Pak Tea House

Only a hope we all have
our only possession;
to offer
through years of trial and error

Only a day we all have
Our only celebration,
To remember
Through years of our formation

Only a life we all have
our only existence;
to bring peace and comfort
through years of blood and terror

Only a nation we all have
entangled in crisis;
to gather
through years of evil and hatred

Only a dream we all have
our only friend;
to have freedom and justice
through years of struggle & protest

Only a word we all have
in darkened nights;
through years of abuse
for salvation and peace

Only a hope we all have
the intangible spirit;
through years of hunger & sufferings
to ignite, our drowsy conscience!

Kashkin

In a café, at the airport
In the corner
Sits there, Chillchinga
The young US soldier
With cigarettes and an empty look
Tired from those battles
Easily seen, the scars
Gained and given
From confrontations
In a distant land
The only desire now
To go home
To converse few words
In Spanish as he pays the price
For migration and adventure
In the distant time

Sit three in the corner
McMillan and Richardson
Spectacles on their tiny face
Turned away from scenes of horror
Of participation and of discussion
Away from those big monitors
News of Iraq and Afghanistan (more…)

Faced with problems of commerce and trade,
In slogans we raise, our misery and fate
Great comfort we draw from rallies and protest
From voices we raise, from beatings we take
Remain there in place, the old hate in wait
From practitioners and proponents of their faith
Hold us in nearness as we move into this state
As change will come as it’s never too late!

Kashkin

By Mozaffar

When a people begin to believe they have been defeated they have entered a bottomless pit. They continue and continue and continue to live in defeat. It is a cycle that can cripple a people not for a year, not for a century, but for a millennium.

Thus we look at so many communities across the globe. These communities celebrate a distant, idyllic past, a past fueled with great heroes and accomplishments. They celebrate a past without which — they claim — today would not be today. And, these claims of the greatness of the past are to somehow bring these people on the same level as the conquerors of today.

Not to be.

That celebration of the past is fuel. It is fuel for the vicious circle of defeatism. It perpetuates a longing for something that never existed as a hope for a future that is not there or theirs. It is also an excuse, an excuse to continue this life of grief. (more…)

by Aasem Bakhshi

Is there a crucial difference between someone who kills in order to die and someone who dies in order to kill? - [Talal Asad]

Alasdair MacIntyre - while making a ‘disquieting suggestion’ in the beginning of his chef-d’oeuvre ‘After Virtue‘ - hypothesized that what we chiefly possess as a vocabulary of morality can best be understood as ’simulacrum of morality’ rather than the actual and true morality. He argued that we are so confident of the absolute objectivity of this contemporary moral paradigm, which guides and constitutes our language, reasoning and transactions, that any transposed hypothesis would most certainly seem utterly implausible, at least at first glance. In short, that we are being betrayed by the very language we use is a proposition that is not acceptable to us.

In these heavily nuanced Welleck Library Lectures on Suicide Bombing, Talal Asad not only vindicates MacIntyre’s thesis but also contributes in reshaping the ongoing narrative regarding terrorism and war. (more…)

This is an interesting editorial from The NEWS April 12, 2008

In his first remarks on planned foreign policy, Pakistan’s new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, has struck a positive note by speaking of the need for good ties with neighbouring India. His remarks coincide with a new report by US scientists at the University of Colorado that a brief nuclear war between the South Asian neighbours will rip apart the ozone layer and spell global calamity that could kill millions. But even aside from such doomsday scenarios, Pakistan and India could gain much from closer links. It is refreshing that in this regard, the new government is willing to look beyond the entrenched issue of Kashmir to achieve this. In the short term, expanded trade with India across an opened, or at least loosened Wagah border, could help offer people food items at lower costs and thus act to alleviate the immense human misery inflicted by spiralling inflation.

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Jihad’s Long Journey 

Read an excerpt from Ayesha Jalal’s book.

PARTISANS OF ALLAH
By Ayesha Jalal
(Harvard, 373 pages, $29.95)

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Salman Rushdie’s latest novel is set in Akbar’s court and Renaissance Florence. NIRPAL SINGH DHALIWAL on how his glossy take could have used more grit

THE MUGHAL EMPIRE has an inordinate pull on the contemporary imagination. After a succession of assaults on India beginning in the 11th century, the Mughal dynasty had established itself over north India by the 1500s, and at its height in the 1700s, controlled all but the southernmost tip of the subcontinent. The empire has today become a byword for opulence and aestheticism. Akbar, the 16th century Mughal emperor is a central figure in Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, a book that flits between Renaissance Europe and Akbar’s court, and the cultures in between. (more…)

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

The oddest point in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s career as a politician and a statesman was when his National Assembly voted to constitutionally
ex-communicate the Ahmaddiya community from the circle of Islam. Odd because, barring Jinnah and some ethnic leaders from small sub-nationalities, Bhutto was till then the most secular politician in
Pakistan. His support base was mostly left and no where during the election campaign had the PPP given voice to the demand for Ahmadis to
be ex-communicated. There are many theories as to why Bhutto would do it, but an investigation into the history of Ahmadi conflict in Pakistan leads to some astonishing conclusions about the role of
Pakistan’s military and civil establishment and their blatant use of
religious clergy in creating the conditions which might have forced a
popular national politician like Bhutto to opt for such a drastic and
draconian measure.

Pakistan was created as a result of the inability of the Congress
Party to recognize the legitimate secular concerns (such economic and
political safeguards) of the Muslim bourgeoisie represented by the
Muslim League. Instead of relying on secular and liberal Muslim
leaders like Jinnah, who had for much of his career been described as
the Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity by the Hindu leadership, the
Congress co-opted the Muslim religious clergy to prove its secular
credentials. Soon the Congress found itself out of sync with the
mass of Muslims. Since Muslims themselves were fragmented into
several sects and schools of thought, Jinnah and the Muslim League
kept theological and purely religious issues out of the main political
discourse. This allowed Jinnah to bring Sunnis, Shias, Ismailis,
Khojas and Ahmadis on one table despite major doctrinal differences
between these groups. It was for this reason that after Pakistan was
created, Jinnah extended his policy of keeping religious doctrine out
to state governance. To drive the point home, he included in his
cabinet a Hindu (Jogindranath Mandal) as a law minister and an Ahmadi
Muslim (Ch. Zafrullah Khan) as his foreign minister.
After 1947, the religious clergy that had opposed Jinnah and the
creation of Pakistan found itself like a fish out of a pond. They
would have all but lost political significance had it not been for the
political weakness of the ruling Muslim League. By 1951 the Muslim
League was without both Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan, the two leaders
who had recognition and mass appeal. Khawaja Nazimuddin who took
over after Liaqat Ali Khan was known as a good honest man but was not
known as a decisive leader. That he was from East Pakistan was an
additional factor which made him undesirable for the West Pakistani
establishment. By January 1953, the religious parties including
Maulana Maududi’s Jamaat-e-Islami had formed the “Majlis-e-Amal” whose
demands were the removal of Ch. Zafrullah Khan as the foreign minister
and declaration of the Ahmadi community as “Non-muslim”. Khawaja
Nazimuddin refused to entertain this demand and when informed of the
chance of 100 000 crazed Mullahs marching onto the Prime Minister
House, merely ordered the doubling of his guard. Violence broke out
in Lahore and Karachi.
Iskandar Mirza, the then Secretary of Defense, took note and wrote to
the Prime Minister:

“The problems created by your personal enemies including Mullahs, if
not dealt with firmly, will destroy the administration of the country…
is religion to destroy the very foundation of the administration of
the premier Muslim state? In Cairo, Sir Zafrullah Khan is being
received with the utmost honour and respect… while in Karachi he is
being abused in public meetings and his photographs are being spat
upon… what then is the position of Pakistan today internationally… for
god’s sake become a courageous leader and take decisive action. Once
you do this, the whole country, with the exception of the rascals,
will really round you…”

(more…)

Contibution from Mohammad Taqi
Today, is, the death anniversary of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
 
The judicial murder of ZAB 29 years ago, still serves us as a reminder that a tamed judiciary in the hands of the junta, is a lethal weapon that can be unleashed against popular leaders and the will of the people.
 
One also needs to remember the brave judges like KMA Samdani,Safdar Shah and Dorab Patel,who stood their ground in the face of a brutal martial law but declined to accept the fabricated evidence and hang ZAB.
 
Justice KMA Samdani has been an inspiration all along. He encouraged us to participate in the pro-judiciary movement in Pakistan last year. He was the first judge to release Bhutto , as he found the evidence flimsy, and in the process had to resign from the Lahore High Court.

Bhutto’s famous book If-I-am-Assassinated by Bhutto can be accessed here
 

The highs and lows of the last year have politicised hitherto indifferent sections of society and created a new impetus for democratisation. This is a welcome development. But a democratic polity is built neither by dictator’s decree nor Supreme Court rulings. Of course, the ouster of the dictator and the restoration of the Supreme Court judges that defied him are both symbolically important, but neither should be confused with democracy and the creation of a rights-respecting society.

By Ali Dayan Hasan

Today’s inauguration of the new National Assembly is being heralded by many as a new dawn in Pakistan’s political history. A grand coalition of the country’s major political forces will assume government shortly and its stated agenda, as enunciated by Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif on March 9, has won national acclaim.

For now, the army appears to have opted for a strategic retreat from the political arena. Its former leader, President Pervez Musharraf, though characteristically unrepentant and unashamed, nevertheless stands humiliated and diminished. It is a rare moment of vindication for the country’s political class, its democrats and its highly mobilised civil society.

But history teaches us that this moment is as fleeting as it is special.

It would be naïve to assume that one general election that threw up a politically credible result despite a massively flawed process has transformed power relations in the country. Pakistan remains a praetorian state structured and geared to service, above all, the needs of a military that remains every bit as convinced as ever that Pakistan’s national interest is synonymous with its institutional priorities and the preservation of its position as the final arbiter of political power and patronage. (more…)

By Bhupinder Singh

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Highly endangered heritage buildings of Abbottabad, this is inside of the old Tahsil,Revenue building,built 1876 AD,a masterpiece of stone masonry,craftsmanship..front has a massive stone arched gate and chieseled stones upto 200 Kgs were used in the arch

Originally uploaded by Environmentalist

text and photo by Environmentalist

We mourn slow death of that Abbottabad, which was once, an unforgettable experience for heads of states, commander in chiefs, poets, statesmen, writers, and thousands of nature loving souls.

I quote following words of Captain Thomas, in which he describes the magic of Himalayan hill stations, he writes:

” From March, when the sleet and snow may have passed away, to the middle of July, the climate is heavenly. There is nothing like it on earth. Nothing! Nothing in Italy! Nothing in France! Nothing anywhere that I know off. Recall the finest day, nay hour, of sunshine you have ever known in English spring, and conceive the beauty and gladness of that sunshine, brightened by continuing without a storm, and deck the fruit trees and bushes in a Thousand English blossoms;and spread violets and daises and berry blossoms and wild roses over the bright close emerald turf; over crags amid the pine roots, and far away down amid the ferns and you may fancy some thing….”
One of the gazetteer mentioned that places like Abbottabad, Srinagar, Murree and Shimla were pieces of Heaven on this earth and there were times of the year when these towns offered the world best climate.
——————————————————————————–
Are we completely helpless?? will some sons or daughters of Pakistan come forward to claim this heritage and ask government to protect leftovers of these assets for the appreciation of future generations ??..

In collusion with self imposed , contractors hiding as so called political and religious parties, Army sponsored Mayors (nazims) …Government Engineers are going to demolish these buildings.

They have already demolished various master pieces of stone masonry and chopped down dozens of mature old trees due to following reasons..

1- They get expensive seasoned timber , heavy gauge roof sheets , chieseled stones and antique building items for their private bungalows..

2- They make huge money from kick backs, bribes, commissions, shares etc..from sham contractors during reconstruction phase..

3- They remove neatly built buildings, so that eventually Pakistanis won’t be able to compare ugly and ill designed buildings with well proportioned, symmetrical and environmentally friendly buildings left for us by Britishers..

Please note the land scape and grace of these buildings and it is so damaging to know that instead of retrofitting them..they will be demolishing such buildings of Abbottabad and other districts of Hazara…??

Abbottabad, NWFP, Pakistan , height above sea level, 4100 feet was founded in 1853 AD by Major ( later, General, Sir) James Abbott of Blackheath London, who became first deputy commissioner of Hazara,.. and Hazara gazetteer of 1883 AD declared Abbottabad as the most beautiful hilly town of sub continent..trees from UK and Kashmir were brought to this unmatchable town and avenues and landscapes of Abbottabad had trees of horse chestnuts, Elms, Ash, Pistacia, Chinar (Kashmir maple), himalayan pine, Cedars of Lebanon, fragrant camphors of England, etc…and shrubs and flowers of all kinds including fragrant gardenias etc..were present

Major James Abbott fell in love with the rolling hills and awe inspiring views of Himalayan peaks of this thickly forested little England of East and he wrote following mystical lyrical Love poem in the praise of nature and Abbottabad

Poem “Town Abbottabad” by Major (later General, Sir) James Abbott

I remember the day when I first came here
And smelt the sweet Abbottabad air
The trees and ground covered with snow
Gave us indeed a brilliant white glow
To me place seemed like a dream
And far ran a lonesome stream
The wind hissed as if welcoming us
The pine swayed creating a lot of fuss
And the tiny cuckoo sang it away
A song very melodious and gay
I adored the place from the first sight
And was happy that my coming here was right
And eight good years here passed very soon
And we leave our perhaps on a sunny day
Oh! Abbottabad we are leaving you now
To your natural beauty do I bow
Perhaps your wind’s sound will never reach my ear
My gift for you is a tear
I bid you farewell with a heavy heart
Never from my mind will you memories thwart

temporal

photo- rumana husain
flare glares
burns, rages
kehti hay jalo jalao
jalo aur jalao

fire prostrating

satan twirls
moustaches
this is not the ire of rome
nor the liquid rave
that separated noah

beware for He is father
of all fire, fury and furor
merciful, graceful
wrathful, unforgiving

maloom hay humaiN
yeh aag nahiN bajooz oos aag kay
jo kisi aanay walay lumhay maiN
sub aalamouN ko chupa laigi
apnay shikanja e zeest maiN

her smile a glimpse
of the promised
inferno
big bang beginning
of molten passion petrified

heaven’s rage
creative, consuming
enraged we bow

flare glares
burns, rages
kehti hay jalo jalao
jalo aur jalao

Salman Rashid debunks a few myths here:

There is no historical evidence of Alexander or his men straying north of the ridges of the Hindu Kush Mountains into Kafiristan. But we know that the Greeks and the Kalasha themselves are today sold on this piece of charlatanry. The simple answer would thus be to turn to DNA testing

Every half-baked expert who writes on Chitral has to tell us of the Kalasha people of Kafiristan being the progeny of Alexander of Macedonia or at least of the many soldiers he ‘left behind’. So long has this fib been bandied about that even the poor Kalasha have established an amorphous and, at the same time, rigid belief in it.

The refrain is always been that the soldiers ‘left behind’ were responsible for starting the Kalasha line. This implies that Alexander reached Chitral and turning back left his soldiers there. (more…)

As we move towards another session of the National Assembly, elected after what have been described as landmark elections, it would not be out of place to remember and draw inspiration from the long and illustrious legislative career of Mr. Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, in the service of India’s people(s).  In this career you would find the staunchest denunciation of Emergency rule, martial law and government’s attempt to usurp the civil liberties of its populace. Given that in 2007 Pakistan slipped into the list of top 10 persecutors of religious and ethnic minorities,  it is all the more important to re-visit this vision.

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by Raza Rumi

My piece published in Today’s NEWS

The immortal words of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishty epitomize the reverence and devotion of Muslims towards Imam Hussain (AS):

Shah ast Hussain,
Badshah ast Hussain
Deen ast Hussain, Deen
Panah ast Hussain
Sardad na dad dast,
dar dast-e-yazeed,
Haqaa key binaey La ila ast Hussain

Ruler is Hussain, Emperor is Hussain,
Faith is Hussain, guardian of
faith is Hussain .
Offered his head, and not the hand to Yazid.
Indeed, Hussain is the foundation of La-ilah (the
declaration that none but God is absolute and almighty)

Moharram reminds us of the Kerbala tragedy; and Imam Hussain’s (AS) refusal to submit to the autocracy of Yazid. This episode is laden with deep symbolism. Imam Husain and his faithful companions preferred to die on the banks of river Euphrates but did not submit to what was wrong. (more…)

SINCE Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Dec 27, inevitably a lot of discussion has eddied about her legacy. Historian William Dalrymple, in an article in The Observer, has said that Ms Bhutto introduced a strange strand of democracy in Pakistan, which in essence was “elective feudalism” and “helped fuel the current, apparently unstoppable, growth of the Islamists”.

Abbas Rashid has called Ms Bhutto “a symbol of deliverance … committed to fighting the growing perils of extremism and militancy that threatened Pakistan …” These are rivalling countenances of Ms Bhutto obfuscating her real legacy. A common motif running through opinions of Ms Bhutto is the perception that her two governments were corrupt and yet another motif is that the main reason she was celebrated in the West was because she was seen as ‘one of us’ — western, modern, liberal and anti-Islamist — conducting western-oriented politics at the cost of the nation state’s.

Understanding Ms Bhutto’s legacy requires a deep understanding of Pakistani politics — as it stands, not what it ought to be. Pakistan is a feudal society where from the beginning the feudals have wielded power. Most people in Pakistan cherish feudal tradition pivoted around a family name, cohering and structuring a community. Of course, in an egalitarian society people should not blindly support a person just because of which family they happen to be born into. But this is the stark truth in Pakistan. (more…)

by Simon Jenkins

Here in the city of Kim, Pakistan’s magnificent history is being left to rot - Musharraf has allowed one of the wonders of Asia to disintegrate; and a country that neglects its past endangers its future

Poor Lahore. Yesterday this jewelled city of the Raj was hit by a suicide bomber aimed at lawyers protesting at President Pervez Musharraf’s imprisonment of his top judiciary. As body parts scattered the tree-lined Mall, Kipling’s “city of dreadful night” became the city of dreadful day. Nor could the outrage have happened in a more symbolic spot. Just up the road from the bombed Victorian high court stands “Kim’s gun”, the great 18th-century Zam-Zammah cannon, pointing towards the scene.

While the historic cities of Pakistan’s great rival, India, soar up the league table of celebrity, nothing better displays Pakistan’s current misery than the state of Lahore, joint capital of many an Indian empire and of British Punjab. Splendid Victorian palaces still line the boulevards of the Mall: the high court, the governor’s house, the general post office, the government college and Lahore’s museum, Kim’s “Wonder House”. Even the art college built by Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, survives, with students squatting under giant fans in its corbelled hall. (more…)

by Yasser Latif Hamdani

Pakistan is mourning. It is not just Benazir Bhutto but the dream of Pakistan itself that is in pieces.Pakistan was envisaged as a modern democratic homeland for the Muslim minority of British India as a last resort by Pakistan’s founding father Mahomed Ali Jinnah, who had fought for it to ensure the political and economic future of his people. As a modern Muslim Jinnah sought to protect the Muslims’ economic and political rights from what he viewed as a devious alliance between the caste Hindu leadership and the Muslim clergy. Failure of Gandhi and the Congress Party to recognize the secular concerns of liberal Muslims like Jinnah deeming the Muslim clergy to represent the Muslims led to Pakistan’s creation. (more…)

QQurratulain Hyder wrote Aag ka Darya, which by any measure remains one of the greatest novels in world literature, between August 1956 and December 1997 at Mauripur, Karachi, where she was then living. It is a monumental work, taking in its stride the sweep of history, the rise and fall of civilisations, the eternal human quest for enlightenment, the mystery of life’s transience and the ultimately futile search for happiness.

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