WHEN DREAMS LEAD TO DISILLUSIONMENT—-(20)
FROM THE FAILED REVOLUTION OF FIELD MARSHAL AYUB KHAN
TO THE PROMISE TODAY OF THE EMERGENCE OF NEW PAKISTAN
FROM THE DASHED EXPECTATIONS OF OVER FIVE DECADES.
TO THE SURGE OF NEW HOPES TAKING BIRTH TODAY.
THIS IS MY STORY.
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
READ FROM TUESDAY THE 13TH OF NOVEMBER 2018 IN INSTALMENTS.
MEANWHILE THE ECHOES OF THE HEART WILL CONTINUE FROM THE PAST.
GHULAM AKBAR
20—People, The Donkeys & Leaders, The Riders
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 Struggles) by Hitler and “The 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: “ 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 analogy. I leaned towards my friend sitting close by, and whispered: “So people are the donkey and the government the rider.”
This analogy 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.
