A word about letters
By Kazy Javed
Darwin’s ideas
The man who played a major role in developing the modern Zeitgeist is being remembered around the world on the occasion of his 200th birth anniversary. It is now generally admitted that Charles Darwin’s insights have left no sphere of human thought and civilization unchanged. His indelible mark can be felt on the social as well as natural sciences. Literature, arts, morals and religions are certainly no exception. They, too, have absorbed a lot from Darwinian precepts.

Roots of Religious Tolerance in Pakistan and India

By Kamran Ahmad

Publisher: Vanguard Books, 2008

Pages: 214

Price: Not mentioned

The trend of intolerance in countries like Pakistan has been reinforced by the local political parties, the socio-economic interests of the specific groups and even by the role of the United States in global politics but paradoxically there are other tendencies in the psyche of the people of the sub continent that have allowed a coexistence of diverse groups in a way that may be unparalleled in any other part of the world. This collective psyche has roots which are thousand of years old and Kamran Ahmad has gone about exploring which of these roots allowed for a relatively more tolerant, harmonious and peaceful co-existence in the region and to examine whether these roots can be drawn upon and strengthened now as a remedy for intolerance.

In studying the myth and the folklore of the area, Ahmad discovered many commonalities that were the playground of shared interests. And he put this through the rigour of hermeneutic analysis in which the text is read first directly, putting aside the usual assumptions and preoccupations, letting the patterns and structures in the text to emerge, then going down to the essentials or invariant features that lie under the patterns and structures related to the theme and sub themes before putting the text in the historical context.

There are structures of domination, fragmentation and prejudices that are internalised by everyone in the system, staying strictly within the text could mean being restricted by the cultural distortions and the social attitudes that are internalised by the people of that time. Putting a text against its historical context is therefore one of the important ways to deal with this problem.

The psychologists were probably the first batch of scholars who studied myths and symbols as leaving a print that signifies more than what meets the eye but then another group of scholars grouping under the banner of structural anthropology found a more scientific way of studying myths and symbols as they criticised the attempts of psychologists to interpret myths symbolically . Structural Anthropology is an attempt to do a precise study of the myths moving away from subjective interpretations. Claiming that myth is language and using the rules of linguistic analyses, structural anthropologists attempt to understand myths by breaking them down into their components and analyzing their structure.

But then finding structural anthropology too lacking in certain areas the hermeneutic analysis of a myth was evolved which on the surface seem something similar to the methods of the structural anthropologists — how a particular theme or a pattern is repeated on various levels of meanings in the whole is given more importance to, but instead of the rigidity of the structure it chooses to focus on the overall attitude or the tone of the story.

The folk tale that Kamran Ahmad selected for his analysis is Heer and in particular the text of Heer written by Damodar and realised that it reinforces the connection of the Lover Archetype generally in folklore and myths, as the one who knows the union and interconnectedness of all things as described in mystical traditions, to the problems of structure and formal differences that divide the followers of the orthodox traditions.

The main purpose of the study was to learn from history and capitalise on the past to build a more tolerant society. According to Ahmad, the first task is of dealing with the burden of historical rights and wrongs. The historical injustices and abuses of power that have been committed in the sub continent need not to be at least acknowledged and perhaps apologised for in order to achieve an atmosphere that is tolerant and respectful to all. In India one essential task remains to generate a broad based movement to expose the roots of the oppression of the darker indigenous people of the sub continent through the Sanskrit tradition. The civil society and the Government of India could check the recreation of history by some of the Brahmin circles and ethnocentric historians. They are strategically covering up the historical injustices and abuses and not just in the scholarly discussions but attempting to do so even in the textbooks. For generally for the Muslims of the sub continent whether they live in India or Pakistan one primary challenge remains to dissociate with the Muslim invaders of the sub continent. Ahmad has moved away from the formal argument for tolerance based not only on the formal religions but also on the formal spiritual traditions. The latter stays on an intellectual level; it holds us in and reinforces formal religion and spirituality. The indigenous mind of the sub continent knows a level of spirituality that may be deeper and more primary than the formalized spiritual traditions, perhaps even the mindfulness of spirituality.

The people of the sub continent are used to multiple identities that they moved easily in and out of. Today we see rigidity in religious identities which were more flexible earlier. Could a strategy of indirect intervention be to reinforce identities that compete with the more rigid religious ones? The general idea is to move people out of an inflexible and rigid identity that keep them locked up in an all encompassing religious or philosophical system —out of their single vision to and open them up to the complexity of real life around them. Broader and conflicting perspectives have to be introduced on all levels. This broader perspective and healthy doubt along with an ability of critical thinking can lead to psychological growth and pluralism.

By Khawar Naeem Hashmi

Pakistan’s Other Story: The 1968-69 Revolution.

By Lal Khan.

Publisher: The Struggle Publications

Pages: 439

Price: 495

Lal Khan’s new book Pakistan’s Other Story has been published on the 40th anniversary of the movement against Ayub Khan. The introduction of this book has been written by Alan Woods, the world-renowned Marxist revolutionary and a comrade and personal friend of the author.

In the first chapter, Lal Khan narrates the revolutionary movements that took place in France, Mexico, Ireland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, the USA and several other countries in those turbulent times. He explains in detail the war in Vietnam and the revolutionary repercussions of USA’s imperialist aggression.

The author blames the derailing of these revolutions on the traditional leadership of the worker parties. Khan asserts that the policy of divide and rule imposed by the British imperialists was used in connivance of the local elitist to deviate a movement of national liberation that was radicalising rapidly and the rule of capital was being threatened with a glaring possibility of a socialist revolution on the agenda.

The third chapter deals with the situation in the aftermath of the partition and the failure of the nascent ruling classes of Pakistan to develop the economy and institute a stable bourgeoisie democracy, paving the way for country’s first martial law. The chapter defines the patterns of socio-economic developments under Ayub Khan’s dictatorship. According to the author these uneven developments sharpened the contradictions in society that exploded into the mass revolt of 1968-69.

In the fourth chapter the actual events of the revolutionary uprising are narrated in detail. Lal Khan interviewed more than a dozen leaders and activists who participated in the movement and narrates their experiences in the book.

The book also deals with the 1971 war and analyses the 68-69 revolt. The author insists that the reason of the upsurge was socialist in nature because the existent property relations were challenged. Factories were occupied, the youth and workers refused to pay fares in trains and buses, in the countryside the peasant movements seized land estates and there were other similar acts that graphically showed that the movement’s aim was the overthrow of capitalism, feudalism and imperialist exploitation. There were clear indications that the mass revolt was striving for collectivised ownership of the modes of production and the commanding heights of the economy.

Lal Khan asserts that the ruling classes of India and Pakistan even went to war to diffuse the threat of the revolution spreading throughout the subcontinent.

Lal Khan also writes about the role of the left leadership and the ideological confusion and theoretical mistakes they made that led to the revolution bypassing them. Marxism, Trotskyism, Maoism and Stalinism as ideologies are explained and thoroughly analysed.

Khan also writes about the rise of the Pakistan Peoples Party and the phenomenon of populism is reviewed from a historical and social perspective. Khan looks at the reasons of the military coup against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the imposition of the dictatorship from a Marxist perspective. The imposition of the Musharraf dictatorship, its demise and assassination of Benazir Bhutto are also touched upon. Lal Khan presents, through charts, facts and figures the crisis of the present regime, the crumbling economy, the insurgencies raging in different parts of the country and the dismal conditions of social and economic life of the masses.

He ends the book with a grim analysis of the present regime and the intensification of its crises and rise of even greater instability. Lal Khan asserts revolutionary socialism as the only solution to the present crisis. He explains how the capitalist system can be overthrown and what steps can be taken by socialist revolutionaries to salvage society from this abyss. The author has elaborated the concrete measures to be adopted to end poverty, misery, disease and backwardness. What course the revolution will take and the methods, theory and strategy necessary to ensure a Socialist victory.

An integral part of Simorgh Women’s Resource And Publication Centre, Neelam Hussain has spearheaded many projects aimed especially towards the promotion of women’s rights. She teaches English literature. With Simorgh, a non-government, non-profit, feminist/activist organisation, she has been a part of various publications, seminars, documentary films and gender awareness workshops. Publications of this institute include Women, Saints and Sanctuaries, The Fundamentalists’ Obsession with Women and Hudood Shikni kay Khawab and many more.

Neelam Hussain herself has contributed extensively towards the promotion of women’s literature and has translated Khadija Mastoor’s Aangan into English as Inner Courtyard. Her most recent work includes The Romance of Raja Rasalu and Other Tales which is closest to historic Punjabi folklore. Currently she is also working on Zahedi Hina’s Na Junoon Raha Na Pari. She is currently teaching English Literature at Lahore Grammar School.

The News on Sunday: Simorgh is involved in research and publishing. How did you get the idea of compiling folktales and how much success did you anticipate?

Neelam Hussain: We have all read and heard about Cinderella and King Arthur so why not these? It’s a treasure trove. I would have liked to go back to the oral tradition but it requires a lot of money. So we thought we would do what the British had done then and maybe earn enough money out of this book to go directly into the field.

TNS: So how did you compile these folk-tales?

NH: I compiled the stories from tales which were transcribed in the 19th century by the British. The seeds go back much further in the oral tradition which we used to hear when we were kids but which, due to today’s fast paced life, has vanished. Well, Rasalu is from Punjab and others have storylines ranging across the subcontinent.

TNS: Did you aim to bring back the tradition of story telling or the stagnated tales from the ancient?

NH: Story telling has always been a very interactive tradition and an alternative form of entertainment. Why should it be lost then? Initially we wanted to compile stories for children but then it’s such a wealth of stories and we realised the adults did not remember them either.

TNS: What is your readership target, children or adults?

NH: More adults because first the children have to be a bit older in order to read them and secondly there are some very adult references. Even if you take the Cinderella stories, when Grimms collected these they edited them a lot. Also, because folktales do not have any moral boundaries.

TNS: Yours is a pretty new concept because Laila Rehman has done about a dozen or two paintings especially for the book, why so?

NH: We wanted the stories to be thoroughly illustrative and once we had started something we wanted to do our best.

TNS: But don’t you think the book is a little too expensive?

NH: This is because of the production cost – the paper quality and the colour quality and the paintings.

TNS: Don’t you think that undermines the goal that you people were trying to achieve?

NH: The main goal is tricky. In the rural areas there is not much need for this because the oral tradition is well and alive there. It is among the urban elite that this tradition needs to be revived. It is among them that Punjabi is at a less rich level. Punjab is the only province where its regional language is not widely spoken; the language almost needs to be reinstated.

TNS: But then the concept of creating a mass-readership and making folk-lore popular once again is not achieved?

NH: As I said before there is not much need for it in the villages. As for those in the cosmopolitans, they’ll buy it if it’s in vogue or just for the sake of adding to their collection. They will make it a trend and probably that’s how we will achieve our purpose. Apart from that what we’re going to do is make smaller edition in the near future, not in terms of text but maybe without paintings and in black and white.

TNS: Is the promotion of Punjabi language the reason behind the various quotations given in the margins in Punjabi?

NH: Yes. But take it from a political angle; at least you should know your identity. Today all we can hear about are foreign characters like their princesses and princes. I’m not saying that we should exclude them because we do borrow from many other cultures. Everyone says there should be national pride and patriotism and it is to come from within. After all, I can’t feel proud about Cinderella or the Saudi Sheikh.

TNS: What makes it a unique collection?

NH: While collecting these stories I discovered that in European folklore we find a meek and dutiful princess like Snow White working for the dwarfs or our good old Cinderella. But in one of these stories, there are two heroines who actually rescue the prince unlike the former who are at the mercy of the male patriarch. I thought that was worth an idea because all too often our desi woman is said to be without a voice.

TNS: Do you think compilations like these are effective considering that we have very few English writers and diminishing reading habits?

NH: Yes but the work should be of good quality because only good work is bound to be read. I think more of such compilations would serve as steps forward in reviving reading habits since they are entertaining and carry indigenous concepts. I think this collection doesn’t leave room for disappointments.

Darwin’s ideas

The man who played a major role in developing the modern Zeitgeist is being remembered around the world on the occasion of his 200th birth anniversary. It is now generally admitted that Charles Darwin’s insights have left no sphere of human thought and civilization unchanged. His indelible mark can be felt on the social as well as natural sciences. Literature, arts, morals and religions are certainly no exception. They, too, have absorbed a lot from Darwinian precepts.

The church raised hell against Darwin when his first book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859. It was said that the acceptance of his ideas will leave no room for God.

The situation has now changed. Scholars of many religions claim that Darwin’s ideas were not original and have been borrowed from their sacred books.

His ideas reached India in the early 1860s and were violently attacked. Akbar Allahabadi, the famous humorous Urdu poet of the 19th century, and many others opposed his ideas. On the other hand, Allama Iqbal based his reconstruction of religious thought on the concept of evolution.

Dr. Mohammad Rafiuddin wrote a book Quran aur Ilm-e-Jadeed in the 1960s to show that some ideas of Darwin were foreshadowed by Muslim Sufis and thinkers such as Rumi and Al-Jili. However, there are still ‘scholars’ like Imran Khan who believe that Darwin’s evolutionary theory is ‘half baked’ and cannot be accepted as part of scientific knowledge.

In his 1850 epoch-making book, Darwin stopped short of applying the concept of evolution to mankind, though the inference was quite logical. His second important book appeared in 1871 under the title. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. The book carried the doctrine that man, too, had evolved from simpler forms of life. He also propounded the theory that evolution was primarily based on the principle of natural selection. Explaining the principle he wrote: "Nature selects those best adapted to the environment and allows them to survive and transmit their peculiarities to their descendants."

Darwin died in 1882. He is buried in Westminster Abbey beside Isaac Newton.

An unusual craze for collecting books has led a sixty-years- old well-heeled Iranian businessman to jail for one year in Britain. He was found guilty of stealing pages from rare books in some of the top British libraries to "improve his own collection".

Farhad Hakimzadeh confessed that he used a scalpel to remove selected pages from several rare books in reading rooms at the British Library and Oxford’s Bodlein Library.

A newspaper report describes him as a director of the Iranian Heritage Foundation who was fully aware of the significance of what he was damaging.

The 150 books that he damaged, including works from the 16th century, are all about relations between Europe and Middle East and are estimated to be worth more than a million pounds.

Peter Ader, the British Judge, was furious. Passing the sentence, he said: "I am angry because this is somebody extremely rich who has damaged something which belongs to everybody, completely selfishly destroyed something for his own personal benefit which this nation has invested in over generations."

Farhad Hakimzadeh is now in jail but only some of the pages he stole have been recovered from his place. The rest of them have probably been lost for ever.

Humair Hashmi is a noted psychologist who is also deeply interested in contemporary socio-cultural issues. His insights into our individual as well as collective psychological problems provide us with admirable guidance to overcome them.

A graduate of Government College, Lahore and Towson University, USA, he taught at his alma mater and Punjab University for some years. He has eight books on psychology to his credit and his work has also appeared in various publications in Pakistan, India, USA and Canada.

Humair Hashmi has now come up with a book on everyday psychology which is being published in four volumes by the Ferozsons of Lahore & Karachi under the title Psychology for Life. It carries chapters on such vital and interesting topics as politics and psychology, media, social and gender issues, mental diseases, psychology of healing, organizational psychology, psyche at work, education and sport psychology.

Psychology for Life has plenty of thoughtful material that will attract those who are interested in everyday psychology including writers, intelligentsia and general public.

Dr. Agha Suhail wrote novels, short stories, travelogues and critical essays. Born in Lucknow in 1933, he spent his years in Lucknow, Peshawar and Lahore and absorbed the best of values that these different South Asian cultural centres had nourished.

Dr. Agha Suhail wrote 15 books but I like his swan-song best. It is his 500-plus page autobiography Khak ke Parday published in 2004. I have now learnt that the second volume of his autobiography is also in the press and is expected to hit the bookstalls by the end of next moths.

Agha Sahib, however, will not be able to see the volume. He died in Lahore past fortnight.