Reason on the Sidelines

Reason on the Sidelines
Eqbal Ahmad
6 June 1998

Ironically too the most popular achievement of science in Pakistan " the nuclear tests " has stimulated in some sections of society, a demand for conformity that denies the very basis of scientific development à an environment of critical inquiry and interplay of diverse ideas and assumptions. The unfortunate incident on June 3 at Islamabad's Holiday Inn is a case in point. I was a panelist at the press conference which was violently disrupted by the Shabab-i-Milli, the youth wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami . I have reflected on the incident since and find it indicative of a trend which, if allowed to flourish, will greatly hurt this country. A few press reports and Urdu commentaries which followed reflected more the emotions at work and less the facts.

The press conference was called by a group named Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy. I had declined earlier to participate but joined the panel on learning that a scheduled panelist, I.A. Rahman could not be present due to indisposition. A room full of people, including journalists whom I know and have regarded as committed professionals, were there. On entering the room, the panel confronted a barrage of hostile and simultaneous questions all of which challenged the patriotism, bonafide, and financial integrity of the panelists and the Forum. The term NGOs was used as though it were an epithet. Two journalists shouted that we were all traitors to Pakistan and loved India, `so get out of here', we shall not allow your anti-Pakistan propaganda.' From the outset, this audience had indicated that it had come to heckle not hear. We should have disengaged immediately and did not. Rather, in the din we tried to answer the un-answerable. It was as though we were set on conducting a rational dialogue with what was in effect a seated mob. We, including the women, stayed there for some 20 minutes until violence broke out. Could it be that the English educated intelligentsia has not quite internalized its understanding of the forces that are at work in Pakistan?

We had come to the Holiday Inn from a day-long conference organized by a coalition of nine NGOs on nuclear weapons and national security. There existed no connection between the two events; they became linked nevertheless. False reports about the Conference proceedings seemed to have aroused hostile sentiments even among those journalists whom one would expect to behave professionally. It was alleged that we had heaped abuses against the Urdu press at the conference. So why do we now expect the maligned Urdu press to hear our unpatriotic views?

Accusations were also made of anti-Pakistan, pro-India nature of the conference. There was no truth to these allegations. I attended nearly all of the proceedings and heard not one anti-Pakistan or pro-India word. The conference speakers included those who had earlier argued against Pakistan exhibiting its nuclear capability, but even they accepted the tests as fait accompli, and discussed the post-tests challenges. As examples: Lt. General Talat Masood was concerned with the setting up of Command & Control, launch-on-warning, and the Permissive Action Links (PALs) systems which are indispensable to the management of strategic weaponry.

Dr. Mahbubul Haq, a former finance minister and World Bank official, argued that international sanctions against Pakistan will be neither severe nor effective. He praised the government's "brilliant moves" and recommended some more. Dr Shahrukh Rafi Khan and Omar Asghar Khan, economists both, were less optimistic than Dr. Haq. Dr. Syed Haroon Ahmed, a well-known Karachi based psychiatrist talked about the medical aspects of nuclearized environment, a much written about subject about which most educated Pakistanis remain, for good reasons until now, largely unaware.

Only one speaker mentioned Pakistan's Urdu press along with the Hindi press in India. Khaled Ahmed of Friday Times was critical of how the vernacular press in both countries treated this crisis. His argument was that with some exceptions they jettisoned reason, analysis, even news in favor of arousing patriotic and nationalist fervor. He was funny at times with such descriptions as that of a cartoon showing Atal Behari Vajpayee defecating in his dhoti (the standard Indian wrap-around) upon hearing of Pakistan's nuclear tests. But he was not abusive of either the Urdu or the Hindi press. I remain astounded as to how his very serious criticism, with which the defenders of the Urdu language press have every right to disagree, came to be reported as an exercise by all conference participants in "abusing" the press.

I followed Khaled Ahmed. The greater part of my talk was an argument that by carrying out the tests on May 11 & 13, the BJP government had committed a blunder and a "crime" against the people of South Asia including India, that it "goaded" Pakistan into testing, and that the effects on our conventional capabilities of the decade-long American sanctions under the Pressler Amendment actually enhanced Pakistan's compulsion to conduct the tests. I also picked up Khaled Ahmed's theme of inverse linkages between language and nuclear power. My argument was that in our time science and technology grow, to borrow a phrase from Malthus, in geometrical progression while culture and habits of mind adapt to them in arithmetical progression. Language often reveals the gap between the two. Thus well known Americans, soldiers and civilians alike, often referred to "our swift nuclear sword", and Henry Kissinger wrote of using nuclear weapons as a "modern equivalent of showing the flag".

It was in this context that I cited some examples from India and two from Pakistan: the naming of a missile after a medieval muslim conqueror - Shahabuddin Mohammed Ghauri - and the Prime Minister's use of a Sufist line from Allama Mohammed Iqbal to characterize his decision to test nuclear devices:

Be khatar kood para aatish-I-Namrood mein `ishq,
`Aql hai mahwe tamasha lab-i-baam abhi.
(Love leaped into the fire of Nimrod, with reckless abandon, Reason stayed on the sideline, deep in thought.)

The image misleads, posits a false allusion, mixes a spiritual experience with a mundane, awesome reality. To surrender reason to love of God, as Iqbal's line suggests, is a level of spiritual experience that ought not be transposed to a political decision involving nuclear weapons. Language influences thought, forms outlook, and shapes instincts. We need to make an special effort to use languages - English and Urdu included - carefully, making usage conform to contemporary realities. This was an abstraction misconstrued, perhaps deliberately. In disbelief, I read in a section of the Urdu press reports that I had condemned Allama Iqbal as an "emotional poet" (jazbaati shaair), and the Prime Minister as an ignorant man. Whatever it is, this sort of reporting is not journalism.

Within minutes the "press conference" was stormed by about two dozen Shabab-i- Milli youth bearing a banner and several placards in English and Urdu, the first clear indication that this was a pre-meditated and organized affair. They formed a semi-circle behind us and shouted "Allah Super-Power" and anti-traitor slogans which included at least two calls to murder. Accusations continued to fly from the seated journalists and Dr. A.H. Nayyar tried to respond. By then I was hearing neither the accusers nor his response. Suddenly, I saw one journalist hurl a chair at Nayyar. The Shabab took it as a signal, the beating started, and the fracas ended when the hotel staff intervened. In the heat of hatred, the Shababin lost the distinction even between their friends and imagined foe. They beat up quite badly an old gentleman who had I am told called out "Ali Maula" instead of Allah Super-Power. A journalist who was actually on their side but tried to save the innocent old man was also beaten up.

Two thoughts have haunted me in the aftermath of the incident. The first concerns the state of journalistic profession in Pakistan. Granted, this was a microscopic minority of Pakistan's press. Most were probably misinformed about our positions and activities. But among these were men I knew and had respected as professional journalists. A younger man is the son of an old friend of mine. For the fear of hurting their careers or reputations I do not wish to name names. But I do wish that they had heard us out, for then they would have discovered some newsworthy diversity among the four panelists. It might also have helped the public know the truth about dissent and assent in this fledgling democracy.

Second, the incident has shaken my confidence in the maturity of Jamaat-i-Islami and its leaders. I differ with them ideologically but I have regarded them as intellectually and politically serious people. In fact I owe an intellectual debt to Maulana Abul Aula Maudoodi and his associates in 1948-49. In Ichra (a Lahore neighborhood) Maulana Sahib was our neighbor, and generous with his time whenever I ventured to ask a question. Maulana Salahuddin and Naim Siddiqui also instructed me in Islamic studies. I know they contributed to my decision eventually to study Islamic history and culture. It was painful to discover first-hand on June 3 that the party which had once encouraged the youth to learn, think and argue now molds them to be disruptive toughs. They looked like bright kids, full of energy, motivation and, regrettably, hate. It is sad to see them wasted.

With an illiterate population of nearly 100 million people, Pakistan has entered the nuclear age. An awesome responsibility now falls on its highly privileged educated class to keep this environment free of hatred and violence. We can not let "`Aql" remain "on the sidelines, deep in thought."