Cowasjee Articles

'On His 118th Birthday'

23rd December 1994

I GREET you, Mr Jinnah, as we near your 118th birthday. I, and many others, thank you for having ordained that the anniversary of your birth coincide with that of the Second in Trinity, so that Christmas Day will be a holiday in our country for as long as your name is revered. Seven years ago in this newspaper. on August 14. 1987, I wrote in your name: You have collectively and dissolutely pakdanced all along the Way down the year,—one step forward, whirl, sidestep, swirl, two step backward, twirl, twist, turn four steps backwad.

"Neither surprised. nor confounded—certainly not shocked' am I. Long ago I fathomed your genious (with hindsight, I now realise how exceedingly well). Therefore, all those years ago, I deviated from my initial adherence and set myself the task of carving out a nation for you, a territory in which you could survive, for you to tend, a country your successors would proudly be able to call their fatherland. Given the circumstanes, and tbe short time I had left to me, I did the best possible.

"It was not easy, negotiating with the tiresome British, dealing with the wily Mahatma, his discordant Mahadevs, and the ironclad Sardar. It was rough going. It was not until August 7th, 1947, after taking off from Delhi for Karachi and settling down in the Dakota, that with great satisfaction I was able to mutter to my young ADC, Ahsan 'Well, that's that'.

"It will serve no purpose for me to now enumerate for you the multitude of your follies, shortcomings and losses. The Master Reteree exonerated me many years ago, and I now rest content upon my laurels. But you, on your part, could at least have made the effort to do better, rather than blindly blunder along and merely survive.

Since you have made it beholden upon yourselves to remember me my wish is that you remember me as I was. I do not want to be the object of hagiography I do not want to be remembered as is momentarily convenient or politic. I want to be remembered as the normal human being I was. with faults, foibles and failings. Yes, I took upon mysell a mission which by fortune and fate I was able to accomplish. Having accomplished it, I died, highly apprehensive of the honesty, integrity, and capability of those I was leaving behind to care for my cre.

"Why is it that I am so often misquoted and misunderstood? Let me be clear. I conceived and created a nation-state, with the steadfast unwavering intention that it should be forward-looking, democratic, and secular. Bigotry, theocracy, intolerance, hatted played no role in my ideology. Three days before the outset, before the start of the countdowns I unequivocally declared in my speech to your first constituent assembly: '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'.

"These words, spoken On August 11th 1947, embody my faith, my creed and my testament to my countrymen. Whether you like it or not, whether it suits you or not whether it all be too liberal, humanitarian hill, tolerant and progressive for your warped minds to grasp, this is the ideology I had planned for my country."

To bring you up to date, Mr Jinnah. The remaining half of the country you made is now inhabited by some 123 million mainly uneducated souls, multiplying like rabbits. They, in their illiterate state, by ticking various symbols have elected in a free and fair election the latest of your disastrous governments. We are now led by an awesome (or awful, depending upon how you look at it) husband and wife twin-act. Our de jure prime minister is the wife, Benazir, for the second time around. De facto prime minister is the husband, Asif. also for the second time around. As is the custom in the Islamic world, husband must dominate wife in all ways, thinking included.

Those they have chosen to rule by their sides. or rather, under them, are a motley lot bereft of brain, bone, and shame. To them, to a man, to heal- is to obey. Under their tull control and at their mercy they have the judiciary, the bureaucracy, finance foreign investment, energy, power generation, communications, defence, education, health, population planning, the environment—you name it.

As has been said so many times, what makes the mare go is pelf in tandem with power. But even in pay-offs today there is 'no foal, no fee' is 110 honesty. The principle of 'no foal, no fee' is either unknown. or if known, blithely disregarded.

Your profession, the law is in a shambles. The men who practise it are demoralised divided. The judiciary is on a leash with many judges hand-picked on probation, or just plain scared. Indpendence to them is but a dream. The dignity of our courts, as you will agree, should not be dependent, as it is, upon the law of contempt. It should, as you would have hoped, be based on more solid foundations. We also know that judges must be above suspicion, as white as driven snow. This does not now hold true with us. Sitting on one high court bench we have a judge who is out on bail on a murder charge.

As I write this, I am still recovering from the news about the appointment of new law minister. Benazir's original one this time around, Groovy Haider, has just been sacked. He was as honest, as corrupt, and as supine as the rest of them, but he obviously failed tc hear the voice of the emperor 'Roma locuta est; causa finita est'. The new man, Nabi Dad Khan, is a lecturer who calls himself a professor. Perhaps he is unable to dif ferntiate hetween the two. He is an advocate of mediocrity, no hot-shot lawyer he. But then, what has any hot-shot lawer law minister ever done for your country? This minister is unlikely to make any law or take earth-shaking decisions. What he is likely to do is to give t he Press a field day when he rises to utter in the Assembly.

One most perturbing and distres sing factor of life these days, in what you quite simply and cleanly named "Pakistan", is the habit of land-grabbing From head honcho downwards, to the most lowly man in a position to do so, they all grab for themselves land that rightly belongs to the nation, its redidual worth. So much in a hurry is each man or woman in power to grab as, grab he or she can, that now land that is under water even at low tide planned to be reclaimed for the people, is being taken. This greed has unbelievably also extended to land belonging to the University of Karachi, that once fine institution. We would have expected that a university-educated head of government would have put her foot down on this. But no.

Our anthropologist professor, Akbar Ahmed, is planning a film on your life. We await this with much trepidation as we all know that the life portrayed on celluloid will be a know that the life portrayed on celluloid will be a far cry from the life that was lived. He has full 'government support". The commercially minded, amongst those sponsoring the adventure, should endeavour to put the real Jinnah on the screen. The government of the day would then ban the film, making it a riproaring success.

Your mazar, architecturally hideous as it is, is a focal point for all successful, and I stress the word 'successful', politicians, sportsmen, artists, and so forth. The minute a man wins an election, or a match, or a medal, he is to be found in Karachi, at your grave, grabbing with piously folded hands a photo opportunity. You had the entire triumphant hockey team the other day. Had they lost the World Cup they would not have been seen anywhere near your tomb.

The barren spaces around your resting place have luckily and by some stroke of fortune been saved from land-grabbers (not that they did not try). The people of Karachi have now taken it upon themselves to plant trees for you. 'Treemazar' is at work and one day soon, the entire area will be wooded.

This last is the only good news I can give. I refrain from listing today the woes of the city of your birth, which the government is incapable of governing. Fortunately, you remain beyond 'their' evil and destructive reach.

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