I have no pretenses to make, to being a historian. Nor am I a journalist in the mould of those who have sought to dominate, and occasionally succeeded in dominating the national scene either through their partisan activisim or their orchestrated heroics. In the sixties I headed the editorial teams of such frontline newspapers as Daily Kohistan and Daily Mashriq. I launched the country’s top weekly (Mussawar) in the dying years of that decade. In the seventies and eighties I was known more for my advertising skills than my journalistic past. Some of the leading names in Pakistan’s political scenario found their way on to the list of the clients I had the distinction of serving. This distinction traveled through the nineties with me when I rediscovered my commitment to the world of journalism. I am enjoying too many identities at a time to earn a place of singular distinction in any arena. I am also known to have written novels of all kinds But ‘He Was Not Hanged’ written in 1988 was not a novel. As hadn’t been ‘Jhoot Ka Peghambar’ (1977). Z.A. Bhutto figured prominently in both of them but for different reasons. In 1995 was published that book of mine which had no ‘title’. Commenting on this book BB Sahiba wrote to me: “I assure you, you will have a title for the next book you write.
The nineties are history now. And as I said I am not a historian. Yet whatever I wrote in the late eighties and the early nineties cannot fail to catch the attention of historians. A lot has changed since then. Yet nothing much seems to have changed beneath the surface. The same culture of greed. The same politics of acrimony. The same lust for power. The same taste for intrigue. The same pretenses to patriotism. The same patronization of mediocrity. The same deification of hypocrisy. The same legitimization of corruption. And the same fascination with self-centred value-system.
So I believe most of my past writings are even more relevant today. Didn’t George Orwell write “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”?
He was so very very right. It is true, historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked. But firstly I am not a historian. Secondly I seldom answer questions. I raise them.
Why should we continue to tread the path on which walked those who may not yet have found their graves, but have been pronounced dead?
(This Column was first published on 27-03-2007)
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