The Historian 2008 (1&2)
The Historian 2008 (1&2)
The Historian 2008 (1&2)
Department of History
GC University, Lahore
The Historian
Volume 6 (January-December 2008) Numbers 1&2
ISSN. 2074-5672
THE HISTORIAN
JANUARY-JUNE 2008 (VOL. 6, NO. 1)
ARTICLES
REVIEW ARTICLE
BOOK REVIEWS
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6
DETAILED CONTENTS
THE HISTORIAN
JULY-DECEMBER 2008 (VOL. 6, NO. 2)
ARTICLES
CONCEPT PAPER
BOOK REVIEWS
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8
FEMINISM: THE GROUNDS OF AN IDEA AND
LOGICS OF DISINTEGRATION
M. AFZEL KHAN
UNIVERSITY OF THE ERFURT,
GERMANY
ABSTRACT
The term “feminism” evokes mixed reactions when one first encounters
it. From an idea to a socio-political movement, and later, to a complete
academic discipline, it has many dimensions and multifarious
meanings. One common thread running in all these is that it is
something pertaining to women. This paper seeks to investigate the
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not for any other reasons but just because of inability and lack. The
included constituted a majority and excluded became a minority; a
minority which otherwise was a majority.
Speaking in terms of citizenship, according to Michel Dusche
“the individual of the social contract is a self-sufficient entity”. 9 Kant,
while elaborating the concept, divides citizenship into two categories:
namely, active and passive citizens. Passive citizens are ‘mere
auxiliaries of the commonwealth, for they have to receive orders or
protection from other individuals, so that they do not possess civil
independence’ 10 . Kant enlists the passive citizens as:
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described above). She pleads the case before their masters, men folk, a
la Kantian, to be encouraged for enlightenment, to have had more
responsibility as a necessary pre-requisite for a greater answerability.
Wollstonecraft writes:
In the same vein she asks that woman to be really rendered virtuous and
useful, “she must not, if she discharge her civil duties, want
individually the protection of civil laws; she must not be dependent on
her husband’s bounty for her subsistence during his life, or support
after his death”. 16 She questions the assumptions of woman’s
generosity and virtuosity that without being free and having property
rights she could not be held responsible for any deed. While indicting
in her own times a woman’s role as a wife, “who is faithful to her
husband” but “neither suckles nor educate her children, scarcely
deserves the name of a wife, and has no right to that of a citizen”, she
invokes the social contractarian logic, which says, “take away natural
rights, and duties become null.” 17
However, the first real case for equality for women was built
by J.S. Mill, in all its comprehensiveness, and that too under the
influence of Harriet Taylor, a women’s rights activist who later became
his wife. In a well articulated treatise on The Subjection of Women, he
at the very out-set questions the rules governing the relationships
between the sexes, “the principle which regulates the existing social
relations between the two sexes ⎯ the legal subordination of one sex to
the other ⎯ is wrong in itself … one of the chief hindrances to human
improvement”, and suggests in return its replacement by a “principle of
perfect equality”, which he defines as “admitting no power or privilege
on the one side, nor disability on the other”. 18
Although convinced of the strength of his argument he was
nevertheless wary of the would be (potential) criticism received to his
opinion on the basis of its novelty and unprecedented nature, as
established custom and general feeling went against it. Only by
showing ‘that custom and feeling from age to age … [had] owed their
existence to other causes than their soundness’, 19 could a case for
women’s equality be built. For this purpose he tries to dismantle the
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western countries, including USA, got it after the World War Ι. There
were other improvements particularly in the areas of education, work
conditions, and property rights as well, but overall women’s condition
remained subordinated to men with all the inherent dependencies. The
struggle for equality had only accentuated the pain of women’s unequal
status, they were still far behind.
Perhaps, there was a belated realization that the centuries old
societal traditions had in them a collective unconscious and any amount
of legislation would come to fail against these hard headed hidden
prejudices. They were the unconscious truths to be battled against. The
battles were fought then, to change the minds of people, in the form of
coffee house meetings and consciousness raising campaigns in the
second wave of the feminist movement, and had in them some
surprising results which we’ll come to see later. Let us first examine the
theoretical foundations of second wave feminism, whose major
articulations are to be found in the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Kate
Millet, Betty Friedan and Shulamith Firestone.
Simone de Beauvoir contests the second status of woman as
“the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential”. 26 Whereas,
“he is the Subject, he is the Absolute ⎯ she is the Other”. 27 She
considers this duality to be arbitrary, an event of historico-sociological
import, just like slavery, as Mill already spoken off, or the class
division of bourgeois as the One and the proletariat as the Other. The
Self is always conceived against the other. The division implies the
complementary nature of the terms divided in the pre-existing whole:
“Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein …. The
couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together”. 28
The whole was broken, nevertheless, and how it did all happen
remains perplexing but understandable at the same time: “No subject
will readily volunteer to become the object, the inessential …. The
Other is posed as such by the One in defining himself as the One”. 29
Man chose the Self and posed woman as the Other. It was
woman’s unique position where she could not leave man to struggle
against him that was different from proletariat’s and Negro’s; as a
matter of fact she was a partner in most of other struggles, and her own
struggle came afterwards and in a different way. The historical
precedent for this was deep rooted, perpetrated by religion,
philosophies of great many thinkers, the institution of family and its
economy linked with the powerful male as the master. Simone de
Beauvior disputes the biological and psychological basis of this
inequality, the problem lies in the fact that “in exchange for her liberty
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On the whole, the class division only confounds the issue for women,
while standing on the same ground, nevertheless, they are pitted against
each other as belonging to different classes. Patriarchy also works
while holding back educational and economic opportunities for women.
Force and violence are perpetrated against them in the form of rape and
other heinous crimes, “justified on the grounds that the enemy is either
an inferior species or really not human at all”. 42 Anthropologically
speaking, religion and myth are equal partners in the strength behind
patriarchy. Whereas all the above aspects combined have a
psychological bearing on both sexes, “their principal result is the
interiorization of patriarchal ideology”, 43 which tends “toward the
reification of the female … [as] a sexual object than a person”. 44
Betty Friedan defines this psychology in terms of a feminine
mystique. 45 She writes in the backdrop of American reversal to
feminine ideals after the gains of first wave feminism. In the 1950s and
early 1960s, the baby boom returned to America where more and more
women were encouraged to have a domestic job of a house wife rather
than a professional life outside. It was considered to be ideally suited to
their feminine nature. Friedan analyses the frustration of most of these
women as “the problem that has no name”. 46 As earlier with
Wollstonecraft’s era, the problem with these women was their leisure
time and sheer boredom without having their own identity related to
their work. They were glad to be identified with their fathers, husbands,
spouses, and children, but, in spite of that, they remained depressed and
frustrated.
Though wary and critical of this feminine mystique, Friedan
was not, nevertheless, a radical feminist. Among the radicals,
Shulamith Firestone stands out by asking some ultimate and less
probable questions. Taking on Engel’s analysis that women’s
subordination began with the development of private property, when
according to him, “the world historical defeat of the female sex” 47 took
place, she goes even further in the biological roots of this subordination
as prior to the development of private property. Woman’s woes are to
be blamed on her womb and the child bearing and child rearing
activities she performs, which make her dependant on man as the pillar
of this subordination. She thinks, by eliminating these hurdles woman
17
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leading fold is in the history of the idea of feminism or, in other words,
in the ontology of feminism itself.
The lacuna in the idea of Enlightenment was that it was a
particular and limited idea but claimed Universality. It had not had the
space of Universality into it. It grew in the West and only for the well
to do, educated, middle class westerners, sans the minorities previously
mentioned, including women. Its truth was a hegemonic truth. People
fell for it as a liberating idea; excluded wanted inclusion; but it failed to
carry them along. Eventually, they were given the rights but only in
abstraction, in the forms of law and juridical sanction, but not in
concrete terms as fully participating individualities. In their
desperation, the excluded, the peripheral questioned and challenged
their masters as if standing on medieval ancient grounds; but the
grounds were modern nevertheless.
Michel Foucault, leading French social thinker of the last
century, admires the feminist movement for what he considers to be its
politics of truth, the kind of politics found in Kate Millet’s writings;
feminist movement in the late sixties and early seventies was mainly
built around that kind of politics. One, other feature of this politics was
its micro nature in the forms of small gatherings in the coffee houses,
clubs and consciousness raising campaigns. This was also closely akin
to Foucault’s idea of microphysics of power and resistance. 50 This
politics of truth questioned the leading and well-established truths of its
times, the patriarchal and phallologocentric order of the period, the
modernity itself, though implicitly:
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END NOTES
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24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., p.22.
26. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Everyman, 1993), p. xΙv.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., pp.xΙviii-xlix
29. Ibid., p.xΙvi.
30. Ibid., p.755.
31. Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (New York: Ballantine, 1978), p.32.
32. Ibid., p.33. Herrschaft is a form of knowledge which emerges in one’s
enmeshing in its social surroundings, and conveys through work, language and
power. It is basically steeped in power; patriarchy as its one form. In German
Herr is a male referral, and schaft connotes knowledge.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., pp.36-7.
35. Ibid., p.45.
36. See William J. Goode, The Family (Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1964).
37. Millet, Sexual Politics, p.45.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., p.49.
41. Ibid., p.50.
42. Ibid., p.64.
43. Ibid., p.75.
44. Ibid., p.76.
45. See Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique (New York: Laurel, 1983).
46. Ibid., p.26.
47. Frederick Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works, vol. 2 (Moscow:
1962), p.217.
48. See Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (London: The Women’s
Press, 1979).
49. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p.4.
50. Foucault has elaborated his idea of microphysics of power on many
occasions, but for its relation to feminism see I. Diamond and L. Quinby, eds.,
Foucault and Feminism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988).
51. Michel Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh”, in C. Gordon, ed., Michel
Foucault: Power/Knowledge (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1980).
52. See I. Diamond and L. Quinby, eds., Foucault and Feminism. Also see
Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance. For details see Foucault’s critique of
psychoanalysis, the major commentary on his work by Hubert L. Dreyfus and
Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
(Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1982).
53. Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance, p.100.
54.Richard Kearney, Modern Movements in European Philosophy
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), p.115.
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25
THINKING FEMINISM THROUGH A MALE’S
MARGINALIZED POSITION
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
I know whatever I am going to say is not normal, that is, not “normal”
as you “normally” listen. This “normally” orders speech to come out in
already familiar, therefore, already well-settled modes. I know this
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writing is not the case of normality. And to foresee what would happen
after reading whatever is to come out I am feeling ashamed. I am not
confident enough to say what I want to say. I just want to hide myself
from you and from whatever is going to happen. I am feeling like a
feminine. But I’ll write and let you read.
I want to write from my position. By position I mean the
context of my temporality and the way I experience the signs of the
world around. But what I am to write is already destined toward the
way given to me. This destiny is part of the collectivities that fashion
my position. I am destined to write, satisfactorily, by asking to write
something on feminism.1 The writing, already mentioned in the
signified that comes with the accompanied signs and with my position,
has to be located in certain context of the discourse initiated by the
movement termed as feminism.
In my effort, from the very start, I find many difficulties. The
difficulty arises out of strangeness of my position with the generated
discourse that is understood as the discourse of feminism. This
strangeness is multifaceted . I am male, at least that is the construction
of the sign that is given to me, owned by me, displayed by me and
expected by me contextualizing my position. Yet this construction of
owning “male” constitutes a binary opposition with “female”. Only
through this binary opposition the term “female” and with it
“feminism” can get its meaning. (From where else the term “feminism”
takes its root but from female.) If the meaning of “female” is bound to
come out from its opposition to “male” then how is it possible for any
position that is constructed with one polarity to bring out other’s
position satisfactorily. (What do we mean by satisfactorily? In multiple
ways one can get satisfaction. The multiplicity may confuse us in
finding our way out. Let me change satisfactorily with “itself.” This is
an intervention and I do accept it. But to speak from my position let me
do this. The satisfaction may be achieved from multiple ways. It is a
psychological position that may be reached from inward or outward
efforts. But we are here concerned with the manifestation of the being-
itself, that is of feminism. It is only when feminism, from its
femininity, brings out being-itself only then the appearance of the being
would be the true appearance of itself.)2
Feminism means the doctrine of feminine. What do we mean
by doctrine of feminine? Is this doctrine given to Feminine or doctrine
coming out of feminine? If it is given to feminine then it can be
understood only with relation to the agency that ordered, controlled and
gave the doctrine. 3 Why? If the essence of a being is not its existence
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then its presence is dependent upon the defined essence and the agency
who defines the essence. 4
Who else can give the doctrine but it’s very other that is male
itself? But then it is the fate of female to live with this order, with
femininity, since the known history. Feminism must not be this
doctrine. It must be different. It must be something coming out of
feminine itself in its effort to understand itself from itself. Then it must
be historical. Being a rational-being feminine must have tried to
understand itself from the very self-reflective moment the feminine
ever experienced. 5 But we are talking here about doctrine. The doctrine
can only be doctrine when it comes out in a systematic way to put
forward its truth with the clear sense of its ‘Other,’ what it is not. 6 But,
is it really the case that feminism, as a doctrine, produced its other,
while already being other of male, through defining distinctively the
very limits of its own self? If it is, then, is it the case that the doctrine
defined through feminism kept its distinctness and has not dissolved
itself altogether? Is it the case that the very movement of feminism
retained the very essence of feminine itself, and kept itself distanced
from becoming male itself, that is, becoming what it is not?
Following is an effort to bring out answers, though no claim of
finality has been made. The article must be understood as an effort to
understand the primary essentiality of feminism from a programmatic
perspective. I shall take Derrida as my guide to analyze the multiple
texts and the lines to pursue. I shall trace the history of feminism, but,
shall give significance to the second wave of feminism. I’ll try to find
out the ground of feminism to understand its essentiality, instead of
perusing on historical facticity. Bringing out self-understanding of
second wave feminism through Friedan, Shulamith Firestone and Rosi
Braidotti, I shall bring forward understanding of Simone de Beauvoir
emphasizing women’s being as social construction transformed into
being feminine. To signify the conception of modern subject I shall
trace its origin in Descartes and engage his conception with the critique
of Derrida and Foucault. It is important to understand the construction
of male as it is developed through psychoanalysis, as a re-assured
paradigm of modernity’s male order. I’ll try to bring out the
construction through Freudian readings, and thus bring the sexualized
expression of male-hood of modernity into the light.
It will be shown that the larger strand of second wave
movement faced disillusionment as it entered into post-modern
condition. Many earlier theorists, like Friedan, find themselves in the
condition of distress. The expression of their very disillusionment
brings back, on the one hand, the owning of the very roots of femininity
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(I)
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regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes ⎯ the
legal subordination of one sex to the other ⎯ is wrong in itself … one
of the chief hindrances to human improvement”, and suggests in return
its replacement by a “principle of perfect equality”, which he defines as
“admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the
other.” 9
The dynamism of the first wave, with the forces of capitalism,
soon transformed into a struggle for juridical equality, while leaving the
struggle for rational equality linked with the tradition of enlightenment,
so strongly demonstrated by Mill through his rational argumentation,
into an oblivion. 10 After the World War I the story of feminism was a
story of old days. The economic prosperity lost the motive to struggle
for the rights when women can get all the leisure in the world within
existing social order. The period of baby-boom, conclusively, brought
out the triumph of prosperity and defeat of the struggle for freedom. 11
The defiance, however, emerged from the very ground of wealth and
prosperity. The dialectics of self-development defied the pleasure trap
of passivity, and the struggle began. 12
The struggle for freedom and equality found its next and fullest
stage in the second wave of feminism. The voice, so far sporadic, found
its central point and that is, patriarchy, the prevailing male’s social
order, in general, justifying the rules of gender development and
relationship, as a seed for generating oppression and injustice.
“Whether the authors be of the liberal kind (Betty Friedan and National
Organization of Women) or radical (Ti Grace Atkinson and her
political battlefield maps in Amazon Odyssey) they all develop in their
own ways a precise standpoint on the forms and impact of a situation of
oppression.” 13
Only at the later stages of its presence the phenomenon could also
bring out its presence in the gathered sameness. And only then the
name of feminism was owned by the sporadic voices of female. The
voices were bringing out desire of feminine to be known as feminists
that is “the desire to discover, understand and share the experience of
women, in a sense of commonness that cuts across all the established
differences of class, race and lifestyles that separate women.” 14 The
later stage, as called by many as second wave of feminism, is a special
moment in the long history of women’s struggle.15
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Only through the long struggle the women remained able to bring out
their voices from the condition of femininity. The long established
dialectical historical relation between male and female, forming the
ground of patriarchal social order only enabled male to exist on the
consumption of its other, that is, female. The relationship between this
dialectic could only be shattered through resisting the other. The
struggle of women, in the condition of femininity, brought out that
resistance, in the hope of enabling women and society at large to live in
a condition of justice and non-oppression. 17
The second wave of feminism or “feminism-owned-stage” 18
conclusively brings out the point that inequality would finally be
abolished through a leveling of women and men. The condition of
woman they thought was:
The disillusionment from the culture, from the larger social order,
produced the struggle of women that remained susceptible to the
difference between male and female. This difference for them remained
the point of oppression and inequality, their condition of femininity.
Only through denying the difference the system of domination and
oppression would finally be abolished. When Atkinson maintains that
feminism must begin by criticizing the hold exercised over women’s
bodies by the culturally dominant sexuality, that is, monogamous
heterosexuality, she is representing the mood of the whole movement.
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The redemption of original political sin would be to give back the one
half of Mankind its humanity. It happened, and happened through
resistance yet the change occurs without completion. The struggle
achieved it largely, though, in the West, and tried to achieve it in the
other part of the world. But the success remains half-won battle. The
other of male, female, showed its separate existence through its
struggle yet what it gained is the male-ness. Instead of one male,
culture has to live with two males. In the words of Betty Friedan
criticizing the ideal for which she had fought for fifteen years; I sense
other victories we thought were won yielding illusory gains; I see new
dimensions to problems we thought were solved. 21
In West, it is perfectly possible for a woman to be treated if it
wants to be treated in social relations like a male. The advanced
capitalist society has given way to the “liberating” women and opened
almost all the doors to the working force coming from the women side.
The progress towards equality has also led women towards a situation
in which, according to the treacherous logic of the system, they run the
risk of achieving a new invisibility: equal to and distinct from men. 22
The feminist movement, at the end of second wave of
feminism, finds itself in the need of revision and new insight. It finds
itself in the age of post-modernity, in the condition of post-feminism. 23
The question “what has feminist achieved?” is being asked again and
the suggestions to relocate the struggle are being suggested. Post-
feminism is an age of lost identities and subjective conceptions. The
concept of women has itself become a problem. The concept becomes
problematic “because it is crowded with the over-determinations of
male supremacy, invoking in every formulation the limit, contrasting
Other, or mediated self-reflection of a culture built on the control of
females. In attempting to speak for women, feminism often seems to
presuppose that it knows what women truly are, but such an assumption
is foolhardy…No matter where we turn-to historical documents,
philosophical constructions, social scientific statistics, introspection, or
33
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a way the male rules the female. Only in that prioritized dichotomy
does Iqbal’s Ego and body make sense.
Iqbal, in its repulsion of colonizer, takes back the theoretical
framework of understanding. Instead of looking forward the paradigm
of “Muslim” understanding developed while looking back. But in the
tradition woman is already a point of neglect. There is no feminine
theoretical tradition. If there is any theoretical tradition it is only of
Muslim males, though even that is a questionable matter. If woman has
to find its place it is only through the interpreted boundaries of male. 32
The other way towards the conception of subject moves while
including body, in fact by giving priority to the body and Desires.
Pychoanalysis from Freud through Lacan is one of those lines that
presented such a conception. It is the un-thought that drive and orient
the very rational activity. It is not the centre that decides; it is the very
seat of desire, called unconscious, drives and moves human being and
form that very concept called subject. The unconscious remains a seat
of unfulfilled desire and a seat of complexes developed with the growth
of personality in the very effort of organism to live in an otherwise
hostile world. The most significant complex in human development
remained Oedipus complex and Castration fear because of their ability
to produce the identity of the living organism, called human being.
Both Oedipus and castration complexes are the description of male
development and his fear to lose its identity of being male. The identity
of male-subject depends upon the penis it has and the battle between
son and father to win, in a dialectical struggle, the very same desired
woman. Due to its physical weakness the son loses the battle and
remained within the fear of losing his penis. The whole struggle of
development remained a struggle to become male in a condition of
being human and win over the desired woman. The stress from
logocentrism shifted to the phallocentrism, the actuality re-translated
into symbolic imagination. Yet the situation remained same.
Traditional order is that of man, and only around his understanding the
condition and rules exist and prevail; woman has to accept its very
own-self defining within man’s prevailing order or itself become a
male. 31
With a brief overview of the conception of subject that
appears as the conception of male-subject what becomes clear is the
conception of woman. The woman was defined by male and for male in
the condition of femininity. The only tradition and order left for woman
is to let her-self merged in the traditions and orders of the male. But
then the initial question creeps in; how can “male” bring out something
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that may otherwise could come out from its opposition that is “female”
and this bringing out should have to remain bringing out from “itself”?
To follow the path that may bring out answers, satisfactorily,
let us look again the very categories defining the whole debate, that is,
male and female. What do we mean by male and female? Is it some
thing fixed both biologically and naturally? Is the binary opposition
between male/female, translates in the binary opposition of
masculine/feminine un-problematically is fixed and transcend
language?
For many it is so obvious that they may find it strange to doubt
it and find it an occasion to make fun of my own male-ness. This is fine
but doesn’t give us answer. Is it fine to live there with self-evident
truths and to consider self-evidence as the only criterion of truth? To
question self-evident means opening new space in which self-evident
shows it-self. Whether self-evident could show itself is a matter of
showing in temporality. Let us question the un-questionable.
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CONCLUSION
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END NOTES
1
.For discussion Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge (NY: Routledge,
1972)
2
. This discussion can be traced in the history of philosophy. For instance, see
Heidegger’s discussion of being-itself. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time.
Trans. Joan Stambaugh, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996)
3
. The reference here is towards the fact that the very term feminism was used
initially not by women struggling to find their repressed equality. Instead it is
male theoretician who brought forward this term in order to point out the
women moving away from conventional norms and becoming reason for the
moral degradation. Alexandre Dumas used it in a pamphlet, on the subject of
adultery, to describe women behaving in a supposedly masculine way, in 1872.
Even earlier, in 1871, the term was used to differentiate sexual organs of
human body, in a French medical text. See Jane Freedman, Feminism (New
Delhi: Viva Books, 2002), p. 2.
4
.For this discussion see the writings of Heidegger. David Farrell Krell ed.,
Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings (NY: Routledge, 2007)
5
Heidegger explained this point of view quite clearly. Especially his essays
“On the essence of truth” and “Humanism” published in Farrell Krell ed.,
Martin Heidegger.
4
For this Simone de Beauvoir provided brilliant understanding. Simone de
Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Everyman, 1993)
5
. Rosi Braidotti, Patterns Of Dissonance (Sydney: Polity Press, 1991), p.147.
6
For the detail see Sarah Gamble ed., The Routledge Companion To Feminism
and Post-feminism (London: Routledge, 2001)
7
. See M Afzel Khan article, being published in this journal.
8
. For the detail see Gamble ed., The Routledge Companion To Feminism.
9
. Ibid.
10
. The argument is taken from Betty Friedan “The Feminine Mystique” quoted
in Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance, p.152.
11
. Adrienne Rich, Of Women Born (New York: W.W Norton, 1976), p.152.
12
. Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance, p.152.
13
. Rich, Of Women Born, p.153.
14
. For argument see Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (New York: Ballantine, 1978)
15
. Ibid
16
. T.G. Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, quoted in Braidotti, Patterns of
Dissonance, p. 156.
17
. V.Gornick, and B.K. Moran, Women in Sexist Society (New York:Menton
Books,1971), p. 144.
18
. Betty Friedan, The Second Stage, quoted in Braidotti, Patterns of
Dissonance, p.160.
19
. Ibid.
20
. Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-structuralism: The Identity
Crisis in Feminist Theory”, Signs, Vol.13, No.3.(Spring. 1988), pp.405-406.
21
. Ibid.
44
UMBER BIN IBAD, THINKING FEMINISM
22
. Reference is towards Pakistan.
23
. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Everyman, 1993)
24
. Ibid.
25
. Ibid.
26
. See Descartes, Discourse on Meditations (1642) or for commentary see John
Cottingham, Descartes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)
27
See Muhammad Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
(Lahore, 1930) especially IV and V essays.
28
. Descartes, Discourse on Meditations (1642) or for commentary, John
Cottingham, Descartes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)
29
. See literature on psychoanalysis, especially Derrida on psychoanalysis in
Jack Reynolds and Jonathon Roffe (eds.), Understanding Derrida (NY:
Continuum, 2004).
30
. See Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.
31
. For details see Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s
Second Sex”, Yale French Studies, No.72, (1986), pp.35-49.
32
. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak quoted in Gamble ed., The Routledge
Companion To Feminism, p.58.
33
. Ibid.
34
. G. Deleuze quoted in Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance, p.69.
35
. Ibid, p.77.
36
. See GWF Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind. Trans. J.B. Baille (London:
Harper Colophon Books, 1967)
37
. For detail, see Derridas’ works, like Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles, trans.
Barabara Harlow (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979)
38
. Jack Reynolds and Jonathon Roffe (eds.), Understanding Derrida (NY:
Continuum, 2004), p.144.
39
. Ibid., p.145.
40
. Ibid.
41
. Ibid.
45
LOCATING ‘ABORTION’ AS A BIRTH CONTROL
METHOD IN THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
TAHIR JAMIL
GC UNIVERSITY, LAHORE,
PAKISTAN
ABSTRACT
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The Historian, Vol. 06, No.1 (January – June 2008)
societies, legal codes of the ancient Rome and Greek, Biblical ethics,
Christian traditions, official position of Church and the interpretations
made by the Theologians from time to time. It is not to suggest that the
issue has been developed over a period of time, in fact, the paper
attempts to highlight the various inter-related political and sociological
issues in different societies connected to the practice of abortion. How
this issue has different connotations in different society is the larger
question this paper attempts to explore. It is divided into three sections.
First, deals with the practice of abortion in the primitive societies along
with the social and economic dynamics re-defining and re-orienting the
issue according to certain moral and ethical values. Second part deals
with the codification of abortion practice in the legal codes developed
during the Greek and Roman period, and later when Christianity
affected the legal processes around this practice. The last part deals
with the adjustment of modern American society with the issues related
to women generally and abortion particularly. During this period, there
was a need to give a historical revision to this issue alongwith its moral,
social, economic and political contingencies in the wake of feministic
paradigm and women emancipation.
(I)
48
TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
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50
TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
cohabitation between a woman and her lover other than her fiancé was
permitted, but if she got pregnant then she must have to marry her
fiancé with whom she was not ready to live like a wife, the only way
left to postpone her marriage with her fiancé was to go for abortion. In
the religiously motivated primitive societies, for example, in Fiji,
shame was the most important factor, which resulted in abortion. That
is why women of these societies were not ready to lose their
reputation.12
(II)
51
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TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
(III)
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TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
John's mission in life was to confirm the arrival of the Jesus and to
prepare people to receive him. This text indicates the humanity of
Jesus even in his embryonic state. There is an objection that the
circumstances of conception of the Jesus were unique and
extraordinary. We can draw no parallel between the conception of the
Jesus and the normal process of human conception.33
The early Christians were actively pro-natalists. They
denounced abortion, contraception exactly equal to murder, but the
point to be noted is that moral and legal treatment was void of the
rhetoric. It is a fact that abortion was denounced by early Christian
writers such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and St Basil, but
the position of the Church was not that much strict. The Church
councils of Elviva and Ancyra outlined the legal groundwork for the
Christian communities, specified penalties only for those women who
commit adultery and prostitution. From the third century onward
Christian thoughts were divided as whether early abortion of an
unformed embryo was in fact' a murder. Moreover, the different
sources of church teaching and law did not agree that early abortion
was wrong.34 There are also some evidences, which prove that some
early theologians did not consider therapeutic abortion wrong.
Tertullian in the third century gave justification of therapeutic
abortion or therapeutic feticide on ground of necessity if there was a
direct threat to life of mother. Moreover, there is a long list of
medieval, renaissance and Counter Reformation theologians who
justify therapeutic abortion prior to the rational ensoulment by direct
means and after ensoulment by indirect means.35 According to
Encyclopaedia Americana, with the advent of Christianity abortion
became more widely condemned, but the early church doctrine
considers it as murder only after the point at which rational soul
became animated usually said to be forty days after conception.36 We
also find in most of the theological work of Middle Ages abortion was
approved. For example, in a monumental treatise on matrimonial and
sexual morality by a Spanish Jesuit Thomas Sanca the abortion is
allowed in certain circumstances. He says that a girl is impregnated by
rape or some ravish, Soon afterward, before she know that she had
been pregnant by the crime, marries another person then discovers her
condition after wedding, is not bound to carry the fetus to term, but
may abort it. Moreover, if she fears that her husband's relatives may
discover that she is carrying a child who does not belong to him and
they may kill her for it, then she is allowed to go for abortion.
According to some pro-natalists this justification owes much to the
medical ethics of that age because surgical abortion of healthy women
57
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at that time oftenly caused infection and proved fatal and the
physician could not control the surgical operation hence abortion at
the later stage of the pregnancy would be impossible. But the point to
be noted is that Sanca is talking about the social cause of abortion
rather than that of medical.37 Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian
of the middle ages, however, opposed abortion but he made a
distinction between the moral gravity of the early and late abortion.
Aquinas assumed the embryology of the Aristotle who thought that
rational soul was not present before the fortieth day in case of male
and eightieth day in case of female.38 Augustine disapproved abortion
on moral grounds but he had hesitation about the exact time of
ensoulment of the fetus. Martin Luther also talked about the morality
but he did not directly address the question of abortion.39
Church position on abortion began to change in the sixteenth
century. Abortion was considered morally disgraceful and
unjustifiable at any stage of pregnancy because the fetus was ensouled
at the time of conception. The Pope Sixtus V denounced previous
doctrine that allows early abortion in 1558. He emphasized that the
fetus was infused with a soul even from the time of conception,
therefore the termination of pregnancy violates the sacredness of life.
This position is even assumed by the present Roman Catholic
Church.40 But the prevailing opinion of the Catholic moral theologians
remains unchanged from 1450 to 1895.41 By the middle of eighteenth
century catholic teaching moved away from the earlier position of
Aristotle and Aquinas and identified conception at the time of
ensoulment. It is argued that the earlier position adopted by Aquinas
was due to inavailability of new embryological information to
Aquinas. 42 In last decades of nineteenth century, decrees of holy
office 1884, 1889 and 1895 for the first time in the ecclesiastical
history explicitly condemned craniotomy, another form of
embryotomy and abortion even it was resorted solely for therapeutic
reason to save the life of a pregnant woman. 43
In colonial America abortion was neither forbidden by the
written Law nor persecuted under the common Law yet minister
abhorred abortion and exhorted women who abort their fruit of womb
was equal to a murder. In English custom abortion was -allowed till
mother detected the fetal movement which usually occurred in the
fourth month of pregnancy. Women knew certain Abortifications and
primitive techniques to end their pregnancies, while midwives and
doctors used relatively safe and medically advanced intrusive
methods. During eighteenth century women usually used coitus
interruptus, abstinence and oftenly abortion to limit their family size.44
58
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TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
to the United States between 1818 and 1836. She not only advocated
radicals in the legal position of women but also a whole range of
women’s natural rights from education to sexuality.64 In 1850 women
in United States began to attract the attention of the people by various
odd means such as odd dressing and abortion was also on their
agenda. Madame Rosette a practitioner of abortion in New York,
advertised herself as a “women physician.”65 Birth control movement
got momentum in 1910’s and 1920’s but there was no change in
Federal legal restrictions. A Bill lobbied by the physicians to prescribe
birth control measures was defeated in the state legislatures. Despite
the defeat in legislatures, other developments made birth control a
widespread movement. In 1918 New York court of appeal exempted
physicians from persecution for prescribing contraception necessary to
cure or prevent a disease. Sanger opened first birth control clinic in
the country in 1923, which supplied contraceptive information to 1208
women in a year and the number of Sanger clinics increased to 28
across the country. American Birth Control League founded by
Sanger facilitated domestic manufacturers to produce diaphragm,
spermicidal jellies, and clinic’s contraceptives of choice. She also
managed to smuggle female contraceptives such as German mad
Minsinga diaphragm and contraceptive jellies in oil drums with the
help of her husband who was the president of three in one Oil
Company.
In 1925 Holland Rantos Company began to manufacture
female contraceptives in the United States with the financial help of
Sanger’s husband.66 The post suffrage movement consisted of tow
groups; one group was comparatively more conservative struggling on
the lines determined on the occasion of Seneca Fall’s “Declaration of
Sentiments” while other group, lead by Margaret Sanger who was
public health nurse, was more liberal and started the birth control
movement. The idea was that a woman had control over her body
through control over reproduction and sexuality. It radicalized the idea
of women emancipation. The opposition was very strong;
consequently, antiwomen rights laws were enforced. But in 1936
Supreme Court gave a decision, which declassified birth control
information as abscene.67
During the great depression the number of abortions soared
because economic constraint forced women to do so. The number of
exposes and the persecution of abortion were declining and the
physicians were co-operating more with women than with the
government officials who were executing abortion. According to
many observers anti-abortion statutes were not fully observed till
63
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64
TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
END NOTES
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TAHIR JAMIL, LOCATING ‘ABORTION’
67
REVIEW ARTICLE
CONCEPTUALIZING “OTHERNESS” IN
HISTORICAL DISCOURSES (EDWARD SAID,
BERNARD S. COHN AND O.W. WOLTERS)
HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE,
SINGAPORE
BOOKS REVIEWED
69
The Historian, Vol. 06, No.1 (January – June 2008)
(I)
One of the many possible ways of looking at Saidian discourse in his
(un)famous work Orientalism is to contexualize it within his personal
life which may be termed as a defining force behind the construction of
this narrative. “My own experiences....are in part what made me write
this book. The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West, particularly in
America, is disheartening. There exists here an almost unanimous
consciousness that politically he does not exist, and when it is allowed
that he does, it is either as a nuisance or as an Oriental”. 3 Experiences
within such cultural nuisances, racial stereotypes and political
imperialism provoked Edward Said to “use” his “humanistic and
political concerns for the analyses and description of a very worldly
matter, the rise, development and consolidation of Orientalism”. 4
For Said, Orientalism is “a way of coming to terms with the
Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western
experience. The Orient ... is also the place of Europe’s greatest and
richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages,
its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images
of the “Other”. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or
the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. The
Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture.
Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even
ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions,
vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies
and colonial styles”. 5 Said defines Orientalism “as a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”. 6 For
Said, because of Orientalism, Orient could not acquire the status of a
free will.
This very agenda of exploring (or perhaps proving) the
hegemonic apparatus of Orientalism is the defining feature of his
methodology of studying “Otherness”. He extracts strength from Michel
Foucault’s concept of discourse as discussed in The Archaeology of
Knowledge and Discipline and Punish. For Said, Europeans configured
Orient by creating a systematic disciplinary society in the colony. Such
disciplinary society constituted Orient “politically, sociologically,
militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively”. 7 Saidian
70
HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN , CONCEPTUALIZING “OTHERNESS”
(II)
Bernard Cohn’s strategy of studying “Otherness” in colonial text is to
emphasize upon institutional practices fully laden with classification of
peoples, groups and communities. For Cohn, the presupposition in his
research is that “metropole and colony have to be seen in a unitary field
of analysis. In India, the British entered a new world that they tried to
comprehend using their Ours forms of knowing and thinking. There was
a widespread agreement that this society, like others they were
governing, could be known and represented as a series of facts. The
form of these facts was taken to be self-evident, as was the idea that
administrative power stemmed from the efficient use of these facts”. 11
71
The Historian, Vol. 06, No.1 (January – June 2008)
72
HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN , CONCEPTUALIZING “OTHERNESS”
(III)
In his book, History, Culture, And Region in SouthEast Asian
Perspective, O.W.Wolters not only traces the background of the earlier
South East Asia, but also challenges the issue of “Indinization” of whole
regional history. He suggests various methods and paradigms to study
“Indian Otherness” in the “prevailing history” which needs complete re-
interpretation. Wolters tries to remove the historians’ misconception that
“the South East Asian peoples could graduate to statehood only with
assistance of Indian influence”. 18 For it, he brings into light the
statements of different historians and then redefines them. According to
him, unlike what the Western historians portray, there is no universality
in delineation of one’s culture, style, law, and language. By putting forth
the viewpoint of Coedes “that the states of Southeast Asia were
continuously shaped and sustained by Indian culture influences”, 19
Wolters takes into account the cultural diversity in this region (the
Khemers, the Javenese, and the Chams). In case of localization, Wolters
quips, “Localized foreign materials do not have to be Indian to tell us
something about the society”. 20 In account of any society, language
plays a role of an important “signifier”. 21 Wolters raises this issue by
counter arguing on Mabbett’s view that the Indian symbols are utilized
to propagate Southeast Asian features. According to him, the status of
Sanskirt has been varying and it is evident from the difference between
tenth century and twelfth century Sanskirt, used by the Khamer.
In short, it is Wolters’ way to raise the controversy and then
digging out the truth by tracing back the history. In his case he deals
with two “Others” – the Western historians and the Indian influences.
However, he also takes the support of the Western historians in order to
refute the misconception of the Indianization with regard to the cultural
diversity. For instance, he quotes M.B. Hooker, who asks the legal
historians to be “cautious because the mode of congruence of Indian law
with indigenous laws has varied greatly throughout Southeast Asia”. 22
73
The Historian, Vol. 06, No.1 (January – June 2008)
(IV)
Edward Said, Bernard Cohn and O.W. Wolters see the intrusion of
outside forces in the formulation and restructuring of internal fibre of
colonized societies. All three identify various methodologies and
paradigms to underscore the sense of alienation/”Otherness” in
colonizers texts. Prime emphasis is laid on linguistic discourses by
highlighting the limitations of colonizers to appreciate the local
practices. One distinguishing feature of Cohn’s work is the
acknowledgement of the process of osmosis, or in other words,
negotiation between colonizers and colonized. He identifies various
operational strategies pursued by the colonial state. However, Said, to a
great extent, ignores the role of locals in influencing the colonizer’s text.
In fact, Said is being blamed for oversimplifying the
complexity of colonial context by adopting the same methodological
tools of binary oppositions. He treats colonizer and colonized as
homogenous and coherent entities politically, culturally, ideologically
and institutionally. Said may not be a simplistic scholar but his
discourse certainly led to a simplified representation of complex
processes. In case of Wolters, he emphasizes more on local perspectives
by criticizing the works of some Western historians. These three writers
address the issue of “Otherness” differently. Said sees “Otherness” in
binary opposition, Bernard Cohn identifies colonial modalities and
various apparatus of control to classify and control the colonized and
Wolters delineates localizated definition “Self” in South East Asian
historical discourses by negating the western historians’ definition of
“Self” and “Other”.
74
HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN , CONCEPTUALIZING “OTHERNESS”
END NOTES
1
Bill Ashcrof, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back:
Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literature (London: Routledge, 1989), p.
9.
2
Ibid.
3
Edward W Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p.27.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid., pp. 1-2.
6
Ibid., p.03.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., p.20.
9
Ibid., pp.21-2.
10
Ibid., pp. 23-4.
11
Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in
India (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996), p.4.
12
Ibid., p.5.
13
Ibid., p.6.
14
Ibid., p.7.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid., p.9.
17
Ibid., p.53.
18
O.W. Wolters, History, Culture, And Region in SouthEast Asian Perspectives
(NY: SEAP, 1999), p.24.
19
Ibid., p.51.
20
Ibid., p.61.
21
Ibid., p.84.
22
Ibid., p.51.
75
BOOK REVIEWS
ROY GUTMAN, HOW WE MISSED THE STORY (OSAMA BIN
LADEN, THE TALIBAN AND THE HIJACKING OF AFGHANISTAN)
(WASHINGTON: US INSTITUTE OF PEACE, 2008)
79
that the Russians and British had broken their spears trying to govern
these people. They resisted outside authority. They were notoriously
difficult to govern even when left alone. The question of who governs
was not prime subject for us.” Karl Inderfurth, the assistant secretary
for South Asian Affairs, admitted before the US Senate in 1997, “Let
me be very clear about our policy toward Afghanistan: The US is
neutral between the factions.” Probably, Robin Raphel, the assistant
secretary of state for the South Asian Affairs from 1993 to 1996, was
the only high level official who wanted the US to remain engaged with
the Afghans: “I would say if you walk away because you got what you
were after when the Russians left, and not considering the mess you left
this country in, you are going to pay. It is not the right thing to do.” But
when no one listened to her, she expressed her frustration in these
words: “I did everything except dance naked on the secretary’s staff
table” to draw the attention of all concerned to the Afghan cauldron.
After the Soviet retreat, the three figures that were to dominate
the Afghan scene for the next decade were Ahmed Shah Masood,
Mullah Omer and Osama Bin Laden but none had good relations with
the Americans. Mullah Omer, the head of Taliban had a vision in which
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) appointed him to bring peace to
Afghanistan. In 1995, the Taliban clearly told the US diplomats visiting
Afghanistan that after taking Kabul, they would institute sharia and
crush all opposition. Osama was their guest but his harangues against
the Americans so much irritated the US government that the CIA
director George Tenet rushed to Riyadh and in a meeting with Crown
Prince Abdullah got a commitment that the Saudis would use all their
means to prevail upon the Taliban to expel Osama from their country.
When Prince Turki al Faisal, the Saudi intelligence Chief demanded
Mullah Omer to hand over Osama, the latter replied, “He is our guest.
It is not our tradition to ask the guest to leave. And where would he go?
He would be arrested.” When Turki indicated that he had an open
cheque book, Omer angrily told him to leave which Turki did, but after
delivering his final warning: “You will regret it, and the Afghan people
will pay a heavy price.”
While on one hand the Saudis threatened Mullah Omer of dire
consequences on the US prodding but at the same time the author has
quoted several sources who held that the US officials viewed the
Taliban takeover as a ‘hopeful development’ because according to the
AFP correspondent Stefan Smith, “At our end, we had the very general
impression, including from US diplomats in Islamabad, that the Taliban
were not such a bad bunch at all.” In the ensuing Afghan civil war the
Americans had to make a choice between the fundamentalist Taliban
80
and the secular Northern Alliance’s maverick head, Ahmed Shah
Masood. Concerned officials for the Afghan desk at the State
Department such as Al Eastham and Mike Malinowski opposed the
American assistance to Masood because they believed that he could not
defeat the Taliban. Gary Schroen, who remained the CIA officer for
seven years in Islamabad, quoted Eastham as saying, “A Taliban
victory would mean no more fighting, no more civil war, and that
would in itself be something for Afghanistan.” In other words if the US
did not actively support a Taliban victory, they also made no effort to
stop them from coming into power.
Retrospectively, Masood could have been a better alternative.
Often compared with Mao Zedong, Che Guevara and Marshal Tito, he
was the most capable resistance leader who not only repelled nine
Russian offensives in north-eastern Afghanistan but also led the
bloodless takeover of Kabul in 1992 after the fall of Najibullah and
successfully defended his government for four-and-a-half years. A man
of action rather than words, the story of ‘Lion of Panjshir Valley’ is
almost unknown to the world due to the dearth of published writings on
him. His major shortcoming was his failure to develop a reliable
relationship with an outside patron. This does not mean that he was
unwilling to accept any foreign aid but the important point was that he
was not willing to accept any ‘direction or instruction’ from the
foreigners because in his view, his struggle was an “Afghan national
struggle, not a proxy war.” He admitted, “we Afghans erred, too. Our
shortcomings were as a result of political innocence, in-experience,
vulnerability, victimization, bickering and inflated egos but this by no
means justified the response of former cold war allies to destroy and
subjugate Afghanistan.”
Masood was much clearer about the potential threat of the
Taliban and Osama than the ‘Babus’ of State Department. Three years
before the 9/11, while elaborating the potential of threat from Osama
and the Taliban, he said, “the terrorists will grow deep and wide, right
and left, up and down to terrorize and entangle the West, and especially
the United States.” In a strong worded message, he tried to shake the
slumbering Washington establishment: “If President Bush doesn’t help
us, then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very
soon—and it will be too late.”
It is not that he was a power hungry leader who did not want
to share power with other stakeholders. After Najibullah had stepped
down, Masood urged him to join the Northern Alliance but the former
replied, “the Taliban had not only Pakistan’s backing but also that of
the United States.” Masood even phoned Mullah Omer for grand
81
reconciliation suggesting a cease-fire, an interim administration, a loya
jirga and free elections but when Omer said, “You are not corrupt. But
you have become an obstacle for Islamic Emirate. Don’t do that. You
can play a role in Tajikistan. The Tajiks like you. You can expand the
Islamic Emirate to Tajikistan,” Masood interrupted, “We are talking
about Afghanistan. There is a war going on in Afghanistan in which
people are suffering. This is not the way to stop it,” Omer interjected,
“Tajiks should go to Tajikistan, Uzbeks to Uzbekistan, Hazaras to Iran.
We are Afghans. This is our land.” The night before his assassination at
the hands of Qaeda, he prophesied, “If we are out of Afghanistan, the
next (to fall) will be Central Asia. Bokhara (Uzbekistan) will be the
capital of the Islamic movement of al-Qaeda.”
Masood died fighting the Taliban and Qaeda. He was the only
leader who could have turned the tables against his foes but neither
Clinton nor George W. Bush sought his counsel or used his talents or
provided him adequate assistance to shift the balance of power in the
volatile situation. Gutman feels that the most critical juncture for the
US policy shift from neutrality to support Masood was the August 1998
attack on the American embassies in East Africa because by that time it
had become crystal clear that Mullah Omer was fully committed to
grant sanctuary to Osama.
The author has also meticulously researched Osama’s
emergence as a top level non-state threat to world peace. His
association with Afghanistan dates back to 1980. It is believed that
Osama was offered asylum in Afghanistan by three men: Molvi
Saznoor, a commander of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s Ittehad-i-Islami,
Engineer Mahmood, a commander of Gulbadin Hikmatyar, and Fazlal
Haq of Yunus Khalis’ party—all three groups were beneficiaries of US
largesse during the ‘Afghan jehad.’ Interestingly, Osama departed
Sudan for Afghanistan along with his family in two chartered flights on
May 18, 1996 – one of the aircraft belonged to Ariana, the Afghan state
airline. Although the then Afghan President Rabbani denied having
anything to do with Osama’s arrival, the fact of the matter is that the
$50,000 paid in cash for the Ariana chartered plane went straight into
the state coffers. Even more surprising is the fact that Osama’s
departure from Sudan to Afghanistan was at the urging of CIA. The
Americans had begun to put pressure on the Sudanese government to
expel Osama from their soil. When the Sudanese defense minister
visited US in March, 1996, the CIA repeated their demand. And when
the minister enquired as to where should Sudan send Bin Laden, the US
officials responded, “Just ask him to leave the country, but don’t let
him go to Somalia.’ Knowing Osama’s preference, when the minister
82
informed that he might go to Afghanistan, the Americans said, “Let
him” (p 87).
Consequent to his arrival, he began to dominate the Taliban
regime because of his invaluable support to them during the civil war
as well as to their regime that lasted from 1996 to 2001. In this way, a
non-state actor ‘hijacked’ a state. The author thinks that Bin Laden’s
financial resources enabled him to become a decisive force in a very
poor country. According to one estimate, he is a billionaire with a net
worth of $250 million whereas Prince Turki put it between $40 to 50
million. In addition, the US intelligence analysts held that Osama
“raised some $ 30 million a year for al-Qaeda and invested $10-20
million a year in the Taliban.” With such a fortune, he could pay $300
monthly to his each fighter and it is widely held that the $16 to 18
million cost of the Taliban offensive that routed the Northern Alliance
was also borne by Osama. He proved more intelligent than the most
intelligent minds of the West, particularly the US. The way he
manipulated the Muslim grievances worldwide, made him a magnet for
jehadis with an extremist global agenda justifying terror tactics.
Gutman’s conclusion is that the ascendancy of Taliban and the
‘hijacking’ of the Taliban regime by al-Qaeda which culminated in the
9/11 attacks was less of an intelligence or military failure and more of a
strategic US foreign policy failure. With the collapse of the Soviet
empire, power vacuum was bound to occur in different parts of the
globe, particularly in the periphery of the US empire, which, if not
addressed on time, was likely to create situations as happened in the
case of Afghanistan. In their frenzy to beat the Russians, the American
policy makers completely ignored the “need to try to achieve a stable
political end-state in Afghanistan.” Without formulating a long term
policy to steer the Afghan imbroglio to its logical end, both Clinton and
Bush thought that Osama could be eliminated by an intelligence or
military operation. The author thinks that the US should have adopted a
tough policy vis-à-vis Taliban after the attacks on their embassies in
East Africa but the general mood prevailing in the Clinton
administration at that time was: “We don’t go to war over dead
Africans.” He contends that as terrorism is a tactic to attain a political
purpose, it cannot be eliminated by waging a war against terror rather it
can be addressed only by a political counterstrategy, otherwise the
terrorists will continue to rebound.
Afghanistan has been a burial ground of empires. The Russian
empire was humbled when the last Soviet soldier crossed out of
Afghanistan. This was February 15, 1989. The mood at the CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia became jubilant when their
83
Islamabad station Chief Milton Bearden sent a two-word teletype
message: “We won.” The victory was all the more heady because not
only that not a drop of American blood was shed in the entire conflict
but with just six billion dollars and a handful of Muslim ‘jehadis’, the
CIA had achieved what the entire might of the American empire could
not during the course of Cold War. Since 1989, it is almost two
decades, now, and there is no end of Afghan conflict in sight. In fact,
US President-elect Obama has promised the deployment of more
American troops in Afghanistan. Only time will tell, who will have the
last laugh, this time.
84
CARLO GINZBURG, THE CHEESE AND THE WORMS: THE
COSMOS OF A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MILLER (TRANSLATED BY
JOHN AND ANNE TEDESCHI), (LONDON AND HENLEY:
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL, 1980)
(I)
85
unconsciously historian does represent his own past in his works. But it
is, according to Ginzburg, “obvious that our own experiences will
govern our interests as researchers. And there is no reason why such
subjective elements should have to impose limitations on an historian’s
work, instead of presenting opportunities”. 6
If history is a perspective, like The Cheese and the Worms,
then how far is the possibility of truth in historical discourse? Ginzburg
terms “Truth as the daughter of time”. 7 Historians are definitely aware
of the fact “that all phases through which research unfolds are
constructed and not given: the identification of the object and its
importance; the elaboration of the categories through which it is
analyzed; the criteria of proof; the stylistic and narrative forms by
which the results are transmitted to the reader” 8 . That’s why history has
strains of truth, fiction, consciousness and unconsciousness.
The fictional aspect in Ginzburg’s work may be prominent
because of his inspiration from Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He terms The
Cheese and the Worms as a “small, distorted product of Tolstoy’s grand
and intrinsically unrealizable product: the reconstruction of the
numerous relationships...”. 9 Since History is the reconstruction/re-
enactment of the past, therefore, Ginzburg acknowledges the power of
reader over the text. His hero, Mannochio, customizes every text which
he reads, and that’s why Ginzburg “is not sure that Mannochio is being
heard”. 10 Through this he not only creates new spaces for readers’
subjectivities but also highlights the interaction of oral tradition with
the print culture. 11
(II)
86
somewhat similar to “abductive model of testimony” which “treats
judgment of testimony as an instance of inference of hidden causes
from manifest vestiges and signs”. 16 On the use of inference and signs,
Carlo Ginzburg argues that in the 19th century, in most of the
disciplines like history, philology, art history, criminology, signs were
taken like means, clues, “in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, as a
science of systematic reconstruction of absent or hidden realities from
present.....”. 17 He adopts the same Sherlock Holmes’ strategy of
looking at the testimony in a systematic way in The Cheese and the
Worms. While analysing the inquisition record, he reads it like a text of
sign-posts/clues and applies rationality to extract possible actions of his
characters. 18 That’s why constructions like “apparently”, “it appears
so”, “it may be the case”, “perhaps he had thought this” are too
frequently used in the text. He takes record as sign-posts (what has
been done by Umberto Eco) and thinks historical text as a kind of
hermeneutical circle. One of the prime factors of negating prima facie
of historical evidence is his awareness of the subjectivity of historical
record. 19 As a result, he imaginatively chooses not to rely on
inquisition record at various places. It is the same strategy which Marc
Bloch suggests in probing the past. 20
Sometimes, Ginzburg adopts Foucauldian theory of
knowledge-power relationship to substantiate his point of view.
Especially when his hero, Scandella criticizes Church, he relates
religious knowledge/perspective as a source of legitimacy. The book
suggests that various centres of power constructed their own
episteme/epistemology for defining and redefining their own order and
disorder. 21
However, locating Ginzburg’s work within the strict
Foucauldian concepts may not be altogether correct. Multiplicity of
voices, tensions within ideologies, confusion, simplicity, complexity,
clarity and vagueness place this work beyond such conception.
Ginzburg suggests such complexities as a very core feature of
microhistory. Interestingly, he locates this multiplicity of
voices/ideologies by discourse analyses of trial record. In other words,
he locates “other voices” within the text that is ought to project self. He
is analysing the document of high culture (i.e., Trial record of Holy
Officer), and reconstruct “other” (i.e., an illiterate ordinary miller of
low stratum). 22
The book, as a whole, is useful contribution not only to the
16th century Europe, but also to the history-writing. The author aptly
uses discourse analysis and hermeneutics to reconstruct the
marginalized or neglected past. The negotiation of elite and popular
87
cultures, contextualization of an individual and his associations and
alienation with these developments, interaction of print and oral
traditions are analysed in an imaginative way.
88
END NOTES
1
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-
Century Miller (Translated by John and Anne Tedeschi), (London and Henley:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. xxvi, 13-17.
2
Ginzburg's talk, entitled “Coleridge, Exoticism and Empire”, St Catherine's
College, 16 February 2007.
3
Carlo Ginzburg and Anna Davin, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes:
Clues and Scientific Method”. History Workshop, no. 9 (Spring, 1980), p.6.
4
Carlo Ginzburg’s Interview, www.eurozine.com.
5
"I am a Jew who was born and grew up in a Catholic country; I never had a
religious education; my Jewish identity is in large measure the result of
persecution", Carlo Ginzburg writes in the preface to one of his recent books.
Ginzburg was born in Turin in 1939. His father, Leone Ginzburg, taught
Russian literature at the university there until, in 1934, he lost his position,
having refused to swear an oath of allegiance imposed by the Fascist regime.
He died in 1944, in a section of the Roman prison controlled by the Germans.
Carlo Ginzburg was therefore brought up by his mother, Natalia Ginzburg
(1916−1991), one of the leading Italian writers of the twentieth century”. Carlo
Ginzburg’s Interview, www.eurozine.com.
6
Carlo Ginzburg’s Interview, www.eurozine.com.
7
Anne Jacobson Schutte, “Carlo Ginzburg”. The Journal of Modern History,
Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1976), p.306.
8
Carlo Ginzburg, John Tedeschi, Anne C. Tedeschi, “Microhistory: Two or
Three Things That I Know about It”. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Autumn,
1993), p. 24.
9
“....the impetus towards this type of narration (history narration) (and more
generally for occupying myself with history) came to me from further off: from
War and Peace, from Tolstoy's conviction that a historical phenomenon can be-
come comprehensible only by reconstructing the activities of all the persons
who participated in it.51 This proposition, and the sentiments that had spawned
it (populism, fierce disdain for the vacuous and conventional history of
historians), left an indelible impression on me from the moment I first read it.
The Cheese and the Worms, the story of a miller whose death is decreed from
afar, by a man (a pope) who one minute earlier had never heard his name, can
be considered a small, distorted product of Tolstoy's grand and intrinsically
unrealizable project: the reconstruction of the numerous relationships that
linked Napoleon's head cold before the battle of Borodino, the disposition of
the troops, and the lives of all the participants in the battle, including the most
humble soldier.” Carlo Ginzburg, John Tedeschi, Anne C. Tedeschi,
“Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It”. Critical Inquiry,
Vol. 20, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993), p.16.
89
10
Carlo Ginzburg’s Interview, www.eurozine.com.
11
For instance see for discussion, Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms:
The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, pp. 31-47, 51.
12
Carlo Ginzburg, John Tedeschi, Anne C. Tedeschi, “Microhistory: Two or
Three Things That I Know about It”. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Autumn,
1993), p. 24.
13
Ewa Domanska (ed.), Encounters: Philosophy of History After
Postmodernism. (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia,
1998), p.16. Also see F. R. Ankersmit, “Hayden White's Appeal to the
Historians”. History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 2 (May, 1998), p.185.
14
Carlo Ginzburg’s Interview, www.eurozine.com.
15
C. Ginzburg, “Clues: Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Homes”. History
Workshop, No. 9 (Spring, 1980), p. 06.
16
Nick Jardine, “Explanatory Geneologies and Historical Testimony”.
Episteme, 2008, p. 165.
17
C. Ginzburg, “Clues: Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Homes”. History
Workshop, No. 9 (Spring, 1980), pp. 5-36.
18
For instance, when Menocchio very vaguely identifies 15-20 years as a
period of his beliefs, and fails to identify the person who inspired him to think
like that, Ginzburg very smartly relates Mennochio’s beliefs to Nicola da
Porcia on the basis of Don Ottavio’s statement although Nicola was released by
the Holy Officer because of the testimonies of two ecclesiastics of Porcia. “It
seems, then, that Menocchio must have spoken with someone about religion
fifteen or sixteen years before--- in 1583, probably, because at the beginning of
the following year he had been imprisoned and tried. In all probability it was
the same person who had lend Menocchio the incriminated book, Decameron.
Menocchio named him a couple of weeks later: Nicola de Melchiori. In
addition to the name, the dates (coincidences that escaped the inquisitors) lead
us to identify this person with Nicola da Porcla, whom in 1584, Menocchio had
not seen for precisely a year. Don Ottavio Montereale was well informed:
Menocchio must actually have discussed religious questions with Nicola da
Porcia. We don’t know if Nicola had been part of the group of artisans who
gathered to read the Gospel more than twenty-five years before”. Carlo
Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century
Miller, p. 21.
19
Ibid., pp. xv, xvii.
20
Anne Jacobson Schutte, “Carlo Ginzburg”. The Journal of Modern History,
Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1976), pp.299-300.
21
For instance see Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of
a Sixteenth-Century Miller, pp. 02, 10.
22
Ibid., p.xix.
90
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a book review in the journal must be accompanied by one copy of the book concerned.
“AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS
ADVENTURE”: 1 CONCEIVING AND EXECUTING
THE KARGIL OPERATION (1999)
ABSTRACT
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IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
(I)
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IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
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The Historian, Vol. 06, No. 2 (July – December 2008)
the center of gravity of Kargil. The clearance of the Daras Heights was,
therefore, given first priority. Insurgency in Batalik did not pose any
immediate threat to Kargil, however it would have opened a route for
further intrusion in Shyok valley and its adjoining areas turning the
flank of the affected sector. Therefore it was accorded second priority.
The last priority was accorded to the Mushkoh and Kaksar intrusions as
they were considered less important and could be tackled once the
Daras heights had been cleared. 32 In the initial phases, only one brigade
was available. As gravity of the situation became clear; an infantry
brigade from the Leh sector and a mountain division along with the
reserve brigade of fifteen battalions were rushed to tackle the
intruders. 33 Within fortnight 20,000 Indian troops were entered into
Kargil, the number increased to 35,000 till June 16 in Daras sector. 34
Two more mountain divisions from Batalik sector moved to the
western sector to thwart any eventuality, 35 the total strength of Indian
army rose to 50,000 troops within a few days. Besides, troops rushed to
Rajauri Paanch, Kapwara and Gorez. 36
In the late May 1999, India resorted to aerial bombardments at
the Islamic militants in Kargil. 37 It was for the first time, that India
used airpower to drive out militants in Indian-held Kashmir. 38 About
1,200 air strikes were carried out, which included reconnaissance
sorties, search and destroy missions, close support tasks, etc. For
Indians, it had a moral boosting effect on ground troops alongwith
neutralizing the Mujahideen. It was perhaps, for the first time that
battlefield strikes were carried out at night. 39 The whole operation,
named as "operation Vijay", aimed at recapturing Kargil from the
Kashmiri Mujahideen.
An aspect of Kargil war was the battle for the control of
strategic hills; the battles for Tololing Heights and Tiger Hill may
specifically be mentioned. Indian Army's first attack was to clear the
intruders from the vital Tololing and Tiger Hill heights at 15,000 feet as
they were on the highway near Darass. 40 Indians widely publicized
their recapturing of strategic locations along eighty-five mile battle
front. They described their success as unparalleled in the history of
mountain warfare. 41 The second important Indian attack aimed at
blocking a major incursion on Jubar-Kukareong massif near Batalik
that descended from 18,100 feet high Shangruti hill in Azad Kashmir.
However, Pakistan successfully defended these heights including
Jubar. 42 The battle for Tiger Hill in July was described by India as a
"turning point" since the 16,500 feet peak was over the main road from
Kargil to Leh. 43 Pakistan army described the Indian claim of capturing
Tiger Hill as a "make believe". 44 Analysts believed that due to the
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IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
difficult conditions in which the Indians were fighting, and their own
un-preparedness for high attitude campaign, the victories were less
glorious than their spokesman portrayed. Brian Cloughly opines that it
is more likely that the forces holding Tiger Hills scuttled their
operations and then Indians reclaimed their positions. 45
Controversy surrounds the story of capturing Tiger Hills as it
was alleged by certain Pakistani circles that India did not capture Tiger
Hills by force rather these Hills were handed over to India as a "good
will gesture". This view is lent further credence by certain reports
which were published in the Pakistani press during the months of July
and August 1999. According to a veteran Pakistani Urdu Journalist
Ata-ur-Rehman, US President only agreed to meet Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif on the pre-condition of Mujahideen's withdrawal from
Kargil. Subsequently, on 4th July, when Nawaz Sharif left for the
United States at 3:00 a.m. the Mujahideen on Tiger Hills had
abandoned shelling. 46 Moreover, strategically it was not possible for
the Indians to occupy Tiger Hills before 4th July. 47 Ata-ur-Rehman
revealed that a crucial meeting of defence committee was held on 2
July, which was also attended by COAS General Pervaiz Musharaff. It
deliberated for five hours and the decision of withdrawal from the Tiger
Hills was taken to appease the US and to demonstrate Pakistan's
sincerity towards it. 48
The Kargil war led to the sudden deterioration of Indo-
Pakistan relations. At political levels, Indo-Pak relations were far from
cordial and the temperature kept soaring. At the end of May, the UN
Secretary-General Kofi Anan offered to send an envoy to New Delhi
and Islamabad to defuse tensions but Vajpayee rejected this offer by
saying “if an envoy needed to be sent to discuss peace, he should be
sent to Islamabad and not to New Delhi”. 49
Following the visit to New Delhi by Pakistani Foreign
Minister Sartaj Aziz, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh remained
skeptical about the outcome of any talks. The conduct of Pakistan
raises serious doubts about the professed aim of "defusing tension" as
averred by Aziz. 50 A day after the talk-process collapsed, Indian Prime
Minister Vajpayee visited Kargil and blamed Pakistan of "betraying
Indian friendship". 51 The pressure mounted further when Principal
Secretary to Indian Prime Minister, Barjesh Mishra, traveled to
Geneva, where he held talks with the participants of the G-8's Annual
Conference and with the American Security Advisor, Sandy Berger. He
also handed over to him Vajp'ayee's letter for President Clinton. The
letter made it very clear if Pakistan refused to withdraw its forces from
Kargil, India would attack Pakistan. 52
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The Historian, Vol. 06, No. 2 (July – December 2008)
When the tensions rose between the two nuclear rivals, the
international community, especially America, began its diplomatic
efforts to avert a possible war. On his way back to Washington from
Geneva on June 23, President Clinton sent General Anthony Zinni, C-
in-C of Central Military Command and Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for South Asia, G. Lanpher, as personal envoys. They held
meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif the then Chief of Army
Staff General Pervaiz Musharraf and other important government
officials. General Zinni conveyed a message from the American
President asking Pakistan to withdraw the forces unconditionally from
Kargil. Zinni implicitly threatened, “the US would not bailout Pakistan
if India decides to launch a major attack across LoC." 53
General Zinni co-authored a book with a novelist, Tom
Clancy, which provides some details about the Kargil operation. “If
you do not pull back, you are going to bring war and nuclear
annihilation down to your country. That's going to be very bad for
everybody”. 54 He writes that no one quarreled with his "rationale" but
no one wanted to "lose face". 55 Withdrawal to the LoC was seen as a
"political suicide" 56 , so a face saving device was found in the form of
meeting with President Clinton but only after the "withdrawal of
forces". 57 General (Retd.) Javed Nasir reveals: after these negotiations
the Muiahideen opened Kargil Daras highway for heavy traffic of
Tololing height that could not be recaptured; Zinni assured Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif that in return the US President Bill Clinton
would initiate Camp David type negotiations to resolve the Kashmir
dispute. 58 It was a crucial moment, when American pressure brought
decisive shift in Pakistan’s stance towards Kargil. However, Pakistani
authorities kept this change so secret that even the members of the
Cabinet's Defence Coordination Committee were not aware of it. It was
the American Ambassador who gave indication to “a member about
visible flexibility in Pakistan's stance and told that 'Pakistan would be
allowed to negotiate with India according to the spirit of Lahore
Declaration in lieu of that concession”. 59
Throughout the Indian offensive against Mujahideen in the
Kargil district, Pakistani government kept calling on the international
community to assist in the resolution of Kashmir dispute. Not
convinced by Pakistan's denial of involvement, the western response
was far more supportive to India's demand for a withdrawal than
Pakistan's request for discussions to solve the core issue of Kashmir.
The response from the UN and multilateral organization such as G-8
also supported Indian stance in the June G-8 summit in Cologne in their
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(II)
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(III)
The controversy pertaining to the withdrawal of Mujahideen triggered a
blame game between the political and non-political actors, i.e. civilian
government and the military. As the military tried to “place the onus on
the former the accompanying acrimony with Chief of Army Staff
General Pervaiz Musharraft paved the way for another military
takeover in Pakistan on 12 October 1999”. 95 This controversy became
far more complex and compounded when Pakistan's former Prime
Minister in his sensational interview revealed that the civilian
government had no prior knowledge of this operation, his government
only came into fray when military was caught on the horns of dilemma
and was only obliged to seek civilian government's help. Military asked
the civilian government to bring an end to this conflict through
mediation in order to put it out of the Kargil quagmire. 96 According to
Lawrence Ziring, “the operation was launched after Vajpayee's visit,
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IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
and Nawaz Sharif’s protestation that his government did not give
advance word about the action was almost believable”. 97
Nawaz Sharif insisted recurrently that his government was not
privy to the action. 98 During the Kargil crisis Indian Home Minister
George Fernandes also accused Pakistan Army for planning the Kargil
operation without government's approval. This statement created furor
in Indian Parliament and Fernandes was charged with an attempt to
exonerate Nawas Sharif of wrecking the Lahore process. 99 Benazir
Bhutto, former Prime Minister and leader of opposition during Nawaz
Sharif second stint as premier, vehemently criticized the government
for sending infiltrators into Kargil. In an interview with BBC, she
accused Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of authorizing the intrusion to
divert the attention from domestic failures and charges of corruption. 100
During the same period this statement was also attributed to her that it
was blunder of Nawaz Sharif and all Kargil drama was staged to help
BJP in its electoral campaign. Benazir in her another interview on a
private television revealed that, there is some element of truth in both
statements: “I did not mean that Kargil was staged to facilitate
Vajpayee's victory but Nawaz Sharif could have prevented the
unfolding of this development”. 101 While Schofield, on the basis of
circumstantial evidence, asserts that, “the head of the ISI Lt. General
Zia ud Din Ahmed was nominated by Nawaz Sharif, it did not therefore
seem possible for either the ISI or Sharif not to have known about-and
consequently sanctioned”. 102 She further maintains that, Nawaz Sharif
also appeared to be well in control of the army. In October 1998, he
had obliged the Army Chief Jehangir Karamat to resign after he had
openly criticized the government and installed General Pervaiz
Musharraf in super-session to other senior generals. 103 It seems hardly
credible that soon after Lahore Declaration in February 1999, Sharif
could have covertly sanctioned an operation across the line of control
which was bound to have far reaching repercussions on their attempts
at re-conciliation.
Stephen P. Cohen contends that, “Apparently, Nawaz Sharif
decided to give permission for an incursion by the Pakistan military and
either it was larger than he though it would be or it got to off hands”. 104
The most plausible explanation of this episode is provided by Samina
Yasmeen. She argues that, “Sharif was briefed about the case but he
apparently did not comprehend the nature and possible consequences of
adventurism”. 105
Pakistan's military strategy in the Kargil war had some
strategic blunders that led to its failure: First, according to some
analysts Kargil operation was a grave "miscalculation". The army
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IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
She has brought to light two major defects in the Pakistani policy. At
one level, the problem partially stemmed from the nature of the
political leadership, with its dependence on personal linkages and
rapports, and reliance on individuals rather than institutions. 115 Besides
these factors, deficiency can also be attributed to system factors rather
than individuals alone. To put explicitly, “Pakistan utterly lacks strong
civilian institutions/bureaucracies, inclusive of any national security
apparatus that can integrate various inputs at the upper echelons of the
government and then render appropriate advice to the Chief Executive
of the country, or set out policy options for him”. 116
Kargil operation can be seen as a shift in Pakistan's strategy of
a low intensity conflict operation (LICO) to mounting an attack by
infiltration undertaken by professional military personnel. The previous
strategy was: first, dependent on infiltration through Jehadi groups into
Indian territory; 117 Second, waging a proxy war along LoC remained
hallmark of Pakistan’s strategy particularly during pre-nuclear phase;
Third, the government distanced herself from any involvement in overt
military operations conducted in Indian Kashmir. 118 After the nuclear
detonations, Pakistan evolved a strategy similar to that in Afghanistan
where the Pakistani military personnels through their overt and covert
support successfully installed Taliban to power. 119 However, Pakistan’s
policy makers, who were primarily obsessed with the Afghan type
solution, miserably failed to decipher the difference between Kargil and
Afghanistan conflict.
The Kargil plan was shrouded with mystery and confusion. It
is not clear that who had conceived the idea, General Aziz or General
Pervaiz Musharraf, or any other else. Another controversy surrounding
Kargil pertains to the statements of high ranking policy-makers and top
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END NOTES
1
The quote is taken from the Editorial, Newsline (13 July 1999).
2
Zafar Abbas, "War Cover Story", The Herald (July 1999), pp.30-31.
3
Vinod Anand, "India's Military Response to Kargil Aggression", Strategic
Analysis, Vol. XXIII, No.7 (October, 1999), p.1056.
4
R. N. Sharma, et.al, The Kargil War: A Saga of Patriotism (Delhi: Suubhi
Publications, 2000), p.55.
5
Lt. General (Retd.) “Javed Nasir’s Interview”, Weekly Zindagi, Vol.19,
No.6 (July 1999), p.11.Also see Abbas, "War Cover Story", pp. 30-31.
6
Bidanda M. Chengappa, "Pakistan's compulsions for the Kargil
Misadventure", Strategic Analysis, Vol. XXIII, No.27 (October 1999), p.
1079.
7
Devin T. Hagerty, "Kashmir and Nuclear Question Revisited" in Craig
Baxter and Charles H. Kennedy (eds.), Pakistan 2000 (Karachi: Oxford
University Press, 2001), p.132.
8
Ibid., p.128.
9
Irfan Waheed Usmani, “Kargil Ki Indrooni Kehani” (The Inside Story of
Kargil) Weekly Takazey, Vol.4, No.34 (15 September, 1999).
10
Anand, "India's Military Response to Kargil Aggression", p. 1056.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., p.1057.
13
Ibid.
14
"Outlook Report "cited in Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict:
Pakistan and Unfinished War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000),
p.209.
15
For details, See Jang, Sunday Magazine (24 January2002).
16
Abbas, "War Cover Story".
17
Ibid. Tehrik Jihad drew its cadres from Kashmiri Al-Badar members
which included Kashmiris and Pakistanis. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had in its
fold a few Kashmiri and many Pakistanis and Afghans and Lashkar-e-
Tayyeba members largely hailed from Pakistan.
18
Ibid.
19
Zahid Hussain, "The Holy Warriors Rise Again", Newsline (June 1990).
20
Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p.211. Lashkar Tayyeba even warned the
Sharif government that if under foreign pressure, they were asked to
withdraw from Kargil, they would destroy the government.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid., p. 208.
23
Ibid., p. 209.
24
Hagerty, "Kashmir and Nuclear Question Revisited", p.127.
25
Tehmina Mehmood, "Kargil Crisis and Deteriorating Situation in South
Asia", Pakistan Horizon, Vo1.52, No.4 (October 1999), p.26.
109
The Historian, Vol. 06, No. 2 (July – December 2008)
26
Farzana Shakoor, "The Kargil Crisis: An Analysis", Pakistan Horizon,
Vol. 52, No.3 (July 1999), p.58.
27
Anand, "India's Military Response to Kargil Aggression", p.1057.
28
It comprised: National Security advisor to the Prime Minister Brajesh
Mishra, a noted analyst on strategic affairs A. Subrahmanyam, former
Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit, former Defence and Home Secretary N.N.
Vohra, former Air Chief Air Marshal (Retd.) S.V. Mehra, Major General
(Retd.) Afsir Karim and Economist. Sanjaya Bard, Satish Chandra was
appointed the convener of the NSC secretariat, he was also convener of this
group. Sharma, The Kargil War, p.58. Mishra decided to constitute the group
after criticism that twenty-seven member National Security Advisory Board
was too disparate and unwieldy to advise the government during a crisis.
This group was functional for four weeks.
29
Anand, "India's Military Response to Kargil Aggression", p.1058.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid., p.1059.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Sharma, The Kargil War, p.58.
35
Anand, "India's Military Response to Kargil Aggression", p. 1059.
36
Sharma, The Kargil War, p.58.
37
Ahmed Rashid, Daily Telegraph (28 May, 1999).
38
Muntazra Nazir, “The Political and Strategic dimension in Indo-Pakistan
Relations (1999-2004)”, Pakistan Vision, Vol.5, No.2 (December 2004),
p.30. Pakistan immediately retailed to the aerial activity so close to the line
of control by shooting down to M.G- fighter planes which had reportedly
crossed the Line of Control into Pakistani airspace One pilot was killed, and
the other was captured as a prisoner of war (and later returned to India).
Reports varied as to whether these planes were actually shot down or
developed engine trouble. One report stated that the M.G.21 had strayed
across into Pakistani airspace and hit by a surface to air missile while M.G.
27 developed engine trouble and crashed. A day later, an Indian helicopter
gunship was also shot down. See Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, pp. 209,
262.
39
Anand, "India's Military Response to Kargil Aggression", p. 1063.
40
Sharma, The Kargil War, p.66.
41
Rahul Bedi, Daily Te1egraph (22 June 1999) cited in Schofield, Kashmir
in Conflict, p.216.
42
Sharma, The Kargil War, p.66.
43
Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p.216.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid.
46
Ata-ur-Rehman, "Tiger Hills, Bharti Qubzey Ki Asli Kahani", (The Real
Story of Indian Occupation) Weekly Zindagi, Vo1.19, No.6 (11-17 July,
1999), pp.12-13.
110
IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p.212.
50
Ibid.
51
Ibid.
52
Shireen M. Mazari, The Kargil Conflict 1999: Separating Fact from
Fiction (Islamabad, Institute of Strategic Studies, 2003), p.104.
53
Ershad Mehmood, "Post Cold War US Kashmir Policy", pp-95-96.
54
Khalid Hasan, "Post Card USA: General Zinni on Pakistan", Daily Times
(06 June 2004).
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
58
Lt. General (Retd.) Javed Nasir, "Kargil: A War averted", cited in Irfan
Waheed Usmani, “Kargil Ki Indrooni Kehani”.
59
Kamran Khan, “Investigative Report”, The News (5 July 1999).
60
Text G-8 Statement on Regional Issues, G-8 Cologne Summit Documents,
Transcript June 18-20.
61
"Statement of the Foreign Minister of the European Union, Helsinki
Session", Dawn (3 June 1999).
62
Howard B. Schaffer, "Reconsidering the U.S. Role", The Washington
Quarterly, Vol. 24(2) (Spring 2001), p.202.
63
Strobe Talbott, Engaging India Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb
(Washington: Brookings’s Institute Press, 2004), p.63.
64
Tariq Butt, “Kargil, Kashmir cannot be linked US told”, The Nation,
(Islamabad, 26 June 1999).
65
Ibid.
66
Mahmood, “Post Cold War US Kashmir Policy”, p.95.
67
Talbott, Engaging India, pp-202-3.
68
Mehtab Ali Shah, “Pakistan-US relationship in the Post Cold War Era”,
Pakistan Journal of American Studies, Vol. 17(1 and 2), (Spring and Fall
1999), p.15.
69
Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p.213.
70
Dawn (25 June, 1999).
71
Thomas Lippman, The International Herald Tribune (28 June 1999).
72
Dawn (30 June 1999).
73
Dawn (16 June and 9 September 1999)
74
The News (9 September 1999).
75
Ashley J. Tellis and C. Christine Fair, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear
Umbrella India and Pakistan : Lesons from Kargil Crisis (US, National
Security Research Division, RAND, 2001), p. 21. Also see Muntzra Nazir,
“The Political and Strategic Dimension in Indo-Pakistan Relations”, p. 31.
76
John W. Graver, “China’s Kashmir Policies”, India Review, Vol.3, No.1
(January 2004), p.16.
77
The News (30 June 1999).
111
The Historian, Vol. 06, No. 2 (July – December 2008)
78
Mazari, The Kargil Conflict 1999, pp.61-62.
79
Tellis and Fair, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella, p.21.
80
Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p.214.
81
Shakoor, “The Kargil Crisis”, p.50.
82
Mahmood, “Post Cold War US Kashmir Policy”, p. 96.
83
“News Week Report” cited in “Zia ud din’s News Story”, The Dawn (9
July 1999).
84
Howard B. Sehaffer, “Reconsidering the U.S. Role”, The Washington
Quarterly, pp. 201-202.
85
Mahmood, “Post Cold War US Kashmir Policy”, p.96.
86
“Prime Minister’s address to nation”, The Nation (13 July 1999).
87
Ibid.
88
Ibid.
89
Hasan, “Post Card: General Zinni on Pakistan”.
90
Ibid.
91
Ibid.
92
“Prime Minister had prior information of Kargil operation”, The News (02
July 1999).
93
Samina Saeed, “Western Perception of Kargil Conflict: A flawed strategy
or failure of Diplomacy”, Quarterly Journal National Development and
Security, Vol. III No. 3 (February 2000), p. 24.
94
The News (12 July 1999)
95
Mazari, The Kargil Conflict 1999, p.59.
96
Ahmad Rashid, “Decision making process” in Saeed Shafqat (ed.),
Contemporary Issues in Pakistan Studies, (Lahore: Vanguard, 1999), p.194.
97
“Nawaz Sharif’s Interview with Sohail Waraich”, Jang (24 January
2002). Also see Suhail Warraich, The Traitor Within: The Nawaz Sharif
Story in his own Words (Lahore: Sagar Publishers, 2008).
98
Lawrence Ziring, Pakistan: At the Cross Road of History (Lahore:
Vanguard, 2004), p. 269.
99
Ibid.
100
Khalid Mahmood, “Back Channel Diplomacy”, The News (29 September
1999).
101
See website: http:/bbc.co.uk/hi/English/world/southasia (accessed on 23
July 1999); Daily Jang (24 July 1999).
102
“Benazir’s Interview”, Daily Khabrain (10 February, 2005).
103
Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p.210.
104
Ibid.
105
“On the Line: The India-Pakistan Dispute”. See website:
http/www.fas.org/news/India/1999/990824-indopak.htm. (accessed on 26
May 2005)
106
Ibid.
107
Mahmood, “Backchannel Diplomacy”.
108
Chengappa, “Pakistan’s compulsions for Kargil Misadventure”, p.1080.
109
Ibid.
112
IRFAN WAHEED USMANI , “AN INGLORIOUS END TO GLORIOUS ADVENTURE”
110
“Editorial”, Newline (July 1999), p.13.
111
Hamid Gul, “Barhtey hua qadam wapins nah houn” (the advancing steps
should not retreat)”. Kashmir Today (July 1999), pp.7-8.
112
Interview with Squadron Leader who requested to be anonymous.
113
Chengappa, “Pakistan’s compulsions for Kargil Misadventure”, p.1081.
114
Mazari, The Kargil Conflict 1999, p.72.
115
Ibid.
116
Ibid., p.73.
117
Ibid.
118
Chengappa, “Pakistan’s compulsions for Kargil Misadventure”, p.1081.
119
Ibid., p.1072.
113
DIVINE ATTRIBUTES-AN ATTEMPT TO
REINTERPRET
SOBIA TAHIR
GC UNIVERSITY, LAHORE
ABSTRACT
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SOBIA TAHIR , DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
(I)
What then must, The Unity be, what nature is left for
it? …….It cannot be a being ………Generative of
all, the Unity is name of all; neither thing nor
quantity nor intellect nor soul; not in motion, not at
rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self defined,
unique in form or better, formless, existing before
Form was, or Movement, or Rest, all of which are
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Dealing with divine attributes the same line of thought was followed by
Jewish and Muslim Philosophers later on, only with slight changes and
adjustments. Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 AD), the outstanding
Jewish Philosopher of Hellenistic age was nonetheless a contemporary
of Christ, when the latter was preaching his sermons in the synagogues
of Galilee, the former was doing the same in the yeshivas of
Alexandria. He, however, was an admirer, follower and loyalist of
Plato, whose ultimate objective was to reconcile Old Testament’s Book
of Genesis with Timaeus of Plato. He is the founder of the most
famous terms of theology, that is, “Logos”. However, his considerable
direct influence may be noticed in Christian Fathers instead of Jewish
thinkers. It will be pertinent here to clarify that theology is a later
development in Judaism as compared to Islam, inspite of the fact that in
hierarchy and chronological order of Semitic Religions, Islam is junior
to Judaism. The reason being that from first century, the focus of
Jewish intellectual life shifted from Alexandria to Babylonia where
Palestinian Jews found relief from Roman persecution. In Babylonia
three Jewish academies were established at Sura, Pumbedita and
Nehardea to preserve the Oral Law (Talmud). The rabbis at the
academies were preoccupied with Talmudic scholarship and completed
the monumental task of transcribing oral law into Babylonian Talmud.
In the meantime Muslim theologians have started taking interest in
Greek Philosophy by the end of eighth century. However, it was in
tenth century that the head (gaon) of Sura Academy, Saadia ben Yousaf
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not let him affirm four attribute too, without being going into self-
contradiction.
Bahya been Pakuda goes into further refinement and in his
“Duties of the Heart,” unable to deny or affirm attributes altogether, he
divides them into categories, that is, of Essence (Dhatiyat) and Actions
(Failiyat). The essential attributes are Existence, Unity and Eternity.
But these may not be literally applied to Him, these simply negate the
possibility of having the opposite attributes (Duties of the Heart-x).
Judha Halevi literally follows Mutazilites in the denial of
attributes, and insists that divine attributes may be stated in negative
terms only. He, however, divides them into three categories i) active
(taziriyah) ii) relative (idafiyat) and iii) negative (salbiyyah), quoted by
Cuzari, pp. 73 et seq. ed. Hirschfeld. However, the problem is not easy
at all to deal with as Abraham ben Daud is again compelled to
acknowledge at least eight attributes in God enumerated as Existence,
Unity, Immutability, Truth, Life, Knowledge, Power and Will. 14
The problem reached its culminating point in Moses ben
Maimonides, who shares his basic views with Saadia, who could not
develop them fully to their implications. As far as Maimonides’
theology is concerned, he takes the line of Mutazilites and asserts that
we may not ascribe anything positive to God, we may simply say what
God is not. He has expressed his thesis in considerable detail and with
great fervour. He writes,
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Though the loftiest Jewish minds have grappled their best with the
problem of divine attributes but no clear-cut “solution” has been found
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out. Most of them have affirmed the attributes somehow or the other,
their arguments of denial come near to sophistry and careful play and
interplay of words, which, however, leads to nothing. Let us have a
quick glance on their Muslim counterparts before moving to the turning
point in the discussion.
Mutazilites were the first Muslim group of theologians who
tried to interpret faith in rational terms. It is interesting to note that the
title “Mutazilites” (separatists) has been assigned to them by their
opponents, whereby they called themselves “Men of Unity and
Justice”, since they over-stressed the both. To safeguard divine justice
and unity they went to utmost possible extremes. The problem of
divine attributes was a matter of life and death for them as this was
directly related to oneness of the Lord. One of the chief exponents of
Mutazilites, that is, Abu al-Hudhail’ Allaf (748-480) held the view that
divine attributes are one with the essence of God, he does not deny
attributes rather declares them identical with divine essence, for
instance, when it is asserted that “God knows” it does not mean that
knowledge is part of His essence rather “knowledge is His essence”.
The God is knowing, powerful, and living with such knowledge, power
and life as are His very essence (essential nature). Al - Shahrastari has
tried to interpret it in this way: God knows with His knowledge and
knowledge is His very essence. He is powerful with His power and
power is His very essence. He lives with His life and life is His very
essence. Another interpretation says that divine knowledge means that
God knows with His essence and not with His knowledge. The
difference in both positions is that, in latter the attributes are altogether
denied whereas in the former (as is accepted by Allaf) they are
admitted but identified with essence of God 16 .
Almost all the Mutazilite theologians held similar opinion
with minute differences. One of their representatives, Abu Ali al
Jubbai (b.849) affirmed that the attributes do not have any separate
existence other than essence since that would imply eternality of
attributes. The attributes are identical with divine essence. He also
denied “states” and said that there may not be any state which enables
God to acquire the “state of Knowing”. However, his son Abu Hashim
did believe in states. According to him, to say that God is all hearing
and all seeing really means that God is alive and there is no defect in
Him. The attributes of hearing and seeing in God originate at the time
of the origination of what is heard and what is seen 17 . The theory of
states is rather a solution to seek a midway between essence and
attributes. The essence remains one, simple and unchanged only states
change. These states are in themselves inconceivable; they are known
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SOBIA TAHIR , DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
through their relation with essence. Though they are different from
essence even then may not exist separate from it. In his own words, “A
state-in-itself is neither existent nor non-existent, neither unknown, nor
known, neither eternal nor contingent, it cannot be known separately,
but only together with essence” 18 .
Abu Hashim had an intricate and complex argument to support
his conception of states which runs like this: Reason evidently
distinguishes between knowing a thing absolutely and knowing it
together with some attribute. When we know an essence, we do not
know that it is knowing also. Similarly, when we know a substance,
we do not know whether it is bound or whether the accidents subsist in
it. Certainly man perceives common qualities of things in one thing
and differentiating qualities in another, and necessarily gains
knowledge of the fact that the quality which is common is different
from the quality which is not common. These are rational propositions
that no sane man would deny. Their locus is essence and not accident,
for otherwise it would follow necessarily that an accident subsists in
another accident. In this way states are necessarily determined.
Therefore, to be a knower of the world refers to a state, which is an
attribute besides the essence and has not the same sense as the essence.
In like manner Abu Hashim proves the states for God; these states are
not found apart from essence 19 .
Al – Jubbai, however, denies states and refutes the theory of
Abu Hashim and says that these states are really mental aspects, not
contained in divine essence rather found in the percipient, that is, in the
perceiver of the essence. In other words, these are just generalizations
or relations which do not exist externally but are found in percipient’s
mind alone 20 . Ibn Taimiyyah also denied states, in one of his famous
couplets he asserted, “Abu Hashim believes in states, al-Ashari in
Acquisition and al-Nazzam in Leap. These three things have verbal and
no real existence.” 21
The other major Theological School of thought in Islam, that
is Asharism tried to tackle the problem of attributes in its own way.
Ash’arites were the middle roaders who strived to reconcile two
extreme views of Sifatists (literal believers of attributes) and the
Mutazilities, who somehow or the other denied the attributes.
Ash’arites divided the attributes in two main groups i) Sifat-i-Salbiyya,
or negative attributes and ii) Sifat-i-Wujudiyyah or existential / positive
attributes. The latter are also called Sifat-i-aqliyyah, that is, rational
attributes being seven in number: Knowledge, Power, Will, Life,
Hearing, Sight and Speech. Regarding anthropomorphist attributes,
they held the view that these should not be understood literally. These
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SOBIA TAHIR , DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
He is called thus: He called Himself, for instance, the hearer, the One
who sees, but we cannot say that He has the sense of hearing or sight 28 .
That was a briefest though inconclusive possible summary of the view
presented by eminent Muslim theologians about the problem of divine
attributes. It may not be presented exhaustively because of limited
space.
Till now we have discussed the issue purely on logical and
philosophical ground and traced back its origin to Plato, Aristotle and
Plotinus; but can it be explored from any other angle? Has the problem
some other dimensions too? May some tradition, other than Hellenism
be also a contributory factor? Is there any other underlying stimulant
present leading towards idea of unity along with problem of attributes?
Part II of the essay is the same endeavour!
(II)
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history of the world, and along with the belief in a single god religious
intolerance was inevitably born, which had previously been alien to the
ancient world and remained so long afterwards. The reign of
Amenophis, however, lasted only for seventeen years. Very soon after
his death in 1358 BC, the new religion was swept away and the
memory of the heretic king was proscribed” 29 . He has also explained
the motive behind the move of Akhenaten, “The political condition in
Egypt has begun at this time to exercise a lasting influence on the
Egyptian religion. As a result of the military exploits of the great
conqueror, Tuthmosis III, Egypt had become a great power: the empire
now included Nubia in the south, Palestine, Syria and part of
Mesopotamia in the north. This imperialism was reflected in religion
as universalism and monotheism. Since Pharaoh’s responsibilities now
embraced not only Egypt but Nubia and Syria as well, deity too was
obliged to abandon its national limitation and, just as the Pharaoh was
the sole and unrestricted ruler of the world known to the Egyptians, this
must also apply to the Egyptian’s new deity. Moreover, with the
extension of the empire’s frontiers, it was natural that Egypt would
become more accessible to foreign influence; some of the royal wives
were Asiatic princesses, and it is possible that direct indictments to
monotheism even made their way in from Syria” 30 .
The consolidation of gods for political purposes had already
started from the predecessors of Akhenaten. At the sun temple of On
(Heliopolis), the efforts had been underway to develop a universal God
with higher ethical qualities. Ammenophis III had focused great
attention on promotion of sun god Ré. Earlier, Amon of Thebes had
been a powerful god. He had been brought forward by XIth and XIIth
Dynasties as a national god. The XVIIth Dynasty from Nubia held its
capital at Thebes, promoted him as an equal of Ré. For the sake of
national unity he was united with Rā or Ré of Heliopolis thus Amon-
Rā became figure head of Egyptian Religion, King of the gods and
“Lord of the thrones of the earth” 31 . It is interesting to note that Rā had
number of qualities and each king took a quality of Rā as a name on his
coronation, much in the same Semitic style as 99 names of Allah 32 .
Very pertinent to note here is that Rā himself was not an Egyptian or
only sun-god. Atmu was another sun-god which was worshipped in
Syria in the form of conical stones and figures. The “city of the sun”,
Baalbek also showed a similar worship. Atum or Tum was regarded as
the setting sun, in some connexion with the Semitic origin of his name
that means “the completed, finished or closed” 33 .
All these gods were “slaughtered” at the altar of Aten, which
was a radiant disk of the sun, however, entirely different from Rā. It
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The comparison clearly shows that the “Judiac – Islamic One God” is
actually a derivative of Aten. Aten became one by suppressing,
overpowering and swallowing all (114) of his “colleagues” or fellow-
gods of which the complete list is as under:
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SOBIA TAHIR , DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
However, all these gods were not equal in importance, these have been
broadly sub-divided into three categories:
a)Animal-headed gods,
b)Human gods and
c)Cosmic gods.
Aten not only obsorbed their beings in his one and only powerful,
mighty existence but also their functions and qualities. This is the most
important point in our entire discussion. Though the other gods lost
their physical identities in the larger self of One God, their qualities and
more appropriately assigned functions could not be so diffused, they
remained separate, different, discreet and independent as ever and later
appeared in Muslim and Jewish theology under the name of “Divine
Attributes”, since the One God of both great Semitic religions is no
other but the One God “Aten” introduced by Akhenaten and later
adopted and developed by Moses, as described at length by Freud in
“Moses and Monotheism” 43 .
However, in the theology of both religions, the problem became very
acute as to how to accommodate or adjust a number of contradictory
states/names and attributes in a simple, one and unified substance of
God. Both did their best (but failed) as has been discussed at length in
Part one of this essay.
To prove this thesis further, a number of examples may be quoted and a
remarkable resemblance may be traced between functions of Egyptian
deities and names and attributes of Allah or Elohino. In Judaism and
Islam a number of symbols, similies and ideas have also been borrowed
from Egyptian religion and its gods. Some major similarities have been
quoted below.
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SOBIA TAHIR , DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
END NOTES
1
H.A. Walfson, ed. “Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretation of Platonic
Ideas” in Religious Philosophy (A Group of Essays) (Harvard University Press,
1961), pp.28-29.
2
Irene Samuel, Plato and Milton (Cornell University Press, New York, 1965),
p.131.
3
Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (George Allen & Unwin
Paperbacks, London 1985), p.157.
4
James N. Jordan, Western Philosophy – From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
(Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1987), p.259.
5
Abdul Hafeez, “H.A. Walfson and A. H. Kamali on the Origin of the Problem
of Divine Attributes in Muslim Kalam”, Iqbal Review Volume 40, No.3,
(October 1998), pp.91-92.
6
Jordan, Western Philosophy, p.258.
7
Ibid., p. 258.
8
Ibid., p.357.
9
Ibid., pp.357-58.
10
A prominent group of Muslim theologians are treated in detail in the same
article.
11
Kaufmann Kohler, Ludwig Stein and Issac Broydé, “Divine Attributes”,
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artd=1201 & letter=A. (accessed
on 27 July 2008).
12
Jordan, Western Philosophy, p.361.
13
Ibid, p. 362.
14
Kohler, et.al., ”Divine Attributes”.
15
Jordan, Western Philosophy, p. 373.
16
Mir Valiuddin, “Mutazilism” in A History of Muslim Philosophy, Vol. 2,
M.M. Sharif, ed., (Germany: Allgaüer Heimatverlag GmbH. Kempten, 1963,
Reprinted in Pakistan 1983), Volume I, p. 208.
17
Ibid., p.217.
18
Ibid., p.218.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., pp. 218-19.
21
Muhammad Najam al-Ghani Khan, Madhahib al – Islam, (Lucknow, 1942),
p.132.
22
Abu al Hasan ben Ismail al-Ashari, Kitab al Ibanah ‘an Usual al-Diyanah,
(Hyderabad Daccan, 1903), p.47.
23
Abu al – Ala, Sharh – i- Mawafiq (Newal Kishore Press, Lucknow, n.d.),
p.571.
24
Al-Quran, 7:181.
25
Ibid., 2:15.
26
Ibid., 3:55.
27
Ibid., 51:48.
137
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28
Omar A. Farrukh “Zahirism” in A History of Muslim Philosophy, Sharif, ed..,
p.285.
29
Sigmund Freud, “Moses and Monotheism” in The origin of Religion,
(Penguine Freud Library, Volume 13 tr. & ed. James Strachey, co-ed Albert
Dickson, 1985), p.258.
30
Ibid., p.259.
31
W.M. Flinders Petrie, “Egyptian Religion” in Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, James Hastings (ed.), Vol. V, p. 247.
32
Ibid., p. 248.
33
Ibid., p .248.
34
Freud, “Moses and Monotheism”, p. 260.
35
Ibid., p. 263.
36
Al-Quran, 42:12.
37
Freud, “Moses and Monotheism”, p. 262.
38
Jimmy Dunn, “Aten Before and After Akhenaten”,
http://touregypt.net/featurestories/aten.htm. (Accessed on 21 July 2008).
39
Ibid.
40
“The Question of Psalm 104”,
http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/Psalm104.html (Accessed on 21 July 2008).
41
J.H. Breasted, Cambridge Ancient History, Vol.II, Chapter 5&6; “The Rock
Tomb of Tell el Amarna”, Archaeological Survey, Egyptian Exploration
Society, (6 volumes, 1903) N. de G. Davis.
42
Ottar Vendel, “The Spirit of Nature, Religion of the Egyptians”,
http://www.nemo-nu/ibisportal/0egyptintro/1egypt/inde.htm (Accessed on 21
July 2008).
43
Freud, “Moses and Monotheism”, pp. 262-269.
44
Al Quran, 32:8.
45
Ibid., 37:12.
46
Ibid., 40:68.
47
Ibid., 15:27.
48
Ibid., 36:83.
49
Ibid., 23:117.
50
Petrie, “Egyptian Religion”, p. 249.
51
Al Quran, 21:31.
52
Ibid., 96:5-6.
53
Petrie, “Egyptian Religion”, pp. 246-7.
138
EXTERIORITY OF DISCOURSE AND
DISAPPEARANCE OF MAN: NEGOTIATING WITH
FOUCAULT IN CONSTRUCTING COLONIAL INDIA
HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE,
SINGAPORE
ABSTRACT
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Hussain Ahmad Khan, Exteriority of Discourse and Disappearance of Man
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142
Hussain Ahmad Khan, Exteriority of Discourse and Disappearance of Man
(II)
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Hussain Ahmad Khan, Exteriority of Discourse and Disappearance of Man
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(III)
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that the British did accept their “inability to grasp the local politics”
when they had to face revolts, protests, rumours, and clashes among
various ethnic groups. 59 Such type of reading of the colonial India
leads us to “accidental encounters” rather than planned social order as
envisioned in the Foucauldian discourses. Arimdan Dutta in his book
highlights that the act of British Bureaucracy may also be associated
with “the sense of an extrarational perception of wonder that the British
administration wanted to invoke in its subjects”. 60 He argues that the
“colonial governance is marked precisely by a calculus of extreme
sensitivity to situational circumstance...the codes of imperial power
sought to be inextricably entwined with the native’s codes of
cognition”. 61 By taking the clue from earlier Subaltern Studies, he
contends that in the wake of protests, violence and resistance “the
discourses of power and knowledge that govern that situation undergo a
mode of crisis”. 62 The British had to redefine their epistemological
discourses to accommodate those changes. This paradigm of crisis
management might be more helpful as it not only defines the mode of
resistance but also reduces the possibilities of presuppositions in
historian’s writing. The theory of situational circumstance becomes
more relevant to the 19th century colonial India because, unlike 1960s
France, the institutional matrix in India was not entrenched in the
public sphere. The British state structure had to evolve collaborative
strategies rather than coercive methods to negotiate with the diversified
subjects.
While highlighting the problems in Foucauldian notions of
non-reflexive subject and exteriority of discourse few historians
challenged the precise relationship between colonial power and
colonial knowledge, and emphasized upon the continuities of pre-
colonial structures which remained unaffected during the colonial
period. Sheldon Pollock’s work 63 is important in this regard who
stresses the continuities of old and un-effected structures during the
colonial period by taking the example of Sanskrit knowledge from
1550 to 1750. Sheldon highlights the “unreliability” and limitations of
colonial discourses, thus questions the very notion of truth in the
discourse. He also questions use of colonial discourses in ascribing or
describing power structure within the matrix of colonial state. The
dependence of colonial state on its subjects remained the central point
in such studies.
The basic objective of this article was to see the concepts of
discourse and thinking being in the Foucauldian and anti-Foucauldian
histories on colonial India. Foucauldian histories have introduced new
themes like gender, institutional practices, identity formation, etc. in the
148
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END NOTES
1
Tony Ballantyne, Archive, Discipline, State: Power and Knowledge in South
Asian Historiography, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 3, 1 (June, 2001),
Also see Tony Ballantyne, “Colonial Knowledge” in Sarah Stockwell (ed.), The
British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
2008).
2
Rosalind O'Hanlon and David Washbrook, “Histories in Transition:
Approaches to the Study of Colonialism and Culture in India”. History
Workshop, No. 32 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 110-127.
3
Few historians like Richard Eaton become quite critical of methodologies of
Foucauldian style of South Asian histories. He argues that “the 1980s and
1990s saw a sharp drop from levels of earlier decades in the number of
historians who applied for support or permission to conduct research in the
mufassal---that is, in district archives, local libraries, private collections,
zimandari records, and so forth. Most ended up in London, and a few in
national and state archives in India, studying colonial records that were then
subjected to discourse analysis”. Tony Ballantyne, “Colonial Knowledge” in
Sarah Stockwell (ed.), The British Empire.
4
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock
Publications, 1972), p.107.
5
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972-1977 (Colin Gorden, ed.), (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 131.
6
Discursive practices offer discourse “objects of which it can speak, or rather
(for this image of offering presupposes that objects are formed independently
of discourse), they determine the group of relations that discourse must
establish in order to speak this or that object, in order to deal with them, name
them, analyse them, classify them, explain them, etc. These relations
characterize not the language used by discourse, nor the circumstances in which
it is deployed, but discourse itself as a practice”. Foucault, The Archaeology of
Knowledge, p.46.
7
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol.01: An Introduction, trans.
Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 100.
8
Foucault terms this rational management of individual as prime objective of
his works:“My own problem is the rationalization of the management of the
individual. My own work is (about the) history of the rationality as it works in
institutions and in the behaviour of the people”. Millicent Dillon and Michel
Foucault, “Conversation with Michel Foucault”, The Threepenny Review,
No.01 (Winter-Spring, 1980), p. 4.
9
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p.122.
10
Millicent Dillon and Michel Foucault, “Conversation with Michel Foucault”,
The Threepenny Review, No.01 (Winter-Spring, 1980), p. 4.
11
Ibid., p.4.
150
Hussain Ahmad Khan, Exteriority of Discourse and Disappearance of Man
12
Edward Said, “Michel Foucault as an Intellectual Imagination” in Barry
Smart (ed.), Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments, Vol. 01 (London and NY:
Routledge, 1994), p. 41.
13
Philip Barker, Michel Foucault: Subversions of the Subject (London:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)
14
Aijaz Ahmed, “Postmodernism in History”, in K N Panikkar, Terence J
Byres and Utsa Patnaik (eds.), The Making of History: Essays Presented to
Irfan Habib (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000), p.467.
15
Ibid., pp. 467-68.
16
Dillon and Foucault, “Conversation with Michel Foucault”, p. 5.
17
“I know very well that what I say is not true...I have written a lot about
madness in the early 60’s---a history of the birth of psychiatry...the book and
my thesis have a truth in the nowadays reality. What I am trying to do is
provoke an inference between our reality and the knowledge of our past
history. If I succeed, this will have real effects in our present history. My hope
is my books become true after they have been written---not before....I have
tried to underline trends in the history of prisons. Only one trend people could
say...Two years ago there was turmoil in several prisons in France, prisoners
revolting. In two prisons, the prisoners in their cells read my book. They
shouted the text to other prisoners. I know that it’s pretentious to say, but that’s
a proof of a truth---a political and actual truth---which started after the book
was written.....the truth of my books is in future”. Ibid., p. 5.
18
According to Said, Foucault and his peers: “emerged out of a strange
revolutionary concatenation of Parisian aesthetic and political currents, which
for about thirty years produced such a concentration of brilliant work as we are
not likely to see for generations. . . . Yet all of these Parisian intellectuals were
deeply rooted in the political actualities of French life[:] ... World War II,
response to European communism, the Vietnamese and Algerian colonial wars,
and May 1968”. Edward Said, "Michel Foucault, 1927-1984," Reflections on
Exile, p.188. Quoted in Rubén Chuaqui, “Notes on Edward Said's View of
Michel Foucault”. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 25, Edward Said
and Critical Decolonization 2005 ) رامعتسالا يكقنلا ضيوقتلاو كيعس كراوكإ
/ ), p.96. Said also believed that by importing French theories would
decontexualize the historical text. “By the time "theory" advanced intellectually
into departments of English, French, and German in the United States, the
notion of "text" had been transformed into something almost metaphysically
isolated from experience. The sway of semiology, deconstruction, and even the
archaeological descriptions of Foucault, as they have commonly been received,
reduced and in many cases eliminated the messier precincts of "life" and
historical experience”. Edward Said, "Michel Foucault, 1927-1984,"
Reflections on Exile, p. xviii. Quoted in Chuaqui, “Notes on Edward Said's
View of Michel Foucault”, p.97.
19
Said writes: "[U]nlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted,
I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise
collective anonymous body of texts constituting a discursive formation like
151
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152
Hussain Ahmad Khan, Exteriority of Discourse and Disappearance of Man
31
“I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault's notion of a
discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in
Discipline and Punish, to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without
examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the
enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to
manage-and even produce the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily,
ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment
period”. Said, Orientalism, p.03.
32
Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern
India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p.8. Also see Gyan
Prakash, “Science ‘Gone Native’ in Colonial India”. Representations, No. 40,
Special Issue: Seeing Science (Autumn, 1992), pp.153-178.
33
Prakash, Another Reason,p.10.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., p.100-101.
36
Ibid., p.227-228.
37
Ibid., p.13.
38
Ibid., p.23.
39
Bernard S. Cohen, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in
India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 05.
40
Bernard Cohen, The Command of Language and the Language of Command,
p. 284). Subaltern Studies IV.
41
Cohen, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, p. 21.
42
Ibid., p. 22.
43
Ibid., p. 06.
44
First published in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 20, no. 3 (1986), pp.401-446.
Reprinted in Ronald Inden, Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).
45
Inden, Text and Practice, p.59.
46
Martha Kaplan, “Panopticon in Poona: An Essay on Foucault and
Colonialism”. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 85-98.
47
Ibid., p.87.
48
Ibid., p.87.
49
Zahid Chaudhary, “Phantasmagoric Aesthetics: Colonial Violence and the
Management of Perception”, Cultural Critique, No. 59 (Winter, 2005), p.71.
50
Rachel J. Tolen, “Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The
Salvation Army in British India”. American Ethnologist, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb.,
1991), p.106.
51
Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World:
Perspectives from Indian Historiography”. Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Vol. 32, No. 02 (April, 1990), p.400.
52
William J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a
Colonial City (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), p.xxi. Also see
William J. Glover, “ Objects, Models, and Exemplary Works: Educating
153
The Historian, Vol. 06, No. 2 (July – December 2008)
Sentiment in Colonial India”. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 64, No. 3
(Aug., 2005), pp. 541, 553.
53
Glover, Making Lahore Modern, p.xxi.
54
Ibid., p.180.
55
O’Hanlon and Washbrook, “After Orientalism”, also see Washbrook,
“Colonial Discourse Theory”.
56
CA Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence gathering and social
communication in India 1780-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996)
57
See for a detailed discussion, Gyatori Spivak, Subaltern Studies:
Deconstructing Historiography, Ranjit Guha (ed) Subaltern Studies IV:
Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1985), p. 348 -349. Aijaz Ahmed also believes that Foucault’s concepts are
‘restricted’. See Aijaz Ahmed, “Postmodernism in History”, p.471.
58
Breckenridges and Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial
Predicament, pp.4-5.
59
Ballantyne, “Colonial Knowledge”, p.189.
60
Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty, p.12.
61
Ibid., p.12.
62
Ibid., pp.12-3.
63
Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit,
Culture, and Power in Premodern India (California: University of California,
2006).
64
David Ludden, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial
Knowledge”, in Breckenridges and Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the
Postcolonial Predicament, p.252.
65
Ibid., p.252.
154
CONCEPT PAPER
INTRODUCTION
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phenomenological rendering in Schultz’s fundamental question for the
social sciences: “The problem of every social science can therefore be
summarized in the question: How are sciences of subjective meaning
context possible” [Original italics]. 3
The cherished ‘commonality of human experience’, however,
comes to be compromised in the realm of social sciences, taken as
sciences of the interpreting beings by the interpreting beings, or as
sciences of the subjective meaning context, not only due to the essential
reflexivity involved, in the condition of being simultaneously the
subject and object of knowledge, but also due to the vulnerability of the
‘interpreting beings’ to undergo drastic cognitive changes in their
‘subjective meaning contexts’ as a result of their varied socio-cultural
particularities. The determining roles of the historico-cultural identities
and their religious and civilizational Weltanschauungs in the
formulation of their epistemic frames of reference, are fairly well
recognized intellectual positions, in philosophy and post-colonial
theory, even going to the extent of challenging the ‘universality’ of the
Western paradigm of universality of knowledge itself. As Kasulis
comments: “The irony of course …… is that in insisting that
philosophy be “universal”, the dominant Western tradition
inadvertently shows its own social, historical and cultural roots. The
insistence on universalization boils down to one cultural philosophy’s
trying to exclude the very possibility of another”. 4 Or, in the famous
work, The Empire Writes Back: “European theories themselves emerge
form particular cultural traditions which are hidden by false notions of
‘the universal’.” 5
In this context it is not hard to see that a society’s sense of time and
history and the placement of its own cultural identity in the total sweep
of humanity tend to have a profound impact on its cognitive potential to
think and theorize in terms of the aesthetic and theoretical modalities
called literature, philosophy and social sciences. So it is at least
reasonable to hypothesize that, in an academic milieu situated in a
society like ours, where the worldview or theory of reality, supporting
scientific thought and practice, is either totally unacceptable or only
ambivalently accommodated simply due to the exigencies of modern
education, and also where an unresolved—assumed or real— conflict
exists between secular inductive reason and the authoritative and
deductive religious paradigms, the very existence of science in its
creative dimensions would be uniquely problematic.
156
MIRZA ATHAR BAIG, ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS
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science fails to explain the complexities of social phenomena in its
socio-cultural particularity.
Let us take a simple example to elucidate the point in
question, an example in fact nearest to our present concern, I mean the
whole gamut of academic and educational discourses of this
conference, a social science conference. Obviously at one level a social
science conference, too, is a social event, and is understandable or
should be understandable within the academic parameter of some social
science, and arguably through the most trans-disciplinary among all the
social sciences, I mean the discipline of Education. In other words, a
social science conference derives its epistemic and heuristic
significance from a theory of Education, with its claims of universal
explanation. But the problem is that the explanandum i.e. that which is
to be explained, the event called ‘the social science conference’ is not
an event uniformly stable and well demarcated like the fall of an apple
or the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen, but it comes to
be drastically reshaped by the mere fact of its divergent settings and
occurrences. In simple words, we may have two different events at
hand, one, a social science conference taking place within the precincts
of some advanced western university, comfortably enmeshed in its
secular outlook and with a deep rooted conceptual and theoretical
footing in western science and philosophy and along with that a smug
mindset-well entrenched in the intellectual and political dominance of
the West. Event number two, a social science conference taking place
in a non-western peripheral university, located in a cognitive social
space profoundly influenced not only by the religious and supersensible
systems of beliefs, but also as they manifest in their militant postures,
tangibly threatened by the annihilating logistics of various varieties of
terrorism. Common sense suffices to be cognizant of the different
phenomenology of these two events, and ‘the interpretation of their
subjective meaning contexts, by interpreting beings’. 7 They also serve
as a starting point for zooming out and making visible the entire range
of two social life-worlds, the purportedly universal and the indigenous
and which require two independent yet interacting courses of
theorizations for their comprehension.
158
MIRZA ATHAR BAIG, ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS
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The Historian, Vol. 06, No. 2 (July – December 2008)
identity: the assumption that the event #1 and event # 2, are essentially,
conceptually and definitionally identical, (2) the epistemic and
subjective identity, the assumption that the human agents ,i.e. the
social scientists and the participants, in event #1 and event#2 have
identical cognitive positioning towards the discursive details of the two
events, (3) the disciplinary identity, the assumption that the disciplinary
space underlying the two events is identical.
160
MIRZA ATHAR BAIG, ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS
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162
MIRZA ATHAR BAIG, ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS
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cognitive monstrosities. Living for a prolonged time with the psychic
tension of mutually antagonistic cerebral structures has its toll, and
results in a cultural and creative dementia.
164
MIRZA ATHAR BAIG, ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS
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play in its position of marginality, or rather marginality within
marginality. Philosophy operates in the conflictive space, between
centralizing champions of knowledge and truth, and as such remaining
always de-centred, creates new centres as disciplinary spaces of
knowledge, and also their cultural perspectives in the form of their
critiques. It is only Philosophy, which can accommodate both the
positionality of the knower, in terms of the multi-cultural referential
distances, its cognitive movements along different directions, and yet
can open the possibilities of disciplinary spaces in new cultural
perspectives, in which knowledge could be grounded and generated.
166
MIRZA ATHAR BAIG, ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS
END NOTES
∗
This paper is also published in ‘Critical Perspectives on Social Sciences in
Pakistan: Papers and Proceedings of the Conference on the State of Social
Sciences in Pakistan, organized by faculty of Social Sciences, GC University,
Lahore in collaboration with Higher Education Commission (HEC), March 27,
2008’, Pervez Tahir, Tahir Kamran, Rizwan Omer Gondal (eds.), (Lahore: GC
University, 2008)
1
Thomas P. Kasulis, Intimacy or Integrity (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 2002), p.33.
2
Robert C. Bishop, The Philosophy of the Social Science (London, New York:
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007), p.353.
3
Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Chicago:
Northwestern University Press, 2001), p.223.
4
Kasulis, Intimacy or Integrity, p. 15.
5
Bill Ashcroft, The Empire Writes Back (London and New York: Routledge,
2001), p.11.
6
Simone Locke, “Sociology and the Public Understanding of Science: From
Rationalization to Rhetoric,” British Journal of Sociology 52 (1), (March.
2001), p.2.
7
Bishop, The Philosophy of the Social Science also see Schutz, The
Phenomenology of the Social World.
8
David Bray Brook, “Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science.” In
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, version 1.0. (London and New York:
Routledge, 1998).
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid., p.80.
12
Mirza Athar Baig, “Post/Neo-colonial Academic Vocationalism” Quest: A
Research Journal, vol. 14. (Lahore: Department of Philosophy and
Interdisciplinary Studies, GC University, 2004), p. 15.
13
See website: http://www.ru.nl/socgeo/colloquium/PrePostDisciplinarity.pdf
167
S ALAHUDDIN M ALIK , 1857-W AR OF I NDEPENDENCE OR
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS ? ( THE B RITISH PUBLIC
REACTION ) (K ARACHI : O XFORD U NIVERSITY P RESS ,
2008)
Much has been written about the 1857 war between the British and the
Indians. And out of this material, the bulk has been penned down by the
British writers. “1857 – War of independence or clash of civilizations?”
by Salahuddin Malik is a unique work because for the first time a
Pakistani scholar has researched how the British public and officialdom
in England and India reacted to this event.
The war of 1857 was fought over 100,000 miles of Indian
territory: 500 miles in length from Meerut to Banaras and 200 miles in
breadth from Fatehgarh on the borders of Awadh to Banda on the right
bank of the Jumna. According to a conservative British estimate, out of
one hundred and fifty million Indians, only two hundred thousand
rebelled against the authority of the East Indian Company (EIC). The
Punjab saved the British empire because with the exception of one or
two zamindars, not only that the rest helped the company’s government
but when the British were short of troops, the Punjabis enlisted in the
English army to fight against their fellow Indians. In spite of the long
physical distance between Britain and the subcontinent i.e. 6000 to
11,160 miles via the Red Sea and Cape routes and the time distance of
six to thirteen weeks, the British were able to defeat the Indians due to
their military superiority.
The author rejects the idea that there was a centrally planned
conspiracy to overthrow the colonial rule but admits that several
rumours circulated widely to turn the natives against the company’s
government. For example, General Hearsey was able to identify that
the greased cartridge story was invented by ‘Dharma Sabha’, a Calcutta
based society. The distribution of flour cakes in the countryside and
lotus flowers among the regiments also figured in instigating the
sepoys. Similarly, it was rumoured that carts or boat loads of bone dust
were also sent to the cities and the cantonments to be mixed with flour.
Another absurd rumour was that the British were importing English
Crimean War widows into India to spread Christianity by forcing the
leading landlords to marry them. Yet another widely circulated rumour
was that on the first centenary of the British rule i.e. 23 June 1857,
there would be a simultaneous uprising from the Himalayas to the
Hooghly in which all Europeans would be either expelled or massacred.
171
During the Delhi trial, the Advocate Judge of the British army
blamed the Muslims for the circulation of the ‘Chapatis’ to inculcate
the feeling that in future ‘there should be but one food and one faith.’
During the same trial, he asserted, “….it is a most significant fact, that
though we come upon traces of Mussulman intrigues, wherever our
investigation has carried us, yet not one paper has been found to show
that the Hindus, as a body, had been conspiring against us, or that their
Brahmins or priests had been preaching a crusade against Christians.”
Was the war actually a result of the cartridge issue? A large
section of the British society rejected this argument and Benjamin
Disraeli while opening the debate on this issue on 27 July 1857 in the
House of Commons, observed, “the decline and fall of empires are not
affairs of greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate
causes….” And he was quite right.
Lord Macaulay had noted a sharp decline in the prestige of
Englishmen almost six decades before this war. Unlike the Mughal rule
in which persons from all communities and all ranks had the
opportunity to rise to high offices, the natives were completely
excluded from all share of the government under the British despite the
introduction of the ‘liberal’ Charter Act of 1833 which abolished all
distinctions of caste, colour and creed in the recruitment of company’s
services. Malcom Lewin, the Second Judge of the Sardar Court of
Madras ruefully remarked, “Our rule has been that of the robber and the
bandit and we are suffering from the natural result—insurrection.” The
process of de-Indianization of services that had started with Warren
Hastings reached its peak under Lord Cornwallis. While criticizing the
British judicial system ‘Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine’
highlighted, “Our courts of justice…were too slow, too
expensive…they promoted litigation….they were hardly accessible (to
the poor) from their expense and nearly useless from their delays.”
The British were more concerned about the Indian revenue
than the happiness of Indians as there were taxes on stamps, petitions,
food, houses, eatables and ferries. The company amassed exorbitant
profits by virtue of its monopolies in opium, salt, arrack and ferry. The
police was expected to be the guardian of the people but in effect, it had
become ‘the bane and pest of society, the terror of the community’ and
a British newspaper aptly commented in its editorial that ‘the system
could not afford even as much protection to the natives as they enjoyed
under the earlier Hindu and Muslim rulers.’
The British and the Indians were poles apart in their outlook.
The Mughals were foreign in their origin but after the conquest of the
subcontinent, penned the ‘Quarterly Review’ they had ‘made India
172
their home and adopted Indian customs and manners and so ceased to
be…….foreigners.’ On the contrary, hardly any British preferred to
settle in India after retirement because ‘their affections, their loyalty,
their love and wealth were all for Great Britain and not for India.’ W.H.
Russell, the special correspondent of ‘The Times’ aptly summed up the
relationship between the ruler and the ruled: “There is no bond of union
between the two….The West rules, collects taxes, gives balls……The
East pays taxes on what it eats grown on taxed lands, grumbles,…..sits
in its decaying temples, haunts its rotting shrines……and drinks its
semi-putrid water…Between the two there is a great gulf….”
Sadly, even today, there are people in Britain as well as in the
subcontinent who still sing hymns in praise of the British rule. How
oppressive and rotten the British administration was to the core can be
well-understood from the letter of Charles Napier, the Commander-in-
Chief of India, when he wrote to one of his friends in Calcutta, in May
1850: “The high compliment you pay the Indian government makes me
laugh, because I know that while you believe in it, it is not correct. No!
No! I will neither concede to you that ‘we are strong, just or regular’; or
that ‘we take no more from the people than the law declares’, or that we
‘pay every mouth.’ Ourselves, yes! But not others…..you know nothing
of the Indian government beyond its theories…..The atrocities which
go on are beyond description…….I on my horse, passing through all
countries saw and learnt them on the spot; and very indignant I am at
them.” Napier also mentioned of a judge whom he personally knew that
openly bragged “when either of the parties before him was a woman,
and a pretty one, he always made the sacrifice of her honour the price
of his decree.” There were a few sane voices in England which were
quite unhappy over the ways of governance in India and a Tory MP
Henry Drummond was one such voice, when he observed in June 1858,
“If we are going to look upon India as we had looked upon it hitherto,
as a mere place of plunder for English officials, we should surely lose
it, and we deserve to lose it.”
No doubt the exploitative nature of company’s government
was responsible for the Indian upsurge but the messianic activities of
the Christian churches had compounded the problem. Religious beliefs
are sensitive issues and the British should have known that but the
meddling continued in the religious life of the Indians. Revenues from
India were used to patronise the activities of the Church of England in
the subcontinent. Salahuddin Malik has built a strong case in this
regard. Not only that missionaries were appointed as inspectors of
schools and the Bible was taught as a classroom book but the bishops
were also awarded royal protocol with military escorts. There were
173
‘missionary colonels’ and ‘Padree Lieutenants’ who gave lectures on
Christianity, distributed Bibles and awarded out of turn promotions to
the soldiers on the basis of religious considerations. When Colonel
Wheler, the Commander of the 34th NI at Barrackpore was charged of
using his position wrongly to proselytize in the army, he stated in his
defence that he was ‘rendering unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar’s
and unto God the things that are God’s. When the missionaries were
blamed for their share in the insurrection, all the clergymen, with one
voice declared that ‘Christian preaching was not at all responsible for
the outbreak of mutiny in India. Indeed they contended that the lack of
sufficient missionary activity had led to it.’ Instead of realistically
sharing the blame, the British priesthood shifted the entire blame on the
age old Muslim animosity towards Christianity by arguing that as the
Indian Muslims had always been threatened by the British rule
therefore the uprising of 1857 was just another manifestation of a
ferocious outburst of Muslim bigotry towards Christians. Reverend
Edward Storrow of the London Missionary Society nailed the point that
‘Christianity has no foe in India, so fierce, unyielding and formidable
as Mohamedanism’ because the Indian Muslims regarded all Europeans
as ‘infidels and unclean.’ The ‘Missionary Magazine’ quoted Major
General W.H. Sleeman, who served as the British Resident to the court
of Lucknow, stating that ‘for nearly the last hundred years daily prayers
have been offered in the mosques throughout India for the House of
Timur and the re-establishment of the King of Delhi on the throne of
his ancestors’ because the people thought that their ancestors had eaten
the salt of the Timurid Mughals and therefore owed unswerving loyalty
to the emperor. Their primary worry was that ‘We have lost our King
and our country’ to the alien rulers. Even the sectarian differences were
set aside by the Shia and Sunni houses of Awadh and Delhi to forge a
united front against the British. The author has referred to a document
bearing the signature of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the dethroned Shia
ruler of Awadh, addressed to the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah in
which he proposed invitation by the Emperor to all the princely rulers
suggesting that they should rebel as a single unit on a fixed day to
restore the native rule as it existed before the advent of the British
‘under the general sovereignty of the King of Kings of Delhi.’
All this was enough for the British public opinion to go for the
blood of the Muslims during and after the war. An Anglo-Indian opined
in the ‘Calcutta Englishman’ that ‘respectable’ Muslims of Delhi
should be subjected to torture by means of thumbscrew or the rack.
Philip Egerton, the Magistrate of Delhi, proposed that the Jamia Masjid
of Delhi be turned into a Church with each brick named after a
174
Christian martyr. The city of Delhi with its predominant Muslim
population was pivotal in challenging the colonists. What the British
felt about it can be gauged from the author of ‘A few words from the
Khyber’, who suggested that as Delhi had been a stronghold of
Islamism in the subcontinent and the nerve centre of the rebellion
against Christianity therefore it should be completely destroyed and in
its place be built a new city ‘from which victorious Christianity should
radiate to every point from north to south, from east to west, from
Bombay to Calcutta, from the Himalayas to the Cape Camorin.’ In
comparison to the far more lenient treatment given to the Hindus after
the conquest of Delhi, not only that every Muslim house was attacked
by the British victors but all Muslim inhabitants were banished out of
the city for six months. Almost one-and-a-half years after the sack of
Delhi, Reverend James Smith noted in the ‘Missionary Herald’ in
January 1859, “As yet Mohammedans have not been admitted to the
city. The beautiful masjids are all occupied as barracks by the Sikhs,
and there can be no doubt that the humiliation of Mohammedans is
complete.’
175
deliberately fabricated and concocted to malign the Indians and frighten
the British public. This manufacturing of falsehood in England at that
time was beautifully exposed by ‘The Nation’ in a pithy comment:
“There is an atmosphere of untruth all over England. Lords lie and
commoners lie,…the leading journal is the greatest liar in the world and
the little journals try to lie as much as the great one. The war with India
has given a powerful stimulus to the lie manufacture and at the same
time increased the popular demand for the article.”
176
MARSHALL SAHLINS, ISLANDS OF HISTORY (CHICAGO AND
LONDON: THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 1985)
177
Meanings change due to the process of structural transformation.
People attach value to different objects and infer meanings from culture
and traditions that are developed over a period of time. The categories
of meanings are negotiated and revalued according to their “culturally
relevant significance and the old system is projected forward in its
novel forms”. This leads to ‘the cultural transformation’ of meanings,
like the concepts of tabu 8 and mana. 9 Every change has also its cultural
reproduction, like the tendencies among the Hawaiian chiefship to
deploy foreign identities and material means to celebrate their cosmic
status. 10 This transformation depends upon the very nature or working
of structures which can be divided into prescriptive and performative
structures. In the former, rules are prescribed while in latter,
"relationships are constituted by choice, desire, and interest." 11
An event may be historicized by a “Structure of Conjuncture”.
The event has its causes but it is heavily dependent on its interpretation.
The relationship between event and the structures used for its
interpretation, is described by Sahlins as “the situational synthesis of
the two in a structure of the conjuncture”. The structure of the
conjuncture brings into light the cultural and historical significance of
an event and its interpretation. Sahlins defines the structure of
conjuncture as “the practical realization of the cultural categories in a
specific historical context”. 12 He emphasizes to “find the conceptual
place of the past in the present, the super structure in the infrastructure,
the static in dynamic”. 13 Here, Sahlins criticizes the theories of
materialism and idealism with their mechanical ‘cause and effect’
relationship between event and its interpretation. It overlooks the forces
at work in that society. 14
The book as a whole is a very useful contribution. By arguing
the plurality and relativism in cultural domain, the work very neatly
explores the historicization of events. To some extent, it has also
derived its strength from contemporary historiographical trends of
searching not for truth but for possibilities. That’s why we find words
and sentences like “hence my hypothesis”, “it is likely that”, “my own
guess is”, etc. It precisely points out his sensitiveness towards
ambiguities and possibilities of many interpretations of the same event.
This very concept suggests that he follows Levi Strauss by
transforming “objectively remote into subjectively familiar”. 15 Unlike
other historical and anthropological texts, this reading argues the
recovery of subject, gives voice to marginalized and suppressed
history-less people by highlighting the process of thinking and change
in societies like Hawaiian and Fauji. One of the important contribution
of this work is that it locates colonized in a colonizer’s structure and
178
tries to highlight the negotiating grounds and influences on each other.
Therefore, forces at work become the defining feature in narrating the
events in the colonies whose responses can be judged through cultural
and historical context. In this way, Sahlins retrieves Cogito in colonies
which is to a great extent remains absent or interpreted as body or
subject in the contemporary literature. Although Sahlins’ Cogito remain
subordinated to the cultural order and historical process, yet he is fully
aware of the historical consciousness and has the capacity to not only
change himself but also to influence the colonizer’s culture. It is very
neatly constructed text, however, one may find two problems in the
book. Sahlins argues that one interpretation is a fraction of collective
consciousness, if it is so then how can Sahlins generalizes his work as a
representative of Hawaiian culture? The other problem is concerned
with the objectivity of anthropology. Sahlins argues that outsiders with
the knowledge of inside culture may well interpret the cultural order.
Now the question arises is this not Eurocentric approach that he takes
away the right of individuals within that culture to interpret their own
culture.
HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
179
END NOTES
1
Robert Borofsky, Herb Kawainui Kane, Gananath Obeyesekere, Marshall
Sahlins, “CA Forum on Theory in Anthropology: Cook, Lono, Obeyesekere,
and Sahlins [and Comments and Reply]”. Current Anthropology, Vol. 38, No. 2
(Apr., 1997), p.273.
2
In another article Sahlins argues the retrieval of “the historical capacities of
indigenous peoples and the vitalities of their cultures. In too many narratives of
Western domination, the indigenous victims appear as neo-historyless peoples:
their own agency disappears, more or less with their culture, the moment
Europeans irrupt on the scene”. For Europeanization of anthropological
theories, see Marshall Sahlins, “What is Anthropological Enlightenment? Some
Lessons of the Twentieth Century”. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 28
(1999), p.ii.
3
Apart from present study, Sahlins also addresses these issues in Historical
Metaphors and Mythical Realities. In this study he argues that “historical
anthropology is not merely to know that how events were ordered by culture,
but how, in that process culture is re-ordered. How does the reproduction of a
structure become its transformation”. See for details, Sahlins Historical
Metaphors and Mythical Realities (University of Michigan Press: 1981), p. 08.
4
Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1985), p.x.
5
Ibid., p.ix.
6
According to Strauss, “[Anthropology could] be in a position to understand
basic similarities between forms of social life, such as language, art, law and
religion, that on the surface seem to differ greatly. At the same time, we shall
have the hope of overcoming the opposition between the collective nature of
culture and its manifestations in the individual, since the so-called ‘collective
consciousness’ would, in the final analysis, be no more than an expression, on
the level of individual thought and behaviour, of certain time and space
modalities of the universal laws which make up the unconscious activity of the
mind”. Claude Levi Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jackobson
and Brooker Grundfast Schoepf, (New York: Basic Books, 1963), p.65.
7
According to Saussure: “Thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no
pre-existing ideas and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.
Against this floating realm of thought, would sounds by themselves yield
predelimited entities? No more so than ideas... The characteristic role of
language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for
expressing ideas but to serve as a link between thought and sound, under
conditions that of necessity bring about the reciprocal delimitations of units...
language works out its units while taking shape between two shapeless
masses”. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade
Baskin, (London: Fontana, 1974), p.112.
180
8
The Concept of ‘Tabu’: Through the frequent visits of Cook and his seamen,
the concept of tabu/ forbidden is changed. The Hawaiian meaning of ‘tabu’ was
gender marked, where men and women could not eat together, whereas the
British sailors saw no harm in it. After becoming mistresses of the European
shipmen, they began to eat together on ships. Now that tabu was transformed
into class categorization system. Thus ‘the dominant structure of the initial
situation that the chiefs distinguished themselves from their own people in the
manner that Europeans were different from Hawaiians in general, became a
conceit of personal identity.
9
The concept of ‘mana’ was transformed from the ‘children of land’, the native
concept of god on land i.e. the chief into the ‘ostentatious consumption of
foreign luxury goods’ in order to show off status.
10
Sahlins, Islands of History, p.144.
11
Ibid., p.xii.
12
Ibid., p.xiv. Within the field of historical ethnography he argues the synthesis
of “form and function, structure and variation, as a meaningful cultural process,
sequitur to a specific cultural order rather than an eternal practical logic. The
practical functions of institutions will appear as meaningful relations between
constituted forms and historical contexts”. See Marshall Sahlins, “Goodby to
Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History”. The
Journal of Modern History, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), p. 11.
13
Sahlins, Islands of History, p.xvii.
14
Ibid., p.154.
15
Robert Borofsky, Herb Kawainui Kane, Gananath Obeyesekere, Marshall
Sahlins, “CA Forum on Theory in Anthropology: Cook, Lono, Obeyesekere,
and Sahlins [and Comments and Reply]”, p.257.
181
ANWAAR AHMAD, SHAUKAT SIDDIQI, SHAKHSIAT AUR FUN
(LAHORE: ACADEMY ADBIAT PAKISTAN, 2007)
Sans Shuakat Siddiqi our Urdu literature will never be complete. His
works continue to remain relevant. One can not tag his works as
‘outdated’. The working conditions of the lower middle class are the
same. The sufferings of the underprivileged have multiplied
exorbitantly. Every thing is same as it used to be in the days when
Shaukat Siddiqi wrote his celebrated novel ‘Khuda Ki Basti. What we
sorely miss is a master chronicler who may paint the life stories of the
wretched of the earth. Only future will tell whether Urdu literature will
see another Shaukat Siddiqi or not. The book under review “Shaukat
Siddiqi Shakhsiat Aur Fun”is a nice attempt by renowned scholar
Anwaar Ahmad to document the life and literary achievements of a
giant of literature. This book has been written under the aegis of
Academy Adbiat Pakistan under its series “Pakistani Adab Kay
Ma,maar”.
Born in Lucknow in 1920, Siddiqi was always fond of books.
But his academics saw many ups and downs as he had to disconnect his
education a couple of times due to certain problems. However in 1944
he passed his gradation as a private candidate. It was in the same period
that he served the army. His infatuation with military proved to be too
short as he left it after three years. Perhaps his love for literature was so
deep that military job did not envy him at all. In his younger days he
found a chance to read a lot as his father was very fond of books. From
“Tilism Hoshruba” to the woks of Premchand and even that of Deputy
Nazeer Ahmad, he read extensively. However he also struggled to do as
far as his studies were concerned. In 1946 he passed his M.A. in
Political Science from Lucknow University. Literary bug prodded him
to join literary magazine ‘Turkash’ that used to be published from
Lucknow. Through this magazine, Siddiqi got a chance to make a
liaison with leading literary men like Israrul Haq Majaz, Prof Ehtesham
Hussain, Dr Ebadat Brelvi, Prof Mumtaz Hussain and few others. It
was the same time that he came under the influence of socialism due to
his friend, Ali Mazhar Rizvi, a die hard socialist at heart. His love for
socialism also brought him into the folds of Progressive Writers. After
landing in Pakistan in 1950, Shaukat Siddiqi‘s life proved to be no bed
of roses. Jobless and homeless, he had to live in abject conditions
among the people who belonged to various walks of life.
Reminiscing about those early days in Karachi he says, “I was
twenty seven when I left Lucknow and landed in Karachi. Karachi of
183
those times was altogether different from what it is today. It existed
only up to Jahangir road. Most of the people lived in huts and foot-
paths. There were people of all hues and cries. Everyone was eager to
set its foot in a new atmosphere. I minutely observed the life. Many of
the people sactttred around me became subjects of my stories. I got
influenced by the environment of Karachi. Quickly this city became a
blend of people from many regions. I saw lot of strange people. My
story “Teesra Admi” is reminiscent of those days. At times I came
across much poverty stricken and criminal people too. I observed their
lives so deeply that these people penetrated into my stories”.
Though he worked in many newspapers after coming to
Pakistan, but it were his novels and short stories that won him acclaim.
He started off with a novelette “Kameen Gah” that he wrote in 1945.
but it was published in 1957 from Lahore. But it was his masterpiece
“Khuda Ki Basti” that made him a household name in the world of
Urdu literature. His brutal portrayal of ‘outcasts’ shocked everyone. It
is a bold attempt to unmask those people whom no one cares to notice.
These characters are from our everyday life. One can relate with them
easily. He is an honest craftsman. He attacks the exploitative system
ruthlessly. He can be likened to Charles Dickens who also presented
the hard realities of British working classes. “Khuda Ki Basti” was
translated into twenty six languages all over the world. “Jangloos” won
huge following when it was made into a T.V. serial. He wrote profusely
as six collections of his short stories saw the light of the day. The
author of this book, Anwaar Ahmad, claims that there are many short
stories scattered in many magazines that have never been published. As
a columnist he also proved his mettle.
This book is labour of love. Anwaar Ahmad, a scholar, critic,
and a distinguished academic has really done a remarkable job by
piecing together details about Shaukat Siddiqi. The author deserves a
salute for his hard work.
184
SYED MOHAMMED HASHIM SHAH, SASSI-PANNU (LAHORE:
BOOK HOME, 2007)
Stories of love are a precious asset of every culture. They reveal the
creative strength, cultural diversity and social organization of a
particular nation. Days of yore are preserved and the beauties of the
moments are captured through such literary creations. Certainly time
surrenders before such heritages of human passions and sacrifices.
Lovers become immortal and their stories add pride to their culture,
language and nation. Punjabi literature is a living example of this fact.
Primarily, the leading themes in this literature are mysticism, culture
and historical issues but love legends also form a significant part of it.
The most outstanding feature of these stories is that the feel of love
simply doesn’t remain confined between the two lovers. Neither does it
show a flesh oriented approach, a bodily desire or a mere lusty
infatuation. It rather exhibits a uniquely different and realistically
compelling force of attraction between the two lovers. They tend to
enter into the metaphysical realm. They enjoy the state of ecstasy. Their
worldly union shows them the ways to God. In this way Punjabi love
legends come out to be a powerful presentation of purest passions,
innocent feelings and strongest emotions connecting mankind with
God.
The under review legendary tale of Sassi-Pannu comes from
the land of sand, heat and thirst. Desert is known for its vastness and
wilderness. It is a thinly populated habitat. Its mammoth grandeur
makes you feel small and fearful of the oblivion. But every difficulty
associated with the desert crumbles before the mighty will of lovers.
The hardships of Sassi and the passionate devotion of Pannu
immortalize their love. The barren lands of Thal receive a reputable
fame. A story is born. Desert may remain a desolated place but Sassi-
Pannu buried in its warmth would not. They would continue to inspire
generations of lovers. Poets and writers in different times wrote about
this famous legend. The one composed by Syed Mohammed Hashim
Shah in Punjabi rose to the pinnacle of fame. Indeed this poetic
presentation of Sassi-Pannu’s love story deserves the claims of a
standard version of the famous love legend. The first printed version of
the story came in 1871. It certainly motivated the traditional story
telling in Punjabi literature. Hashim Shah wrote nearly 28 books in
Punjabi, Persian and Hindi. This poetic composition of 128 stanzas has
been ably translated and compiled in Urdu by Dr. Anwar Ahmed Ijaz.
185
The parents of Sassi had no child. Many prayers and humble
worships hastened the birth of Sassi but the infant child was received
with quite inhospitality by the fortune tellers of her city Bahmbhore.
They prophesied like the oracle of Delphi that Sassi would grow into
Hellenic beauty and would earn disrepute to her family by eloping with
a lover. Her father was not ready for such a compromise and while her
mother wept and requested, she was laid in a wooden box covered with
precious jewels and floated on the river. The whole story of her
separation from her parents was written on a piece of paper to be tied in
a necklace around Sassi’s neck for future remembrance. Probably such
was envisaged in the Divine Scheme. The floating box carrying Sassi
landed on a washerman’s bank. Precious stones attached with the box
were enough to turn his fortunes and he raised a palace to upbring the
royal child.
As the years rolled on Sassi turned into an unmatchable beauty
of her times. The poet has given a graphic and an arresting description
of her beauty. She was innocent, sensitive and humane. Very soon the
fame of her beauty reached her father who called her and her guardian
to his palace. But when her father Aadam Jam saw that particular
necklace hanging around her neck, he was abashed beyond measures.
He pleaded forgiveness. Sassi was quite uncompromising. She not only
refused to live with her father but also left her weeping mother as she
was left weeping by her parents. It was an important turn in her life.
Back to her place when one day she saw a portrait of Pannu in the
annex of a garden, she was moved by his beauty. That was love at a
first sight. Pannu was indeed famous for his youthful beauty. He was a
son of the ruler of Kech city in Thal. Distances in land were great but
the heart of Sassi throbbed for union with Pannu. They were made for
each other. She ordered her personnel that any body entering
Bahmbhore from Kech should be brought before her. Incidentally, a
group of Baloch merchants claiming to be Pannu’s relatives came to
her city. Sassi made them her guest and, after making sure of their
relations with Pannu, she arrested them. Only Pannu could get them
released. One of the captives was sent to Pannu with this message. The
messenger told Pannu about the bewildering beauty of Sassi. He was
ready to leave for Sassi’s palace. His family tried to stop him from this
venture but it was a union written on the skies.
Certainly the journey of Pannu didn’t go in vain. The beauty
of Sassi was marvelous and her love was immortal. It was the meeting
of two souls. They had entered into the metaphysical realm and life was
sweet. But as the tragedy would have it, this union was not likable to
the hostile world. The father of Pannu ordered to take him back. A
186
group of men managed to tie unconscious Pannu and took him to Kech.
Pannu was taken away from Sassi. She was deprived of her love. Now
there was a wild desert between the two lovers. There at Kech, Pannu
found himself helpless before the domineering personality of his father.
But the woman of those days had that much moral courage to show this
to the insensitive and selfish world that what she can do. Without
caring for the adversities of the weather, Sassi set to liberate her love. It
was an emotional decision. But love is not love which surrenders
before the hostilities of the society. Her journey was difficult but her
determination was stronger. Hearing about the departure of Sassi,
Pannu ran away from his place. But the wilderness of the weather came
in her way. It was too late for Pannu. Sassi died braving the heat and
thirst of the desert. Now life was meaningless for Pannu and eternity
awaits him in his union with Sassi. Pannu died of the pain and grief at
the tragic demise of his true love. He was buried along with Sassi in the
desert. But that place no longer remains desert. It is a paradise of love
where eternity and passion reside.
The story brings a perfect catharsis. Towards the end everything
remains except the innocent lovers. This adds glory and grace to their
lives. Tragedy heightens the effect of their story while the wilderness of
the desert receives the coloring of love. The poetic tale of two
legendary lovers is an unsurpassable classic of its times. The story of
Sassi and Pannu has all the essentials of a truly great love story. The
book contains both the Punjabi and the translated Urdu versions which
provide an opportunity to read and enjoy the classic Punjabi.
Translation of the story is very fluent, absorbing and simple. The
subject matter abounds with words of wisdom and advice. It is a
valuable addition for the lovers of Punjabi literature.
187
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