third eye
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Reminds me of Kushwant Singh's columns " With malice to all' in his heydays with The Illustrated Weekly of India.
Kamran Shafi seems to have sorted out almost everyone..has raised some relevant issues though.
DAWN.COM | Columnists | Of this and that
By Kamran Shafi
Tuesday, 26 Jan, 2010
First things first then, and it is highly fitting that our chief election commissioner should have been barred by the government from visiting India to attend a function in honour of democracy. For, what has Pakistan got to do with democracy anyway?
Below, without comment a list of Pakistans various governments and the approximate periods of their rule, or misrule if you will. Caretaker governments or those such as Mr Mohammad Khan Junejos, Mr Zafarullah Jamalis and the Private Bankers have been excluded from the list because army dictators ruled the roost then. The periods of dictatorships are in italics:
Liaquat Ali Khan: 1,500 days; Khwaja Nazimuddin: 900 days; Mohammad Ali Bogra: 840 days; Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: 390 days; I.I. Chundrigar: 60 days; Malik Feroz Khan Noon: 300 days; Iskandar Mirza, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan: 4,745 days; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: 2,205 days; Ziaul Haq: 4,015 days; Benazir Bhutto: 635 days; Nawaz Sharif: 880 days; Nawaz Sharif: 56 days; Benazir Bhutto: 1,125 days; Nawaz Sharif: 970 days; Pervez Musharraf: 3,285 days; and the present one whose several obituaries have already been written: 720 days.
Might one beseech Their Lordships of the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the seeming injustice done to Imran Masih of Hajvairy, Faisalabad, who was most recently sentenced to life in prison on the charge of blasphemy; a charge that seems so far-fetched that it stretches ones credulity to extreme limits. For, My Lords, it would seem highly unlikely that a Christian who ran a shop in a bazaar, surrounded by good Muslim shopkeepers, would suddenly get it into his head to burn pages of the Holy Quran, and blaspheme our Prophet (PBUH) in plain sight and the hearing of his reported rival Haji Abdul Ghafoor, the complainant. Unless he was mad of course, for which the proper thing would be to commit him to a psychological examination and thence to the madhouse.
Might one add that Their Lordships must move with alacrity and before poor Imran Masih is harmed physically, indeed killed outright, by a vigilante fellow prisoner who considers himself to be another good Muslim. It has happened before as we well know, not only to members of our minority communities, but even to Muslims in other, mostly rigged, cases of blasphemy. We are a quite unique people as we well know too, who prey on the weak and the vulnerable, and all in the name of God.
It is a measure of our uniqueness that Justice Hamid Ali Mirza was barred from going to India because of the IPL fiasco which, if truth be told, the Government of Pakistan handled in its usual ham-handed manner.
Why elevate what is a completely private matter between Pakistani players and private Indian cricket teams to the official level? Doesnt our Foreign Office have better and weightier things to do rather than picking up on anything that will sell on the Pakistani street? What in heavens name has it to do with whether Pakistani players are selected for playing in private Indian teams for big bucks?
Let the people protest; let them boycott the IPL; let private Pakistani TV channels not show the matches, but why the governments unseemly quest for cheap popularity in this piddling matter when the two countries must engage one another in other matters that are of extreme importance for both countries, such as the fight against terror that threatens to consume, or at least deeply affect, both?
Our Foreign Office might well be right that variables extraneous to sports are responsible for the IPLs rejection of our very gifted players, but let that be the IPLs loss. If they dont want brilliant T20 players like Shahid Afridi so be it. Why should the government act in as childish a fashion as to ban the CEC from visiting India to celebrate democracy? Why, indeed, should the kabbadi team not go to India?
As if all of the above were not enough, we now learn that the PCB is going to complain to the ICC against the IPL! How can the ICC help in a commercial matter please? When will we ever learn that it is easy to make fools of ourselves, and very difficult to be graceful and dignified?
A Brig (retd) Ali Javed who alleges that he is an old friend of mine (Letters, Jan. 23) had this to say in criticism of my article Defining strategic depth of last week: Notwithstanding that the retired officer of Pakistan Army has not been exposed to our higher institutions of military learning like the Command and Staff College or National Defence College, such preposterous, quixotic and naivety (sic) surprises (sic) his old compatriots of the army.
I am not quixotic. The Rommels and the Guderians of the Pakistan Army who think barren and hostile and lawless Afghanistan can ever be strategic depth for Pakistan are quixotic. As for my not attending the Command and Staff College and the National Defence College, might I ask who led the Pakistan Army into its many humiliating failures, for one, Kargil?
Retired officers who write analytical columns in newspapers and who have not been exposed to our higher institutions of military learning like the Command and Staff College or National Defence College, or the Pakistani Rommels and Guderians who have attended both? Why, the architect of Kargil, the Commando, was not only a DS at the then War College, he attended the Royal College of Defence Studies in the UK to boot!
So, enough of arrogance, gentlemen. It is time to take honest stock of the situation as it confronts us today and to change with the times, discarding attitudes and concepts and so-called doctrines that are dated, and in some cases downright absurd and idiotic.
Pakistan cannot be put at risk just to humour a handful of greedy (and foolish) Don Quixotes and their Sancho Panzas.
Kamran Shafi seems to have sorted out almost everyone..has raised some relevant issues though.
DAWN.COM | Columnists | Of this and that
By Kamran Shafi
Tuesday, 26 Jan, 2010
First things first then, and it is highly fitting that our chief election commissioner should have been barred by the government from visiting India to attend a function in honour of democracy. For, what has Pakistan got to do with democracy anyway?
Below, without comment a list of Pakistans various governments and the approximate periods of their rule, or misrule if you will. Caretaker governments or those such as Mr Mohammad Khan Junejos, Mr Zafarullah Jamalis and the Private Bankers have been excluded from the list because army dictators ruled the roost then. The periods of dictatorships are in italics:
Liaquat Ali Khan: 1,500 days; Khwaja Nazimuddin: 900 days; Mohammad Ali Bogra: 840 days; Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: 390 days; I.I. Chundrigar: 60 days; Malik Feroz Khan Noon: 300 days; Iskandar Mirza, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan: 4,745 days; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: 2,205 days; Ziaul Haq: 4,015 days; Benazir Bhutto: 635 days; Nawaz Sharif: 880 days; Nawaz Sharif: 56 days; Benazir Bhutto: 1,125 days; Nawaz Sharif: 970 days; Pervez Musharraf: 3,285 days; and the present one whose several obituaries have already been written: 720 days.
Might one beseech Their Lordships of the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the seeming injustice done to Imran Masih of Hajvairy, Faisalabad, who was most recently sentenced to life in prison on the charge of blasphemy; a charge that seems so far-fetched that it stretches ones credulity to extreme limits. For, My Lords, it would seem highly unlikely that a Christian who ran a shop in a bazaar, surrounded by good Muslim shopkeepers, would suddenly get it into his head to burn pages of the Holy Quran, and blaspheme our Prophet (PBUH) in plain sight and the hearing of his reported rival Haji Abdul Ghafoor, the complainant. Unless he was mad of course, for which the proper thing would be to commit him to a psychological examination and thence to the madhouse.
Might one add that Their Lordships must move with alacrity and before poor Imran Masih is harmed physically, indeed killed outright, by a vigilante fellow prisoner who considers himself to be another good Muslim. It has happened before as we well know, not only to members of our minority communities, but even to Muslims in other, mostly rigged, cases of blasphemy. We are a quite unique people as we well know too, who prey on the weak and the vulnerable, and all in the name of God.
It is a measure of our uniqueness that Justice Hamid Ali Mirza was barred from going to India because of the IPL fiasco which, if truth be told, the Government of Pakistan handled in its usual ham-handed manner.
Why elevate what is a completely private matter between Pakistani players and private Indian cricket teams to the official level? Doesnt our Foreign Office have better and weightier things to do rather than picking up on anything that will sell on the Pakistani street? What in heavens name has it to do with whether Pakistani players are selected for playing in private Indian teams for big bucks?
Let the people protest; let them boycott the IPL; let private Pakistani TV channels not show the matches, but why the governments unseemly quest for cheap popularity in this piddling matter when the two countries must engage one another in other matters that are of extreme importance for both countries, such as the fight against terror that threatens to consume, or at least deeply affect, both?
Our Foreign Office might well be right that variables extraneous to sports are responsible for the IPLs rejection of our very gifted players, but let that be the IPLs loss. If they dont want brilliant T20 players like Shahid Afridi so be it. Why should the government act in as childish a fashion as to ban the CEC from visiting India to celebrate democracy? Why, indeed, should the kabbadi team not go to India?
As if all of the above were not enough, we now learn that the PCB is going to complain to the ICC against the IPL! How can the ICC help in a commercial matter please? When will we ever learn that it is easy to make fools of ourselves, and very difficult to be graceful and dignified?
A Brig (retd) Ali Javed who alleges that he is an old friend of mine (Letters, Jan. 23) had this to say in criticism of my article Defining strategic depth of last week: Notwithstanding that the retired officer of Pakistan Army has not been exposed to our higher institutions of military learning like the Command and Staff College or National Defence College, such preposterous, quixotic and naivety (sic) surprises (sic) his old compatriots of the army.
I am not quixotic. The Rommels and the Guderians of the Pakistan Army who think barren and hostile and lawless Afghanistan can ever be strategic depth for Pakistan are quixotic. As for my not attending the Command and Staff College and the National Defence College, might I ask who led the Pakistan Army into its many humiliating failures, for one, Kargil?
Retired officers who write analytical columns in newspapers and who have not been exposed to our higher institutions of military learning like the Command and Staff College or National Defence College, or the Pakistani Rommels and Guderians who have attended both? Why, the architect of Kargil, the Commando, was not only a DS at the then War College, he attended the Royal College of Defence Studies in the UK to boot!
So, enough of arrogance, gentlemen. It is time to take honest stock of the situation as it confronts us today and to change with the times, discarding attitudes and concepts and so-called doctrines that are dated, and in some cases downright absurd and idiotic.
Pakistan cannot be put at risk just to humour a handful of greedy (and foolish) Don Quixotes and their Sancho Panzas.
