Ghulam Akbar
I remember an interesting episode that had occurred before my journey from Shikarpur to Hyderabad. After my Board examinations I had got so busy with cricket and other-extracurricular activities that I had not heeded to a call from the school administration to go there and collect the prizes I had been given for my ‘outstanding’ feats.
When I finally had to go there to get the required school-leaving certificate for admission in the college, I had to face the cold anger of the Headmaster… Hafiz Sahib.
“You are not going to get the school-leaving certificate and marks-sheet so easily Ghulam Akbar. You have insulted this school’s decorum and dignity by refusing to come to receive the prizes that we intended to award you,” said Hafiz Sahib furiously.
“I am so sorry sir, ” I replied dejectedly.” “I was not well.”
“You were not famous for lying my boy. I was so angry with you I intended to punish you for showing this disgusting unconcern for your school, but seeing repentance on your face I can’t help recalling your excellent record here. Never insult your teachers this way again.”
“Sir I am proud of having been taught by you—” I instantly replied. He looked at me grimly; then stood up and patted me affectionately on the back.” You are forgiven. I will remember you as the pride of this school. Go and collect your certificate and prize money from the office, and don’t forgot to meet each of your teachers to express your gratitude towards them.”
“Sir I will do it; I said.
I did follow his advice, and met every teacher before I bid goodbye to Government High School Shikarpur where I had passed my formative years.
It was there that in 1954 while I was attending a class, a school orderly had appeared to tell the teacher that a man called NasimHijazi was waiting on the roadside to meet his nephew Ghulam Akbar.
I have vivid memories of what had followed. The whole school had virtually thronged around Uncle’s car. I was wonderstruck to witness with my own eyes the popularity of the man who was my mother’s younger brother. He was driving from Rohjan (Balochistan) to Rohri with Mir Murad Khan Jamali, and on his way had come to see his sister. On learning that I was in the school he had come to see me.
Needless to say he had harboured great affection and love for me from my very childhood.
“Remember Akbar Shah, you have not to be the second best in life. You have to be my real successor, “I remember these words of his when he had come out of the car to embrace me. Akbar Shah was the name he had given me from my very early days, and I was to remain his Akbar Shah till the very end.
In the Government College Hyderabad I was to share a room in the hostel with my school days friend Rafique Ahmad Siddiquei, and another boy from Badin.
I was not to become an outstanding pre-engineering student, because I was already reading books like “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle) by Hitler and “Theory and Practice of Socialism” by Bertrand Russel.
Mein Kampf was a book that was to have a tremendous impact on my mind. It was published in 1925 when people had hardly heard of even the name of Adolf Hitler. Infact when the book was first published, it was universally ignored for the simple reason that Germany lay in ruins and ignominy at that time as a consequence of the First World War.
But soon the world was to know about Mein Kampf. Here was a book that told the story of Germany of 1930s prehand.
The most interesting event that I remember of those early days of my college life was a donkey race held during our annual games. The Chief Guest in those games was Mushtaq Mohammad Gurmani the Governor of West Pakistan.
There were six participants in that donkey race. Each donkey had a rider. The winner was to be the one who would cross the set distance first, without getting out of the boundaries drawn for each track.
Only one rider managed to do it. The others went out of the track due to their haste. Or simply fell down in a vain effort to control the donkeys. The one who won the race covered the distance foot-by-foot through sustained control and speed.
At the end of the games, the Governor spoke: “As you saw, to win a race, extreme cooperation is necessary between the rider and the donkey. This is also the case in a government, which cannot be successful unless there is complete understanding between the rulers and the people.”
I couldn’t help smiling to myself at this allegory. I leaned towards my friend sitting close by, and whispered: “So people are the donkey and the government the rider.”
This analogy or allegory has never left my mind, and I don’t think the late Gurmani was off the mark in comparing the people with the donkeys—specially in the system called democracy.
1956 was an important year for me in very many ways. It was a year in which Pakistan had become a Republic—an Islamic Republic to be exact. It was a year in which a grand experiment towards national integration was made through One-Unit in the Western part of the country. Unfortunately no steps towards autonomous city or local governments were conceived and taken to make the experiment successful. No one had the vision to understand that self-governance had become the order of the day the worldover, and was the only effective measure to counter the sense of deprivation that the formation of the One-Unit ultimately caused.
1956 was also the year when I fell in love with the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt. He became fourth of my ‘modern times’ heroes, the previous three being Jinnah, AtaTurk and Hitler. Mao at that time had yet to find access to my innermost processes of adoration.
When Gamal Abdul Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, he made history. From then on, the Egypt’s revolutionary leader, a supporter of non-alignment became one of the most important leaders in the Third World. On a par with Nehru of India and Tito of Yugoslavia.
The symbolism of the canal’s nationalization was tremendous. For the first time, a former colonized country had managed to regain its economic independence. Nasser had become the champion of the Arab World. He decided to address nations directly, totally disregarding the leaders of the ‘reactionary’ regimes. Nothing seemed to stop him.
It was in those days that I remember an interview of Nasser had appeared in an issue of Life, one of the four magazines that I used to read nearly regularly—the others being Reader’s Digest Newsweek and Time.
Infact Life’s seniormost editor had travelled himself, to Cairo to interview Nasser.
A few questions and answers I still remember. Unfortunately I don’t have the habit of maintaining a diary or notes. I have always relied heavily on my memory.
In a question regarding Bandung Conference, Nasser had replied. “Non-aligned countries have a role to play. But I don’t find any sense in China and India going along together for long. They are, for the simple reason of their geopolitical and strategic position alone, logical adversaries. I don’t find any future for Hindi-Chinese brotherhood slogans.”
In reply to another question, Nasser said: “It is unlikely that Pakistan and India will ever find peace in their relationship. Their case is even worse than that of Arabs and Israel. My political acumen says that Pakistan and China are unlikely not to form a lasting geo-political and stratetigically important bond in near future. This will happen despite Pakistan’s huge reliance on the West.”
Nasser’s words were to prove to be prophetic.
Nasser was a moving orator too. I had grown fond of reading about him in the Suez Canal war days.
Before he adopted Arab Nationalism as his philosophy, Nasser had flirted very convincingly with the concept of Universal Islamism.
In his speech on the occasion of his pilgrimage to Makkah as head of an Egyptian delegation some years earlier, he had said: I am looking forward to an era when this place will be the headquarters of the World of Islam—the seat of Islamic Unity. I have visions of Makkah becoming the Capital of the United Nations of Islam where scholars, politicians and scientists from all the Muslim countries will assemble every year to forge common policies, and common goals.” This aspect of Nasser’s personality was not to find tangible political expression—largely due to the fact that the West had sucked in the Islamic World as allies in its confrontation with the Godless Soviet Union. Another speech of Nasser that had a huge impact on my mind and thinking processes was about Social Justice. “It is not the Will of God,” he had said, “that Riches be hereditary and Poverty be hereditary, that Health be hereditary and Disease be hereditary, that Privilege of Education be hereditary and Fate of Ignorance be hereditary and that the Right to rule be hereditary and the Indignity of being Subjects be hereditary.”