A Crimson Journey with Harris Khalique

Abbas Zaidi

“History is a book which we write and in which we are written” – Blaise Pascal.

One of the dangers of writing non-fiction is that it is likely to become passé, especially when it relates to the writing of history. Some issues, however, remain perennial, and good writings dealing with those issues remain relevant as a result. Harris Khalique wrote his Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering and Creativity in Pakistan in 2017, but it reads like a running commentary on today’s Pakistan. If I write a review of the book in the future, I will perhaps say the same thing. The title makes it clear what it is about. Therefore, a summary is not required to guide the reader.

From the very beginning, Pakistan has been struggling with its identity (in fact, Pakistanis have). Even before Partition, Muslim elites framed the identity issue in terms of the Two-Nation Theory: Hindus versus Muslims. Thus, India has been a perennial obsession and still inspires the national narrative. Apparently, people of substance on both sides have tried to bridge the binary. Why, then, have they failed? Have they been sincere in their efforts? I think not. So does the author.

Harris Khalique: “The subconscious narrative of the state of Pakistan continues to define the country as ‘non-India’. The gate at the Wagah border near Lahore, providing official entry into and exit from the two countries’ territory is called Bab-i-Azadi (The Gate of Freedom) by Pakistan. We were not freed from India; we were freed from the British. The Indian state, on the other hand, browbeats its smaller neighbours and in the same spirit wants a compliant neighbour on its western borders. The two countries kill the villagers who live along the Line of Control and the Working Boundary in Kashmir, catch and imprison poor fisherfolk who unknowingly trespass the lines drawn on water, support secessionist movements through proxy outfits and undercover agents within each other’s borders, and spend colossal amounts of money on the arms race. The privileged Indian and Pakistani old boys drink together to the nostalgia of Doon School, Dehradun; Government College, Lahore; St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, as well as Sandhurst, Oxford and Cambridge, and get their children to establish contact with each other in foreign lands. But it is more of a cultivated social relationship between the same class of people, who at the same time may be benefiting from the economy of tension, insecurity, jingoism and war. Their contacts are seldom seriously intended to bring the two countries together. The poor languish in each other’s jails while the rich Cambridge alumni from India and Pakistan remember college days they spent together and raised toasts in the Avari Hotel, Lahore and Le Meridian Hotel, New Delhi. Lieutenant General A A K Niazi dies in his comfortable bed in Pakistan at a ripe old age while Sepoy Maqbool Hussain spends forty years of his youth and senior years in an Indian prison with his tongue slashed.”

In Pakistan, India has been projected as an enemy, but has it been projected as the greatest enemy? The typical answer is in the affirmative. This is not true. Pakistan’s ruling elites have never defined India/Hindus as their Enemy Number One. The enemy has been a fellow Pakistani, i.e., the Bengali Muslim, who from the very beginning was projected as dirty, dark-skinned, and, therefore, inferior. He had no idea of civilisation or freedom. Who else could describe Enemy Number One better than President Ayub Khan? In his Friends, Not Masters: A Political Biography, he wrote about the people he was supposed to respect and protect: “East Bengalis, who constitute the bulk of the population, probably belong to the very original Indian races. It would be no exaggeration to say that up to the creation of Pakistan, they had not known any real freedom or sovereignty…As such they have all the inhibitions of downtrodden races and have not found it possible to adjust psychologically to the requirements of new-born freedom. Their popular complexes, exclusiveness, suspicion, and a sort of defensive aggressiveness probably emerge from this historical background.” He made it clear who they were, setting the stage for their genocide and mass rapes of their women.

Harris Khalique: “Ayub was oblivious to the Bengalis’ contribution to knowledge and civilisation in the Indian subcontinent, including the Muslim culture of this region. His observations about East Bengalis came at a time when the great Bangla poet Kazi Nazrul Islam was alive and revered across all of East Pakistan. Ayub talks about the inhibitions of the downtrodden Bengalis which made it hard for them to understand what it meant to be liberated. He listed those inhibitions as popular complexes: exclusiveness, suspicion, and a sort of defensive aggression. He was speaking about East Pakistanis, but unfortunately Ayub’s own superior ‘West Pakistanis’ seem to suffer from those same inhibitions. He sounds so right in defining a people. But the people he is describing are his own those who live in Pakistan today. The popular myth, however, endures that Bangladesh became a country only because of its forfeited right to use its language. It is not only in politics that perception is made more important than reality, but to appropriate from Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad’s seminal work on Sufi Sarmad Shaheed, a myth cannot be challenged once the majority begins to accept it as the eternal truth.”

It would, however, be unfair to blame Ayub Khan for everything that happened in East Pakistan/Bangladesh. West Pakistanis in general hated the Bengalis for being sub-human, who did not deserve to live civilised lives like them. They were not supposed to eat or dress well. They were not supposed to live in decent houses. They were supposed to thank West Pakistanis for being allowed to live.

Harris Khalique: “Unfortunately, the dominant West Pakistani elite and state institutions never got it right; social oppression, economic exploitation, undignified behaviour, and political marginalisation continued until the end. Measures taken to appease the citizens after the general elections in 1970 were mere eyewash. In the psyche of a West Pakistani barring those who supported the National Awami Party (NAP) in those years, Bengalis were traitors.”

If history has lessons for people, Pakistani ruling elites are innocent of them. Bangladesh has left Pakistan behind in almost every sector: health, economy, civil rights, political stability, cost of living and average age. The list goes on (Refer to Worlddata.info). However, instead of feeling embarrassed, Pakistanis are still obsessed with the arrogance that they are superior to Bangladeshis and are justified in rebuking them if they do not behave.

Harris Khalique: “In Pakistan, one resolution adopted by the National Assembly and then the statements made by some leading politicians condemned the hanging of the Jamaat-i-Islami leaders in Bangladesh, Abdul Quader Moullah and Motiur Rahman Nizami. They were involved in the killings of Awami League workers, academics and intellectuals, and innocent East Pakistanis. The resolution and these statements issued in Pakistan hinted at an equally disturbing and deep-seated problem in the Pakistani psyche which is comparable to what was happening to the Bangladeshi mind at the time.”

I cannot do justice to Harris Khalique’s work in a short review. Perhaps an MA/MPhil dissertation can. He has been objective in his discussion and analysis. His recall is not selective, which makes his book a work of distinction. I want to say a word about an issue very close to his heart. Since he, inter alia, is a poet, he has a special place for Urdu in his heart. He is hurt when he recalls Bengalis’ anti-Urdu sentiments. They, however, cannot be blamed for hating Urdu because people like Jinnah, Maulana Maududi, Raees Amrohi and Khaled Ahmad have claimed Urdu’s status as an Islamic language and Bengalis must sacrifice their political economy for the linguistic Baal that Urdu has been. However, I can assure him that there is good news for him on this count. Let’s first hear from him.

Harris Khalique: “More than twenty-five years after my father’s last visit to East Pakistan, I visited Bangladesh for a few weeks in 1995. I could see in the eyes of my otherwise hospitable hosts that they saw me under the halo of West Pakistan, the Pakistan Army, and Urdu…My father once narrated another incident from the same trip, or maybe another trip made around the same period to East Pakistan. Baby Islam, whose real name is Anwarul Islam, a leading cameraperson then, and who later came to be considered one of the pioneers of the Bangladeshi film industry, hosted a dinner in honour of my father and invited people associated with the arts, literature, music and film to meet him. After dinner, people sat around the room sipping tea when my father overheard one of the guests telling another that Urdu kokorer bhasha aachay (Urdu is the language of dogs). Urdu was one of the identity markers of the Muslims of British India and became the first state language of Pakistan before Bangla was made the second in 1952, subsequent to a Bangla language rights movement. Urdu was viewed as the language imposed by West Pakistan on East Pakistan. The person who made that remark about Urdu had no idea that my father knew Bangla well. The one he was speaking to knew though. He looked at my father and immediately understood that he had heard what was being said. He whispered something in the ear of the person who had said that. The man stood up, came straight to my father, and touched his feet. He apologised profusely and said that he would never want to hurt a guest, but a man like my father would understand what East Pakistan had gone through at the hands of the West Pakistani army, bureaucracy, businessmen, and political elite since 1947. He said it was sheer anger and pain that made him say that. Else, how could he ever think of demeaning the language of Ghalib and Iqbal?”

Here is the good news for him. I have first-hand knowledge of the language spoken at the private gatherings of Bangladesh’s elites. Yes, it is Urdu. I do not wish to read too much into it, but it should please Harris Khalique. Now that Hasina Wajid is out of contention, history may repeat itself even if it turns out to be a farce.

The writer teaches media, linguistics, and literature in Sydney. His The Infidels of Mecca has recently been published by Aushaal Publishing House, Islamabad