My readers have been asking me to continue with my autobiography “In quest of a Dream” which was being published in National Herald Tribune till a few months back. Previously this autobiography was being published in weekly installments. Before I move further with my story, it will be a good idea to reproduce the previously published installments on daily basis. It is hoped you will enjoy this commentary on the times we live in… GHULAM AKBAR
From Ayub Khan to Imran Khan
Youth is a folly; manhood a struggle; and old age a regret. This is the famous line with which Tolstoy had begun his autobiography.
This may please not be regarded as any comparison with the great Russian writer whose War And Peace, and Cossacks are regarded as immortal classics. But I do have a chauvinistic pretense to being a shade superior to the great man.
He was not a Muslim.He did not belong to that special community of mankind whom God had chosen to raise the flag of His Last Message and to spread it all over the world to ensure that the Words ‘God is Great’ echoed from the North to the South and from the East to the West.
It is fallacious to argue that there are many religions which all should be regarded as religions of God— and hence respected. If that argument has to be granted sanctity, we should also be prepared to ‘believe’ and state that there are many Gods as well— each having sent His own message to the mankind. How can one God be so fickle and mentally unstable that he would send a different message to different people at different times? (May God forgive me for this unavoidable argument).
If there is no God but God, and He cannot be self-contradictive, He simply has to be the Sender of only One Message.
The Message that came to Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus and to Mohammad (PBUH) was the same. God had ordained it so that His Last Prophet to mankind would remove all ‘adulterations’ ‘amendments’ and ‘additions’ that had been inducted in His Message.
We the Muslims therefore are in my opinion the flag-bearers of Allah’s Message in its original and final form.
If I am a Muslim, I can’t think otherwise. Thinking otherwise will be defiance of Allah and rejection of the truthfulness of His Book.
If I defy Allah’s Word and still make pretenses to being a Muslim, I will be a proven hypocrite. Which I am not. I am a Muslim.
And these memoirs of mine are memoirs of a Muslim who might have sinned, might have committed follies, might have acted in a way not in accordance with the principles laid down in Allah’s Book—but who takes immense pride in his identity as a follower of Mohammad (PBUH) the last Prophet of Allah.
I thought of remembering Tolstoy’s line while taking up this task of recalling the events that have shaped my life ever since my age of comprehension began. I substantially agree with the first two parts of Tolstoy’s statement. But with the last I don’t.
I have no regrets. I have lived my life according to my own desires, my own choices, my own beliefs and my own commitments. Allah off course invisibly and unconsciously Guided me into the Direction I went. It was Allah who put this crazy thought into my mind that I wouldn’t need a Degree in my life to build a career for myself, to make my living and to fulfill the longings that had gone into the making of my heart and my soul.
It was in June 1961 that I boarded a Lahore-bound train from Hyderabad Sindh, and told myself I had enough of University education, and needed no more of Shakespeare of Milton of Emile Bronte of Wordsworth of Shelley of Keats of Byron of Hardy Dickens and of Dryden to fire my resolve, and potential to make a career in journalism.
It was in July 1961when I was exactly twenty two that I joined Daily Kohistan Lahore as Apprentice Sub-Editor whose initial assignment for a month was to read proofs.
But do I begin my story from that point of time—the day I joined Daily Kohistan and had my first working day in a building that was situated between the two cinema houses on the Mcleod Road—and that once had housed a man of immortal dimensions — Allama Iqbal (RA)?
Or from that cold day of December 1956 when I alongwith any friends Syed Roshan Zameer Rizvi and Mohammad Tariq Khan celebrated the nationalisation of Suez Canal by Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt? Or from the 14th of July 1958 when we went ecstatic with joy at the news that General Qasim had overthrown the regime of King Faisal and Prime Minister Noori al Saeed in Baghdad— thereby dealing a huge blow to the British/US interests in the middle east?
Or should the 7th of October 1958 be the day from which I begin this story—the day that had sent an era of palatial intrigues packing, and which, at that of time had looked to me, and to many young ones of my generation, a long-yearned-for turning point of our country’s heart-rending history?
Or should I recall that cold day of the same month when I received a telegram from my uncle Nasim Hijazi that said: “I will be going to Karachi by Khyber Mail next Saturday. Meet me at Hyderabad Station”?
If I had been a celebrity (of whichever category or kind) I could easily have begun these memoirs from my childhood— probably from a day in March 1947 when I , in company of my school-fellows had marched through the streets of Batala—chanting “Lae Kar Rahein Gae Pakistan” and Quaid-i-Azam Zindabad?
But I have to make my story readable too. So I begin it from one of the most eventful, tumultuous and tearful days of my life— a day which shaped my political beliefs that went a long way in building my rage at and against the Ayub regime.
It was a summer day in 1963. I was then Executive Editor of Daily Kohistan which I had joined only two years earlier as a proof-reader. It was then the second largest circulated newspaper of the country—next only to Daily Jang and well ahead of Daily Nawa -i -Waqt and Imroze. Daily Mashriq at that point of time had just made its appearance on the Newsstands. It was Daily Kohistan’s main competitor.
When I remember the events of that day even today, a chill runs down my spire.
