To Sepoy Maqbool Hussain with love

I must thank Lt Gen Ijaz Ahmed Bakhshi, Commander 4 Corps, and ISPR, especially the DG, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, for having resurrected the hidden sepoy inside me.

Yes, I was virtually a sepoy in 1965 (obviously we don’t believe in Pichlaa Janam or transmigration of soul). But it was not me alone fired up with that spirit during the 1965 war rather every able-bodied Pakistani had turned into a soldier imbued with the courage to thwart the evil eye cast on our beloved homeland. The whole society presented the scene of one organized force as if the entire country was a big unit of the armed services or as if the whole range of our armed forces was an integral part of Pakistan without any differences and skepticism that we unfortunately witness nowadays.

Even womenfolk did not lag behind men during the 1965 war. And let me explain I am not a proponent of war. My considered opinion right from my early days is that peace is the only durable way of success and happiness and that aggression and war are inhuman, bestial acts committed by insane people for self-aggrandizement and personal whims on the basis of a number of pretexts like religious, sectarian, ethnic, regional and miscellaneous differences.

So when I talk of 1965, I am in fact talking about the ideal cohesiveness that prevailed those days among all the segments of Pakistani populace irrespective of the fact whether they belonged to the categories of big or small, haves or have-nots. Even the most advanced and civilized nations seldom experience such dream situations that Pakistan experienced during 1965 war.

It might be difficult for the new generation to visualize that grand, national amity, I mean the amity between the leaders and the led, the people and the rulers, the institutions and the masses. There were no internal or external jealousies and callousness. Our land at that time was a land of peace even though we were not much well-off or self-sufficient in any commodity or

faculty.

All those who have experienced those golden moments pray for the return of those days. So, when General Bakhshi and I came face to face on the lawns of DHA Auditorium the other day during the Awards ceremony of Drama Sipahi Maqbool Hussain, the first words uttered spontaneously and unanimously by our tongues were that of cohesiveness. Alas! Whither all that love and amity that we would feel proud of in the past? I wish things would not have gone from worse to worst. I wish we would not have got engaged in the battle of egos or that of superiority and false glitter and glory. My interlocutor almost agreed but wanted some of us present over there from the media to see that positives still outnumber the negatives. Seeing positively tends to create positive effects. And where there is positive, there is no room for despondency and thus for conflicts, aggression and callousness.

But how is it possible when every Tom, Dick and Harry in this land of the pure considers himself or herself more intelligent, pious and superior than every other compatriot? Do all these elements add up to the ingredients of a civilized nation? Not at all. We need to reverse all that we have done and undone till the recent past and lay the foundations of a new society with tolerance for one another and with love for humanity, abandoning all the hatred revolving around our superiority or inferiority complexes and ethnic, linguistic, sectarian or religious differences that have now assumed the dimension of grand, national hatred.

Now the time has come to pose ourselves a question: did Sepoy Maqbool Hussain sacrifice his youth and 40 years of life, languishing in Indian jails for this homeland that is now reeling under the shock of inter-institution conflicts, wars between the ruling elite, widespread malice and confusion about our destiny?

Did Sepoy Maqbool Hussain got his tongue chopped off for living up to these moments of grand callousness that constitute high intensity fodder for the enemy guns to be used any moment for our destruction instead of employing heavy weaponry?

Let us resolve this day to live boldly and sincerely like Sepoy Maqbool Hussain who sacrificed so much to keep the flag of Pakistan flying high. Let us not engage in frays and squabbles to keep this flag at half-mast in mourning on the demise of high ideals and national unity.

I think it is time to review our concepts about the so-called war between the personal and the institutional. No doubt we are all the time emphasizing on institutionalizing the things or on the strengthening of institutions. This would be a reward from the heavens if we were ever able to fulfill this wish. Our track record, however, is full of hiccups in this particular area since the touch of personal has always overshadowed the institutional factor. If a man or a woman on the top is strict, the strictness is followed to the bottom; if the top notches are greedy, so follows the greed right up to the lowest rung of officialdom. Some rulers have been warmongers (some are so even at present). Policies, cabinet approvals, parliamentary legislations and official decisions or actions, are usually tailor-made in keeping with the personal style and desires of the top guns. The same has been, very unfortunately, going in our national institutions like, for instance in civil and uniform bureaucracy and likewise in judiciary. It is the will and the wish of the top guns that runs the whole show.

Just get rid of these three personalized Ws (whim, will and wish) and you will start feeling the difference. The country will then no more be witnessing lawyers agitations, clerks rallies and political wrestling or machinations.

PUN: Where there is Fata, there is no Atta (on wheat flour smuggling to tribal areas and/or Afghanistan).

saifee2001@hotmail.com