Posts Tagged Muzaffarabad

Floods’ management: Perfect script for a black comedy

13 August 2010
Comments (2)

As I write these lines, millions are stranded and vulnerable to disease in the wake of perhaps the greatest natural disaster of recent times. Communities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are stranded, Sindh is facing the wrath of gods and parts of Muzaffargarh and Kot Addu have been washed away. Citizens across the country are perturbed and doing whatever they can. But the power centres including the free media are busy in point-scoring and blowing their little trumpets as if the devastation was a playground for political mileage.

They say that individual and collective characters are exposed in times of crisis. Indeed the Pakistan ruling classes have exposed themselves for their historical myopia and lack of vision. Political parties are fighting over optics, media perceptions and wasting their energies. TV channels and wise anchors on the other hand are competing who got there first to show the mammoth destruction and who fired more salvos at Asif Zardari. Adding insult to injury, the media remained busy for hours as to the alleged shoe-throwing incident at the president as if that was the topmost priority of this country. (more…)

Azad Jammu & Kashmir – Ruling from Islamabad

14 June 2010
Comments (5)

Silence on Azad Jammu & Kashmir in the Pakistani mainstream, other than the juicy breaking news, is a tacit acceptance of the marginalization of this area

Arundhati Roy has been exposing the brutalities of the Indian State in the ‘occupied’ Jammu and Kashmir. She has questioned the presence of over half a million Indian troops and the naked violations of human rights there. Roy’s the lone domestic voice that has earned the ire of the patriots and nation-state parrots. In Pakistan, we face a dilemma whereby commenting on the status and predicament of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) remains a forbidden territory. Any discussion on AJK has to locate itself within the narrow confines of the Partition mess. This is why a zone with ambiguous citizenship continues to exist next to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The current government has accorded a quasi-provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan but the state of AJK like its other strategic sibling, the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) is quite low on the national agenda. Indeed, the national security doctrines inform such discussions and leave little option for introspection, let alone deliberating policy shifts.  Ostensibly an autonomous state government exists in AJK with institutions of governance but their remit and outreach are limited. If anything, Islamabad is the real capital. Ironically, both the Indian and Pakistani states despite their rhetoric and habitual one-upmanship display the worst characteristics of their original cast – the colonial apparatus that constructed fragile and unsatisfactory notions of citizenship. (more…)

Unfullfiled Civic Longing

23 December 2008
Comments (9)
Raza Rumi
Writing for The Friday Times, Pakistan

After Mumbai, I have stopped watching television. I will not participate in the senseless jingoism of the Indo-Pak media industries … most Pakistanis do not want war with India
…Thirty-something, burnt out, and driven by the inane logistics of life, I have forgotten what is it to chill, party or even get a few hours of doing nothing. This is particularly what I miss from my past life – the ability to just laze around without an agenda or multiple alarms.IHaving moved back to Lahore recently, after a long gap, the little village of Lahore has grown beyond control, reminding one of Pitras Bokhari’s remarkable essays on the city that celebrates the innate spirit and timelessness of Lahore with elegant wit.

Since my return to Lahore, my social life has resumed its Lahori normalcy except that I have changed. Alas. I just cannot go to random places and meet the same people over and over again. Life is not just tribes, clans and cliques. This is why Rafay Alam has become a saviour of sorts. A younger muse, Rafay is an enthusiastic urban explorer. Though we have hardly kept our plans consistent let alone punctual, the tours within Lahore have been fantastic. From the Mughal to the Raj eras, I have managed to fathom a lot – the evident and not so apparent tide of change that has engulfed Lahore. The people’s architecture is simply astounding for its social and aesthetic statement. Away from the self-conscious red-brick homes of the elites, and far from the kitsch sold as comfort in the Defence Housing Authority; the Mughalpura and Ghoray Shah areas have some interesting buildings and colours that one would rarely find amid the growing menace of high-rises and hideous sign boards that are thankfully being removed fromthe scene.

It was therefore great to be at my dear friend SA’s birthday bash that was a smallish affair but had an interesting mix of Lahore’s younger intelligentsia. Except that I got into trouble while arguing with a friend over the ethnic riots in the commercial capital of Pakistan. The exchange was heated and more so following the Mumbai attacks and the theories that are floating around as to who actually perpetrated the attacks. I was a little too critical of the liberal chattering classes who are pretty much responsible for the mess to start with. Their prognoses and diagnoses are all off the mark. For instance, when someone said that post-Mumbai, quick attacks were an opportunity for Pakistan to carry out surgical strikes and weed out terror, I nearly banged my head against their woolly wall of delusion. Such distance from reality can only be found in the well heated drawing rooms of Lahore with an odd painting of a Pakistani master hanging above their spurious theorisations. (more…)