Paris, Encore Une Fois!

C'est Paris, créé avec Google Picasa.

Bienvenue à Paris!

Salaam. Paris calling. Bonjour tout le monde. Je vous écris cette lettre de Paris.

It's been complicated, and even though I should be familiar with the damp, I'm not quite over the weather shock after having moved from the Arabian deserts to Yorkshire. Whilst I've made a certain peace, I have needed to make minor escapes after feeling trapped by the terminally wet and grey skies - even if crossing the Pennines to view things differently (not that much to be honest), though most recently I had some time in the heart of London, which, of course, is a city which I have always found to be an exciting and dynamic place. 

Over the Eid break, I took the long train journey from the north of England picking up the Eurostar Service from London Kings Cross/St Pancras International to Paris, Garre du Nord. I have been staying close to the Rue de Quatre Septembre in the 2nd Arrondissement (2^e) in the area known as Opera. The summer air, tight cobbled streets and open air cafe atmosphere has been a welcome relief and yes, I've done the touristy things as well - taken an open top bus ride to see the sights - Notre Dame, the Latin Quartre, the Seine etc. I've paid a visit to the Louvre, seen da Vinci's Mona Lisa and taken the walk along the Jardin de Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the fashionable Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe. Of course, no trip to Paris is complete without a trip up the Eiffel Tower.  

Aujourd'hui, c'est ma dernière nuit à Paris. Here's taster photograph. More to follow InshAllah.

Two-Nation Theory II

... continued from previous posting ... 

Despite its vociferous campaign Muslim League could not ignite fears of Hindu domination in the support base of Bacha Khan. His comrades won the land mark elections of 1946 with a thumping majority. He opposed the Partition on the basis of religion, but it happened. His democratically elected government was dismissed 8 days after the independence, on 22 August, 1947 when Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the Governor General and Liaqat Ali Khan was the Prime Minister.

Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan was five-years younger to Bacha Khan. He was born in 1895 to a Muslim aristocrat family whose jagir starting at the eastern edge of Punjab (now Haryana) stretched into Uttar Pradesh. His family had cordial relations with the British. Some say the family gained fortunes and earned intimacy with the Raj, when his grandfather extended support to the British during the hard times of 1857. His father earned many a titles and honors too.

Liaqat Ali went to Aligarh and then to Oxford. On his return from London in 1923, he joined Muslim League. He contested his first elections in 1926 on a seat reserved for Muslims in the UP Assembly (Muzaffarnagar constituency) and comfortably won. He grew into an eloquent parliamentarian, pleading mostly for the causes of Muslim landlords who were a minority in that province.

He became one of the most important members of the Muslim League’s vanguard. Nawabzada is, in fact, credited to have convinced a dejected and disappointed Muhammad Ali Jinnah to end his ‘self-imposed exile’ in London and lead the movement for a separate homeland for Muslims. Liaqat Ali Khan was made the General Secretary of the Muslim League in 1936.

The party’s parliamentary committee did not award him the ticket for the 1936 elections for his home constituency which he valued highly. Despite holding a high office in the Muslim League, he contested as an independent from his home constituency and faced criticism of fellow party men.

He contested the 1946 elections for the Central Legislative Assembly on the Muslim seat of Meerut that is situated in Uttar Pradesh. Following this victory, Nawabzada won a place in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and at independence was made the first Prime Minister with the additional charge of Foreign Affairs and Commonwealth Relations and Defense. He remained the longest serving prime minister in the history of Pakistan till Yousuf Raza Gilani exceeded him by a few weeks recently.

Prime Minister Liaqat Ali is accredited with a number of ground breaking contributions. He decided to ally with the US in the Cold War divide; quashed a coup attempt by communists; promoted General Ayub to the highest rank and fought a war with India over Kashmir to name just a select few. His government ruled on ad hoc basis under temporary laws as it could not formulate and build a consensus on a constitution for the country.

Reasons were simple. They could not dig out a monarchy to rule the country nor could they install a Caliph. The constitution has to be based on democracy. But the problem was that Meerut was now in India. The most powerful Prime Minister serving for one of the longest periods in the history of Pakistan had no constituency in the country to contest elections from. A committed democrat and an active parliamentarian, he  knew well that he and his political class had no, or at best a very shaky, future under a democracy. In contrast, Bacha Khan’s was a completely secure political position. It was impossible to democratically uproot him from his constituency. He had voters, volunteers and diehard loyalists.

The ad hoc powers were thus used to change the rules of the game.

Six months after the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan moved the Objective Resolution in the Constituent Assembly that introduced Islam as the raison d’être of the new country. Religion was pitched against ones linguistic and cultural identity and faith was made to rival political interests. Those loving their culture, defending their language and demanding their democratic and political rights on these bases became heretics conspiring against the last citadel of Islam in the Subcontinent. Ideological boundaries of the country became more important than the limits of electoral constituencies and principles of democracy were contrasted to injunctions of Islam as defined by the select ulema.

Bacha Khan who enjoyed a hard earned and unflinching popular support in a vast constituency went down in our official gazettes as an anti-Pakistan traitor. Red Shirts were hounded and hunted. Politicians were jailed and elections were rigged.

By declaring the entire country as one constituency and setting ones perceived Islamic credentials as the only qualification, Liaqat Ali Khan tried to create a constituency for his class – the politically insecure Muslim elite that had migrated from the Muslim minority provinces of India. But ironically, they could not sustain their hold on this constituency for long. Within a decade they were outdone by the Army in the game they had pioneered. They were declared incapable of defending the citadel of Islam. The army took over the ‘responsibility’ of keeping the country united in the name of Islam and secure from the conspirators who had strong democratic constituencies in the country.

The army did not feel the need to redraft the national narrative that was scripted in those initial years. It was found to be in perfect harmony with the Army’s own scheme to block or cripple democracy and sustain its direct or indirect rule for decades to come. The narrative persists with all its detail and corollaries and insists on its refusal to recognise Bacha Khan as a great national hero.

Two-Nation Theory I

This write up is taken from an article in the Dawn newspaper by Tehir Mehdi. It challenges the Two-Nation Theory that is cited as the raison d'être of Pakistan. Interestingly it makes the point that despite Bacha Khan remaining a pious Muslim he did not harbour the antagonisms that fuelled partition. For this reason and the cultural closeness to Afghanistan, the Khudai Khidmatgars were viewed as having not accepted the Two Nation theory. Bacha Khan and Pashtoons of the Khudai Khidmatgars were systematically jailed under charges of treason and their contributions to the Free India movement were written out of the texts of Pakistan history.

When someone says ‘Muslims of Indo-Pak subcontinent’ with reference to our history, does this refer to one unanimous, monolithic block of people with no shades and diversity? I think it’s a big folly to ignore how divergent the political interests and ambitions of Muslims were in the period that ended on this day 65 years ago. A reintroduction to these groups and how the new state of Pakistan responded to their political aspirations might help us understand where we stand now.

Pre-partition Muslims can be classified in many ways. For now I would put them into two larger groups and instead of laboring over an academically-sound definition of each, I will demonstrate my point by offering example of one person from each of these two groups.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in 1890 to rural middle-class Pakhtun parents of Utmanzai, a small town in the present day district of Charssadda. At the age of 20 he opened a school in his village. He had woken up to the fact that his people have no future if they don’t educate themselves and their children. The tall, young man proved to be a zealous missionary. He would walk for miles from one village to the other with his simple message – educate yourself and abstain from violence. He was a devout Muslim, a five-timer namazi parhaizgar and would draw heavily from Islamic history and the Prophet’s sayings to rally fellow Pakhtuns. People joined him in droves. His arcane appeal matured into charisma, some would even give him a halo.

In his 30s, he founded a social reform movement named Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God). By now he was named Badshah Khan or Bacha Khan. The movement, like many others of that era, gave its volunteers a uniform that was red and organised them on the pattern of a militia that was, in his words, armed “with the weapon of the Prophet – that is, patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it.” It was only Bacha Khan who could unarm Pakhtuns who otherwise were considered quarrelsome and trigger-happy.

The Red Shirts, as the volunteers of the movement were known as, were against the British rule and demanded self government. For the British, the then province of NWFP had great strategic importance. It was a so-called buffer against the Afghan government that was not friendly with the Raj and also against the Russians whom the British dreaded as their rivals.

The Bolshevik revolution of Russia in 1917 was emerging as a huge challenge for Imperialism. It had a natural affinity with the nations oppressed by the British. The Russian revolution was colored red. The sight of a Red Shirt in the Peshawar valley gave the British a fright. At Qisa Khani Bazar in 1930, the frenzied British forces fired directly at a protest rally of unarmed Khudai Khidmatgars killing many hundreds. The movement and its committed cadre did not budge. They stood fast. Many estimate that at its peak there were as many as a hundred thousand Red Shirts.

When the British adopted a cautious policy of sharing power with local political forces and initiated limited franchise elections, the group allied with Indian National Congress. It contested successive elections, won majority and formed governments in the province. As the British hated them, they would conspire against the Red Shirts and jailed Bacha Khan frequently and for long periods but could not undo the politicisation of the Pakhtun middle class that he had initiated.

Pakhtun Muslims felt comfortable with Congress and that didn’t bear out of some personal friendship between the top leaders. Congress accommodated politics of budding smaller sub-national groups, offered them space for growth and opportunity to integrate with others without giving much consideration to religion. On the other hand, Bacha Khan did not owe his ‘fearlessness’ vis a vis Hindus to Pakhtun chivalric traditions, instead he had earned this confidence through successive electoral victories. He had a large constituency where Muslims were in majority. There were Hindus too but Pakhtun Muslims did not see Pakhtun Hindus as threat to their religion or politics.

... continued in the next post ...

The Road to Pakistan

Partition: I include this reflection on partition and the emergence of Pakistan. It draws on the points that were made in the previous posting. Importantly it argues that the reasons for Pakistan were less to do with religion itself, but the preservation of the privileges of a narrow band of landed aristocrats.

Before the 1940s, the membership of Muslim League was solely comprised of non-practicing Muslim landed aristocracy. They had enjoyed fruits of British colonialism, who had bestowed upon them fiefdoms on which they had lorded over. They never wanted Independence from British, whom they considered taller, fairer and worthier rulers. Indeed, Muslim League consistently opposed India's independence, never took part in any agitation, or launched any significant mass movement. They were very comfortable with the status-quo.

The arrival of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi changed everything. He transformed the independence movement from a debating society to a mass mobilization. He injected his own brand of socialism into the movement. This scared the the Muslim as well as Hindu zamindars. They knew that if British left, their titles will be abolished and land distributed amongst the poor farmers on whom they had preyed upon in the past. The Hindu feudals were complete marginalized by the Congress. However, the non-practicing Muslim feudals launched the movement for Pakistan.

Aside from the landed aristocracy, until 1940s, the majority of Indian Muslims as well as Muslim scholars opposed the creation of Pakistan. . They opposed Pakistan Movement not because they supported secularism. On the contrary, they opposed it because they genuinely believed that the Pakistan's creation would hurt their long-term objective of spreading Islam in India through Da'wah. Even Maulana Maududi objected to Pakistan. Nevertheless, after the Pakistan movement gained momentum, the majority of Muslims voted for the Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah whose slogan was 'Pakistan ka matlab kya. La ilaha illallah' over the Congress Party which was under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.

Pakistan's creation was thus an accident of history. As I explained above, the Muslim aristocracy was afraid of losing their undeserved wealth, so they demanded disproportional representation for Muslims, in the legislative assemblies to preserve their privileges, anticipating that the illiterate, poor Muslim masses would be easily manipulated by the use of religious rhetoric. Thus, Pakistan Movement was meant as a bargaining chip, they had no intention of going through with it. There was no actual partition or post-partition plan. Indian National Congress called Muslim League's bluff. Jinnah called for Direct Action Day in August 1946 as a show of strength of Muslims. Wide-spread communal riots first in Bengal then in other parts of India followed. From that day onwards, because of the hatred that ensued, Pakistan was fait accompali. The partition was ensured whether Muslim League leaders wanted it or not. 

This lack of planning is the reason why Pakistan has stumbled from one political crisis to another since its inception, and it took almost 10 years to frame Pakistani constitution (which would later be mutilated multiple times). And, unlike India, no land redistribution took place in Pakistan. The secular non-practicing Muslim aristocrats have new fiefdoms to lord over in Pakistan.

Indeed on his deathbed Mr. Jinnah admitted that he had committed a great blunder by creating a "mutilated, moth-eaten" Pakistan.

Drona, August 2012. PashtunForums 

For additional reading see the follow-up post: Two Muslim Theory

Partition: 1947

This post coincides with the 65th anniversary of 'Independence' - that point in 1947 marking the end of the British Raj and the division of the Indian subcontinent into the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The entire subject remain complex though over the next couple of posts, I hope to explore a few thoughts and opinions on the matter. In this post I begin by starting with a brief history.

British Colonial administration did not directly rule all of "India". There were several different political arrangements: Provinces were ruled directly and the Princely States had varying legal independent arrangements.The Indian National Congress formed in 1884 by a mixture of Indian (Hindu and Muslim) and English activists led for the initial calls to have more Indian representation within the administration.

By 1906 the All India Muslim League had been formed in Dhaka in reaction to what some elite Muslims viewed as Hindu dominance in Congress. As the appeal of Mohandas Gandhi and the Free India movement increased, a number of different scenarios were proposed. Amongst the first to make the demand for a separate state was the philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his presidential address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League, proposed a separate nation for Muslims.

The 1946 Cabinet Mission aimed to reach an agreement between Congress and the Muslim League amid growing tension. Nehru, leading Congress was unwilling to accept a decentralised state and Jinnah, leading the Muslim League (made up largely of the 'secular' landed Muslim elite) returned a demand for Pakistan as a bargaining chip. Initially most Muslims opposed partition and there was no pre or post Pakistan 'plan' right up to the announcement in June 1947 that the British had set a date for handover.

Religious communalism fuelled the British decision to exit early (Lord Louis Mountbatten having just been made Viceroy of India in February 1947) and sealed - by accident - the decision to partition the subcontinent. Sir Cyril Radcliffe never having visited India before was employed to draw the boundaries between the two states in July 1947 five weeks before the end of British rule. On August 15 1947, India was granted her independence, and Pakistan the day before. Note, this was before Radcliffe Boundary Committee had made the announcement on the boundaries and before either country knew their borders. Significantly, partition led to the biggest sudden movement of people in human history  - with up to 12 to 15 million people uprooted within a short period and the after effects felt for years.

More in my next postings ...

Massive Open Online Courses: MOOCs

The combination of education and technology brings new opportunities for sharing content and learning and I have a key interest in distance learning, having successfully gone through the process. Despite some obvious challenges - such as the need to maintain your skills of self reliance, generally, I have enjoyed being part of a technologically connected international learning community. Some time back in this blog, I did mention Curt Bonk's enthusiasm for on-line learning too. In my case it meant that I could pursue an academic programme whilst living overseas and crucially meant that I didn't have to give up my full-time work order to do so. In fact in many ways, the DTCE programme at Manchester University was the 'genesis' for this blog (specifically it was a unit taught at a distance on Emerging Technologies that required my thoughts and input that was the key factor in accelerating me towards becoming a regular blogger). However, it is the overall experience of distance learning in my vocational area of education that is the key discussion point here, and the fact that I am now contemplating further academic study through a blended course that involves some distance and some face-to-face contact suggests that - for some - distance programmes remain a valuable opportunity to pursue further learning. Watch this space, but yes, a doctorate is something that I most certainly would like to complete, InshAllah.

I occupy several spaces to be honest - I have worked at the chalkface as a teacher in a variety or national and international state and private settings and I have worked in consultancy and in advisory roles aiming to build capacity. Each setting has its own specifics. A good example would be how primary education is about developing the 'whole child' and how university education is about developing knowledge and understanding in specific academic areas.

We still live in a world where we expect much of our formal learning to be accredited, so that still remains an important point for pursuing a university programme in my opinion so there are some drawbacks with no-fee MOOCs (Massive Open On-line Courses). In fact, if it simply comes down to distribution of course notes/learning materials then there is little to differentiate it with what is already available/downloadable on the Internet in general. Interaction between students and between students and content and tutors is key and that remains yet to be seen. But since some prime universities seem to be investing time in opening up course modules to the world, then perhaps there is some to be experienced and learned hopefully. I've decided to sign up for two courses in areas of interest - education being one of them, naturally, but I wanted to have a go at Life Sciences and specifically, I am interested in learning more about Sustainable Environment. 

I'm potentially excited by the possibilities, but really, is anything for free? 

Watch this space.

Read more here and here.

Earth Calling Mars

or rather Mars Calling Earth ...

Curiosity, the name given to NASAs latest Mars exploration rover touched down yesterday on the red planet itself, to start its 2 year mission (1 Martian year). I've always been fascinated with Space and the human pursuit of pushing back the frontiers to learn more about what lies beyond. This little animated video from NASA offers an insight into how Curiosity will send messages back to Earth. Oh, and you can connect to Curiosity via Twitter. Apparently, this robot has "her" own Twitter account.

Coming of the Crowds

My voice rings out, this time, from Damascus

It rings out from the house of my mother and father

Nizar Qabbani

Morally speaking, I do not think that we can really disconnect ourselves from politics - but the problem with politics is the disconnect between the perceptions of those who lead and those whom they claim to serve. I believe that my cynicism can be applied universally to all politics, though increasingly and rather specifically the Syrian leader, Bashar Al Assad has not recognised the winds of change in the neighbourhood.  What we appear to be witnessing is a repeat situation of the type leadership that is guided by its own ego and vanity whilst Syria continues to tumble downwards in an erratic free fall. It is true that the world covertly intervenes by offering moral support to the Free Syrian Army and many regional and international saboteurs are likely to hijack the process with the likely scenario that the said leadership will fail to act on the inevitable and will continue to attempt to quell opposition voices with armed brutality. Few, who see clearly, would choose to go to war with their own people, so ultimately Bashar Al Assad's actions appear to spell fatality. At this stage, Allah knows best of course, but it seems that the moral responsibility seems to be with the crowds and not those in power, be that the regime or those intervening. Real power, as witnessed by the Arab Spring and its continuing after effects, lies with the people.

Thinking about the region, we only need to cast some thought back to when Saddam Hussain was ousted after years of resistance and the euphoria that ensued after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak etc. The headlines were typically jubilant - another 'fallen dictator'; 'victory to the people'; 'freedom' and a 'new beginning'. There was a strong sentiment amongst the people of these places that led them to rebellion and in the background the media has had a key role. Whilst the media is drawn to the suffering to make its headlines; foreign political movers and shakers make mileage out of this. Again, the morality of those within politics is sometimes up for question.

Significantly, post the celebrations, many revolutions are followed by a period of public disorder and shaky security. How long this goes on for and how long the international political goodwill towards the revolutionaries lasts varies. In general, the track record is not optimistic. Even after successive fallen governments across the middle east and beyond; we still question whether the world is safer and people are more prosperous as a result. Often the corruption of a few within a police state, is replaced by a break-down/free for all by the masses.

What now happens in Syria over the coming period remains yet to be seen. It is Ramadhan - and technically a month of peace when Muslims should put down their arms and focus on the spiritual.