Whats Relation Pervez Musharraf With Javed Akhtar Family

 

More visas: the route to peace and ameliorate understanding
Tavleen Singh

A T the Prime Government minister�s lunch for Gen Pervez Musharraf I ran into Javed Akhtar. For some reason whenever nosotros come across conversation usually turns to matters related to secularism and communalism, Hindus and Muslims, and this time was no exception. He had seen some of the television programmes on Islamic republic of pakistan I did recently for Aaj Tak under the championship of Ek Safarnama. In them I interviewed a large number of ordinary Pakistanis many of whom expressed clearly their hatred for India. Some went to the extent of maxim when I asked that they had been taught in history classes at school about Bharat that they had heard mainly bad things. In the words of a young homo I talked to in Lahore, �about Hindus what we know is best expressed in the maxim baghal mein churri, munh mein Ram Ram.

There was more stuff forth similar lines and Javed felt I had got it wrong and that there was, in fact, more hatred for Pakistan among Indians than the other manner around. �Proof lies in the success of the picture Gadar� he said �which is one of the biggest hits ever and is a movie that is totally anti-Pakistan�. The film has been attacked by Muslim groups in several Indian cities and even Muslim academics accept reviled information technology as an inflammatory and unsafe film. Since I accept the deepest respect for Javed Akhtar�s views � even when they do not agree with mine � I fabricated information technology a point on a complimentary evening after the Agra summit to go and encounter it. This is non a picture review merely let me begin with a small comment: the starting time one-half is quite good � by the standards of Bollywood � and the 2d half and so utterly dreary that I left earlier the end.

The moving picture is indeed securely anti-Pakistan but at no stage is it, at to the lowest degree in my view, anti-Muslim which makes the anger of Indian Muslims slightly hard to understand.

Countries that consider each other enemies as a result of wars and disputes commonly finish up trying to tell the story from their own betoken of view. We only have to look at the number of anti-German war films that even so get made in the Due west of know this to be truthful. Then if some moving-picture show-maker in Mumbai makes a film most the terrible violence of partition from an Indian perspective I personally cannot understand why Indian Muslims should observe it offensive. When they do, they provide grist to the communal mill of the likes of Bal Thackeray because surely whatever their faith their loyalties in a state of affairs of war or conflict must be with India. And so why the fuss over an anti-Pakistan film? Lagaan, besides a huge hit, is a very anti-British film and in that location have any number of Hindi films that have demonised the Chinese.

Muslim academics and thinkers debate that Gadar comes at an unfortunate time because with friendship and peace in the air (all the same ephemerally) it is not a proficient moment to reinforce bad feelings about Pakistan. Unfortunately, bad feelings be because of Partition and because of fifty years of acrimony, enmity and iii wars, not counting Kargil. They exist not just among the semi-literate and the uninformed but among those who count among the stance-makers in both countries and even among those who make policy.

At the same luncheon at which I ran into Javed I found myself seated beside a senior official from the Islamic republic of pakistan Foreign Part and opposite Farooq Abdullah and Dilip Kumar. After everyone had exchanged the usual pleasantries Farooq, addressing out Pakistani guest, said: �When you insist upon Kashmir coming to Pakistan y'all should remember that there are 18 crore Muslims in India outside Kashmir and you need to call back about what could happen to them�. The official from Pakistan chose to say cypher only the following evening at the banquet the Governor of Uttar Pradesh have for the Pakistanis in Agra the subject came upwards over again at the table I was seated at.

This fourth dimension in front of some other official from the Pakistani Foreign Office who, when I repeated what Farooq had said, took slight umbrage and said, �Well, that is blackmail�. No information technology is not simply we cannot become abroad from the possibility of terrifying communal violence if India were cleaved upward one time more in the proper noun of Islam. The signs are already there. In my mail I routinely become literature from fundamentalist organisations � both Hindu and Muslim � and last week received a pamphlet whose title was: Are you aware of the issue of Islamic Fundamentalism? Below this menacing championship came a long list of atrocities allegedly perpetrated past Muslim mobs during Partition along with blackness and white photographs of the remains of massacres and desecrated temples. If Gadar is considered dangerous and inflammatory it is hard to find the advisable words to describe this kind of pamphlet. Many like it are in circulation simply they are non one-half as dangerous and inflammatory equally the sudden arrival of Islamic fundamentalism in the villages is of Bharat.

Last week I met a lady from Rajasthan, who had been staunchly opposed to militant Hinduism all her life but who said she was now no longer certain if she had been right. The change in her mental attitude came, she said, from the fact that in remote Rajasthani villages there had been in the past ten years or and then a sudden mushrooming of mosques and madrassas. Muslims and Hindus in these parts had ever lived together in peace, she said, but now there were tensions and clear attempts to brand religious and cultural differences.

Similar stories come from other states like Madhya Pradesh and even distant Tamil Nadu. There appear to be huge amounts of money suddenly available to build spanking, new mosques and print Islamic literature. There would be cypher wrong with this if along with it did not come up clear attempts to make Muslims think of themselves every bit belonging not merely to a different religion only to a unlike culture.

Far from discouraging either sectarianism or fundamentalism politicians from all sides encourage it because vote banking company politics are always the easiest kind. So, while our �secular� political leaders brownnose to the Muslim sense of exclusivity our �communal� ones encourage Hindus to call back of Muslims as somehow fundamentally anti-national.

It is a situation fraught with volatility and tension and it does not help when Muslims attack cinema houses because they consider a picture anti-Pakistan. Having said that let me as well say, as I take done before, that one of the all-time ways to lessen tensions on the subcontinent would be to make it easier for ordinary Pakistanis to come up to Bharat. If visas have not become easier to become it is because our officials insist upon reciprocity. Nosotros tin wait forever for that, what we need right at present is the courage to take some steps unilaterally so that even without a solution to the Kashmir trouble we tin start moving towards peace not just with Pakistan only with ourselves.

A proponent of Republic of india-Pakistan friendship
Syed Nooruzzaman

H Due east would dearest to come to India to participate in mushairas (poetic symposiums), specially the one held annually at Ambala under the auspices of the Shaam-due east-Bahaar Trust, now a thing of the past. He had friends and admirers on both sides of the Indo-Pak divide. Whenever he was in India he would, every bit a matter of principle, talk of establishing friendly relations between the two neighbours. He was Qateel Shifai, a towering poet of Pakistan. In the 2nd week of July he was snatched abroad from our midst by the icy hands of death at the age of 82.

At mushairas his admirers would invariably force him to recite his popular compositions twice or thrice and he would never disappoint them. He had a singled-out style.

Qateel spent his entire life propagating the message of peace, friendship and brotherhood through his ghazals and songs----ii popular forms of Urdu poetry. And he had equal mastery over both forms. As the Jang editorial on him says, with his death has concluded the era of creative vocal-writing in the subcontinent.

Qateel was a front-ranking poet like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and belonged to the progressive school. Beingness the most sought-subsequently lyricist in Pakistan'south film industry, he penned over ii,500 lyrics and won at least 20 awards.

For over half a century he strode like a colossus in the earth of literature. He had a paralytic attack earlier he died. He enriched poetry immeasurably, only had little to spend on his proper medication. Even in this historic period when lyricists make millions!

Facade of freedom

Always since Gen Pervez Musharraf usurped power in October, 1999, information technology was generally believed that the armed services ruler was not resentful of what was being reported or commented upon by his state's newspapers. The belief was false. He allowed printing freedom so long every bit it suited his interests. This has been proved by the punishment meted out to the brilliant Chief Reporter of Nawa-i-Waqt, a mass circulation and respected Urdu daily of Pakistan.

Those who watched the much-hyped press conference addressed by the General-turned-President terminal Friday would remember that the brave announcer, Masood Malik, had tried to convey the bulletin through his highly meaningful question that diplomacy was not the forte of a military man. Or in the area of diplomacy a politician has certain obvious advantages owing to his training in comparison to a military ruler. Which meant that if President Musharraf had been a politician, he would have come out with something like the Lahore Declaration or the Simla Agreement afterwards his parleys with Prime number Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The question reflected the reporter'southward perception and he wanted the General's stance or reaction on the subject. A commonwealth-loving Caput of Government would have but given his reaction, even if the question was inconvenient, and the matter would have ended so and there. In the present case, information technology did not happen like that. First the General got angry. The expression on his face said everything. What he said in Urdu in response to Malik's question could exist translated like this: "Are you joking with me? Y'all are talking of politicians. Political rulers did not accept the guts to discuss Kashmir with India. There is no mention of Kashmir in the Simla Understanding. Kashmir finds mention in the Lahore Declaration possibly but once in an insignificant manner...."

The answer did not terminate at that place. When the Islamabad conference concluded, one of the General's loyalists running the Ministry of Information approached the newspaper direction, which also owns The Nation, to show Main Reporter Malik the door. Or if his job was to be saved, he must be demoted to propitiate the ruler of the day.

Malik has been punished and demoted as sub-editor, but he remains a journalist that he was. Now he has to his credit a great achievement. He has exposed General Musharraf'due south facade of being a lover of democracy. The Full general may be annihilation but not a democrat.

The Malik episode has also exposed the weaknesses of the press in Pakistan. The media has taken it lying down at a fourth dimension when it could have got plenty back up for espousing the crusade of press freedom despite functioning under military machine rule. What a shameful scenario!

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Source: https://m.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010728/edit.htm

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