Islamabad diary
Muslim rule in Hindustan was mainly Turkish rule - from Mahmud to Babur all
Turkish conquerors or rulers - interspersed with episodes of Afghan rule as
under the Lodhis and Sher Shah Suri. But we the denizens of the Fortress of
Islam - the confused begetters of holy enterprises like Jehad-e-Afghanistan -
what have we in common with those warriors?
They were full-blooded men marching at the head of conquering armies...Muslims
to be sure but with none of the false piety or hypocrisy which often seems to
be the leading currency of our Islamic Republic. Come to think of it, none of
them proclaimed their empires as Islamic Empires. Confident in the strength of
their arms they felt no obligation or necessity to issue declarations about
their rectitude or their championship of the faith.
The best or greatest of them were open about themselves. They maintained large
harems, kept slave girls, married as often as they liked and when it came to
imbibing, those given to this sin made no secret of it. With our weasel-like
and snivelling ways - doing things
behind doors and keeping up appearances in public - do we at all look like the descendants of Mahmud and Babur and Akbar?
What to talk of anything else, centuries before gay liberation came to San Francisco those
inclined in that direction were fairly matter-of-fact about that too. So many
times in his memoirs Babur referring to various chieftains or fighting men says
of them that they
had "vicious" tendencies - meaning to say that they were inclined toswing
that way (although Babur uses words more direct than this).
Babur, however, is in a class by himself. Could ever a prince be more open
about his foibles? We all know that the Babur-nama is full of references to
drinking parties. Apart from being a warrior and a poet, Babur was an aesthete
with a discerning regard for the finer things of life. Wherever he went, he
planted gardens - I think it can quite justifiably be said that the father of
the modern Hindustani garden is Babur. 'I ordered a char-bagh to be laid...I
ordered a platform to be built because the view from this spot was so wonderful
to look at': the memoirs are replete with such descriptions. And whenever a
valley or a prospect catches the Padishah's fancy he can't resist a drinking party.
Or it could even be an occasion to partake of maajun, a favourite with this
prince of princes. (I haven't been able to find out whether maajun is from
charas or opium.)
Sometimes these drinking parties go on for hours. The Padishah drinks at this
chieftain's place and then they move to the abode of some other companion. And
so many times it happens that they march at the crack of dawn - Babur
throughout calls it "shoot of dawn" - against a fortress or an
opposing army. Tough men...the word hangover does not
occur in these recollections.
And who can forget that famous passage about Babur's infatuation when in
Andijan (near Ferghana) for the bazaar-boy, Baburi. There is nothing to beat
Babur's own words: "In those leisurely days I discovered in myself a
strange inclination, nay! as the verse says, 'I
maddened and afflicted myself for a boy in the camp-bazar, his very name,
Baburi, fitting in....From time to time Baburi used to come to my presence but
out of modesty and bashfulness, I could never look straight at him; how then
could I make conversation (ikhtilat) and recital (hikayat)? In my joy and
agitation I could not thank him for coming; how was it possible for me to
reproach him with going away?...One day, during that time of desire and passion
when I was going with companions along a lane and suddenly met him face to
face, I got into such a state of confusion that I almost went right off. To look
straight at him or to put words together was impossible...Sometimes like the
madmen, I used to wander alone over hill and plain; sometimes I betook myself
to gardens and the suburbs, lane by lane."
Babur broke his drinking cups and forswore the use of wine before the battle
against Rana Sangha at Kanwaha. But he keeps pining for what he has renounced.
In a letter to Humayun: "...in truth the longing and craving for a wine
party has been infinite and endless for two years past, so much so that
sometimes the craving for wine brought me to the verge of tears...If had with
equal associates and boon companions, wine and company are pleasant things; but
with whom canst thou now associate? With whom drink wine?"
Is there anything in the culture, the mores and values of our republic in
common with the sentiment expressed in these lines? We draw a direct line with
the Timurids and say that we come from them. As we say in Urdu: chota moonh,
barhi baat. Kahan woh, kahan hum. Bhutto made the admission in a public meeting
that "mein thori see peeta hoon" and the maulvis and religious
parties went after him. Would the Timurids have tolerated anything like our
religious parties? Would they have countenanced any of their preaching?
Muslims ruled Hindustan for well over 600
years. During all this time did they feel the need to proclaim anything like
the ideology of Islam? Did the Slave Kings or the Timurids fall back on
anything like the Objectives Resolution?
They lived by the sword and when their sword-arm weakened their empire declined
and from a master race they became a subject race. And Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in
the days of their subjection and decline taught them the virtues of obedience:
"...reflect on the doings of your ancestors, and be not unjust to the
British Government to whom God has given the rule of India; and look honestly
and see what is necessary for it to do to maintain its empire and its hold on
the country."
Pakistan
was born out of this milk-laced-with-water philosophy.
The spirit of Sir Syed, unless I am grossly mistaken, would be at home in Pakistan. Sir
Syed would have been a great one for our pro-American alliances and for the
Anglophilia of the chattering classes. But the spirit of Babur...it wouldn't
know what to make of the Pakistani scene or the Pakistani conversation.
Shouldn't the Babur-nama be compulsory reading for all Pakistani students of
history? The history we are taught is a distorted history, events and
personalities painted in black-and-white and too many false gods and false
heroes. What this history does above all is to make numb if not kill the
critical faculty. You stop asking questions. You start accepting too many
things on trust. You lay yourself open to the acceptance of outright nonsense.
Every society has its lunatic fringe. Every society has its share of rightward-leaning
evangelists. But in societies where critical thinking is alive a fringe remains
a fringe, part of the mosaic of society. It doesn't become the bishop of the
dominant discourse.
The Tablighi Jamaat is not peculiar to us. Something like it is there in every
society, Christian, Hindu and Judaic. Our salvationists are of course adherents
of Islam. Hindu salvationists do obeisance before their own deities. And
Christian fundamentalists subscribe to their own creed. But in all three
examples the rigid mindset is the same.
The Babur-nama would be prohibited reading in a madressah as it would be in a
Christian seminary or a Hindu dharamsala. The priest as much as the mullah
would feel ill at ease before words such as these: "A few purslane trees
were in the utmost autumn beauty. On dismounting seasonable food was set out.
The vintage was the cause! Wine was drunk! A sheep was ordered brought from the
road and made into kababs.
We amused ourselves by setting fire to branches of holm-oak...There was drinking
till the Sun's decline; we then rode off. People in our party had become very
drunk..."
Is there anything in us worthy of this description? Would the Timurids recognise
in us anything of their legacy? So why don't we come down to more level ground?
Why don't we build a more prosaic, a slightly more rational republic, and leave
the building of fortresses, whether of Islam or of ideology, to hands stronger
than ours?
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