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profile
A
tale of two glasses
profile He seems as agile
as he used to be. As usual, one can see him carrying with him a bag full of
books in different functions in the capital city of Islamabad. There is
hardly any trace of nervousness and worry on his face. When you are suffering
from cancer, you are bound to get bogged down. Not if you are Ahmed Salim who
shows extraordinary resilience in the face of lots of odds. Writer, editor, Punjabi
poet and novelist, and archivist, Ahmad Salim wears many hats. For the past
many years, his rich archives have helped many a local as well as foreign
scholars working on myriad subjects. It took him nearly forty years to
collect this huge archive which is a real treasure which can guide
upcoming research scholars. First, he arranged the archives at
Samanabad Lahore in a rented house. Since he was based in Islamabad, it was
difficult for him to look after the precious record properly. So, he shifted
it in a rented house in Islamabad but it was difficult to bear the exorbitant
rent for so long. “It was getting very
difficult for me to bear the rent of a separate house where my archives was
arranged. I am diagnosed with cancer and the treatment is quite costly. I am
not least worried about my health as my only concern is about the archives
and rare books that I have collected over the years. So I have decided to
dump all the record, books and other material on the upper portion of my
house,” says Salim. The record, archives and
rare books have occupied four rooms and he has tried his best to arrange them
properly. However, he says, all the material can be properly arranged only in
eight rooms. Recently, a delegation of Library of Congress visited him to see
the whole material. The delegation was amazed to see such precious record and
rare books and confessed that some of the rare books are can’t be found in
any library of Europe. The American Institute of Pakistan Studies have also
surveyed the library and archives as they want to help by arranging a
librarian. He has been offered hefty amount by few foreign institutions who
want to buy all the archives and rare books but Ahmad Salim has declined all
such offers. “This archive and other rare material belong to this country
and I won’t like shifting it to any other country. Yes, I have had a few
offers but I politely declined. It is my wish that it remains in my
country.” Talking about the rare
record and books, Ahmad Salim says, “We have all the proceedings of Punjab
Assembly from 1921 to date; all the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly
and then all the record of provincial assemblies of Pakistan from 1947 to
date; all Five Years Plans, Budget Records and files of important papers like
Pakistan Times, Dawn, Viewpoint, Illustrated Weekly of Pakistan are also
there in the archives. Files of Imroz and Lail-o-Nihar from 1961 onwards are
also there. There are special sections on Punjab, Sindh, KPK, Balochistan,
Kashmir and Bangladesh. There are government reports of various commissions
as well as all the reports of HRCP and other such material.” Apart from this, one can
see many periodicals of 18th and 19th century such as India Review and other
very rare material of the colonial era. The files of Paisa Akhbar, Rahbar-e-Hind
and much such rare treasure can be noticed in the four rooms in which he has
crammed all his archives. “There are almost ten thousand rare books which
can not be found anywhere in the world,” claims Ahmad Salim. He lashes out hard at the
Federal Government and the other provincial governments which have shown
least interest in saving this historical rare treasure. “The apathy of
government knows no bounds as they haven’t shown even an iota of interest
in saving the treasure. Many a time, the government functionaries have
promised to do something for the archives but to no avail. Even the
information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, through a mutual friend, promised to
help but nothing came out of it. All I demand from the government is that it
should offer me a one kanal land on subsidised rate. I am not seeking alms
from the government. I want that my precious record should be properly
displayed and saved after I close my eyes.” However, he adds, there are
few individuals and NGOs which greatly helped him in these trying times. He
is particularly thankful to Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)
which is still paying him his salary, although he is unable to go to office
due to his ailment. He says he is indebted to Abid Sulehri for his all out
support. Afzaal Ahmad of Sang-e-Meel Publications and human rights activist
Fauzia Saeed are also helping him a lot. His archives and library is
registered trust and there are nine trustees. At an individual level, a few
people are trying a work out a strategy to save the archives. “I am
grateful to Dr Nadeem Omar who is very active in saving the archives. Dr
Anwar Nasir of Readings also intends to help me,” he concludes.
A
valuable contribution Seventeenth-century
philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal was convinced that “men never
do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it for religious
conviction.” We, in the Muslim world,
are supposed to trace back our ideological roots and reappraise our value
structure in order to preserve our identity in the contemporary milieu, the
future shape of which will be a symbiosis of religious and scientific values.
But, to our misfortune, the vested interests are bent upon maintaining the
status quo in social, political, economic and religious spheres. If on the one hand
religious dogmatism has fossilised our thinking, on the other the levity of
minds has shrivelled up the national soul. There is an urgent need to
stimulate it. And we need to make due changes in our perceptions, social
habits, cultural patterns, education system, intellectual framework and in
the political and economic structures of today’s society. Sadly enough, minorities
have been increasingly victimised since the creation of Pakistan up till now.
These minorities are disenfranchised economically — by disallowing them
access to respectable jobs or only allowing them access to menial ones. They
are oppressed politically by being systemically denied any real voice on any
public forum. It is not without merit that we are ranked high on the Amnesty
International’s list of countries with endangered minorities. In South Asia, and
particularly in Pakistan, the case of religious violence is not new but, in
present times, the violence in the name of religion has grown. It is
unfortunate that many people in Pakistan have adopted the failed logic of
religious extremists and groups who demand that their followers should
mistreat religious minorities as a sign of their solidarity with the Muslim
brotherhood. Hafiz Muhammad Tahir
Mahmood Ashrafi, the grandson of founder-member of Tableeghi Jama’at
Maulana Sher Muhammad, and the son of a distinguished religious scholar,
Hafiz Muhammad Suleman, has done a great service to non-Muslim minorities by
writing Muslim hukmaran aur ghair Muslim riyaiya. No doubt, the book is a
valuable contribution to Islamic literature. The style of the author is
gripping and absorbing. Indeed, Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi
has depicted a graphic picture of the Muslim rulers’ kind, just and
unbiased attitude and humane treatment to non-Muslims through the power of
his vivid account. Though it is difficult to scale a sensitive subject such
as this in a short book, Hafiz Ashrafi has tried to approach it in a
realistic manner. This very trait of the author — lucidity of thought and
clarity of expression — distinguishes him from his contemporaries. His
style seems more conversational and not just didactic. In the first chapter, the
author relates a pact signed by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) with
non-Muslim minorities to illustrate his point of view. That superb example is
rightly followed by another memorable incident in the history of Islam. The chapters, named after
the main headings, form contents of the book and lead the reader to proceed
and look for the topic of his interest and choice as he wishes. There are citations of
noted Western writers like Bernard Shaw, Thomas Carlyle, Edward Gibbon, W.
Montgomery Watt and T.W. Arnold as well as non-Muslim and Muslim luminaries
such as George Washington, Syed Ameer Muaviya (RA), Muhammad bin Qasim, Tariq
bin Ziyad, Caliph Haroon-ur-Rashid, Muhammad Shah Tughlaq, Sher Shah Suri,
Mehmood Ghaznavi, Salah-ud-Din Ayubi and Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir. The last two chapters
especially pinpoint the problem of secularism and minorities and debate the
rights of non-Muslim citizens in an Islamic state. No doubt, the book is an
outstanding and valuable addition to readable and knowledgeable literature on
minorities in a Muslim state. Muslim Hukmaran aur Ghair
Muslim Riyaiya By Hafiz Muhammad Tahir
Mahmood Ashrafi Publisher: Umar
Publications Pages: 175 Price: Rs 120
A tale of
two glasses Parto Rohilla has
now attained authenticity as a specialist on Ghalib’s Urdu and Persian
correspondence. With the publication of Ghalib aur Ghamgeen ke Farsi Maktubat
his critical work on this segment of Ghalib’s genius is now complete. The
Kulliyat-e-Maktubat-e-Farsi-e-Ghalib which was published in 2008 , a
voluminous book containing the Urdu translation of the entire available
Persian correspondence of the poet, together with the original epistles This collection contained
all the 84 letters which are extant and which Rohilla had already published
in five earlier volumes. There was no mention, however, in these volumes as
well as the Kulliyat of the ten letters which Ghalib wrote to prolific
author, poet and respected Sufi Syed Ghamgeen Dehlavi. In reply to these
letters Syed Ghamgeen had written four letters to Ghalib. These letters were
copied by Ghamgeen’s assistant Hidayatun Nabi Qadri while the writer was
still alive. The original letters are untraceable, but the copies are
authentic that were published in 1964 in the Oriental College magazine. Ghamgeen was 40 to 45 years
Ghalib’s senior and lived to a long age of nearly 100 years, and thus was
both Ghalib and Meer’s contemporary. He came from a rich and noble family
and besides a high position in worldly life he, through his spiritual
exertions on the Sufi path, had virtually attained a saintly status with a
considerable following. Ghamgeen was indeed a unique person who wrote poetry,
went on hunts and kept himself fit through physical exercise. His poetry
comprised both romantic and devotional verse. In the latter genre his
Mukashfatul Israr, a collection of his quatrains, is well known. The
collection of his ghazals, Makhzanul Israr is available in Gowaliar’s
Ghamgeen Academy. Banking
on the urbane courtly
culture and highly polite, respectful and courteous modes of formal address
then in vogue and in which the educated Ghamgeen’s
four letters to Ghalib mostly concern matters relating to mystic thought and
a debate on the concept of Khilafat and Imamat which concluded on a rather
unhappy note when Ghalib stopped the correspondence. Ghalib might have got
fed up with the obscurities and intricate nuances of mystic thought which
filled the former’s letters and through which he wanted to convince Ghalib
and convert him to his circle of Sufi thought. But Ghalib, who was not just a
poet but a well read man, especially in theology, told him quite bluntly that
Sufi literature was prolific and vast and not all in the tomes of mystic lore
made sense or appealed to the heart. And, further, that as far as Ghalib was
concerned; he relied more on two glasses of wine on which he slept soundly
without a care in the world, which was all that mattered, Deen or Duniya,
whatever. The book published by
Muqtadera Qaumi Zaban has ten very useful and informative appendices in which
some complex mystic terms used in the correspondence have been explained for
the benefit of the reader besides extracts from relevant writings of Prof
Masood Ahmad, a foreword by Shah Raza Mohammad Hazratji, another by Hidayatun
Nabi Qadri Gowaliari, Syed Ghamgeen’s family tree, a note on his date of
birth, a list of his published works and ghazals composed by both poets using
the same metre and rhyme. Dr Anwar Ahmad, who now heads the Muqtadera and is
busy giving the institution a more literary orientation, has written a very
laudatory foreword to the book and termed its publication as a tribute to
Parto Rohilla’s services to Urdu literature.
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,
notes about the correspondents and other related research that Dr Jamil Jalbi
had hailed as an achievement for which Parto Rohilla could sit
elite corresponded, it has been
suggested that Ghalib probably sought Ghamgeen’s advice on his verse
compositions and even that he was probably the saint’s disciple. But
Rohilla has debunked these suggestions through his analysis and research.
Ghalib was too free a soul to have been anybody’s disciple and his stature
as a great poet was already established when this correspondence was
exchanged between 1817 and 1820. 
