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Malir was a windswept vast swathe of land bounding the east of Karachi. It had a near-desert terrain of sand and hardscrabble soil where scattered bush and scrubs of long grass were the only signs of vegetation. The heartbreakingly barren landscape stretched to the horizon on all sides exuding desolation and eerie calm. Malir cantonment, the main army garrison of Karachi, was somewhere in that sandy sprawl and a river with an eponymous name ran to the south, far from where the boy scouts assembled for the Jamboree. Perhaps Malir river saved the area from becoming a total desert with sub-terranean streams.
   A tent city had sprung up on the barren space redolent of stories in the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. It had roads and passageways, diagonally cutting each other at various places, creating a geometrical grid. Tents were pitched in neat clusters, each having a pole in front where the national flag fluttered in the winter air. Under the clear blue sky, sometimes gusts of winds swept over the place carrying thin layers of sand and dust that pirouetted above ground. The mornings were hazy, with mist curling up snugly around the tents and nestling the waning cold of the previous night. When sun broke through the miasma, it was already well above the horizon. The sunshine was modest, melding the cold with a mild heat. Winter in Malir was not as harsh as in northern India and Punjab part of Pakistan through which they came, but it could not be taken lightly. There was a sharp fall of temperature between day and night but even day light was not strong enough to fend off the cold that brewed from sand and was carried on the back of northern wind.
   They had travelled from Wagah border by a special train of Pakistan Western Railway almost non-stop to Karachi passing through Lahore, Faisalabad (Layalpur), Khanewal, Multan, Bahawalpur, Rahimyar Khan, Jacocabad, Sukkur, Khanpur, Nawabshah, Hyerebad, Kotri and finally stopping at Malir cantonment station. Every major city, particularly capital of provinces, had an army cantonment marked off by civil lines and a railway station for use mainly by army. From the Malir cantt. station they came in busloads to the Malir Jamboree ground where tents had already been pitched and each cluster allotted to contingents coming from different provinces. He does not remember the exact number after all these years but there must been more than three thousand boy scouts from all over Pakistan. The West Pakistani contingent was not only much larger than the one from East Pakistan, it was more varied, culturally and linguistically. To go around different clusters of tents accommodating boy scouts from Punjab, Frontier Proince, Beluchistan and Sindh was like visiting different countries. But the contingent from Karachi was more cosmopolitan, representing different ethnic and linguistic groups. Though provincial languages were spoken, English was the lingua franca, more or less, followed by Urdu.
   Looking at the sprawling tent city with all the facilities required for living comfortably, one could not but marvel at the efficiency of planning, executing and co-ordinating the activities involved in the huge undertaking. Nothing was left unfinished when they arrived at Malir Jamboree ground and as a result they did not have to do much by way of physical work even though they were mentally prepared for some, pitching tents at the least. To have brought more than three thousand boy scouts from all provinces, including far flung East Pakistan and accommodating them in one place was no mean achievement. The sense of awe and wonder was heightened by the realisation that an event of that magnitude was taking place only six years after the cataclysmic experience of the partition of India. Many of the national institutions and Govt. offices were yet to be fully established and the rehabilitation of refugees was not yet complete. In the circumstances, even to think of a national boy scouts Jamboree was a dare and to bring it about was nothing less than a miracle. Perhaps the Govt. wanted to demonstrate that though grappling with various problems, nation building was going on in every sphere of life. It could very well be that boy scouts movement was considered as one of the accoutrements that a nation requires to fulfill the pledges made for social development. In a ceremonial sense, there was national prestige involved in having a national boy scouts movement. What better manifestation of this could there be than to organise an extravaganza like a National Jamboree ? Politics of nationalism was as much at work as the need for upholding the idealism propagated by Sir Boyd Orr, the founder of Boy Scouts.
   He was overwhelmed by the size of the tent city at Malir at first sight and so must have been others. He had not seen anything like that before. What amazed him no less was the orderly and systematic manner in which all the activities went on from day one like clockwork. There was no confusion, no interruption and no misunderstanding on any count. No contingent grumbled for anything missing or for being inadequate. Next to a place for sleeping the other necessity was to have meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They thought each contingent would be required to prepare their own meals behind their tents. But the organiser thought better of this and had set up common kitchen for each contingent where professional cooks prepared meals thrice a day. Meals were served punctually during all the five days that they stayed in Malir. The food served was simple, mostly roti (unleavened round thin bread) vegetable and meat curry, but it was always served hot and in adequate quantity. The only thing they had to do to was to stand in queu for meal and to wash plate after eating. As regards the last but not the least of necessity, responding to call of nature, rows of makeshift toilets were made a little way behind the tents. They were hygienic but not smell proof. Their teacher complained about the stinking toilets like a common refrain. He had to, because he visited toilets more often than others.
   After their arrival at Malir Jamboree ground, half a day was taken up in settling down. In the afternoon there was briefing about the programme by the organisers who called the contingents from the provinces by turn for better communication. It was during the afternoon briefing that he saw for the first time the Chief Commissioner of Boy Scouts movement in Pakistan, Mr. De Souza. He had read his name in letters and heard about him on different occasions during the train journey across India and through Pakistan. Faced to face, Mr. De Souza looked young for his age, perhaps because of his slim but healthy figure. He was very informal and always wore a genial smile. There was warmth and sincerity in whatever he did or said. What impressed him most was his laid-back style. He was the prime mover and leader of the big show and yet there was no trace of tension or anxiety manifest in his face or words. It was a pleasure to be in his company even if for a while and from a distance. He personified the spirit of boy scouts movement in every possible way.
   Mr. De Souza was a member of the Parsi community, as the name would suggest. In Karachi there was a small but enlightened and influential Parsi community. They were advanced in education and was a close-knit group with inter-marriages and a devout religious life. They had taken to western culture spontaneously without sacrificing their communal way of life. By outward reckoning, Mr. De Souza was very much like an Anglo-Indian (Pakistani ?) and must have regarded himself as one. When he met De Souza again in 1969 he had no difficulty in recognising him. He was then Sub Divisional Magistrate in Karachi and Mr. De Souza had come to surrender his gun licence before emigrating abroad. When he told Mr. De Souza that he attended the first National Boy Scouts Jamboree in 1953 that was organised by him, he was both surprised and pleased. They went over the experience of the jamboree at some length over a cup of tea. As Mr. De Souza reminisced there was nostalgia and a tinge of sadness in him that was palpable. Changing the subject he said he was sad to leave Pakistan, particularly Karachi where he was born and brought up. There was not much prospect for him in the country and so he had decided to emigrate, he said. Many of his community had already gone to Canada and America and it was at their behest that he was going to turn over a new leaf abroad. It would not be easy, he knew, because of his age but he had to try his luck, nevertheless. He looked at Mr. Souza and told him that he looked as young as in 1953 which brought a faint smile on his face. It was then that he discovered that De Souza had no longer an ever smiling face. Age and experience, whatever the latter might have been, visibly took a toll of his youthful and energetic look. He has no doubt that wherever Mr. De Souza might have settled down, he must have given a good account of himself.
   The first two days were taken up by dress rehearsal for the grand parade on the opening day. Mr. Ghulam Mohammad, the chief guest and the Governor General of Pakistan would take the salute from boy scouts in the march past. A stage was already erected for him high above the ground overlooking the broad avenue prepared by leveling sand and soil. The stage, made of timber and iron frame, was inspected twice every day before the opening of the Jamboree by a group of army and police officials. Police constables cordoned off the stage where a multi-coloured Shamiana (marquee) was made the day before the inauguration.
   During their five days stay in Malir, on most days in the afternoon they went to Karachi, which was one and a half hours journey by bus. They went past the Karachi airport on the right and along Drigh road, crossing PECHS, a co-operative housing society where multi-storeyed residential apartments had been built. Besides these structures the land on both sides from Malir to the city was empty and unkempt. Their bus, provided by the Jamboree authorities, usually parked at Freer Hall where they disembarked and went around the city for four to six hours, depending on the agreement between them and the driver. On days when they did not go to Karachi, there were arrangements for playing football, cricket, volley ball and basketball. There was no lack of space for these games. But irrespective of the game played, it was tough going because the playing field was sandy in places and uneven with stubbornly hard soil. One could not guess the speed of running in that intractable and unpredictable terrain.
   Mr. Ghulam Mohammad came, took the salute from the grand stand and went back with his entourage, visibly impressed. He had a cunning smile and a sly look, he thought. The march past was picture perfect and as co-ordinated as the organiser had hoped. The dress rehearsals and regular briefings paid off handsomely. Every one was pleased and the atmosphere was euphoric. There was a feast to celebrate the successful inauguration in the evening. Pilaf, roast mutton, chicken rejala, beef kebab, nan roti, rumali roti (very thin round bread) and sweets were consumed with all caution thrown to the wind. The sumptuous dinner was followed by a cultural programme where boy scouts from different contingents sang songs, danced various types of dances and made slapstick jokes as in a vaudeville. It was a cheerful evening and everyone was in a celebratory mood. Then something happened snapping the rhythm abruptly. A group of naval scouts from Karachi went on the stage and started singing the popular but tasteless Bombay film song starting with ‘Lare lappa’. There was hushed silence for a few minutes. Then one of the organisers went to the stage and asked the naval scouts to stop singing which they did. That was the only unpleasant and discordant note in the day’s proceedings. Perhaps it was like raising storm in a tea cup or making mountain of a mole hill, a palaver that could be avoided. But it spoke of the care and consideration given by the organisers, even to minute details, like which song was ‘in’ and which was not. Though taken aback by the sudden turn of events, his admiration for the organisers, was only enhanced by that small intervention.
   That night their teacher was seen going to the toilet several times. Some of the boy scouts in their group said that he had eaten a whole lamb stuffed with pilaf. Of course, there was exaggeration in that insinuation. But anyone who was familiar with the habits of their teacher would agree to suspend disbelief and laugh as if it was true.

THE youngsters suspected of carrying out the London bombing attacks are all Muslims of Pakistani origin with names like Shehzad Tanveer, Hasib Hussain, etc. Can it get any darker than this?
   Coherent ideology, my foot. The profiles of these suspects as pieced together by UK authorities suggest they would flunk an elementary test in civics, which is not to doubt that if indeed they were behind this outrage, they would have been sustained by the thought they were on the quickest ticket to paradise.
   The common denominator distinguishing the Bin Laden-inspired terrorism emanating from within the Muslim world is simplicity of a kind so frightening it verges on the demonic.
   But draw a sharp line between Bin Ladenism and events in Iraq. What we see in Iraq is a national resistance (in Iraq even called the ‘honourable resistance’) bringing together all Iraqi factions and driven by a common hatred of the American occupation. The Iraqis are fighting for their independence, not for Osama bin Laden as the Americans desperately suggest when they demonize Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and invest him with mythic prowess and omnipotence.
   Even so, the occupation of Iraq gives Bin Ladenism not just another outrage to denounce but the most potent weapon available to stoke the fires of anti-Americanism. This is another instance of the law of unintended consequences, the misnamed ‘war on terror’ producing its own harvest of terror.
   Is the Pakistani Muslim community in the UK bracing itself for a backlash after the London bombings? It has ample reason to do so. Even if, disregarding the racist extreme right, the vast majority of Britons are tolerant people, it can safely be assumed that feelings against Muslims and Pakistanis will harden.
   It is no use saying that Islam is a religion of peace or that there is a foul plot afoot to misrepresent Islam and blacken its name when from Bali to Madrid to London it is Muslims who are behind acts of terrorism. To outsiders a religion is known by the fruits it produces and if the present brand of terrorism has a Muslim substance to it, it becomes difficult to sell the ‘true meaning of Islam’.
   It is like trying to say that what was practised in the Soviet Union was not true communism. No one has the time or inclination to grapple with such fine theories.
   These are the wages of thoughtless terrorism. Misguided zealots bring down the Twin Towers and far from the pillars of capitalism being shaken, it is the Muslim community across the United States which has to bear the brunt of the bitter and often mindless reaction. Likewise in the UK where from now on it will be hard for the ordinary Briton to dissociate the image of a mosque from his ideas of terrorism.
   Guilt by association: Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib give all of the United States a bad name; four Muslim suspects in the UK give the entire Muslim community there a bad name. So what precise point were the London bombers, or rather their remote-control handlers, trying to make?
   Still, give full marks to British restraint. Although random attacks on mosques have occurred and all South Asians living in the UK feel a bit threatened — and although it is easy to imagine pub-goers, after the first rush of lager, banging their fists on the table and exclaiming ‘Bloody Pakistanis’ — a conscious effort is on to ensure that race relations do not deteriorate and the Muslim community as a whole is not held responsible for the London tragedy.
   If something like these bombings had occurred in India, the Indian army by now would have been sitting at the Pakistan border with fresh talk of the subcontinent becoming a ‘nuclear flashpoint’. (The way we bandy about this phrase almost suggests as if we consider it a mark of great distinction, setting us apart from the rest of the world.)
   Of course innocent people have been killed at the hands of American and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. But should that be an excuse to target innocent people elsewhere? As for opposing America and the occupation of Iraq, the anti-war movement in the western world is stronger than anything rustled up by the world of Islam. Any million-person marches against the Iraq war in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Islamabad or Jakarta or a single squeak of protest from that most august symbol of Muslim helplessness, the Organization of Islamic Conference? (What a name?)
   Because, for the most part our misfortune is to live in mediaeval monarchies and tin pot autocracies, what we in the Muslim world excel in is internalized anger which, far from harming anyone else, turns us, collectively, into victims of impotent despair — despair falling eternally short of meaningful action, despair deriving a kind of masochistic pleasure from its own helplessness, despair now finding expression in mindless terrorism.
   Lacking the power to correct our own weaknesses, we tend to blame outsiders for our misfortunes. Thus, even as Muslim rulers turn to the US for support and protection, at the popular level frustration boils over into strident anti-Americanism. Sure, there is much that America can be blamed for, not least its blind support of Israel. But we should not lose sight of the fact that America has not invented Muslim weakness; it merely exploits it, turning it to its advantage.
   America has a vested interest in Muslim dictatorships because dictatorships are easier to handle. But then again, Muslim dictatorship is not an American invention; merely an American convenience.
   True, the CIA helped topple Mossadegh and reinstall Reza Shah Pahlevi as Iranian ruler. But with no little help from powerful sections of Iranian society. The CIA helped trigger a bloodbath in Indonesia after the fall of Soekarno. But with no little help from the Indonesian army. The Americans have always found it easy to use Pakistan but never without a great deal of readiness on Pakistan’s part to be used.
   Indeed, Pakistan’s generals, babus and politicos get upset, to the point of accusing America of betrayal, when America, because of other priorities, shows a lack of interest in using Pakistan. We are happiest with the American connection when being exploited to the full.
   America has detractors and critics at the popular level in the Muslim world. At the upper levels of the Muslim ummah (the great brotherhood of Islam) it has never suffered for lack of collaborators.
   Bin Ladenism, which is a peculiar distillation of Wahabi Islam, and the terrorism which has come to be its favourite tool, are no answers to American domination or Muslim weakness. In fact, Bin Ladenism, with its narrow interpretation of Islam, is itself a reflection of Muslim weakness because it shows a preoccupation with the very elements which constitute the core of Muslim backwardness: a romantic attachment to a glorified past, an emphasis on literalism, and a comprehensive failure to understand what makes the modern world tick.
   The answer to Muslim decadence lies in a political renaissance: a replacement of autocracy with democracy. Of course this is easier said than done but if we can’t achieve it — there being nothing on the horizon to suggest that we easily can — we should at least understand that terrorism such as that in London is no answer to anything. In fact, far from liberating anything, it only makes the Muslim predicament worse by lending strength to the false doctrine of a ‘clash of civilizations’.
   The only clash the world of Islam faces is with itself and the myriad aspects of its own backwardness.
   In this context, Bin Ladenism is a distraction. Far from hastening the demise of Muslim autocracy, or getting America to loosen its stranglehold over the riches of the Middle East, it is in danger of becoming a convenient alibi for assorted Muslim kings and dictators. Instead of having to focus on political reform, the need of the hour for Muslim societies, they take the easier road by becoming preachers of ‘enlightened’ Islam. Islam stands in no need of certificates from anyone, least of all from the cardboard figures masquerading as rulers. But the world of Islam could do with less lies and more honesty, less dictatorship and more democracy. Only then will the battle for ‘enlightenment’ be joined.
   
   Tailpiece one
   The Election Commission has warned candidates in the local elections not to use photographs and images of Gen Musharraf in order to gain political mileage. What gives the Election Commission the idea that using the president’s photographs would give anyone political advantage?
   
   Tailpiece two
   As many readers have pointed out, the famous qawwali ‘Aahen na bhareen, shikwey na kiyey’ is from the film ‘Zeenat’ and not ‘Lahore’. Sorry.
   This article has been published by arrangement with Dawn

London: Not long ago I wrote an enthusiastic review of Mao: The Untold Story, the new biography by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. The June issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, in which my review appeared, was promptly barred from China.
   The same fate has befallen other publications containing similar reviews, and a BBC interview with Jung Chang herself (she is the author of the global best seller Wild Swans) was blocked.
   Mao Zedong died in 1976. Why is it that almost 30 years later, in a China where freedom of speech is said to be on the rise, attacking the chairman remains taboo?
   Chang’s and Halliday’s biography is a nothing-is-sacred act of demolition. Chang says of Mao, ‘He was as evil as Hitler or Stalin, and did as much damage to mankind as they did.’ The authors assert that Mao was responsible for upwards of 70 million peacetime deaths, including at least 37 million in the 1959-1961 famine that arose from Mao’s harebrained economic policies.
   These are scarcely new facts within China. If 70 million people died before their time and many more millions suffered during the Cultural Revolution, there must be hundreds of millions of Chinese who know about Mao’s depredations.
   Indeed, in 1981 the Party published an official judgment in which it said the chairman bore the main responsibility for the epochal tragedy of the Cultural Revolution, and admitted, too, that from the late Fifties the chairman had made mistakes and misjudgements.
   But the Party concluded that Mao remained a great Marxist revolutionary. The Cultural Revolution, therefore, remains out-of-bounds for serious research in China.
   And here we discover the ultimate inviolability of Mao, whose enormous portrait still gazes down onto the sacred centre of China, Tiananmen Square.
   Proper research within China would reveal what is already well known to China specialists in the West, and is highlighted in Chang’s and Halliday’s biography: Mao did not merely throw the switch to start the Cultural Revolution, he micro-managed some of its worst acts. And, like Stalin, Mao needed always to know the grisliest details of persecution, whether of his old colleagues or mere officials and scholars.
   Then there is the myth of Mao before 1949 — the hero of the Long March who in 1934-35 led the ragtag Red Army to safety at Yanan, the guerrilla headquarters from which Mao fought Chiang Kai-shek and organised the eventual Communist victory in 1949.
   As has been shown by Chang and Halliday and earlier scholars, the myth was fed by Mao to the hero-worshipping American journalist Edgar Snow in 1936 and is largely a lie.
   On the Long March itself — and this is a Chang-Halliday scoop — the most heroic moment, the crossing by daredevil Red soldiers of a blazing bridge over a gorge, with Chiang Kai-shek’s forces at the other end, never happened.
   Indeed, it appears that Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Reds to escape.
   All that was long ago. Why, then, protect the chairman now? Because without Mao a black hole would gape beneath the feet of the Communist Party. After all, in 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, Lenin remained. Without Mao, his heirs — for that is what they are — would be left dangling in an ideological void.
   There must, therefore, be no void. Every Chinese student from primary school on receives regular lessons in what is called ‘political education.’ In this curriculum the history of the Communist Party — its triumphs over imperialism, exploitive capitalism, landlordism, and Chiang Kai-shek — are celebrated, as are the Party’s eradication of starvation, prostitution, venereal disease and opium.
   Who was the begetter of all this? Mao Zedong, the Great Helmsman, Teacher, and Reddest Red Sun in our Hearts; the near-god who on September 21, 1949, proclaimed that the ‘Chinese people have stood up.’
   So to demolish the chairman would be catastrophic for the present leadership. These leaders, after all, continue to emphasise that ‘the Communist Party makes mistakes but only the Communist Party can correct them.’
   But what if the Party itself is a mistake and Mao a yet greater one? China’s leaders are determined to prevent that thought from getting loose in the minds of hundreds of millions of Chinese.
   Jonathan Mirsky was formerly the East Asia editor of the Times of London. The Asian Age/The International Herald Tribune