| A chance to build a new Pakistan |
| Islamabad diary |
| Ayaz Amir |
| In the waters of the devastation hitting Pakistan lies a chance to reinvent our condition by washing away the regrets of the last 63 years and laying the foundations of a new temple. But only if we have the courage and vision to think on these lines. What would Maoist China have done? It would not have moped or looked to foreigners for help. It would have acted out the cliché of turning grief into strength. What did the Japanese and Germans after suffering unspeakable destruction in the Second World War? They picked up the pieces and from the ruins came resurrection. A similar chance awaits us provided we can muster the same resolve. We keep on saying that this disaster is unprecedented, the havoc wrought beyond imagining. True, but then shouldn't our response too be unprecedented? First should come a moratorium on all useless statements, a resolve to eschew needless talk and concentrate on essentials. Then should come immediate steps to mobilise domestic resources. Others have talked of a flood surcharge on goods and services. Much better to levy it immediately on property. What's stopping the government from imposing a property charge -- it could be anything from five to ten lakhs -- on houses in the posher sectors of the following cities: Islamabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, Peshawar and Karachi? Shops and department stores in luxury markets in the same cities should have a similar tax imposed. We talk of the diminishing writ of government. More to the point is the diminishing writ of the tax authorities in whose remit, for all practical purposes, big shops and department stores no longer remain because they pay no taxes. Of course there will be an uproar, the mercantile classes not known for such willing sacrifices. They would even take to the streets. But this would just be the stimulus and the sense of crisis the country needs. If the business and propertied classes -- living off the fat of what is still a bounteous land -- howl, that would be the sign to the millions hit by the raging waters that others are sharing their plight. If Pakistan is to be remade, as the more unhinged among us think it should, then there should not be a return to the old ways. This is too much of an unequal society, an Islamic Republic only in name, its highs too high, its lows down in the depths. Not only have we defended the status quo, we have made it more uneven. Mention not President Asif Zardari, a commodity incurable and irredeemable. Afflictions such as him have to be endured until the furies above think fit to bring about a different order of things. But why can't Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani exert himself a bit? We know he is as much an accident of history as the president. We know he was always inadequate for the greatness thrust on him. But is even symbolism beyond him? Since becoming prime minister, no one in the Republic with normal eyesight has seen him wearing the same suit twice. Why doesn't he put up for sale a part of his wardrobe and donate the proceeds to flood relief? Hands-on leadership no one expects from him, not even his fiercest partisans. He has visited two relief centres and both turned out to be fake affairs. That's how seriously he is taken. But his suits are in danger of becoming a national eyesore, a rag in red to a nation in an increasingly ugly mood. Or is this asking for too great a sacrifice? Do we even remember the meaning of the word self-reliance? In a country as precariously placed in an economic sense as ours what earthly justification is there for the import of luxury goods and expensive consumer items? Let there be heavy taxes on them and let there also be a ban on the import of luxury vehicles. BMW and Mercedes showrooms in Pakistan? How absurd can we get. As for the domestic manufacture of Japanese cars, it would be far better to set up plants for the manufacture of buses and trucks. Public transport, transport for the masses rather than the favoured few, is what we need. Our priorities have been skewed. Now is the time to set them right. Now is also the time to think afresh about our railways, in a pitiable state and a burden on the public purse. But the answer is not heedless privatisation. Serious money needs to be poured into this sector, with the ultimate aim of having trains cover the distance from Peshawar to Karachi or Quetta in less than a day. The floodwaters should not be an excuse to shelve the taking of big decisions. Indeed, they should be a spur to national thinking. Even as relief and rehabilitation are underway, a national education conference must be convened, charged with the taking of two decisions: abolishing our multiple education system and revamping our textbook boards. These decisions must be implemented on an urgent basis and our best minds should be put to the task. We should say no to the Kerry-Lugar bill which, judging by past experience, will do us no good. We have nothing to show for American money coming to us in the Zia and Musharraf years. Contractors, NGO analysts and auditors benefit the most from such deals. Kerry-Lugar will be no different. Much better to ask our American friends to help build us the one or two big dams that we need or, if they balk at that, to ask them to help revive our railways. Our American friends have come to our help in our hour of need and we should be grateful to them. Their helicopter teams are doing excellent work. But there is the larger issue of renegotiating our terms of engagement with them. The lease for Jacobabad airport, if there is such a lease, should immediately be rescinded and the airport returned to Pakistani control. Reports in the press suggest that we couldn't use this airport for flood relief because the American presence there was a problem. Nothing can be more embarrassing than this. If the CIA is to continue flying its drones, it should do so from Bagram airbase or similar facilities. We can no longer carry the burden of this privilege. And we should renegotiate the terms for allowing the use of our soil for supplying American and Nato troops in Afghanistan. Our infrastructure and roads have been degraded and what have we got for our pains? We are very tough negotiators when it comes to India but pudding and jelly when it comes to the US. Down the years we have been America's leading frontline warriors, ready to engage in any American enterprise around our borders, but lousy when it comes to protecting our interests. The American connection has made Pakistan's elites happy but it has not been good for the country. We don't need to court American hostility but friendship should not mean sentry duty in costly adventures. One of the things washed away by these floods is our front in the war against the Taliban. Or at least this war has been put on hold which may not be a bad thing entirely. We have done enough and suffered enough. The Taliban remain a problem but the crisis on our hands gives us the time to rethink many of the things associated with this endless war. What we have gained let us consolidate. But let us be wary of opening fresh fronts in this war. The army has done an excellent job in flood relief but just when its role has received plaudits comes word that the Defence Housing Authority Islamabad -- an army enterprise -- is in a serious financial mess. If anything, this is a reminder of just what the army should do and what it should avoid. The real estate culture has done the army serious harm. Just as the nation needs to reset its priorities, the army too faces a similar task. |
Friday, August 20, 2010
A chance to build a new Pakistan
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The burden of history
| The burden of history |
| Dr Maleeha Lodhi |
| The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News. Anniversaries are moments for national reflection. General Ziaul Haq's death anniversary today provides just such an opportunity. Why should an era matter that ended over two decades ago? Because the country's longest-serving ruler left the most enduring and troublesome legacy. A review of that period helps to understand the roots of many of the imposing challenges that Pakistan is struggling with today. So much of what happened during 1977-1988 shaped the country's political and social landscape and cast a shadow on subsequent years. Four aspects of Zia's legacy had deleterious long-term consequences for the country. One, the external and internal policies he pursued led to the growth of religious extremism and inducted militancy into the country. Pakistan's long and deep engagement in the US-led campaign to roll back the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan mired the country in a war of unintended consequences from which the entire region was to reap a bitter harvest. Two, it was in the Zia era that the roots of the country's chronic fiscal crises, financial imbalances and indebtedness are to be found. Three, his eleven years in power left Pakistan institutionally impoverished, undermining the foundation for later democratic rule. Four, the parochialisation of politics during his era left society deeply fragmented and a polity defined more by patronage than by policy or issues. Zia would not have survived in power so long if he hadn't been such a wily manipulator who vigorously exploited opportunities to his political advantage. He leveraged western support for his role as a 'frontline' leader to consolidate his initially shaky position. Using classic divide-and-rule tactics, he manipulated the polarisation between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's followers and opponents – that had paved the way for the 1977 coup – to orchestrate the execution of the country's first popularly-elected prime minister. He turned his ostensible 90-day operation into a long career, twice promising and cancelling elections, in 1977 and 1979. Combining the post of army chief with that of president gave him virtually unfettered power. More instructive than a chronology of his political manoeuvres are the four aspects of his rule that have left such a toxic legacy. The repercussions of Pakistan's geo-political engagements in the region turned out to be the most explosive. The Afghan enterprise, in partnership with the United States, was marked by a series of strategic mistakes the most spectacular of which was to deploy religious militancy to fight communism. This unleashed the blowback of militant radicalisation that engulfed the neighbourhood and eventually came to endanger Pakistan itself. A willing recruit to the western-led coalition's campaign to defeat the Russians, Zia failed to anticipate how this involvement would import diverse sources of instability and compromise Pakistan's own security. Other than militancy the witches' brew of problems the country inherited from its complex involvement in Afghanistan included the weaponisation of society (spawning a 'Kalashnikov culture'), proliferation of drugs, the exponential growth of madressahs, and the influx of millions of Afghan refugees. Some 20,000 to 30,000 nationals from about 20 Muslim countries were encouraged by the US-led coalition to train and fight in the 'jehad'. Several of these Mujahideen were to morph into Al Qaeda. The last of the Cold War conflicts was to lead to the first military intervention of the 21st century in reaction to 9/11. Zia's external policies were accompanied by domestic measures aimed at "Islamising" society and patronising the religious Right. The use of Islam to legitimise his rule fanned the growth of religious extremism, fostered the forces of intolerance in society, and unleashed passions that polarised as well as pulverised the nation. Violent sectarianism had its roots in these policies. As also in the state's deliberate patronisation of countervailing groups to undercut and weaken certain religious sects and ethnic groups. The consequences of the economic mismanagement of the Zia years were equally disastrous. Annual GDP growth averaged six per cent in the 1980s. But this statistically impressive growth rate was achieved by running down physical and social assets and through higher levels of borrowing. A unique opportunity was squandered to translate a combination of fortuitous factors – significant western aid and inflows of remittances from overseas Pakistanis – into investment in productive sectors, infrastructure and human development, including education. Instead, this windfall was used to finance consumption. The profligacy and fiscal indiscipline of the regime's economic policies touched new heights when in 1984-85, current expenditure exceeded total revenue, becoming a turning point in the country's budgetary history. Unwilling to broaden the tax base or curb spending, the regime began to borrow excessively to finance not only development expenditure but also consumption. The crisis of an unsustainable resource imbalance, reflected in the twin deficits of the budget and balance of payments, was firmly rooted in the Zia era. This also inaugurated an inglorious tradition, followed by both his civilian and military successors, of using economic largesse from overseas to avoid or postpone structural reforms that could place the economy on a viable footing. The costs of delayed or no reforms have since trapped the country in a vicious cycle of external dependence, fiscal imprudence and financial crisis, over and over again, necessitating one IMF bailout after another. The third pernicious aspect of the Zia legacy was the political and institutional erosion bequeathed by the country's longest period of martial law. The prolonged prohibition on political activity, ban on political parties, assault on the independence of the judiciary, curbs on press and academic freedom, all served to undermine the institutions of civil society. Weakened institutions in an increasingly fragmented society made governance a much more formidable challenge in the post-Zia era. Although politicisation of the civil bureaucracy had begun under his predecessor, Zia's actions hastened the descent into administrative chaos. Political manipulation of the institutions that had long provided administrative order produced a predictable erosion of authority. With the administrative and police machinery increasingly denuded of any 'neutrality' and distorted to serve political ends, its efficiency underwent precipitous decline. Finally, there were a complex array of consequences that ensued from Zia's policies of depoliticisation and parochialisation. This meant several things. Parochialising politics implied encouraging and channelling the expression of civic demands and grievances in ethnic or sectarian terms. This was accompanied by efforts to promote countervailing political and ethnic groups to undercut support for opposition parties not amenable to the regime's control. These policies fostered parochial trends that divided and atomised society. With national issues deliberately eclipsed by the promotion of local politics, a new genre of politician was spawned. This patronage-seeking politician was tied to the regime by new, 'clientelist' networks resting on the distribution of state largesse: urban land, bank credit and 'development' funds. This set in train a process that opened up vast opportunities of loot and plunder of state resources. This patronage-driven, local influential in turn ensured that the controlled politics of the Zia period was devoid of any issue orientation. This changed the very complexion of politics, as well as the country's political culture. Seeking elected office to leverage state resources became the name of the political game. This produced a range of perverse effects: the triumph of politics without public purpose, the abuse of public office for private gain, the draining of state coffers, the haemorrhaging of state-run banks and corporations, and ultimately the pervasiveness of corruption throughout the system. What Pakistan's most accomplished historian Ayesha Jalal calls "the monetisation of politics" was born in the Zia period. Supporters of the late President Zia often point to economic growth and political stability as the ostensible achievements of his years in power. But that claim is contradicted by the facts: an official economy left in ruins, society more violent, intolerant and fragmented than ever before and state institutions with much weaker capacity to govern. |
Monday, August 16, 2010
| A system has crashed |
| Ahmed Quraishi |
| We’ve just seen the collapse of government and the helplessness of bankrupt political elite in Pakistan. Pakistanis have just seen one of the most defining moments in their political history. Almost the entire political system has been swept away with the floods. Those Pakistanis who were not directly hit by tragedy have been hit by the second worst thing that could have happened: possibly a total loss of faith and trust in a political system that has been tried, tested and failed. Our condition begs change. This is the stuff that revolutions are made of. Our rains and floods could never have turned into a tragedy worse than Haiti and Kashmir earthquakes and the Indian ocean tsunami combined if not for the manmade factors: an entire government and administrative structure that failed to offer any contingency planning before the tragedy or rapid response after. Village after village, Pakistanis saw how cardboard local administrations raised white flags and handed power over to the Pakistani military [army, navy, and air force] at the slightest hint of challenge. I still can’t get over the video footage of our Sindh chief minister who, having been alerted by the Punjab government about floods, headed his way, stood before a camera to laugh along with his aides at how Punjab opened the waterways now that there is a flood, a thinly-disguised reference to the water disputes among provinces. He and his aides thought it was funny to shirk responsibility in this fashion and play politics. Sure enough, days later his administration sat helpless as the army seized Sukkur Barrage and took responsibility for making the hard decisions. For two weeks now, victims and volunteers are yet to see a single elected representative out to help in post-disaster operations anywhere across flood-hit areas of Pakistan, especially in those areas where ‘dynastic’ elected politicians dominate. In fact, the most common complaint aid volunteers heard from the victims is that politicians have been busy worrying about their feudal landholdings. This is nothing to say of economic collapse and how most of the hundreds of millions of dollars that our government is soliciting from the world will disappear in private pockets a few years later leaving millions of flood victims fester into social wounds that will haunt Pakistan for decades to come. We’ve already seen how the Musharraf government fared in dealing with the 2005 Kashmir earthquake reconstruction. Between 2006 and now, we should have had in place a first class disaster management and rapid response system. Instead we have an agency called NDMA with a bulging bureaucracy whose seniors enjoy juicy perks and TV airtime and zero utility. This is a failed system because it is marked less by politics and organization and more by violence and chaos. For example, the monsoon rains could have been a boon had we built dams. But our current crop of politicians, knowing they have nothing else to attract voters, have been whipping up linguistic divisions among Pakistanis and raising hysteria over how one dam or the other would threaten the lives of this linguistic group or another in the country. Political parties have stolen the Pakistani state’s right to represent all citizens and instead have appointed themselves as sole representatives of entire linguistic groups [I won’t say ‘ethnic’ groups because it is absurd to talk about this imaginary division that no longer exists in the strict sense of the word but has been exploited by political parties for political gain]. The height of tragedy is that today some parties consider it legitimate to kill innocent Pakistani citizens based on their supposed linguistic affiliation to settle scores with another party that claims to represent them. Democracy cannot remain an excuse for these gigantic failures. And criticizing them should not be interpreted as an invitation to the military to stage a coup. We’ve experimented with a British-inspired political system after our Independence in 1947. We’ve experimented with an American-inspired political setup since 2007. It is time we introduced a Pakistani political system suited to us. And all options are fair if the job can be delivered. The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com |
| Since Pakistan’s first Aug 14 |
| Roedad Khan |
| On Aug 14, 1947, I was a 24-year-old subordinate judge–full of idealism, hope and ambition. For me and for all those who belonged to my generation, Pakistan symbolised all our wishes and expectations. On that day, over a century-and-a-half of British rule came to an end. The Union Jack was lowered for the last time. I saw the sun set on the British Empire in the subcontinent. It is not just that we had a great leader who seemed to embody in his determination a bright and different world as each person imagined it. We had entered a new era. Mr Jinnah could not have foreseen the tragic decline of Pakistan when he passed his flaming torch into the hands of his successors, or how venal those hands could be. Sixty-three years after Mr Jinnah gave us a great country, little men mired in corruption have captured political power and destroyed his legacy. If Mr Jinnah came today and saw Zardari in occupation of his august office, he would say, “I am afraid I need to erase this and start all over again.” Zardari’s handling of the current unprecedented flood crisis is horrendous. The response one would expect from the head of state never happened. He ignored the country’s worst flooding in 80 years, a national disaster of epic proportions with thousands of lives lost and millions of people affected, in order to travel abroad and address a party meeting in Birmingham. He seems too indifferent, too callous, too insensitive on the television screen. What is there to celebrate? Bloated dead bodies are floating down the rivers of Pakistan, reminiscent of the terrible cyclone which struck East Pakistan in 1970 with disastrous consequences. Millions have been displaced. Whole villages have disappeared. People have lost all their belongings. Zardari couldn’t care less. Sixty-three years after independence, we have a disjointed, dysfunctional, lopsided, hybrid, artificial, political system–a non-sovereign rubberstamp parliament, a weak and ineffective prime minister, appointed by a powerful accidental president. The federation is united only by a “rope of sand.” The independence of Pakistan is a myth. By succumbing to American pressure, we managed to secure a temporary reprieve. But at what price? Everyday American aircraft violate our airspace, and bomb our villages, killing innocent men, women and children. In 2009 alone, the Americans killed 667 innocent men, women and children. With impunity, no questions asked, no protest, no expression of remorse from them. Today Pakistan is dotted with American fortresses, which seriously compromises our internal and external sovereignty. American security personnel stationed on our soil move in and out of the country without any let or hindrance. Pakistan has become a launching pad for military operations against neighbouring Muslim countries. We have been drawn into somebody else’s war without understanding its true dimension or ultimate objectives. Nuclear Pakistan has been turned into an American lackey, currently engaged in a proxy war against its own people. To no nation has fate been more malignant than to Pakistan. With few exceptions, Pakistan has long been saddled with poor, even malevolent, leadership: predatory kleptocrats, military dictators, political illiterates and carpetbaggers. After Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination, Mr Zardari’s sudden ascension to the Presidency caused panic and fear among people. His record since then hasn’t exactly been an exercise in the glories of Pakistan’s democracy. We are saddened when we look back at all the squandered decades. Once we were the envy of the developing world. That is now the stuff of nostalgia. Pakistan has lapsed into languor, a spiritless lassitude. A sense of guilt, shame, danger and anxiety hangs over the country like a pall. It appears as if we are on a phantom train that is gathering momentum and we cannot get off. Today Pakistan is a silent, mournful land where few people talk of the distant future and most live from day to day. They see themselves as ordinary and unimportant, their suffering too common to be noted, and prefer to bury their pain. Today the political landscape of Pakistan is dotted with Potemkin villages. All the trappings of democracy are there, albeit in anaemic form. Parliamentarians go through the motions of attending parliamentary sessions, question hour and privilege motions, endless debates which everybody knows are sterile and totally unrelated to the people’s real problems. Why did Pakistan become a land of opportunities for corrupt, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians, judges, generals and civil servants, smugglers and tax-evaders, who have bank accounts, luxurious villas, mansions, and apartments in the West? Why did Pakistan become a nightmare of corruption, crime and despair? Sixty-three years after it came into being, Pakistan is among the world’s most badly governed and politically corrupt countries. Corruption is endemic and extends throughout all segments of society. It is made all the worse by a “culture of impunity.” Why? The whys of history are never answered. Too long have we been passive spectators of events. Today our fate is in our hands, but soon it may pass beyond control. A shout in the mountains has been known to start an avalanche. We must call things by their names and shout louder. Let Pakistan be Pakistan again. Let it be the dream it used to be—a dream that is almost dead today. “From those who live like leeches on people’s lives”—who have robbed us of everything, our past, our present, our future and all our beautiful dreams—we must take back our land, and our money. Many nations in the past have attempted to develop democratic institutions, only to lose them when they took their liberties and political institutions for granted, and failed to comprehend the threats, both internal and external, facing them. Pakistan is a classic example. Born at midnight as a sovereign, independent, democratic country, today it is neither sovereign, nor independent, nor even democratic. Today it is not just a “rentier state,” not just a client state. It is a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a power-hungry junta and a puppet government set up by Washington. Where are the voices of public outrage? Where is the leadership willing to stand up and say: Enough! Enough! We have sullied ourselves enough. Why are we so passively mute? How can we be so comatose as a nation when thousands of poor people are dying along the rivers of Pakistan before our own eyes? Millions are stranded without shelter, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink with nobody to look after them. When the history of these benighted times comes to be written, it will be noted that the Pakistani army and independent media, both print and electronic, were the only institutions which served the nation most meritoriously in its hour of greatest need. The spontaneous demonstrations and outpouring of anger of the flood-affected people witnessed all over the world are ominous. With such ripples, do tidal waves begin? Who will tap the anger, the frustration and the resentment among millions of our people? Both military dictatorship and corrupt, fraudulent democracy, have failed them. The country is impoverished and humiliated. Democratic forms remain, but democracy itself is in effect dead or dying. One man, one man alone, occupying the commanding heights of power, is responsible for the mess we are in today. Zardari is taking Pakistan to a perilous place. The course he is on leads is downhill. It is not enough to sit back and let history slowly evolve. To settle back into cold-hearted acceptance of the status quo is not an option. The writer is a former federal secretary. Email: roedad@comsats.net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com |
Sunday, August 8, 2010
My political struggle
| My political struggle |
| My early life:Part I |
| M Asghar Khan |
| I was born in Jammu on January 17, 1921. My grandfather, a Malik Din Khel Afridi, had moved to Kashmir in about 1855 from Tirah, in the tribal territory of the North-West Frontier. He had four sons of whom my father was the youngest. My grandfather, who died in about 1903, had settled in Buttal Balian, near Udhampur in Jammu province of Kashmir State. His sons joined the state armed forces and my uncle, Summander Khan, in whose house I was born, was living a quiet life, having retired from service as a major-general. He had more leisure than my father and gave us all his attention. A kinder man would be difficult to imagine. No trouble was too much for him. He had no children of his own and treated us with unimaginable love and affection. I was the second of eleven children born to my mother – eight sons and three daughters. My father had another son from an earlier marriage, who was about 20 years old when I was born. My uncle, his wife, my father, mother, my brothers and I lived, as was the custom those days, as one family. My father joined the Jammu and Kashmir Army, took part in the First World War in East Africa and was a major when I was born. He retired as a brigadier in 1941. My father was a strict disciplinarian and professionally very competent. He could not tolerate incompetence or laziness and set a high standard of morality and character in his personal life. As children, my brothers and I saw very little of him, dreaded his strict nature and spent most of our time in our uncle’s care. Our aunt was also like a mother to us and she and our uncle gave us so much love and affection that had it not been for the balancing factor of the terror that our father inspired in our minds, we might have been thoroughly spoilt. As it turned out, the balance was perfect and I do not think that I suffered as a result. As I grew up, I began to feel closer to my father than I had as a youngster and this relationship continued to grow until his death in 1966. My mother, with a new child every year and half to two years, was kept so busy that she could give us very little individual attention. The early years passed very quickly and at the age of 12, I came across an advertisement in a newspaper which invited applications for interview for entry to the Prince of Wales’s Royal Indian Military College in Dehra Dun. The age of entry was 11-12 years and after successful completion of six years at this college, one could appear for an examination for entry into the Indian Military Academy for service as a commissioned officer in the Indian Army. I immediately made up my mind to try to get into this college and began to pester my father. Since the tuition fee was about Rs125 per month which was about one-fifth of my father’s total salary, he was reluctant at first but finally agreed to allow me to try. I was selected in the interview and went to Dehra Dun in March 1933. The six years that followed were very interesting and rewarding. ‘RIMC.’, as it was called, was probably the best school of its kind in India at that time. Run on English public school lines it combined liberal education with a military environment, only sufficient to induce us to lead a regular disciplined life, new to most Indian children. The emphasis was very well-defined and the products of this college did well in comparison with those of other schools in India at that time. The principal and all the staff were British, except the Urdu and Hindi language teachers. The college had a mosque, a temple and a gurdawara and we were marched daily in time for evening prayers to our respective places of worship. Playing facilities were ample and the surroundings and the environment clean and healthy. I was an average student in class and had nothing to show in the way of brilliance in any particular field. A convention that caused me considerable annoyance was the wrong age with which most children entered schools in India. Since there were no birth certificates, it was normal for parents to show the child’s age a year or two less than their actual age. This put those children at a disadvantage in the class whose year of birth had been recorded correctly. So at the age of 12, I was in a class whose average age was 13 or 14. I would have much preferred to have been dropped a class but had to struggle throughout my educational career with some children my seniors in age. Some 30 years later when I put my own children in school, I remembered my experience and when my son Omar was experiencing a little difficulty in class, I asked the principal, much to his surprise, to put him back in a lower class. I wanted him to feel comfortable in class and not undergo the experience I had in school. I think Omar benefited from this decision. In 1939 I took the entrance examination at Delhi for the Indian Military Academy (I.M.A) at Dehra Dun. In those days, only fifteen boys were selected for the Indian Army every six months for Officers’ training. Twelve were selected by an open examination and three were taken from the ranks of the Indian Army. I was one of the twelve who passed the open examination. Another, also from the RIMC, was Yaqub Khan. The examination at Delhi was an interesting affair. There were almost equal marks for the written examination and the interview. The members of the interview board were five or six senior British armed forces or civilian officers and Sir Hissamdudin Khan of Peshawar. Sir Hissamuddin Khan knew my father and the interview was a pleasant affair. A few general questions were asked by the panel and Sir Hissamuddin Khan asked me to do a ‘cart-wheel’. This I did and so ended the interview. I am sure that my ‘cart-wheel’, though not perfect, got me good marks and I had no difficulty in being one of the twelve selected for the IMA. Yaqub Khan was also selected. One of the other three, selected from the ranks of the Indian Army, was Tikka Khan, who also rose to be a general in the Pakistan Army. Yaqub and I lived in Srinagar and were required to be medically examined at the Combined Military Hospital at Sialkot before joining the IMA. When we reported to the CMH at Sialkot, we were given laboratory tests and examined by Major Puri of the Indian Medical Service (IMS). Yaqub was declared fit but I was told that I was suffering from a serious disease. I was admitted into the hospital. I was told that my laboratory test had shown that I had albumin in my urine which was at a dangerous level. Yaqub bade me farewell and I asked him to inform my father in Srinagar about the state of my health. I felt perfectly well but spent an anxious two days in the hospital until my father arrived with a doctor from Srinagar with a few medical books. These showed that albumin had been considered a dangerous thing in the past but recent tests had shown that some of the Cambridge University rowing crew had albumin in their urine and research on the subject had revealed that albumin was of two kinds – caustic and functional. The caustic variety was considered dangerous but functional albumin was quite harmless. In my case, the albumin turned out to be functional. Major Puri was sufficiently convinced and I was declared fit for joining the IMA. The two-and-a-half-year course at the IMA was reduced to one and a half years because of the war. Yaqub and I graduated from the IMA at the end of 1940 and I was commissioned in the ‘9 Royal Deccan Horse’. Immediately afterwards, however, the Indian Air Force asked for volunteers from the army for the Indian Air Force. I was one of those who volunteered, was interviewed and selected without having to do a cart-wheel! Wing Commander Shubrato Mukerjee, the senior-most Indian Air Force officer at the time, was one of the members of the interview board. (To be continued) This is an excerpt from the writer’s book “My Political Struggle”. He is a retired air chief and veteran politician. |
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
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