Life after death

ROBERT FISK, the well-known British journalist, now based in the Middle East, has indulged in self-analysis while devoting a newspaper column to events concerning former premier Rafik Harari’s assassination in Beirut. Inter alia, he has also thrown light on the psyche of the ‘Islamist’ suicide bombers active in Iraq.

He recalls his casual conversation with the late prime minister of Lebanon in a Beirut restaurant, a few days before he was blown up in a devastating bomb attack. He says that answering his query whether he believed in after-life the latter’s response was an emphatic ‘yes’ — an unexpected answer from a worldly-wise politician rolling in wealth.

Fisk was deeply impressed by a liberal and moderate Muslim’s faith in after-life. This made it easy for him to understand the strong impulse that the faith in after-life generated in young men and women who embraced an assured death by blowing up a dynamite-packed vehicle.

So, the present life, however easy and luxurious for some and however difficult and miserable for others, is neither a ‘divine comedy’ for the former nor a tragedy for the latter. In the final analysis, both appear to be in transit to a ‘brave new world’ after suffering the inevitable death in this world.

Why is the next world necessary? The answer that put the journalist thinking was provided by a relative of a suicide bomber in Iraq. “Is there justice in the present world?” was the counter-question posed by the person interviewed. How could a realist like Fisk with leftist leanings, conscious of the absence of economic and distributive justice in a major part of the world, answer in the affirmative? So, a second innings is, logically and sensibly, necessary for justice to be dispensed by a Power, much above human level, in an indescribable world that defies definition in the languages known to humans. To believe or not to believe in such a world? This is the atheists’ dilemma.

Now let us have a look at the world where we have been created. How and when in the time-space spectrum are inconsequential. We know, as our own science tells us, that the earth is the planet where alone life exists, as no extra-terrestrial being has been discovered so far. And even if life is found on some other planet, or planets, the importance and characteristics of the life as it exists on the earth will remain unaffected. Though bereft of life, other planets — the sun, the moon and countless stars — have certain functions to perform, some of these having a direct bearing on the survival and sustenance of the living beings on the earth. Even the land mass and the immense expanse of saline water that occupies the greater surface of the earth play their parts in supporting life in its various forms on the globe.

The inanimate heavenly bodies, the dry land and watery oceans on the earth, the air in the earth’s atmosphere and the floating clouds are all serving the purpose they are meant for. The sun is rising and setting every day in the sense human beings see it, and is providing light and measured heat exactly according to schedule; the land is producing vegetation of all kinds regularly, as ever before; the clouds give rain wherever the winds take them, the trees and plants continue providing fruits and flowers of the kind each of them is supposed to produce. None of these lifeless objects have the faculty of choosing or determining their own course nor are they performing the given functions of their own volition and free will.

Reflecting on the issue a sensible person will accept as true the Divinely-revealed text: “It is we (the Almighty) who send down rain from the sky whence you have your drink and whence the trees (are irrigated), as also pastures for the livestock, and which causes crops to grow for you — the olive, the date-palm and grapes and all kinds of fruits. And We have constrained the night and the day and the sun and the moon to be of service to you, and stars have been made subservient to you, and whatsoever, of diverse hues is in the earth has been created for you — these are indeed portents for the people who have sense” (Quran 16: 10-13).

How true the above statement may appear to those ‘who reflect and have sense’ (to use the Quranic phrases), who may conclude that, obviously, there is a set purpose and a determined design in the whole scenario. But there are others who dismiss it as a mere chance happening, a fluke and an accidental scenario, without a plan or purpose. This is how one becomes a ‘believer’, who believes in the existence of a wise and all-knowing Creator, and the other becomes an unbeliever, who denies the existence of the Creator, wise or otherwise.

But can such a person, who denies that all that he or she sees on the earth and in the universe has been created for mankind, offer any plausible explanation for the fact that if any of the inanimate or animate objects of nature — the lifeless sun, the moon, the air and the oceans, or the living plants and animals cease to act as they do without their own volition and choice, the very existence of man on this planet will be at stake? If the sun alone ceases to give light and critically measured heat, the land will stop producing crops, as there will be no rainfall for want of evaporation of sea water and, consequently, no cloud formation.

A person of the meanest intelligence, as such, will conclude that everything on the earth and in the skies is there according to a plan and is performing its function without the slightest failing and without even a minor deviation from the routine to keep mankind alive and active. It does not take a genius to conclude that all these things on which human life depends so directly happen to be there not by chance but by design. The evidence is unmistakably there of a Master Creator and Sustainer behind this well-planned, perfectly integrated and ably orchestrated natural phenomena that all of us observe unfolding before our eyes day in and day out.

Let us look at this issue from yet another angle. Supposing mankind, like the dinosaurs becomes extinct for one cause or another, the sun, the moon, the mountains, and oceans — in short every thing on earth and in the universe — will remain unaffected, showing that whereas man depends for his survival on them, none of them depend for their existence on man. Further, the survival of mankind is so critically linked with the environment that even a minor change from the normal and balanced state will spell disaster for all forms of life including the that of human species.

A sensible person is also likely to ask oneself that if all that exists in the sphere of human needs and requirements is meant to serve mankind, then what is the purpose of mankind itself? Whom is mankind supposed to serve, as humans alone, in the scheme of things, are endowed with the faculty of reasoning and choosing and determining their own course and have the freedom to act according to personal likes and dislikes? “Does mankind think that it will be left aimless? (75:36)” the Quran asks all right-thinking men and women to ponder.

Those who have a tenuous belief in after-life, or who plainly deny accountability of their deeds performed according to their own choice in their present life should reflect and weigh the pros and cons of treating such a serious matter nonchalantly and with complete indifference.

Certainly, the freedom of action which they enjoy cannot be without being saddled with any responsibility. They cannot be at par with lifeless objects or with those living creatures — the worms, the ants and the beasts — who perform their acts as their instincts tell them and have no choice of their own.

Where in Ayodhya is the ‘qiblah’?

BEFORE the birth of Ram, the city of Ayodhya was a model of congenial harmony. In the words of the sages, ‘No-one was mean, impious or failed to discharge his duties; none denied the existence of God, none uttered falsehood or were guilty of slander.’

Today, Ayodhya is a hornet’s nest, its menace accentuated by the stinging yellow and black railings that surround the entire perimeter of an enclave where legend and history overlap in layers.

Legend has it that Ayodhya was the birthplace of Ram, as it was that of his three half-brothers Lakshman, Bharata and Shatrughana, all of whom were conceived mystically by Lord Vishnu and delivered simultaneously to the three wives of Ayodhya’s King Dasaratha. Later, celestial divinities spawned an army of bears and monkeys to support Ram while he searched for his wife Sita, who had been abducted to Sri Lanka by the demon Ravana.

Understandably, the present city of Ayodhya is dotted with sites associated with Ram, from the moment of his miraculous birth to his death by self-immersion in the waters of the nearby sacred river Sarayu. Hanuman, Ram’s devoted monkey-general — is accorded a lesser but nonetheless significant prominence, and his unruly descendants scamper over the rooftops of Ayodhya, dart through open windows, and audaciously snatch anything edible from the hands of unwary pilgrims.

No one has yet conducted a census of the number of such simian truants but however many hundreds they may be, they must surely be less than the battalion of police deployed to guard the Babri Masjid / Ram janambhumi site, on the orders of the Supreme Court of India. Guards search you as you enter the precinct, they search you at various stages on the way, frisking and scanning you to ensure that you are leaving all your worldly possessions behind you. You walk through metal pipe corridors not dissimilar to the ones familiar to visa applicants outside western embassies in Islamabad, and this seems oddly appropriate for, in a sense, one is applying to enter another country, the re-established kingdom of Ramraj.

The last stage in one’s yatra is an ascent through what one can only describe as a steel tunnel, the sort used to channel dangerous animals into the circus arena. You pass an expanse of dusty sheets of tarpaulin covering the excavations being made by the Archaeological Survey of India under the orders of the Indian Supreme Court to determine which came first — Ram’s mandir or Babar’s masjid, and then, after a sharp turning at the top, one sees in the distance, through metal railings, a garishly-lit shrine to the holy trinity of Ram, Sita and Lakhshman. A pujari ladles out drips of holy water into the cupped palms of passing pilgrims moving past him in constricted single file, and then hands them a plastic packet each containing dry prasad and saffron-coloured thread.

There must be few Hindus visiting Ayodhya who are not moved by the image of their Ram, imprisoned now behind bars, as his wife Sita had once been in Ravana’s palace in Sri Lanka, just as there must be few visiting Muslims who are not affected by the remembrance of a mosque built by Babur (the first Mughal emperor), that had stood and been used as such for over 500 years, and that is now required to justify its paternity in a court of law.

A god that the Hindus worship and an Allah that the Muslims worship no longer seem to have any jurisdiction in Ayodhya; only the writ of the judiciary reigns supreme. Until it decides, justice delayed is communalism postponed.

It is hard to imagine how the Muslims of Ayodhya, if the site is ever restored to them, will ever be able to reconstruct a mosque on the site, especially since an image of Ram has been installed and sits triumphant atop the rubble of the Babri mosque. It is equally hard to expect that the Hindus of Ayodhya or their sponsors will permit a restoration of the site to Muslims. As with Kashmir, which India will not give and Pakistan cannot take, the contentious site at Ayodhya could also be remembered by history as a lose-lose situation, with no final victors — only forgotten victims.

Without seeming disrespectful to the countless humans who died and were either buried beneath the falling masonry or whose bodies were washed onto the ghats of the river during the BJP-led attack in 1992, the true casualties of the Babri episode are in fact history and religion. By destroying a mosque built by a Muslim ruler, extremist Hindus have attempted to obliterate history, to excise the past from their memory, to erase the past, to conduct in effect a post-facto ethnic cleansing.

To all religionists, whatever their persuasion, the conflicting claims over this contentious site have demonstrated a sad truth — that while God created all Men to be equal, He neglected to ensure that all His religions would function on the same principle.

Numerous Indians often cite the reverence shown by Hindus and Sikhs at Muslim dargahs such as those of Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer and Nizamuddin Aulia in New Delhi as demonstrations of a bipartisan humanism, a symbol of Indian secularism. That is obvious and therefore unarguable. What is disquieting is that such inter-faith harmony should need to rely on the intermediacy of sufi saints, safely dead centuries earlier. What one missed seeing anywhere in India was a procession of Muslims witnessing arti in temples or Hindus and Sikhs prostrating themselves in the direction of the Qiblah.

Tradition has it that Ram had two sons — Lava and Kusha — born to their long-suffering mother Sita. Before his death, Ram divided his kingdom between the two sons, installing Lava as ruler of the Northern Koshalas and Kusha king of the Southern ones. It is one of the history’s ironies that both Lava and Kush are said to have migrated from their father’s Ayodhya and in time founded two cities — Lahore and Kasur — both in what is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Work is afoot to have the temple attributed to Lava and located in the Lahore Fort restored. During the visit of Ch. Shujaat Hussain to New Delhi recently, an invitation was extended by Mian Yusuf Salahuddin (the grandson of Allama Iqbal) to the BJP leader, Mr L.K. Advani, to come to Lahore for its formal re-commissioning. According to those present, he was caught off-guard by the suggestion. He would have been. It must have been discomfiting for a Hindu BJP leader to be at the receiving end of such a Gandhian act of cross-religious conciliation, especially when that emanated from a Muslim Pakistani.

It is over a thousand years since Islam came to the subcontinent. It qualifies not be treated as an alien immigrant, nor to be ostracised as an outsider. Is it not time that the various communities of the subcontinent — the Muslims, the Hindus, the Sikhs and the Christians — forgive a millennia of grudges and make peace with each other?

Once before in history, peace was brought about in a unique way; perhaps, it is time to use the same method again. Let each pick up the four corners of their separate beliefs in the same universal God, raise them simultaneously, and place them as fresh cornerstones of interfaith tolerance and communal coexistence.

The politics of opportunism

ADVERSITY brings out the real character, calibre and moral fibre of a person. Under pressure a person reveals a whole new kaleidoscope of otherwise concealed colours. There are essentially two ways to handle adversity: you either stand tall in the face of the winds that blow and hold on to your principles come what may, or you capitulate and surrender out of fear or expediency, opting for the path of least resistance.

In the recent past at least, few of our politicians have opted for the first option, being daunted by the sacrifice and suffering it requires, and have mostly chosen the second option which comes with the allure of short-term gains, albeit at the expense of principles and reputation.

But principles and reputation are currencies that went out of circulation long ago in Pakistan. Opportunism and expediency symbolize the new creed that prevails. To apply a veneer of respectability over this ugliness, we are now being told by self-appointed messiahs that in politics nothing is final and everything is open to a deal. This is, no doubt, a prelude to the political acrobatics that we are likely to be treated to in the near future.

There is a world of difference between flexibility and capitulation. Though flexibility is acceptable in politics, capitulation is a moral death of a man of principles. What we see happening in Pakistan cannot be called flexibility. One day a man is decried as an arch criminal and the next day he suddenly becomes the paragon of virtue and the symbol of all that is good. A man denounced as a despot and usurper one day, becomes acceptable the next day, when he dangles the carrot of power-sharing before his opponents.

A pose of confrontation is adopted against the government for the sake of public consumption, but secretly a dialogue is initiated to facilitate his entry into the corridors of power through the back door. Yesterday’s enemies become today’s allies and then, just as easily, become tomorrow’s enemies again. This is not flexibility; this is unprincipled opportunism in its ugliest form.

The reason why the entire political scene in Pakistan is in a perpetual state of flux and instability is because principles, honesty and a commitment to ideas and the people have been made redundant by opportunism and expediency. Though this course has been profitable for some individuals, it has proven to be disastrous for the country.

History has shown that only men of ideas and conviction who have a vision for the future can lead nations to prosperity, progress and stability. It is only when leaders look to the next generation, rather than the next election, that nations can expect to progress and develop. The politics of opportunism has driven us to ruin and despair.

Conviction is the conscience of the mind. Unfortunately, the leaders we have today lack the conviction or the backbone to stand up for their beliefs and principles, if they had any. They are desperate to get into power by any means possible and are willing to compromise anything along the way. It is usually easy to be brave from a distance, but even those who are at a distance find it inexplicably hard to be brave these days and seem to be the most eager to compromise.

They have abandoned the honest brand of politics of the people and have prostrated before the power brokers. They have forgotten the basic political reality that the people are the source of all political power, and to harness this power you need only to address the issues that matter to them and take a firm stand on their behalf. If you can do this you need not sell your soul to the devil. The salvation of the nation lies in the leaders taking a firm stand based on principles and ideas and a deep commitment to the people.

Those who worship at the alter of expediency and opportunism would do well to learn a lesson from the Shaheeds of Karbala, who chose to fight for the truth despite formidable odds and made the greatest sacrifice to be found in history. Who can deny that the ultimate victory belonged to the Shaheeds rather than Yazid? The great success Islam enjoyed in the centuries that followed owed its origins to the blood of these martyrs. Had the grandsons of the Holy Prophet chosen the course of expediency and compromise, the long-term damage to the relatively young religion of Islam would have been devastating.

Similarly, Joan of Arc’s execution played a pivotal role in Christianity. In 399 BC the Sophists of Athens conspired to eliminate Socrates on false charges. Socrates remained defiant and true to his principles throughout his trial and willingly drank the hemlock rather than compromise his ideas. He is remembered today as the father of philosophy and a symbol of struggle against tyranny and oppression. Would he be revered in the same spirit had he elected to surrender his beliefs to save his life?

The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto continues to dominate the political scene in Pakistan even twenty-six years after he was hanged and many a scavengers have made a career and a living feeding off his legacy. He never succumbed to the temptation to strike a deal with the rulers of the day, who offered him safe passage out of the country. He went to the gallows with his head held high with honour and dignity.

That is why he still occupies such a special place in the hearts of people across the nation. If he had chosen to compromise to save his life, his legacy would have amounted to no more than the legacy of those who now sit in exile in royal palaces as a consequence of compromises.

Sacrificing one’s life is the ultimate sacrifice one can make. It is pointless talking about sacrificing lives in the context of contemporary political leaders in Pakistan when they are not even prepared to give up ministerships, even when they stand disgraced. We have a federal minister who not only has cases pending against him in NAB courts but also has warrants for his arrest. We have a former provincial minister who was accused by the chief minister who appointed him of gross misconduct, corruption and even murder and had to be dismissed and is absconding.

We have a politician who has recently stumbled on to the political scene and, though he stands implicated in a plethora of cases of corruption and money laundering to murder, he claims to be the saviour we all have been waiting for. By contrast, British home minister, David Blunkett, resigned last year when accused of merely expediting the granting of a visa to a woman. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori resigned in April 2001 after just one year in power, when his government came under attack for incompetence and corruption scandals, none of which involved the prime minister himself. President Charles de Gaulle of France resigned when the people of France rejected his policy on Algeria in a referendum.

Leaving a ministership or the leadership of a party is too much to expect from our politicians, but when was the last time anyone in Pakistan resigned from even the nazimship of a union council without being forced to do so?

History remembers only those who take a stand on principles. Apart from all romantic notions, it is only when you take a stand that you can make any tangible difference in people’s lives and blaze a trail to progress. It is a sad truth that the world belongs to mediocres who cling to the status quo and resist all forces of positive change. Great leaders and statesmen are a rare commodity, like the occasional shooting star across the heavens.

But it is only with the advent of these shooting stars that mankind progresses as their force of conviction breaks through all resistance to lead mankind to a brighter future.

This is not an easy task. It requires an iron resolve and the will to sacrifice, suffer and fight for what is right and just, regardless of the consequences. This kind of struggle and honesty of conscience is quite beyond the ambit of our contemporary leaders who would perhaps find it difficult to stand up straight if their shirts were not heavily starched. There is an undeniable beauty and elegance about principles that generates a desire for the preservation of self-respect and dignity in those who possess them.

Those who lack principles wallow in a petty life of humiliation and will never understand things like why the Shaheeds of Karbala went to their certain death. It is well said that little people do not wear well under the extremes of fortune. Politics is an honourable profession that has, in recent times, been dragged through the mud by those who do not understand what principles are.

The urgent need of the hour is to jettison opportunism and expediency from the body politic and infuse a healthy dose of honour and principles. Andrew Jackson once said, “One man with courage makes a majority.” Will any one of our leaders who claim to have the people’s card in their pocket step forward and show such courage?

The bond between a leader and a follower should be based on the solid foundation of an ideological contract and should be too sacred to barter it away for personal gain and lust for power. The acquisition and exercise of power on grounds of ideology, honour and principles produces a unique euphoria and intoxication that is unparallelled by anything expediency or capitulation can produce. Those who worship at the altar of opportunism might take heed from these words of Shakespeare: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”

Oil: a curse for Nigeria?

IN the long list of African countries seen as deserving relief from their crushing debts, there is one that is often ignored: Nigeria. Donors have too often assumed that Nigeria’s role as a leading oil exporter disqualifies it from receiving substantial amounts of aid. Even if it were not for its oil and natural gas reserves, Nigeria’s systemic corruption also makes the country seem an unlikely candidate for aid.

On a continent where there are so many deserving cases, and competition for aid, it is easy to pass over Nigeria’s claims — especially when the international oil price is above $50 a barrel.

But rather than having been a boon, oil has been a curse for Nigeria, just as it has for many developing nations. The hundreds of billions of dollars that should have gushed from the ground into the government’s accounts have been diverted or wasted.

Nigeria, with Africa’s largest population of more than 130 million citizens, remains one of its poorest. Despite its oil windfall, it has managed to amass more than $34bn in overseas debt. It receives only a fraction of the aid that other countries in Africa get, and is ineligible for debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries programme - thanks again to its oil.

Those who despair about making progress in Africa have a perfect test case in Nigeria. The surprising thing is that even there — on some measures the most corrupt country in the world — there is hope of a turnaround, with a crack-down on corruption and an opening-up of the workings of its government.

Even its recent windfall from the hike in oil prices has been saved rather than squandered. The International Monetary Fund hailed the country’s recent efforts as commendable, while the Commission for Africa’s report recommended that Nigeria be included in debt relief. Yet Britain is alone among the G7 nations in pushing for Nigeria to receive it.

Nigeria certainly deserves both aid and debt relief. The more help that Africa’s largest country receives, the better off the whole continent will be as a result. A healthy, strong Nigeria could be the catalyst for the economic growth the region so badly needs to escape the clutch of poverty.

Much of Nigeria’s existing debt is odious - loans taken by an illegitimate regime, which is unfairly saddled onto the backs of future generations. It should be written off, and money saved to help meet Nigeria’s development goals. To do so would send an important signal: that the international community is prepared to encourage and reward the fragile efforts at reform now taking place in Nigeria.

—The Guardian, London