Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

The dust has settled on the cricket pitches in Bangladesh after the humiliating defeats of the home team by Sri Lanka and Australia in a row. Meanwhile, the average Bangladeshi has forgotten the brutal massacre of innocent villagers at Kansat by Bangladeshi police in the midst of the ongoing debate on reforming the unique (and absurd) ‘caretaker government’ to hold free and fair elections. Witnessing the cricket fiasco and the hyper politicking over reforming the election machinery while Bangladeshi police were killing innocent villagers at Kansat is like visiting a nihilistic world of anarchy and absurdity.
   What happened at Kansat, a rural hinterland in northern Bangladesh, during January and April 2006 would have toppled governments or at least brought about months-long mammoth mass demonstrations, general strikes and total non-cooperation with the government for the brutal killing of twenty unarmed civilians anywhere in the civilised world. What is interesting that predecessors of these inert Bangladeshis during the Pakistani period did never shy out from coming out on the street protesting against police and eventually military brutalities on unarmed civilians. One may mention how the killing of less than half a dozen Dhaka University students by police firing on 21st February 1952 kept the millions of Bengalis restive, agitating, assertive and angry for about two decades against Pakistani ruling classes, which eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh. Similarly in 1969, Bengalis took a vow to avenge the killing of Bengalis by Pakistani police and military. Cricket or elite power politics could never divert public attention from the real political issues of mass empowerment, dignity and eventually, freedom.
   The Kansat tragedy reveals by turning Bangladesh inside out how neglected are the peasants and working classes in the psyche of the elites. Peasants’ getting electricity and fuel to run irrigation pumps seems to be the least important thing to them. Not only had the ruling coalition been indifferent to the Kansat peasants’ demands for unhindered supply of electricity and fuel, but the main opposition parties and the vast majority of the urban middle and upper classes also been indifferent, if not hostile, to their demands. From the general apathy of the vast majority of Bangladeshi elites across the board during and in the aftermath of the killing it appears that most of the elite never meant what they said about the ‘liberation of the people’ before and after the creation of Bangladesh.
   What was most surprising was the celebration of the ‘Kansat victory’ by the ruling and opposition parties after the so-called truce between aggrieved villagers and the government. The government did not take any disciplinary action against the killers and yet everything seems to be normal throughout the country. Some intellectuals have even portrayed the peasant agitation and the brutal massacre of twenty-odd unarmed peasants as a ‘peasant revolution’.
   The mass apathy towards the Kansat tragedy, excepting a few general strikes by not-yet-been-corrupted students, indicates the state of mass de-politicisation of the people. The vested interest groups either brain wash and hegemonise mass consciousness in the name of their parties or religion to keep them dormant/next worldly/depoliticised or to activate them politically through phoney and divisive non-issues like ‘Bengali’ versus ‘Bangladeshi’ or ‘pro-‘ versus ‘anti-Liberation’. Non-political distractions like playing Bangladesh in Test and one-day cricket matches against leading cricket teams of the world have also been very efficacious in depoliticising the masses. In short, besides being a red herring, cricket in Bangladesh is also a political football of the rival political elites.
   The history of cricket in the region reveals that contrary to the general perception, there is nothing so new about cricket in Bangladesh. Bengali youths have been playing the game at least since the 1860s while the game per se was introduced to Bengal about a hundred years before its arrival into the Punjab and Sri Lanka. So, the moment we see Bangladeshis over-celebrating their extremely few and far between cricket victories, we know something has gone wrong. One does not know how Bangladesh would celebrate a hypothetical victory in series of Test and one-day matches against all the leading teams of the world in a year, including its winning the World Cup. We know the abysmal state of the infrastructure – shortage of playgrounds, mass poverty and lack of physical fitness of the vast majority of the population due to low calorie intake – Bangladesh is most likely to remain an underdog in the arena of games and sports. This, however, does not mean that one undermines the Bangladeshi cricketers for achieving whatever they have achieved during the past few years despite having so many problems and not having at least 500 cricket pitches for such a vast population.
   The wild celebrations smack of only the collective sense of disproportion and inferiority complex of the polity. Did Pakistan celebrate in the similar manner when it defeated India and England in the early 1950s and other leading teams afterwards? Sri Lankans also did not cross the line of decency after winning the World Cup and after so many victories against all the leading teams in the world. Sri Lankan leaders and elites did not nourish (let alone expose) any inferiority complex. One should not miss the not-so-hidden message in the Bangladeshi wild celebrations, which conveys the following: ‘Look, even we Bengalis can defeat Pakistan and Australia’. This is not similar to what the Japanese did after defeating the mighty Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Figuratively, Bangladesh today is not another Japan against Russia. Bangladesh’s defeating Pakistan or Sri Lanka, West Indies or India (let alone the tiny Zimbabwe) should not become such occasions of wild celebrations.
   The cricket mania, a calculative political distraction to depoliticise urban youth, has been so successful that after the crushing defeat of the non-Test playing Kenya by Test-playing Bangladesh Bangladeshi dailies publicised the event (actually a non-event) as a ‘Whitewash of Kenya’ in the front page. If this reflects some journalists’ immaturity and arrogance, a by-word for inferiority complex, then one does not know what is predicting an innings defeat for Australia, as the media did after Bangladesh had scored 400-odd runs in the first innings only to eventually lose the match to Australia.
   The ongoing opposition demand for reforming the ‘caretaker system’ is another problematic move to resolve the problematic concept of ‘caretaker government’ to conduct ‘free and fair’ parliamentary elections in the country. The Awami League-led 14-party alliance (thirteen of them having very negligible to no political clout at all) has been insisting on having a discussion with the ruling coalition to fine tune the ‘caretaker system’, but is adamant not to put their heads together with any member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which is a part of the ruling coalition. So, apparently there are two tricky problems to resolve. First, fine tuning the ‘caretaker system’ and then doing it without any participation by the Jamaat. The opposition simply insists on not interacting with any war criminals and collaborators of 1971.
   So far so good. However, those who know the recent past of Bangladesh during the last twenty-odd years know that top Awami League and 14-party alliance leaders, including Sheikh Hasina and Rashed Khan Menon, among others, had absolutely no problem in hobnobbing with some top Jamaat leaders, including Matiur Rahman Nizami.
   One may also point out that on the eve of the presidential election of 1991, Justice Badrul Haider Chowdhury, the Awami candidate, went to Golam Azam’s residence (the Jamaat patriarch and controversial collaborator of the Pakistani occupation army in 1971) for his ‘blessings’ or political support as the Jamaat had thirty-odd MPs, more than ten per cent of the electorate. What is even more significant that the unheard of concept of an unelected ‘caretaker government’ by the political scientists anywhere to run a democracy for three months and hold the most important elections in a parliamentary system was a brainchild of the controversial Golam Azam, who became a pariah to the opposition only in the late 1991 for various other reasons.
   Those familiar with Bangladeshi political culture and socio-political history know the opportunism and lack of commitment to any ideology or leader by the bulk of the Bengali (mainly Muslim) politicians. Consequently, one has no reason to be surprised at their vacillation. However, what is very unfortunate for the nation is that ‘politics’ (in the pejorative sense) has over-powered economics and common sense, decency, justice and truth. One wonders if Bengalis could successfully elect the right type of representatives in 1937, 1946, 1954, and most importantly, in the 1970’s Parliamentary Elections in united Pakistan without having this bizarre, peculiar and outlandish ‘caretaker system’, why on earth do they need it now?
   As we have experienced in the wake of the three parliamentary elections since 1991 held under ‘caretaker governments’, the outcome of the elections has never been acceptable to those who have to sit in the opposition bench. So, what is the big fuss about the system, which is neither foolproof nor anything to be proud of as a democracy? Having this absurd concept of ‘caretaker’ simply implies that the Bangladeshi polity and the voters are in regression, in a state of immaturity and that no body is trustworthy any more to hold free and fair elections in the country. One is not sure if after the next parliamentary elections in 2007, as an alternative to the ‘caretaker system’, the leader of the opposition (whoever she or he will be around) would be asking the UN for International Peacekeeping Force to hold ‘free and fair’ elections in the country.
   In sum, while the rich is getting richer and poor poorer at an alarming rate for the last 30-odd years, despite all the poverty alleviation programmes through the NGOs and public sector, the bulk of the politicians and members of the civil society, intellectuals, students, bureaucrats and businessmen have been engaged in an unhealthy rat race – some to survive and some to get-rich-quick. Consequently the real problems – such as population growth, lack of healthcare and education, hunger and poverty, hyper inflation (about 10,000 per cent price hike since 1970), rampant corruption by politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats – have receded to the background, as designed by political, business and professional elites. The upshot is the preponderance of non issues and red herrings to distract the masses from the real issues. Hence, the celebration of ‘Kansat victory’ in the wake of the massacre, lunatic exuberance over cricket and the phoney war and controversy over the outlandish ‘caretaker system’.
   The writer can be reached at

CONVERTING my column regarding the intended commercialisation of the open spaces of the Government College of Chakwal into a petition under Article 184 (3) of the Constitution, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudry, has caused notices to be issued to advocate-general Punjab and the administration of the college. DCO Chakwal has been asked for his comments. Hearing is set for this morning, Friday, before Bench Number One.
   It is an open hearing which anyone can attend. The tattered remnants of academia in Chakwal can do with all the support they can get. The college administration, still finding it hard to believe this suo moto intervention, is coming fully prepared. The people of Chakwal are to be represented by senior counsel, Mansur Ali Shah, and up-and-coming Athar Minallah.
   Since the matter is now sub-judice, that too before the highest court in the land, it is not for me to go into its merits or demerits. Let justice be done and may the truth prevail.
   Some general observations, however, may be in order. Across the country illiteracy and philistinism, and greed in no small measure, are on the march while things like public decency and anything remotely connected to culture and education are in headlong retreat.
   Public spaces are under attack, parks are being gobbled up and trees being cut at a pace that would frighten the gods. Yet we are taking no heed and there is nothing to stop the rampant advance of commercialism and land-grabbing except a triad thrown up by circumstances: the higher-most judiciary (euphemism for the Supreme Court), the more enlightened sections of the bar and the more literate sections of the media.
   Let us, therefore, collectively count ourselves lucky for having a chief justice with a broad enough vision to make him interested in such ‘arcane’ matters as the environment and other public causes. In the Pakistani context I may be forgiven for saying this makes him something of an aberration. Interested in trees? Who the hell is interested in trees and the preserving of public spaces in Pakistan? Strangely enough, my lord the chief justice is. Wonders, I suppose, will never cease.
   Who would have saved a park in F/7, Islamabad, from commercial despoliation? Which chief justice would have moved to save the trees of Jehangir Park, Karachi, from being cut? Who would have questioned the New Murree project, a pet project of the Punjab Chief Minister, Chaudhry Pervaiz Ellahi, which was set to martyr some of the finest and oldest trees in the Patriata forests?
   Chief justices of Pakistan — some of them very able, some of them upright — have been famous for other things. But let us not go into this because judicial history is a tale full of uncomfortable truths. If in the ‘hamaam’ (bathhouse) of Pakistani politics everyone has been naked — generals, politicians, priests, moralists, journalists and industrialists — the sad truth is that the judiciary has been no exception.
   The ‘doctrine of necessity’ is not just a millstone round the nation’s neck. It is also a spectre haunting the higher judiciary because around its unhallowed altar some truly macabre dances, rarely seen in everyday choreography, have been performed.
   Pakistan’s military saviours, their list seemingly endless because when one departs (often unceremoniously) there is always another in the wings desperate to take his place, have never been content to do their soiled work by themselves. Around the scenes of their triumphs they have looked for partners and collaborators and such, alas, is the texture of our soil and composition of our air that other things may have been in short supply but never the recruiting grounds of collaboration.
   Indeed, so marked is this trend that if Maharaja Ranjit Singh were to rise from the dead and recreate the kingdom of Lahore, and if for his political needs he wanted a Q-League, there would be no shortage of Punjab feudal volunteers rushing to serve under his colours. But why blame the landowning class alone? There is no shortage of smart townsmen (and ladies) in the Q-League. The title, Q-League, may be specific to our times but it represents a political tendency as old as the hills, as timeless as the Indo-Gangetic plains. It is too much to expect that the judiciary would have been left untouched by this legacy.
   But it is time we left the past behind and started writing a new history, a history free forever of such aberrations as the ‘doctrine of necessity’. We may not have the steadfastness or bravery of the Nepalese people — heroic Nepal having just written a new chapter in the fight against autocracy and unrepresentative government — but we can at least arrive at one understanding: that if the forces of autocracy are not to be resisted, they shouldn’t be assisted. As my friend Mian Ata Maneka, MPA and former provincial minister, is wont to say, all of us have the option of staying at home (excellent advice which didn’t prevent him from joining the Q-League).
   The end of collaboration would in itself be something great. Starting from there we can then mull over the Nepalese experience and try to understand why the people of Nepal have succeeded in forging a broad democratic front while our democratic parties are still grappling with their PhD thesis called the ‘charter of democracy’.
   It should be a matter of shame for us that we are at the bottom of the democratic table in South Asia. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are ahead of us and, after its recent revolutionary experience, Nepal too. It is time we too stock of our failings.
   There is much with which the judiciary can be charged and no one is saying it is a perfect institution. But the trend under the present chief justice to take note, often suo moto, of issues affecting the public interest, issues that seldom claimed the attention of the Supreme Court before, is setting a powerful new precedent.
   It shows that provided the will is there derelict and largely moribund articles of the Constitution can be infused with new life and made relevant to the people. It also demonstrates that at its best the judiciary can indeed become a guardian of the people’s interests and, who knows, in time even of their liberties.
   There is, however, a conundrum at play in this suo moto activism in that it sheds a bad light on other institutions, including the lower judiciary. If other institutions were functioning well, if the rule of law was being enforced, if public officials were doing their job, there would be no need for matters such as those relating to park spaces and the cutting of trees to come before the Supreme Court. But just because other institutions have collapsed or are in an advanced state of decay and people find it difficult if not impossible to get justice or relief from them, the trend has become noticeable of recourse being made to the Supreme Court.
   This can’t be helped. Someone has to pick up the slack. It goes to the credit of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudry that he is doing exactly this and not hiding behind the excuse, that would have been readily available to anyone less energetic, that the Supreme Court was meant for ‘higher’ things (such as, I suppose, the doctrine of necessity).
   Goes without saying I too will be at the Supreme Court this morning, urged on by these lines from Flecker:
   We travel not for trafficking alone:
   By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
   For lust of knowing what should not be known We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
   However dark the night, there is always a shining city on the hills beckoning from afar and always, however long the journey, a golden road to Samarkand.

In the red-hot debate over immigration, myth too often takes the place of truth. It is time to step back, take a deep breath and reflect before we react.
   The truth is often distorted in ways that feed our divisions. For example, many contrast this generation of immigrants with the Europeans who came at the beginning of the last century. That generation, we are told, came legally, whereas this generation is coming illegally. That generation learned the language, whereas this one is writing the national anthem in Spanish.
   But as Michael Powell of the Washington Post reports, this is mostly nonsense. Until 1918, the United States didn’t even require passports –– the term ‘illegal immigrant’ had no meaning. New arrivals merely had to provide their identity and find a friend to vouch for them. Customs officials tried to weed out the lunatic or those infected with disease or ‘anarchism’. The Mexican-U.S. border was then unguarded and crossed freely. When finally passed, immigrant quotas exempted northern Europeans and Mexicans.
   And all the same fears that exist now existed then. There was a huge backlash against German, Irish, and Italian immigrants. White Protestant reformers warned that they weren’t learning English, that they were drunks, dissolute, lazy. Commentators warned of the ‘mongrelization’ of the ‘white race’. Conservatives warned that immigrants were importing European class warfare into America.
   All those fears turned out to be unfounded. The immigrants by and large were immensely hardworking. They learned English and assimilated. Their energy helped fuel America’s rise in the 20th century. And the fears this time are likely to be similarly unfounded. The children of today’s immigrants are learning English. The newcomers are by and large hardworking. If they are competing at low wages now, they are also at the centre of drives to raise the minimum wage and to organize low-paid workers.
   We ignore the many contradictions of our immigration policy. Cuban immigrants are invited into America, welcomed and subsidized. Immigrants from neighbouring Haiti are locked out and shipped back.
   Vigilantes hunt immigrants coming over the Mexican border. But the Canadian border is basically unguarded, and undocumented immigrants from Canada raise no interest and are never called ‘illegals’. Yet, so far as we know, the terrorists coming over the border have come through Canada, not Mexico.
   Even as the vigilantes organize to keep undocumented workers out, employers organize to bring them in. They lobby for guest-worker programmes, for seasonal exemptions for farm workers, for exemptions for high-tech workers. Or they just routinely hire undocumented workers as a source of cheap labour. But it is also true of liberal, upper-middle-class professionals, happy to have non-union undocumented workers take care of their lawns, their children or their dogs.
   The U.S. military provides an accelerated path to citizenship for legal permanent residents who can present a green card at enlistment. There are some 37,500 foreign nationals from 200 countries in the active-duty and reserve forces. Seventy-one have died in Iraq, three in Afghanistan. Non-citizens perform well; they also tend to serve longer than citizens do.
   Undocumented immigrants are not allowed in the military in peacetime. But Section 329 of the Immigration Nationality Act says that an ‘alien’ who ‘has served honourably’ in the armed forces during a period of conflict ‘may be naturalized’ whether or not he or she ‘has been lawfully admitted to the United States.’ This is an old tradition. In the Civil War, some 20 per cent of the Union forces were not citizens; many were signed up directly off the boat. The second U.S. soldier who died under fire in the Iraq war had entered the United States illegally. With the Army and Marines having difficulty meeting their recruitment goals, more conservatives call for letting undocumented immigrants gain citizenship by agreeing to serve.
   We need comprehensive immigration reform –– reform that removes the discrimination that embraces Europeans and excludes Africans, or hunts Mexicans and hugs Canadians. But we should remember that America is a nation of immigrants –– that’s a fact, not a legend.
   The Chicago Sun-Times, May 9, 2006