How many Qassims, Ghaznvis and Ghoris do we need?        

-- Mubarak Ali --

Last week when I was passing through the Lahore Mall, I saw a banner flattering with a bold headline 'We welcome Parvez Musharraf as a modern Muhammad bin Qasim'. The banner was manifest of historical consciousness of our society. I started wondering why our nation always thinks in terms of a strong man as a deliverer? Why do we construct a past that entirely belongs to the conquerors and invaders? Why do we remember Mah-mud of Ghazna and not al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, or Firdusi? This attitude and approach to cognate history is reflective of the psyche of our people shaped by continuous mani- pu-lation of history by the state.

Political history, as a major discipline, dominates our history textbooks. Popular history fiction by writers like Sharar or Nasim Hijazi contains Muslim heroic figures who em-body the essentials of a
brave hero to crush the enemy and manifest courage, mag- nanimity, and tolerance towards the oppressed. Such qualities, by the end of the narrative, are rewarded by way of marrying the hero off to a beautiful woman, who is generally non-Muslim.

Equally fascinating is the play of historical films that heighten the drama of war and con-quest to popularise the past events that gratify the sense of history in popular conscious-ness. Naturally such
commercial ventures fetch enormous amount of money to producers and film industry at large.

Muhammad b. Qasim, Mahmud of Ghazna, and Shihabuddin Ghori emerged as powerful symbols in Muslim politics in the context of the 1930s' communal atmosphere in India. Interestingly they continue to be used as symbols of perfect Muslim heroes who have the ability to restore peace
and order through their belligerence. Such manipulation is of course suitable to those rulers who seize power by force. They legitimate their rule by manipulating figures of war and power from our past. The grave impact of which is that our past, not just in popular consciousness, but in
academics and school education, is re-duced to the past of conquerors and aggressors. Not surprisingly then it has the strongest appeal to the people. Such a version of history gives our society a temporary sense of pride and a satisfaction in bygone greatness nurtures self-delusion and escape in the past that lives no more.

18th Century was the turning point in the history of the Muslim societies. Owing to the process of colonization the Safavi, the Mughal, and the Ottomons were on the decline. Having lost the power and prestige, Muslim societies harked back to their past glories to find images of victors and conquerors who had built great empires. Such imagination was a kind of redemption from colonial bondage, and a source of hope that such heroic personas would redeem them from political enslavement, social and cultural decay.

The Indian Muslims imagined the Ottoman Empire to be a powerful constant. Undoubtedly it had projected power during the time of Sultan Muhammad Fateh and Sulaiman the Magnificent, but its position in the political world in the twentieth century  had changed. Not recognizing such a change, the Indian Muslims acclaimed the Ottoman Caliph as their protector. During the Balkan wars in 1912-13, Maulana Azad's paper al-Hilal started to publish the heroic encounters of the Turkish generals who fought against the Christians. It served as an inspiration to the Muslim community in
India. However, the defeat and surrender of the Caliph in the First World War greatly disap-pointed them.

In an atmosphere of loss and grief when Ghazi Anwar Pasha got killed in his mission to unite all the Turkish speaking people in Central Asia, the Indian Muslims turned him in to a mujahid and later martry. The other hero that emerged as victor was Mustafa Kamal who restored the lost dignity of the Turkish nation by defending his country against the allied invasion. Both Pasha and Kamal, despite their antithetical views, became the he-roes of the Muslims of the subcontinent. Out of the two, Mustafa Kamal continues to be a model for Muslim rulers and leaders. Riza Shah, the founder of Pahlawi dynasty of Iran, and Amir Habibullah of Afghanistan, had the aspiration to emulate him to moder nize their countries but circumvented the process of modernization due to their involve ment in corruption. Similarly Jinnah, Ayub, and now Paervez Musharraf aspire to espo use the values of Ataturk, the great man and hero.

Ataturk, however, is viewed as a destroyer of religion and tradition by the religious extr- emists. His endeavour to secularize and modernize Turkey is anathema to the bearers of religious extremism. The religious extremist parties have rejected Ataturk as their hero and take pride in the figures of Muhammad b. Qasim, Mahmud of Ghazna, and Shihab uddin Ghori. They also became relevant in the context of Indian-Pakistani conflict: the conquerors who defeated the Hindus and propagated and established Islam in the Indian subcontinent. This also shows that the historical consciousness of our people is still tilted towards the belief in physical power, not realizing that the days of physical power are over and intellectual creativeness and technological innovation reign supreme.

The consequences of hero worship have resulted in disaster for Pakistan. Following the footsteps of the conquerors, the rulers of Pakistan treated it as a conquered country and, therefore, legitimated plunder and loot of its wealth and resources. The only difference between them and the model conquerors is that in the past the wealth was taken away from India and deposited in the state treasuries of Damascus, Bhagdad, and Ghaznin. Now the Swiss banks or American and Western countries provide safe haven to the Plundered wealth. How can we condemn the modern heroes when we admire the ones of the past on the same deeds? If we justify hero worship, then
we have to condone not only their plunder but also endure their rule and sacrifice each and everything to make them great and powerful.