A Noble Son of Pakistan

21st November is the death anniversary of the Dr. Abdus Salam (1926-96) the only Noble Laureate of Pakistan who brought home this prestigious award for his work in theoretical physics in 1979.

Every year this day comes and goes by but no one bothers to remember the man who brought international recognition to Pakistan. If our ruling elites have ostracized him because they didn’t want to offend the fundamentalists in the country by remembering him for he belonged to Ahmadi community. What about our media which also considered it to be of no worth to dedicate some space to the only Noble laureate of Pakistan.

Quoting an editorial of Daily Times on the day “after the great scientist was buried in Chenab Nagar, his tombstone said ‘Abdus Salam the First Muslim Nobel Laureate’. Needless to say, the police arrived with a magistrate and rubbed off the ‘Muslim’ part of the katba. Now the tombstone says: Abdus Salam the First Nobel Laureate.” Bulleh Shah perhaps said for such occasions:

Crows swoop on hawks,
Sparrows do eagles stalk,
Strange are the times!

The founder of the nation Qauid-e-Azam in his inauguration speech to Constituent Assembly on 11th August 1947 said that “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State…. Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State”.

Let us for a moment overcome the wall of bigotry and think what we are doing to our heroes. He is one of least remembered Pakistani because he belonged to a sect which was declared non- Muslim by the Parliament. Why don’t we take humans according to their personal worth and genius instead of weighing their belief and faith? If in this country moral and intellectual dwarfs can be hailed as the saviors, then what is wrong in paying him his overdue homage? Belief in humanity and love for fellow human beings is the sign of enlightenment and rationality, quoting again Bulleh Shah:

I am free, my mind is free,
I am neither a sick person nor a physician
Neither a believer nor an infidel
Nor a mullah or syed
In the fourteen spheres I walk in freedom
I can be imprisoned nowhere.

In the Memory of Mountains

A female snow leopard was captured and fitted with a GPS satellite collar on 17^th November in Chitral district of Northern Pakistan. It is a first of its kind attempt to study the snow leopard and the GPS tracking system will provide the researchers valuable information regarding the movement and habitat use of the animal which is said to be notoriously hard to track down in the wild terrain. The GPS contained collar will calculate the animal’s exact position several time a day and then uplink the data to Argos satellite system which then be delivered to the researchers via email.

 

 This is a big achievement after George Schaller took the pictures of animal for the first time in 1970s when the species was believed to be extinct.  Interestingly enough the leopard was captured at the same place named Pordum Mali ridge or (the cave of snow leopard) where Dr. Schaller took his pictures of the animal.

 

This leopard weighed 35 kg and was freed in the Chitral Gol National park which was declared a natural sanctuary in 1971 and declared a National Park in 1985. Snow leopard is listed among the endangered species and is found in limited number in the Himalayas and other parts of the world.

 

The female leopard has been named Bayad-e-Kohsaar or in the Memory of Mountains to honor the death of many conservationists who perished in helicopter crash in Nepal this September while returning from a landmark ceremony to hand over the Kanchenjunga conservation area from the government to the local community.

The Martyr Mystic

Hallaj is one of the towering personalities of the Islamic Mysticism. He is widely known across the world as a symbol of devotional love which made him saying “ana’l -Haqq “- I am the Truth, and apparently resulted into his death. Hallaj was born in 858 in Tur Persia to a wool- carder (Al-Hallaj) and his name was Abu Mughith al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj al-Baydawi al-Wasiti.

He memorizes the Holy Quran by heart and after marriage makes a pilgrimage to Mecca and stayed there for many years. He also visited India and other countries and at the end of his wanderings settled at Baghdad.

Hallaj is regarded an anomaly by the other Sufis due to his inclination to share Mysticism with the masses even his Sheikh Shaykh al-Junayd, believed that mystic teachings should be kept secret and shared only with the worthy. Hallaj was denied the guidance by Shaykh al-Junayd and Amr Al Makki.

 Once while mediating in trance he utters “ana’l -Haqq “- I am the Truth, which was taken as a claim to be God; as Al Haqq (Truth) is one of the 99 names of Allah. He was jailed by the Abbasid Caliph for 11 years on the charges of heresy and executed on March 26, 922. According to the accounts he went to the execution place dancing in his chains and even forgave his executioners before his death.

Sayings from Medieval Source Book

Ana’l -Haqq – I am the Truth. (This is the saying which apparently earned al-Hallaj his martyrdom – al Haqq also means God)

You know and are not known; you see and are not seen.

(Akhbar al-Hallaj 44, 1.4)

 Your Spirit mixed with my Spirit little by little, by turns, through reunions and abandons. And now I am Yourself, Your existence is my own, and it is also my will.

 (Diwan al-Hallaj)

I find it strange that the divine whole can be borne by my little human part, Yet due to my little part’s burden, the earth cannot sustain me.

(Akhbar al-Hallaj, 11)

I have seen my Lord with the eye of my heart, and I said: “Who are You?” He said: “You.”

(Diwan al-Hallaj, M. 10)

I do not cease swimming in the seas of love, rising with the wave, then descending; now the wave sustains me, and then I sink beneath it; love bears me away where there is no longer any shore. (Diwan al-Hallaj, M. 34)

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of beauty
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.
- Kalidasa, Indian Poet

October is the cruelest month

October is traumatically eventful month in the wasteland of Pakistan’s history. The misfortune fell on the nascent nation for the first time on 27th October 1947, when units of Indian Army started landing on Srinagar airfield. It was birth of a tragedy which has persisted unresolved for sixty years and caused three wars, hunger and plagued the lives of millions with miseries.

Pakistan’s first premier Liaquat Ali Khan fell prey to a stray bullet in Rawalpindi on 16th October 1951 and we are still clueless about the motives and identities of the perpetrators of this crime.

On 27th October 1954 we entered what can be called an era of political intrigues, conspiracies and disregard for the constitution when governor general Ghaulam Mohammad dissolved the Constitutional Assembly. Thus he set precedent to emulate for the future adventurers and his legacy has been a core doctrine in the moves and edicts of our rulers.

7th October 1958 was another black day in the history of Pakistan when the Army made a formal entry into the politics and this time commander in chief Ayub khan toppled the government of Premier Feroz Khan Noon. Ayub ruled for 11 years and left the country at the mercy of a drunkard general who presided over its disintegration.

Again on 12th October 1999 general Musharraf overthrew the Nawaz Sharif government in a coup. Thanks to the America’s commitment to democracy and democratic ideals he has recently completed his seven years in office.

On 8th October 2005 a devastating earthquake of 7.6 magnitude jolted the northern parts of the country killing 80,000 people and rendering more than 3 millions homeless.

Concordia Discors

Tibet’s spiritual leader Dalai Lama says since the Tibetan have lived with Buddhism for centuries, so they tend to consider it as the best religion. Necessarily this result into thinking that it will be good if the humanity would also follow Buddhism and this notion of an all Buddhist world is a type of extreme thinking.

Now if we consider all the chaos, wars and fragmentations that plagues our times or  better the very course and essence of it; all are owed to the extreme thinking which emerges as the sole cause of cultural friction and chaotic world. Notions like “white man’s burden” and the sort limits our perspectives and seriously undermine our ability to understand the religions, cultures and social setting other than of our own.

Thanks to the rapid innovations in the communication technologies, the world has shrunk to global village. But these innovations are unable to alter the deep-rooted cultural stereotypes and broaden our viewpoints. Therefore, as our contact with other people and backgrounds tends to increase, so does the differences and friction. And we tend to impose what is dear to us on others in place of what is dear to them. This being impossible leads us into the world of conflict.

Therefore, in order to live peacefully in this world we have to accept the religio-cultural diversity, which adds hue and zest to life otherwise it would have not been worth living. We have to come up with our phobias, manias and stereotypes in order to qualify the litmus test of human survival. Otherwise in the words of T.S. Eliot, “The wind shall say, “here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousands lost golf balls.”