In the shadow of the gun – I

By: Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

During the 1973-1977 army action in conflict zones, thousands of innocent people were killed, tens of thousands were internally displaced

Mr Ikram Sehgal’s “Of Empire and Army” (Newsline, March 2012) is a bundle of misinformation and bias against the Baloch. Perturbed that the media holds the security establishment solely responsible for the Balochistan crisis, he claims, “Most of our problems stem from jumping to conclusions that are based on misinformation, and then deliberately distorting those half-truths to suit mass perception.” He feels, “Disproportionate media projection of the separatist leaders encourages ethnic divisions and violence.” He probably thinks the Baloch struggle and the atrocities by the state are a figment of the media’s imagination.

The state’s brutal kill and dump policy seems justified to him. He half-heartedly admits, “No one denies the fact that targeted killings of the Baloch are taking place, that people are being picked up and that state actors are involved in the killing and the disappearances.” Then he offers a lame justification that “sons of the soil” are killing an equal number of settlers. Balochistan Home Department’s recent report said that the majority of the ones killed are ethnic Baloch.

Sehgal tells us that on December 29, 1973, as his son was being born in Karachi, his company came under heavy fire from Marri insurgents near Kahan, after the dismissal of Ataullah’s representative government. The Baloch considered them aggressors rightly, and could not be expected to throw a party. He then says, “Throughout that year, many soldiers were martyred and several injured,” and adds, “In one instance, the insurgents beheaded 19 of our soldiers.”

Well, I too was in the Marri area with the Baloch nationalists then and assuredly, the Marris never indulged in such abhorrent practices. His claim defies reason as no guerilla could possibly have time to ambush and behead soldiers. Ambushes invite response and with helicopters, jets and motorised transportation at the army’s disposal, only fools would linger after an ambush.

The columnist adds that the army could have retaliated against the Marris in kind but relented because they understood that their Sardar (tribal chief), who was living comfortably in Kabul, misguided the Marris. Incidentally, Sardar Khair Baksh Marri and other Baloch leaders, including Sardar Ataullah Mengal, were in jail until 1978. He blames the media for misinformation and distortion. During the 1973-1977 army action in conflict zones, thousands of innocent people were killed, tens of thousands were internally displaced, social and economic life was disrupted, flocks were stolen, crops destroyed, and the entire Balochistan was terrorised. Eight persons, whom I knew personally, including my dear friend, Daleep Dass, aka Johnny Dass, went missing, never to be heard of again. Sher Muhammad Aliani — a sept, an elder, a septuagenarian — was picked up because of an ambush in the vicinity of his settlement near Kahan; his brutally tortured corpse was later recovered. Murad Khan Ramkani of Tadri too was similarly killed. The valiant Asadullah Mengal and Ahmed Shah Kurd were abducted and killed in Karachi. The examples of the ‘consideration’ shown are too numerous to note.

Ghalib’s unique strand of Sufism – Dr Mohammad Taqi

If anything, the wine of adoration may actually have enhanced Ghalib’s description of those mystic themes of Love Divine. February 15th marks the 142nd death anniversary of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

“Ghalib, you write so well upon these mystic themes of Love Divine,

We would have counted you a saint, but that we knew of your love of wine.”

Professors Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam narrate from Altaf Hussain Hali’s Yadgar-e-Ghalib (Memoir of Ghalib) that when King Bahadur Shah Zafar heard Ghalib recite the above ghazal, he commented, “No, my friend, even so we should never have counted you a saint.” Ghalib retorted, “Your Majesty counts me one even now, and only speaks like this lest my sainthood should go to my head.”

That 19th century connoisseur of wine — and mysticism — continues to fare quite well even today. Several biographies of Ghalib and translations and commentaries on his works have appeared in the past decade like the 2003 volume by Professors Russell and Islam titled The Oxford India Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals preceded by Natalia Prigarina’s Mirza Ghalib: A Creative Biography in 2000.

A few weeks ago in India, Justice Markandey Katju suggested that Ghalib be awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously and the writer-activist Asghar Ali Engineer started a signature campaign towards that goal. The suggestion and the campaign became mired in a controversy, which is beyond our scope here. What really caught my attention was Mr Engineer’s apt comment that besides, and in, his literary contribution, Ghalib “was a follower of what is known as Wahdat al-Wujudi school of Sufism, which is most liberal school among sufis” and his entire poetry is representative of this liberal, humanistic and all-embracing ethos.

Work on Ghalib’s poetry, letters and life had started in his lifetime, with his close friends and disciples meticulously archiving the relevant materials. Ghalib’s biographers from Hali to Russell, and his aficionados — Ghalib Shanasan — have all acknowledged his mystic aptitude if not outright mysticism. In biographical sketches his doctrinal inclinations too have been recorded. But while the masters writing on and about Ghalib have elaborated on his ostensibly sectarian persuasion and journeys in Sufism, a particular strand of Sufism that is unique to Ghalib has gone unnoticed. And interestingly this is something that has been hiding not just in plain sight but announced with pride by Ghalib himself.

Commenting on Ghalib’s faith, Russell and Islam, again on Hali’s authority, report that his antecedents were Sunni Muslim but at some point in his life he became either a Shia or at least sympathetic to the Shias. Hali himself notes that Ghalib may have been a Tafzeeli — someone who exaggerates in praising Hazrat Ali Murtaza (RA). Other scholars like Sufi Tabassum have made similar observations. This perhaps does not even begin to define Ghalib’s creed, which he had himself expressed both in verse and prose.

For all practical purposes Ghalib was not a religious man and had nothing to do with religious orthodoxies. For example, while his letters provide a great montage of almost all his life, there is remarkably no mention of him having participated in any Twelver Shia ritual at all. The anecdotes about his wine consumption and not observing fast or prayer rituals have, of course, been part of literary lore. Within the 19th century orthodox Muslim society, Ghalib remained an arch unorthodox.

Sufism and its intricacies are not my forte nor do I wish to venture where the greats like Malik Ram and Maulana Ghulam Rasool Mehr had once held sway. I do want to draw the attention of the Ghalib scholars towards how within the realm of Sufism, Ghalib apportioned himself a niche that perhaps was neither explored before him nor expounded on after him. This may actually have to do with Ghalib’s well-known desire to remain above the crowd in all his temporal and, indeed, divine quests, thus remaining unorthodox even within the heterodox Sufism.

Hali’s memoir of Ghalib had carried, in its opening, a portrait of the poet captioned with a Persian verse of Ghalib. A similar sketch, along with the same verse, adorns Russell and Islam’s aforementioned work. The Urdu journal Nuqoosh had also opened its Ghalib edition with the same lines, which say:

“Ghalib-e-naam-awaram, naam-o-nishanam ma-purs,

hum Asadullahem-o-hum Asadullahi-em.”

(I am the renowned Ghalib; do not ask of my name and fame/I am both Asadullah and Asadullah’s man.)

Russell and Islam explain it as: “My name is Asadullah and my allegiance is to Asadullah, ‘the Lion of God’ — a title of Ali (RA), a cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), and the object of Ghalib’s special reverence.” But translating Asadullahi as mere allegiance is quite exoteric and does not do justice to the verse and the nuanced thought therein. On many occasions in his letters Ghalib refers to being the servant of Ali (RA), saying, for example, “Ali ka bandah hoon, uss ki kasam jhoot naheeN khata” (I am the retainer of my lord Ali [RA] and do not swear by his name in vain).

The God-man relationship in the sufi realm, of course, has many dimensions. The fundamental one is that of Lord (rabb) and His servant (abd), and the more sublime and complex one is an inimitable and divine intimacy (wasl) with the Creator (dhat). Reading Ghalib’s above quoted Persian verse, and other Urdu and Persian verses, and parts of his prose together suggest that the intended esoteric meaning of Asadullahi is not as limited as Russell et al had noted — perhaps Ghalib was pushing the envelope.

Ghalib himself leads us into the second and related dimension of his sufi realm in another Persian verse, saying:

“Mansoor-e-firqah-e-Ali-allahiyan manem,

Awaza-e-anaa Asadullah der afganem.”

Translation: (If) there is a sect of those saying Ali [RA] is our lord, (then) I am their Mansoor, For I chant that I am the (lord) Asadullah.

Mansoor al-Hallaj’s claim and fame in mysticism are self-explanatory. But by drawing a parallel between Mansoor and God on the one hand and himself and Asadullah Ali on the other, via equating an-al-Haq and anaa Asadullah, Ghalib appears to have let us in on the crux of his Wahdat al-Wujudi philosophy, and more. In his declaration ‘I am Asadullah’ and thereby the annihilation into Ali, Ghalib distinguishes himself not just from the ordinary crowd but also his strand of Sufism from other sufis and sufi orders.

If anything, the wine of adoration may actually have enhanced Ghalib’s description of those mystic themes of Love Divine. February 15th marks the 142nd death anniversary of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.

(Versified translations from Professors Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam.)

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/mazdaki

Courtesy: Daily Times

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20122\16\story_16-2-2012_pg3_2#.Tz0GpQOz204.twitter

IQBAL’S HINDU RELATIONS

This above all – Khushwant Singh

I am beholden to P.V. Rawal of Jammu for sending me a photograph of Allama Iqbal’s Kashmiri Brahmin family taken in Sialkot in 1931. At this time Iqbal was in his mid-fifties. He had already risen to the top as the greatest Urdu poet, at par with Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. Although he was proud of his Brahmin descent, he had nothing to say about his Hindu relations. In this picture, the elderly lady seated in the middle is his grandmother, Indirani Sapru, nicknamed Poshi, wife of Pandit Kanhaya Lal Sapru. The man standing on the left in a shawl is Iqbal’s cousin, Amarnath Sapru; note the close resemblance to the poet.

The family traces its origin to one Birbal. They lived in the village of Saprain (hence, the surname Sapru) on Shopian-Kulgam road. Then the family moved to Srinagar where Iqbal and most of his cousins were born. Birbal had five sons and a daughter. The third one, Kanhaya Lal, and his wife, Indirani, had three sons and five daughters. Kanhaya Lal was Iqbal’s grandfather. His son, Rattan Lal, converted to Islam and was given the name Nur Mohammad. He married a Muslim woman — Imam Bibi. The Saprus disowned Rattan Lal and severed all connections with him. There are different versions of Rattan Lal’s conversion. The one given to me by Syeda Hameed, who has translated some of Iqbal’s poetry into English, maintains that Rattan Lal was the revenue collector of the Afghan governor of Kashmir. He was caught embezzling money. The governor offered him a choice: he should either convert to Islam or be hanged. Rattan Lal chose to stay alive. When the Afghan governor fled from Kashmir to escape its takeover by the Sikhs, Rattan Lal migrated to Sialkot. Imam Bibi was evidently a Sialkoti Punjabi. Iqbal was born in Sialkot on November 9, 1877. As often happens, the first generation of converts are more kattar than others. Iqbal thus grew up to be a devout Muslim. It is believed that once he called on his Hindu grandmother, then living in Amritsar. But there is no hard evidence of their meeting and of what passed between them; Iqbal did not write about it. Though he had many Hindu and Sikh friends and admirers, he felt that the future of Indian Muslims lay in having a separate state of their own. Iqbal was the principal ideologue of what later become Pakistan. Iqbal’s mother-tongue was Punjabi but he never wrote in it. He used only Persian and Urdu, as did many Urdu poets before him. …

Read more : Telegraph Calcutta India

Jamat-e-Islami sees Taseer’s assassin in ‘seventh heaven’

JI sees Taseer’s assassin in ‘seventh heaven’

By Shamim Bano, Karachi

In a shockingly blunt endorsement of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination, Ameer Jamat-e-Islami in Sindh Asadullah Bhutto has declared that the assassin will directly go to the “seventh heaven”.

He said this after a press conference addressed by JI Ameer Munawar Hasan at Idara-e-Noor-e-Haq on Tuesday. The press conference ended abruptly when a JI spokesman Sarfaraz Ahmad broke the news of Taseer’s assassination to Munawar. “Is he alive?” was his first reaction.

“Whoever has killed him is a pious man and will go directly to heaven,” replied Bhutto to a question put forward by this correspondent.

He even went on to say that Taseer would not have got killed if the government had replaced him. “Aasia Bibi will suffer the same fate if the punishment awarded to her by the court for using derogatory remarks against Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa (PBUH) is not implemented,” he added.

Earlier, during the press conference, Syed Munawar Hasan said that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) should also clear its position in Sindh after parting ways with the government at the Centre. …

Read more : The News