Issue 60 Vol III, March 31, 2008

L I T E R A T U R E

Reconciliation
Ishtiaq Ahmed

Benazir Bhutto's book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West (London: Simon and Schuster, 2008) published posthumously is very different from her Daughter of the East, in which, besides saying some sensible things, she freely boasted, and exaggerated her paternal ancestors' landed property and high station in Sindhi feudal society.

This time round, we meet a woman who is devoted to her idea of reconciliation between Islam, democracy and the West. Many years ago, I presented her my first book (which was also my doctoral dissertation), The Concept of an Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan (Frances Pinter, London, 1987), through her close adviser at that time, Fakhar Zaman, the Punjabi writer and intellectual.

There is no doubt she read it thoroughly and carefully, though it is not referred to in her book under discussion. I had argued that it is possible to derive an argument for the most unenlightened, as well as the most progressive, state model by selectively quoting the sacred sources and early Islamic history, but that in the modern period at some point Islam and the state will have to be separated in practice if democracy is to prevail and consolidate.

Her thesis, on the other hand, is that her selection of the sacred sources and pristine Islamic history is the correct representation of the Islamic ethos, while all the fundamentalist and extremist versions that are around are distortions of true Islam. She believes that in practice too Islam and the state can be interdependent, without democracy suffering injury.

In any event, Benazir Bhutto's book is an admirable exercise in arguing that Islam and democracy are reconcilable. With the help of a team of researchers and advisers, especially Husain Haqqani, Ms Bhutto proceeds to demonstrate that the core spirit of Islam and the Quran is democratic.

She quotes verses from the Quran, Hadiths (sayings and doings) of the Prophet and examples from the way the pious caliphs were chosen to lead the pristine Muslim community, to demonstrate that Islam prescribes freedom of choice and thinking and tolerance for difference of opinion.

A careful reading of her text shows that she identifies her own family's persecution, beginning with the execution of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, by the oppressive Zia regime with the suffering of Imam Husain at Karbala. Consequently, in her several observations on the Sunni-Shia relationship she in a guarded but in an unmistakable manner expresses sympathy for Shiites, though for making her case for democracy she relies on the Sunni principle that the ruler has temporal functions and should be chosen by the people.

She informs us that her father was a Sunni and her mother a Shia. However, as a clever politician she never reveals whether in her case the situation is reverse: a Shia husband and a Sunni wife, or? She asserts that normally the two sects have managed to live in peace and mutual tolerance.

She describes the mediaeval scholar Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, and Maulana Maudoodi and the Egyptian Syed Qutb from the 20th century, as the "three reactionaries" (p. 29) whose ideas are currently popular in parts of the Islamic world. She comes out strongly against the Wahhabis, the Taliban, Mulla Omar and Osama bin Laden. The exclusion of the modern founder of Islamic reaction, Ayatollah Khomeini, from the list of reactionaries is surprising and patently unconvincing. It is indicative more of her political biases than her merits as an honest scholar of reactionary Islam.

Many readers will find her key chapter "Islam and Democracy: History and Practice" interesting and informative, though the editors have been remiss in that she reviews the absence or weakness of democracy in not only Muslim countries but also some non-Muslim southern European, African and Latin American countries. A central argument that pervades is that the West has prioritised its economic and geopolitical interests, rather than supported popular democratic movements, parties and leaders.

The classic case is, of course, the British-American conspiracy to topple the nationalist regime of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadagh in Iran in 1953 because he had decided to nationalise Iran's oil.

Some words of praise for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and the gradual evolution of democracy in Turkey with positive remarks about the ruling AKP of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, show that she understands that the long period of secular state and nation-building helped contemporary Turkey became a democracy.

In the chapter, "The Case of Pakistan," she presents an interesting historical sketch of Muslim rule in the subcontinent, praising the Emperor Akbar for his policy of religious pluralism, commenting on the decline of Muslim power and on British colonialism, culminating in the partition of the subcontinent. Her account of Pakistani politics is fairly accurate, though she absolves her father and herself of all blame for what went wrong. She blames Maudoodi, Zia, the ISI and the military nexus for all the ills that afflict Pakistan.

In the chapter, "Is the Clash of Civilisation Inevitable?" she very approvingly referred to one of my weekly columns, on page 269, in which I had argued that the clash of civilisations is not between the West and Islam, but between those who believe that civilisation is a power game in which the rich and mighty in the West should acquire and keep the wealth produced globally with themselves, sharing at most a portion with their client elites in the Third Word.

Her pleas for a Marshall Plan-type model to help the poor nations surmount their current technological and academic backwardness along with Muslim intellectuals and statesmen taking the lead for a progressive reform of Muslim societies sounds very familiar indeed, as these are some of the points I and others have been making from time to time.

[The writer is a professor of political science and a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore. Email: isasia@nus.edu.sg Courtesy News Pakistan]

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Review
SPOTS OF TIME
[A novel by Manju Jaidka, Professor at the Panjab University Chandigarh.]

WHEN Priyadarshini Pannu, erstwhile editor and creative writer, decides to settle down in the outskirts of Chandigarh, she anticipates a quiet life with little excitement. This is the place where she hopes to resume her creative writing and produce another bestseller. However, as she works in a study overlooking a busy residential colony, she is inadvertently sucked into the lives of the people surrounding her. In particular, she finds herself drawn to Anamika Mehra who lives in Twitter House just across the road.

Spots of Time, interspersed with a sprinkling of verse, traces the interweaving stories of these two women, moving back and forth in time, progressing through flashbacks and reminiscences. Tangential characters emerge from the margins, come to the foreground with their own stories, and then recede. As the story unfolds, the various pieces of the collage are linked together by the narratorial consciousness that observes, assimilates and records myriad different experiences, ranging from professional hazards in an academic environment to more agonizing issues of parenting a special child while coping with personal aspirations and ambitions.

The narratology is metafictional; the master narrative holds together several embedded little stories and yet holds on to a coherent whole, inlaid with literary allusions, traversing an extensive terrain, from a tiny colony of the City Beautiful nestling in the Shivalik foothills to far-off places across vast oceanic distances. It is narration that holds the storyline and characters together.

Jane E. Schukoske, Executive Director, U.S. Educational Foundation in India says, “Spots of Time captures a writer's life of long, quiet struggles and turning points, a dance of familiar continuity and surprise. The characters in the novel are as close and real as neighbors towards whom the reader feels affection and curiosity.  It is wonderful to see a Fulbright alumna who has varied academic interests contribute her own novel to the genre of Indian Writing in English.

Spots of Time is about a small world with a big heart. It is a story which has been told with spontaneous eloquence. It stirs and moves as the main characters encounter life-altering situations, and shakes the reader as they find solutions that are at once mature, stoic and brave. The author's world, in fact, is akin to R.K. Narayan's Malgudi with its own ambience, wit, compassion, location details, charming touches and human concerns that are easy to identify with. The book leaves the reader in a state of delightful contemplative silence; a silence which reverts again and again to the nuances that colour the spots of time on human lives.”

Ashwini Bhatnagar, author and journalist from The Tribune group of newspapers finds the novel “as complex, nuanced, and sensitively written, with a great attention to the awkward details of everyday life. The revealing image of contemporary India it presents will not only add an important dimension to new fiction appearing from the subcontinent, it may help to problematise and deepen the very precepts underlying these fictions.  Straddling the territory between fictional fantasy and factual document, it makes for intriguing, and often unsettling, reading.”

[Professor Jaidka is currently at Concordia U, Montreal, as Visiting Fellow, Simone de Beauvoir Institute for Feminist Studies)) Spots of Time is published Graphit India]

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A Unique “Kirtan Darbar”
Harjap Singh Aujla

LATE Giani Gurdip Singh ji, former head priest of Gurdwara Richmond Hill, New York was a very knowledgeable connoisseur of “Gurbani Kirtan”. He liked Bibi Amarjit Kaur’s style of rendition of “Gurmat Kirtan”. Bibi Amarjit Kaur honed her skills in “Gurmat Sangeet” under the guidance of Late Bhai Santa Singh. Giani Gurdip Singh told me, “Whenever you invite Bibi Amarjit Kaur for “Shabad Kirtan” at Gurdwara Bridgewater, please invite me too. So one day Bibi Amarjit Kaur performed the Kirtan and Giani Gurdip Singh was a listener. Giani Gurdip Singh was so knowledgeable about the “Gurmat Sangeet” that it was a treat to listen to his wise words that he used for the good “Kirtanias”.

He told me the story of a unique “Kirtan Darbar” held during early nineteen fifties in Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi. A great exponent and connoisseur of “Dhrupad and Khayal Style” of Hindustani classical music, Shri Daleep Chander Vedi was in Delhi during those days. It was his brain-child to have a special “Kirtan Darbar” in Delhi in which only four top exponents of Sikh Religious Classical Music would be invited. Two of them Bhai Santa Singh and Sant Sujan Singh were permanently based in Delhi, the other two, Bhai Samund Singh and Bhai Gurcharan Singh Avtar Singh came from Ludhiana and Sultanpur Lodhi respectively. The “Kirtan Darbar” was to start at 4 in the morning and last up to 9:00am. The “Kirtan of Asa Di Vaar” was split into two parts. Bhai Santa Singh started first and did half of the “Asa Di Vaar”; the remaining half was performed by Bhai Gurcharan Singh Avtar Singh and party. Bhai Santa Singh did some special numbers from Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s Bani in his high pitched emotional rendition. Bhai Gurcharan Singh Avtar Singh rendered some “Dhrupad Shelly” and some “Partals” in morning Ragas. The styles of basic “Asa Di Vaar” were quite similar, but the “Shabad Tunes” were totally different in form and rendition.

Sant Sujan Singh did the one hour slot of “Shabad Kirtan” between 6:00am and 7:00am. Bhai Samund Singh followed him between 7:00am and 8:00am. After that Bhai Gurcharan Singh Avtar Singh did another half an hour long slot of “Kirtan” and the last slot was rendered by Bhai Santa Singh, who finished the special Diwan with “Kirtan” of “Sri Anand Sahib”.

Those were the days when some of the most knowledgeable listeners of “Gurbani Sangeet” from the birth place of Guru Nanak (Sri Nankana Sahib) and from other far flung places like Lyallpur, Montgomery, Rawalpindi and Peshawar were still alive. They all enjoyed the “Kirtan Darbar”. Daleep Chander Vedi was thrilled to hear them all. At the end of the session, the finest exponents of Sikh Religious Music exchanged their notes. Bhai Samund Singh made some very significant remarks. He told Sant Sujan Singh “What a fantastic musician you are and your style of Kirtan is very different from every one else before you. You have adopted the “Thumri” and “Qawwali” style of Patiala Gharana of classical music”. Bhai Samund Singh expressed the fear that after the death of Sant Sujan Singh, his style may also wither away. His observations have proved right. Bhai Samund Singh was all praise for Bhai Gurcharan Singh Avtar Singh and wished he had grooming in centuries old “Dhrupad Style”. Bhai Santa Singh was all praise for the culturing of Bhai Samund Singh’s voice. Every body agreed with Bhai Santa Singh. Bhai Avtar Singh remarked “Who can match the pitch of Bhai Santa Singh’s voice”. About Bhai Santa Singh, Bhai Samund Singh said”You have the unique ability to hide your classical credentials; to a lay man you are performing “Shabad Kirtan” in light “Reets”. With this every body agreed.

I am recording this story because these are small incidents that do deserve a mention when all the aspects of history of the Sikh community are documented.

E-mail:- harjapaujla@gmail.com

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