping/To find it somewhere, friends, we all set out/In the deserts of the sky, beyond the stars last flight,/Must be the shore of the ocean of slow-moving night/A haven where the heart’s load of pain may alight)
—The Dawn of Freedom by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz’s poem risks becoming a cliché, perhaps. But unfortunately, the lines he wrote on the eve of independence in 1947 keep ringing truer with every passing Independence Day and more so on this 65th one. Jury is still out on whether Pakistan was created for Islam or the Muslims. But consider the pledge its founding father Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah gave to those who we call minorities in this land of the pure today. In his address to the Constituent Assembly Jinnah said on August 11, 1947:
“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State ... you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
Another cliché perhaps? Well, not if one considers that it did make it into the constitution of this Islamic Republic, the Article 20 of which addresses the “Freedom to profess religion and to manage religious institutions” as follows:
“Subject to law, public order and morality:
(a) every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion; and
(b) every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions.”
Nevertheless, the bitter, cold reality is that no matter what its constitution says, Pakistan has become a prison for various religious and a few ethnic minorities. The Ahmadis, the Shiite, the Hindus and, of course, the Baloch sit there, waiting for their turn to be taken to the gallows. Last vestiges of diversity continue to be sacrificed on the altar of a monolithic ideological state. No matter how well-intentioned Jinnah’s words might have been, the fact is that today there remains a high likelihood that the Hindus would cease to be Hindus — in the religious sense — were the things in the citadel of Islam continue as they are now. Plunder of their property, forced marriages with Muslims imposed upon Hindu girls and now the televised conversions of Hindus. There simply is no end to what madness the majority Muslims of Pakistan are capable of unleashing on the most vulnerable.
On the flip side, contrary to ceasing to become Muslims — not in the religious sense as Jinnah envisaged — a vast majority has become rabidly xenophobic. This indoctrinated lot tolerates, enables, eggs on and celebrates another kind of minority from amongst its midst — the religious zealot. This battled-hardened, war-trained zealot uses its militant, and now increasingly political, muscle to weed out what it considers the infidels, or worse, the heretics. The religious vigilantes have taken upon themselves to undo whatever little protection the constitution offers to the minorities. “Right to profess, practice and propagate his religion” in Pakistan? That seems like a cruel joke when one sect is barred from using the age-old Arabic greeting like Salaam or calling their place of worship a mosque, the latter razed to ground frequently. A major sect of Islam is threatened to be confined to their Imambargahs as their congregations are bombed with impunity and individuals target killed regularly while the perpetrators are set free by no less than the highest court in the land.
Is there any wonder then that some 250 Pakistani Hindus crossed over into India on the eve of the ‘Minorities Day’ — celebrated ostensibly in Pakistan to mark Jinnah’s August 11 speech. The extremely sad episode was made further grim by the antics of the Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who refused to allow the Hindus go beyond Jacobabad, Sindh, unless he was assured that they would not seek asylum in India citing religious persecution in Pakistan. He alleged that there was a conspiracy against Pakistan and demanded to know why the Indian High Commission in Islamabad had issued visas to so many Hindus at one time. Two things may be lost on Mr Malik: firstly, if there is any conspiracy against Pakistan, it is by Pakistan itself, which is ravaging itself in a way no one can or wants to. Secondly, after the decades of ordeal they had gone through in Pakistan, if saying that they loved it, could deliver those hapless Hindus out of their misery, they might just say it. More power to them.
One is not sure, however, if a promised land awaits the Hindus crossing over into India, where, coming from Pakistan, they might be viewed with suspicion. The fate of many Shia Hazara asylum-seekers is sealed on the rickety boats they take to Australia in an attempt to get out of the hellhole that Quetta has become for them. Whether cliché or not, Faiz sahib’s poem had put the travails of the partition poignantly. But the verse still retains a veneer of civility glossing over the savagery that the partition left in its wake. It really took Saadat Hasan Manto to rip the façade off the blood-tainted experiment in nationhood, which continues to date. The master storyteller has just been awarded Pakistan’s highest civil award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, posthumously, by President Asif Ali Zardari. The award does not do a thing for Manto’s literary stature but as the exodus of Pakistani Hindus continues I am tempted to read Manto’s short story Mootri — the Urinal — again. A haven where the heart’s load of pain may alight remains a mirage!
Note: Faiz’s translation by Sarvat Rahman
(The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com. He tweets at http://twtitter/mazdaki)
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