Pakistan: Funny the way we run things

Ayaz Amir

Only after a madressah in Rawalpindi’s Raja Bazaar went up in flames (11 people dead from rifle fire and many more injured, a few critically), and only after returning from one of his endless foreign tours, has PM Sharif woken up to the menace of sectarian wall-chalking and misuse of loudspeakers. There are things here that never cease to amaze. PM Sharif and his party have been in power in Punjab for the last 20-25 odd years. It was during this period that we saw sectarianism on the rise and loudspeakers, now being disliked by the PM, become the nuisance that they are.

When you are drawing your strength from right-wing religious elements, and your patrons in the army and ISI are also molly-coddling the same, how can you control things, like loudspeakers, so close to the hearts of these fiery speakers?

It was only Manzoor Wattoo, briefly Punjab CM from 1993 onwards, who issued an order that loudspeakers should only be used for the call to prayers and the Friday Khutba. Wattoo’s position was precarious, head of a coalition government. But know what? He got his order obeyed and implemented.

With the return of the Sharifs in 1997, and later when Musharraf took over, mullahs again started testing the frontiers of loudspeaker freedom. Just as an exercise, please observe any morning, at the time of the early morning call to prayer, how the blaring sound of a multitude of loudspeakers at top volume, the sound erupting from all directions, shatters the sublime beauty of that bewitching hour, when night is about to depart and the chariots of dawn are waiting to come over the western horizon. A Mongol army would break formation and flee in panic at this noise. What’s the beauty of the morning before it?

There’s no point in pleading for the impossible. Ideally, the sound of loudspeakers should be controlled, a specific wattage allowed for sound amplifiers. After all, the azaan should be rendered melodiously, falling gently on the senses. But in a country where it’s hard to sensibly control traffic, and ban pressure horns, it’s asking for too much that holy fathers will readily accept any moderate restraint on the power of one of their principal weapons, the loudspeaker.

But we can do something else. Once the azaan is done clerics have now come to take it as a holy duty to start reciting scriptural verses at random. Sometimes this goes on and on. Can’t an end be put to this practice? After all, there is a Loudspeaker Ordinance in force against such misuse. Why isn’t it implemented? If Wattoo could do it, why not knights of a heavy mandate? Or, as we have seen so far, is this government going to be all talk and no action?

As I was writing these lines there was an editorial in another paper talking of the country’s alarming foreign exchange situation, forex reserves down to 3-4 billion dollars. There was another report saying that this winter power cuts would be so much worse. If we are to solve these problems we need leadership and competence, something woefully missing from the picture presently. If it’s going to be all talk, and fierce statements, and then the obligatory trips abroad, and Interior Minister Nisar virtually acting as deputy PM, and making matters worse, it’s not going to be an easy ride. Do we remember Sikandar the lone gunman along with his wife who made monkeys of the entire Islamabad administration for 5-6 hours and the interior minister subsequently spending days on end trying to convince a laughing public that the incident had been handled with great perfection? Now if a single eccentric could bring Islamabad to a standstill, what makes us think that this government was any better prepared to handle a far graver situation on the 10th of Muharram in Rawalpindi? The same directing hands, the same choreographers, so were there any grounds to expect something different? And there are Sharif allies like the half-cleric Professor Sajid Mir, head of a religious faction whose name I always forget, suggesting that all religious processions should be banned to curb sectarianism. Well, try doing this and see what happens. For centuries past Ashura processions have been brought out and to suggest that they should be banned now is nothing short of an invitation to mischief. An Ashura procession is brought out in London, in the centre of the city, and the British police don’t have any problem managing it. We can pray for miracles but they won’t come easily. Let’s just do one thing, control the loudspeaker, confining its sound to the four walls of mosques and Imambargahs and, take it from a sinner, half our sectarian problem disappears. Foaming clerics won’t embrace sanity overnight but the potential for mischief, fanning the flames not just of hatred but of mindlessness, will be controlled.

The Nawab of Kalabagh was a strong administrator. He had not just Punjab under his watch but the whole of what is present-day Pakistan, and he had his finger on the pulse of things and anything untoward that happened was dealt with an iron hand – this phrase no cliché as far as he was concerned.

Mustafa Khar was a strong administrator. The police in Lahore went on strike and he broke the strike not by trying to appease the protesters but by threatening drastic action, such as dismissing the entire force. In the 1970s cattle-rustling was a big thing in the districts of central Punjab, farmers in a state of fear because of the widespread practice and nothing being done about it. Khar put an end to cattle-rustling by coming down hard on the police force. Talk to any old farmer and he will tell you all about it. (Khar may have been up to no good in other matters but that’s a different story.)

Pray, can anyone please say on what precisely rests the present CM’s reputation for tough administration? Metro-bus, flowers on the Mall, ticking off officials? He has a chance to prove himself on the loudspeaker issue but I am sure he’ll find some way to get round it. As for wall chalking, which relates not only to sectarianism but to such esoteric matters as sure-fire cures for ailments as varied and interesting as piles and impotence, PM Sharif is fairly familiar with London, that being his second if not his first home. Does he find any wall chalking there? If all you acquire from there is the pleasure of avid shopping not much use in being a half-Londoner. There should be no wall-chalking at all, period. If we can’t do this and can’t control that other menace, the loudspeaker, we might as well give up altogether on the Taliban and terrorism.

Tailpiece: Things may be bleak on the political front but some truly sensational stuff is happening in the world of music. If you haven’t heard Masuma Anwar you are missing something. What a voice…sultry and husky and honey all over it, and such feeling and passion that even the dead would come alive.

And while there is so much nonsense on television, there are some beautiful programmes – wait for this – on PTV Home, none better than Firdous-e-Gosh on Wednesday evenings (10 pm), compered by Fariha Pervez and Faheem Mazhar (gosh, both of them such marvellous singers). If you think hope is lost, listen to Masuma. If you are down in the dumps, give talk shows a break and listen to this Fareeha and Faheem show. I felt depressed. Then, flipping channels, I saw this revelation by the name of Masuma and my spirits soared… “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken…” But my enthusiasm carries me away