“Dear Mr Jinnah” — 70 Years in the Life of a Pakistani Civil Servant
By Salman Faruqui
Lightstone Publishers
ISBN: 978-969-716-282-6
429pp.

Psychologists tell us impressions formed in formative years influence our thoughts and actions as grown-ups. Reading Dear Mr Jinnah, Salman Faruqui’s memoir, makes clear why Faruqui became what he became. Faruqui was only eight years old when he reached Pakistan after crossing rivers of blood. The roads were impassable and Faruqui remembers his elders removing bodies to make way for his vehicle.

The joy on reaching Pakistan, a passionate love for this country, the realisation that there is nothing more precious than home, and that we must live and die for the country created by the Great Leader are the ideas that dominate Faruqui’s life and work, as the memoir shows.

The book reveals the tenacity and sangfroid in Faruqui’s character, as seen in an interview that turned into a confrontation between him and an 11-man commission testing candidates for the Central Superior Services or bureaucracy.

The session lasted an hour. Faruqui stuck to his guns, annoyed the commission and was given the lowest possible marks to pass the viva voce test because, as one member of the commission later put it, they were impressed by his “eloquent persistence.” The encounter taught Faruqui to be “politically correct and reticent.” On the whole, the book relates a tough bureaucratic life, where his main assets were rectitude and candour.

The memoirs of Salman Faruqui, regarded often as one of Pakistan’s ‘super-bureaucrats’ till his retirement, shed light on many important moments in the country’s history

Because he eventually rose to become among Pakistan’s top bureaucrats, Faruqui’s book gives us a first-hand account of the way in which Pakistani officialdom operates — ways which, in the end, do produce results, though not always very pleasing.

As a student, Faruqui had a hectic leadership role, which brought together student unions in both East and West Pakistan and resulted in the founding of the National Students Federation. He was also elected secretary general of the Inter Collegiate Body (ICB), which consisted of vice presidents and general secretaries of Karachi university student unions.

Headed by Faruqui, the ICB found itself facing government ire on a number of issues, including over its agitation against high tuition fees, the lack of adequate number of cadavers in medical colleges, and the poor maintenance of the Karachi university campus.

In 1955, one of ICB’s great successes was to preempt a visit to Pakistan by Lord Mountbatten, whose anti-Pakistan role, especially with regards to the Kashmir issue, besides the unfair drawing of the boundaries of Punjab and Bengal, had done enormous harm to Pakistan. The ICB mobilised public opinion and said it would demonstrate at the Karachi airport and other places that Mountbatten was to visit.

The public had not forgotten the hostility that Mountbatten had developed toward the Quaid-i-Azam, because the founder of Pakistan had denied Mountbatten the pleasure of being the common governor general of Pakistan and India. The ICB, thus, scored a major victory when Mountbatten cancelled the visit.

Because he was amongst Pakistan’s top bureaucrats, the book is replete with tension-filled events inevitable in the kind of life Faruqui had. Some episodes emerge as dramas involving the highest in the corridor of powers and reveal a fall in rational faculty when everybody is in a febrile state.

One such nerve-racking drama in 2011 involved — just imagine — the president, the prime minister, senior cabinet ministers, those with the swagger stick and Faruqui himself. An indication of the things to come that day dawned on Faruqui when he found the doors to the president house closed with nobody allowed to enter it, even though Faruqui was then secretary general to the president.

Finally, when he managed it, he found President Asif Ali Zardari in bad shape. The president appeared exhausted, his face showing signs of physical collapse, and his speech lacking coherence. He announced he was going to Dubai for treatment but made clear he was going to stay in power.

One man’s presence evoked everybody’s curiosity. He was Hussain Haqqani, the former ambassador to America who was alleged to be behind what came to be called ‘Memogate’. The memo, allegedly written by him to the American establishment, sought the Obama administration’s help because, according to it, the army wanted to throw President Zardari out. Zardari, however, made clear he was no milquetoast, he was not going to be dragooned into resigning and, if necessary, he would use physical force to stay on as president.

The intensity of the chaos cannot be condensed into a few lines. Everybody was wondering why Haqqani was to accompany the president to Dubai. Most officials were reticent, with acting president Farooq Naek giving Faruqui two contradictory orders within minutes.

During his long career, Faruqui had to deal with all sorts of situations and a variety of characters, not all of them kind to him. However, among the persons he had respect for was Z.A. Bhutto, whom he met first as a student leader, when the latter was a minister in Ayub Khan’s cabinet; one day Faruqui would become Bhutto’s closest adviser.

The book gives us a graphic descriptions of Bhutto’s motives and actions, for one day Bhutto would turn against the class to which Faruqui belonged, the Civil Services of Pakistan or CSP. Always an iconoclast, Bhutto abhorred the “might and arrogance” of the CSP and radically altered the structure of Pakistan’s civil service.

In 1972, less than a year after coming to power, Bhutto promulgated a new ordinance and abolished the very nomenclature of an institution that, in his opinion, had blocked progress toward democracy. He promulgated the Removal from Service (Special Provision) Regulation and compulsorily retired over 1,300 civil service officers. The CSP academy was abolished and a joint pre-service training programme and a Federal Public Service Commission were formed. All along, Faruqui was in the picture.

Chapter Four leaves you sad, and you wonder why you chose to read what you cannot help read, because it is part of your history. The chapter reminds us of Bhutto’s glory: the enactment of the Constitution, which has now completed half a century of its chequered existence; the Islamic summit, which saw the Muslim world’s heroes gather at Lahore; the quiet but astonishing technological progress towards Pakistan ultimately becoming a nuclear power; and Bhutto’s tour de force — the famous “Give them passports!” order. Within no time Pakistanis from welders and masons to typists and chartered accountants were sending millions of petrodollars as home remittances from the oil-rich Arab soil.

Then came 1977 and all that it stands for — treachery, cunning and a “judicial murder”, as so aptly put by Dorab Patel, one of Pakistan’s most eminent jurists. Faruqui’s account of the events leading to the 1977 coup is authentic because he was in contact with Bhutto all along — the controversial elections, the violent protest movement by the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), the crucial negotiations between Bhutto and PNA leaders, and the stab in the back: the coup, when the talks had made a breakthrough.

The book has names of common friends, who included Saleem Asmi, my editor at Dawn (2000 to 2003) and an unforgettable character, and Wajid Shamsul Hassan — journalist, author, diplomat and friend par excellence.

Faruqui and I were students in the political science department of the Karachi University, and he was also our elected union chief. Space constraints and book review parameters restrain me from mentioning the names of fellow students, some of whom also became CSP officers; many are enjoying life playing with their grandchildren, while some have met their Lord.

In a lighter vein, I heaved a sigh of relief when I found a single ‘S’ in the name of Dawn Editor Altaf Husain in a caption on a photograph with him sitting beside Faruqui and his bride. Appointed as Dawn Editor in Delhi by Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah he was strict about the correct spelling of his surname. I joined Dawn in Karachi in 1960, and the very fact that Altaf Husain had been appointed by the Quaid evoked in a youngster like me both awe and admiration. If ever a double ‘s’ appeared in his name in some news item, God had to help the staff member, who would get a one-line warning that I enjoy recalling till this day. The reprimand from the news editor would say: “The subeditor doing this again will come to grief!”

I wonder why Faruqui didn’t write the book himself. He narrated the tempestuous history of his life to fellow journalist and editor of Aurora Mariam Ali Baig, and the late Talat Aslam, whom his friends and admirers miss till this day.

It was on becoming the federal ombudsman in 2012, his last assignment, that Faruqui realised the immensity of an ombudsman’s task. There were powerful bodies “with immense authority” to formulate and implement policy, but such bodies often overlooked “the small signals of malaise and malfunction that appeared in the armour of public service.” This made clear to him that a radical restructuring of the ombudsman’s agenda was needed to “sweep away the debris.”

Having virtually gone through the sawmill of the country’s bureaucratic juggernaut with its unavoidable political pressures, combined with temptations and bullying, Faruqui sums up his view of Pakistan in a guarded combination of hope and despair toward the end of the book. Pakistan, he says, is far from perfect but “it can be made perfect by diligence, hard work, and […] moral values.”

The writer is Dawn’s External Ombudsman and an author

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 4th, 2024