Last week, numerous female students in Karachi spoke out on social media against sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour that they have had to face in schools at the hands of their peers, teachers and administrators.
The wave of first-hand testimonies seemed to crystallise into a demand by the students to have proper sexual harassment policies in schools.
This would be an opportune moment to look at the laws that exist in the country in this regard, where they fall short, and what can be done to plug the gaps.
Subjecting children to adult ordeals
There are various federal and provincial laws in Pakistan to promote children's well being, but legislation to protect children from sexual abuse in schools is lacking.
Currently, a child who has been a victim of sexual harassment or molestation at school by a peer or by their teacher or caretaker only has recourse to generic provisions of criminal law against the direct perpetrator of such an act.
The Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) applies to the entire country and it addresses sexual harassment in a broader spectrum. Section 509 of the PPC criminalises sexual harassment and sexual advances by any person against a victim, independent of setting.
Recently, through the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act of 2016, Section 377-A of the PPC was inserted to criminalise sexual abuse on persons less than 18 years of age.
Therefore, whenever a child suffers sexual abuse in the confines of their school, they have no choice but to file a claim directly against the accused under the provisions of criminal law and procedure.
Never mind the emotional trauma underlying reporting such a claim, a child (through a representative) would have to lodge an FIR under the applicable provision of the PPC and/or provincial law on sexual abuse at the police station in order to charge the accused.
Additionally, the child would ordinarily record their statement under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The FIR would have to be promptly lodged without delay, otherwise the case would be prejudiced.
Furthermore, documentary and/or ocular evidence would generally be required to validate the contents of the claim.
This would be followed by a full-fledged trial, in which evidence would be recorded, witnesses and experts would be called upon and cross-examined to verify the contents of the claims.
The victims, through the trial, would essentially undergo the ordeal of suffering losing their privacy, having their credibility challenged and potentially become targets of abuse and stigmatisation.
All the while, the one party who in theory should be most responsible for ensuring the child's safety is spared by the operations of the aforementioned laws: the child’s school and its administration.
Unprotected children
There is no particular provision of law that criminalises neglect or oversight by caretakers in sexual harassment against children.
At best, a school may be culpable under Section 328-A of the PPC (also recently inserted by the legislature), whereby whoever does an act of omission that has the potential to harm the child by causing physical or psychological injury may be punished with imprisonment of up to one year.
However, the evidentiary requirements would be the same as above, and the victim would have to undergo the torment of criminal proceedings and trial to substantiate their claims.
Civil remedies against a school for negligence can range from filing a claim for negligent hiring or vicarious liability. Such civil causes of actions are rarely filed.
Schools are workplaces too
The one legislative instrument that keeps in view the ground realities of reporting sexual harassment and accommodates victims is the Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act of 2010 (Workplace Harassment Act).
The Workplace Harassment Act specifically addresses the issue of women (and men) in the workplace facing harassment in an abusive working environment.
Section 2(h) of the Act defines harassment as "any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favours or other verbal or written communication or physical conduct of a sexual nature."
The Act provides a comprehensive system on how workplace harassment should be reported and dealt with internally by an organisation. "Organisation" includes educational institutes such as schools.
Every organisation within the ambit of the Act is required to form an internal committee to review and adjudicate complaints of harassment by an employer and/or employee against an employee.
The Act goes a long way in shielding victims from the mental turmoil of providing detailed proof by shifting the evidentiary burden of ascertaining the facts upon the Inquiry Committee and the accused instead of the victim.
The Act empowers victims with the tools to confront the offender and provides a level playing field, unlike the marred criminal trial proceedings under the Criminal Procedure Code and the Evidence Act.
Sexual harassment in the workplace, however, is not confined to the world of adults. Children also experience harassment and abuse in their workplace: their schools.
Unfortunately, the Workplace Harassment Act does not extend its procedural cover to children at schools.
Without statutory law regulating schools in this regard, the current model of schools acting on their own whims provides aesthetic relief at best.
This gives a false sense of improvement and is largely unenforceable, thereby not making a classroom a more secure place for children.
Need of the hour
In Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, the United States Supreme Court held that a student deserves protection from sexual harassment by a teacher just as an employee does from harassment by a supervisor.
Public school students in the US who are sexually abused by school persons have the option of bringing a claim of sexual harassment under statutes normally reserved for workplace harassment against employees.
Jurisprudence, or better yet legislative action akin to the Workplace Harassment Act, needs to be implemented in schools.
This would not only combat harassment against children in educational institutions, but also protect children from the stigma of going through a full-fledged trial proceeding, which often due to socio-economic, legal and cultural factors ends up empowering the status quo instead of providing justice.
A central purpose of law is to protect the weak from the strong. Unfortunately, we have neglected the weakest class — children — in their most vulnerable setting: school.
Graphics by Zoha Bundally
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The village of Dera Chahal, named after a historical gurdwara located in the middle of the village, is being encroached upon from all sides.
Located in Lahore district, on the Bedian Road that once connected Lahore with Amritsar, the village was far removed from bustling Lahore city not that long ago.
But the extension of the Defence Housing Authority into the area has seen the city expand onto the agricultural lands of Dera Chahal and other nearby villages, some of which have been in existence for hundreds of years.
The subsequent development of the area brought this particular gurdwara into the limelight in 2011, when Gulab Singh, a Pakistani Sikh working with the traffic police, filed a case against Asif Hashmi, chairman of the Evacuee Trust Property Board, accusing him of illegally selling gurdwara land to property developers.
Created in the 1960s, the board is a government organisation responsible for the maintenance of non-Muslim property that had been abandoned during Partition. In January, the Supreme Court of Pakistan found Hashmi guilty.
This gurdwara is one of the most important Sikh shrines in Pakistan. It stands on the spot where the maternal house of the first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, once stood. It is believed that Bebe Nanki, his older sister, was born here. This is why the gurdwara is also referred to as Gurdwara Bebe Nanki.
Rising from the middle of the village, the gurdwara's white dome is visible from afar. Abandoned in 1947, like several other structures, it fell into disrepair.
It was renovated on the orders of interim Prime Minister Meraj Khalid in the mid 1990s. Subsequently, the gurdwara was opened up for Sikh pilgrims, many of whom come from India to participate in various religious festivals.
The story of Meherban
There is one particular historical tradition that asserts that Guru Nanak was not born at Talwindi (present day Nankana Sahib) but at Dera Chahal. This is asserted in the Janamsakhis (literally, birth stories) of Nanak, written by Meherban.
Meherban was the son and successor of Prithi Chand, the eldest son of Guru Ram Das, the fourth Sikh guru. Traditional Sikh sources refer to Prithi Chand and his followers as "mina" or deceitful for he tried to hijack the spiritual authority of the guru from his younger brother, whom Guru Ram Das had appointed as his successor.
That brother was later known as Guru Arjan Dev.
Prithi Chand challenged the appointment of his younger brother. Several anecdotes recall how he even tried killing Guru Arjan Dev’s son, Hargobind, who became the sixth guru.
Some of these anecdotes also lay the blame of Guru Arjan Dev’s execution in 1606 at the hands of Mughal Emperor Jahangir, on the connivance of Prithi Chand.
The Minas presented a formidable challenge to the authority of the Sikh gurus during the lifetime of Guru Arjan Dev and even after. After having been exiled from Ramdaspur (Amritsar), Prithi Chand settled in a village called Hair, a few kilometres from Dera Chahal.
There, he constructed a shrine to rival the authority of Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple). Remains of the shrine are still visible outside the village, which also lies on the Bedian Road.
After Prithi Chand died, his son Meherban became the head of the movement.
One of Meherban’s most important achievements was his writing of the Janamsakhi of Guru Nanak — the guru's biography as narrated through tales of his miracles. The former Sikh gurus were to play an important role for both Prithi Chand and Meherban, who attempted to appropriate the legacy of Guru Nanak.
However Meherban’s writings were not confined to the first Sikh guru. He also wrote a hagiography of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and a commentary on Hindu deities including Ram. Some of these early writings, part of the broader Sikh culture, reflect its syncretism.
Traditional Sikh authorities assert that Guru Arjan Dev began the compilation of the Adi Granth — the first holy book of Sikh scriptures — as a reaction to Meherban's writings, as he did not want Meherban to claim Guru Nanak's legacy for himself.
A 19th century text suggests that the Minas got hold of Ramdaspur and continued exerting influence on the city till after the death of Harji, the son of Meherban.
This is when the Mina movement lost its vitality and was evicted from Ramdaspur by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last guru. The Mina movement subsequently split into several groups until its followers were incorporated into the broader Sikh community towards the close of the 19th century.
Diverse Sikh religious movements
While orthodox Sikh literature asserts that the relationship between the followers of Guru Arjan Dev and Prithi Chand was antagonistic, a few other sources challenge this belief.
For instance, one of these sources records how Guru Hargobind met Meherban after his release from the Gwalior jail — where he had been imprisoned by Emperor Jahangir – to convey his condolences on the death of Prithi Chand. The two later entered the Harmandir Sahib together.
There is another conventionally-held belief that Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, was locked out of the Harmandir Sahib at the time the Minas controlled it. The guru is said to have waited it out at a spot near the Harmandir Sahib, where Gurdwara Thara Sahib now stands.
But another tradition challenges this narrative. It asserts that instead of being locked out of the shrine, Guru Tegh Bahadur sat at Thara Sahib out of his own will so that he could be greeted by Harji and his son.
After the formation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, the Minas were referred to by Sikh scholars as Panj Mel — one of the five dissenting groups with whom the Khalsa were forbidden to engage. But there is historical evidence to suggest that members of the movement continued to play an important political role in the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839).
These various eclectic religious movements remained part of the broader Sikh community well into the 19th century.
Thus even when the formation of the Khalsa formalised the Sikh community to a certain degree, several distinct groups continued to be a part of the broader Sikh fold.
For example, thousands of Nanak-Panthi Hindus can still be found in Sindh. Another example of these distinct communities are the followers of Sahib Singh Bedi, a descendant of Guru Nanak, who during the coronation of Ranjit Singh, put a tilak on his forehead.
Bedi’s descendants settled in the village of Bedian — close to Dera Chahal — giving the village and the road its name.
A greater uniformity seeped into the Sikh community towards the end of the 19th century, with the beginning of the Singh Sabha Movement, which was similar to Hindu reform movement Arya Samaj, and the Islamic revivalist movements of the early colonial period in Punjab. The Singh Sabha Movement preached the purification of Sikhism.
History was appropriated to present a state of perpetual conflict between the Sikh gurus and Muslim kings, while several Hindu practices were jettisoned.
In those times of heightened communal identity perpetuated by the colonial state there was a need to exert a distinct identity.
Thus in the following years, several distinct Sikh movements were brought under the umbrella of a uniform Sikh identity. Gurdwara Dera Chahal, the villages of Hair and Bedian today serve as a distant reminder of this diverse past, now almost lost.
The article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.
It’s been several days since the school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, where you, a 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student, were among the 10 victims.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot about you from media reports and the moving testimonials from your family and friends.
You were blessed with many admirable qualities, but what particularly stands out is your pure and unadulterated optimism.
Indeed, in a deeply troubled world where many nightmare scenarios have come true, you still dared to dream of better things.
In a speech you made at a retreat for foreign exchange students in North Carolina earlier this year, you said you "prayed every night to wake up to a world of peace."
At a time when the US global image is suffering beyond belief, you still saw the good in America. Your father recalled that before you arrived here, you studied US history "to learn from the best."
You believed America provided a safe and special space to receive an education. You wanted to be a diplomat and hoped to help improve US-Pakistan relations.
You were from Karachi, where terrorism and other violence haven’t been as frequent as in earlier years. And you lived far from Pakistan’s most conflicted regions in the west and north.
Still, given your country’s many afflictions — including the extremism that you reportedly sought to escape by studying in America — you had good reason to come of age too quickly.
Indeed, in Pakistan and beyond, so many conflict-scarred, disease-ravaged, and prejudice-victimised young people — and many more traumatised by the travails of their global peers thanks to the powerful vehicle of social media — have had to grow up way too fast.
In short, it wouldn’t have been surprising if you’d become jaded.
Or at least a bit cynical.
But you didn’t. You were an optimist to the core.
Until the moment you died.
How cruel and tragic that the country you so admired, and that gave you so much hope, didn’t only let you down. It killed you.
Now you are one more victim of a sickening American gun culture that has literally been the death of so many people in this country—again and again and again and again.
I’m also struck by something else: your death has taken a powerful perception harboured by many Americans and turned it firmly on its head.
Nearly eight years ago, a Newsweek headline infamously declared Pakistan to be the most dangerous country in the world. Today, many Americans — who often fixate on the fate of Daniel Pearl and the discovery of Osama Bin Laden — continue to view Pakistan as a dangerous place, and especially for Americans.
And yet then there was you: a Pakistani student gunned down at school — by an American terrorist. In America.
It’s as if the lens through which Americans view Pakistan has been inverted, bringing into focus an ugly and deadly dimension of the United States that many here are still unwilling to fully acknowledge.
This underside of America is all too real. It makes your determination to focus on America’s better side all the more admirable.
Your father said he hopes your death will finally prompt America to reform its gun laws.
Sadly, that’s not in the offing. Dozens of previous school shootings — including one in 2012 that killed 20 six- and seven-year-olds — haven’t prompted change.
Neither has the most galvanising gun control movement in US history, spearheaded by survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting in February.
We’ve already witnessed a familiar charade since the Santa Fe shooting: US political leaders blaming everything — video games, not enough religion, too much drug abuse, even too many doors in schools — but guns for school massacres.
Indeed, it’s hard to find any silver linings. But it’s worth trying, if only to honour someone who seemed to have an endless repository of hope.
Here’s one. Even in your much-too-short life, you achieved your goal of becoming a diplomat.
Your first and only overseas posting was in Texas, where you served as a cultural ambassador — a well-deserved informal status for effective foreign exchange students like you.
How tragic that in the end you brought the US and Pakistan together in grief, not goodwill.
Here’s one more silver lining: you offer a resounding reminder that young people are Pakistan’s greatest asset. In a country where two thirds of the population is under 30, and where the median age is 23, there are many more Sabikas: young, smart, suffused with hope, and determined to make Pakistan, and the world, a better place.
Here’s hoping we hear more about Pakistan’s other Sabikas in the coming years — not because of their tragic deaths, but because of their inspiring acts in life.
And I’d like to think you’ll be pulling for them all.
In the subcontinent, there were many women poets from all manner of social and linguistic backgrounds who dared to be "heard" and more importantly, considered their voices worth hearing. In 16th century Kashmir, one such woman was Habba Khatoon.
Mughal-e-Azam tells us a tale contrary to the otherwise glorious accounts of the Mughal emperor Akbar.
It tells a heart-wrenching story of a blooming romance between a courtesan and the prince, and how it was put to an end at the orders of the emperor.
Although the veracity of this tale is doubtful, like all legends, it survives and is retold. However, this is not the only romance that Akbar put a premature end to.
There is yet another epic, often told and retold in Kashmiri folklore, which does not find mention in popular narratives.
This romance, too, was throttled by Akbar for conquest of the crown jewel of the Mughal empire — a veritable heaven-on-earth — Kashmir.
Habba Khatoon, named Zoon (meaning moon) by her parents, was a Kashmiri poetess in the 16th century.
Yusuf Shah Chak, the king of Kashmir, spotted her in the fields one day. Legend has it that he fell in love with the beauty of her voice and richness of her rhyme.
He is said to have relieved her of her earlier marriage and taken her away to his court, where she enchanted him with her poetry, while reigning as queen for six years.
At the end of those six years, Akbar summoned Yusuf Shah to Delhi. Akbar had failed to conquer Kashmir militarily and now resorted to tactics of cozenage.
Upon reaching the Mughal court, Yusuf Shah was flung into prison, never to see the light of day again, and never to see his beloved Habba again.
For the rest of her years, Habba pined away in an abode next to the Jhelum, where she finally lay to rest.
There exists little documentation and fewer records of the story of Habba Khatoon and Yusuf Shah Chak, yet this story has been passed down for generations and it slowly, yet inevitably, found its way into historical records and books of lore.
It is not only her tale but also her verse that has travelled across time to be alive and loud.
The clichéd line, Nightingale of Kashmir, has often been used to describe her. She is the sound and song of many gatherings even today.
Looking carefully at her context, Habba Khatoon’s verses are surprisingly bold. That she recited them in the 16th century make her words even more powerful.
She did not fit into the existing lineage of women poets before and immediately after her, many of who wrote of spirituality and mysticism. She, on the other hand, brought in a romantic lyricism to Kashmiri.
One can even retell her story through her verse — her poetry is biographical but also has an inherent universality, much like this verse, that possibly describes her first encounter with Chak.
Bara kiny vucchnamai
gara kamy hovnasai
zara zara thovnamai
chhu me baale tammana
He gazed at me through the door
Wonder who showed him where I lived!
And I ached with love in every limb
Forever a young girl I am in desire
Dil nyith ratytham goshe vwolo myaani poshe madano
You stole my heart and stole away
Come back, my lover of flowers
Habba articulated her lived reality in verse, yet what makes her stand out is not only the extraordinariness of her life as a peasant-queen-poetess, but the articulation of desire in words that were thus far limited to men.
Laale gati manz tsong zaajaanai baale roodus na hosh tsu chhaham shama, bu chhas parvaanai chhaav myaany daanai posh
Lost in her world of dreams, Leila Lit her lamp in the dark! I am the moth and you my lamp! Enjoy my pomegranate blossoms
Habba dared to name and beckon her lover, a significant role-reversal at a time when women were only the objects of desire and only the recipients of proposals of love.
Lajy phulai anda vanan tse kanan goi naa myon lajy phulai kwola saran vwothoo neeryan khasavo phojy yosman anda vanan tse kanan goi na myon
The distant meadows are in bloom. Have you not heard my call? Flowers bloom on mountain lakes Come, let us ascend these meadows now The lilac blooms in distant woods Have you not heard my call?
The relatability in her verse didn’t stop at descriptions of conjugal love. Habba lent her voice to the banal chores of everyday life, singing as she went along.
It is no wonder then that her verses gained widespread popularity in the region.
She wrote of miseries inflicted upon her by her in laws and of the perils of physical labour. Her descriptors of sweat and toil are also beautifully poetic.
With sweat pearls dropping from my brow I’m a maiden gathering violets
Much of her poetry is rooted in the flora of Kashmir: descriptors of hills and streams, flowers and fruits that lend a truly paradisiacal quality to the Kashmir she describes.
I’ll seek you down the wandering brooks Praying we must meet again I’ll look for you where the jasmines blow Don’t tell me we shan’t meet again
While we cannot be certain that she was the only woman poet of her time, she was certainly the first to usher in a lyrical age of romantic poetry in the memory of Kashmiri literature.
Her successor in this genre would not show up until two centuries later in the form of poetess Arnimal.
Of the repertoire of songs and poems in her name, scholars say, only a handful can be indubitably attributed to Habba. Her position and her story made her worthy of memorialising.
Passed down orally in songs that have been sung by women across centuries, it is likely that Habba’s words have been modified, reinterpreted and reimagined by many other unnamed voices.
All these voices may have eventually contributed to the myth and legend of Habba Khatoon. Given the universal relatability of her verse, it would not be surprising if Habba’s voice has carried the ideas of many lyrically gifted women of Kashmir since.
Habba has been a subject of fascination, be this very early film or Muzaffar Ali’s attempt to recreate her story on the Hindi film screen.
In Kashmir, a recent surge in reinventing old Kashmiri music as pop is a trend and many contemporary musicians, often men, have put Habba’s songs in verse and lending their voice to it.
Listen to a traditional rendition of her most famous poems here, a reinterpretation here and another of her spiritual poems here.
Illustration by Zoha Bundally
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Lahore and Toronto might be thousands of miles apart, but they enjoy similar traits and concerns. Both are home to over six million people and gridlocked with traffic exceeding far beyond the designed capacity of the road networks.
Lahore and Toronto are also struggling with controversial plans for rail-based urban transit, known as subways in Toronto and Orange Line Metro in Lahore.
In Toronto, concerned citizens and transit experts question whether a nearly $4 billion subway extension in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, is the best use of money.
They argue that better service and accessibility can be provided by cheaper alternatives, such as Light Rail Transit (LRT) that runs on the surface on a dedicated right-of-way.
In Lahore, where urban transit is far less developed than in Toronto, similar concerns have been raised about the almost completed Orange Line Metro system, which is a 27.1km-long elevated rail transit with a 2km underground track and services 26 stations.
Media reports and litigation in superior courts have raised several concerns about mass transit in Lahore in general and the Orange Line in particular.
Given that most discourse on such a technical matter has either been in the hands of untrained yet well-meaning individuals or partisan surrogates, one needs clarity on matters related to mobility and public transit.
With general elections around the corner, where transport infrastructure development is now deemed a controversial subject, putting urban mobility in a proper context should help inform the electorate.
I attempt to answer the concerns and questions raised about the Orange Line and public transit. I do so by highlighting important facts about transit planning, relying on my experience as a former professor of transportation engineering at McGill University.
Fact 1: Urban public transit is inadequate in Lahore
And it’s not just Lahore. Urban mass transit is of poor quality and insufficient in all major urban centres of Pakistan.
Given the demographic footprint of large urban centres, the number of buses and other paratransit falls horribly short of the demand.
How much transit does one need? I would argue that in the absence of a comprehensive rail-based urban transit operating on its own right-of-way, urban mobility needs require roughly one bus per 1,000 people.
The World Bank’s Urban Bus Toolkit recommends anywhere between 0.5 to 1.2 buses per 1,000 people.
For instance, consider Shenzhen in China, a city with 13 million people, where the entire fleet of 16,539 buses has been recently switched from fossil fuel to electricity resulting in 1.3 buses per 1,000 persons.
With 11 million people residing in Lahore District, we would require roughly 11,000 full-sized buses at one bus per 1,000 people, or 5,500 buses for one bus per 2,000 people.
However, these numbers are roughly four to eight times higher than the 1,574 buses mentioned in the eight-phase plan outlined by Punjab Mass Transit Authority.
The population breakdown in the latest census can help determine the mass transit needs at the tehsil level.
Consider that in Lahore Cantonment alone, where 1.6 million people reside, 1,600 buses are needed at one bus for every 1,000 residents.
If one were to argue that the affluent parts of the city are more auto-dependent and one should use 0.5 buses per 1,000 people for Lahore Cantonment and Model Town, and one bus per 1,000 persons for Lahore City tehsil, Raiwind tehsil, and Shalimar tehsil, the number of buses needed is around 9,000.
Hence, let there be no doubt. Pakistan’s urban transit is severely undersupplied. This is partly the reason that motorised transport has increased significantly over the years.
Fact 2: Lahore has the required density to support Metro
Many in Pakistan argue that Lahore, unlike Karachi, does not have high-rises, hence it lacks the population density to support higher-order mass transit.
This leads to three important questions: What is the population density in Lahore? What density thresholds are needed to support public transit? Does one need high-rises for high population density?
A 2014 report estimated Lahore’s population density to be 5,583 persons per square kilometre. However, the population density is much higher in central (urban) Lahore.
The one million residents in Data Ganj Bakhsh are living at densities of 31,000 persons/sq km, while a million residents of Samanabad live at 28,000 persons/sq km. The density in Cantonment is around 8,700 persons/sq km.
Urban Lahore, excluding Wagah and Nishtar, reports population densities that are much higher than densities of cities with sophisticated public transit systems.
As for the need for high-rises, one must look at central Paris, a city of 2.3 million within an area of 105 sq km, where the average population density is 21,500 persons/sq km.
Paris achieved high population densities without having the need to build high-rise buildings. The city owes its urban form to the famous architect Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who ensured that buildings were no taller than five to seven stories.
If Paris could serve as a prototype for density, Lahore can operate higher-order public transit without having the need to erect high-rise buildings as long as the city is able to maintain population densities of around 10,000 persons/sq km.
Fact 3: Public transit system follows a hierarchy
When it comes to capacity, public transit systems follow a hierarchy. Buses operating in mixed traffic are at the bottom, and rail-based metros operating in their own right-of-way are at the top of this hierarchy.
Buses operating in mixed traffic can carry anywhere between 1,500 persons per hour per direction to 3,000 persons per hour per direction.
Articulated buses where two or more buses are linked and driven by the same driver can carry even more passengers.
When buses operate in their own right-of-way, often referred to as the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), they can achieve higher throughput capacity of over 5,000 passengers per hour in the peak direction.
In Pakistan, where crowding in public transit is accepted, the throughput transit capacity could be even higher.
A five-car metro train operating in its own right-of-way can carry as many as 1,200 passengers per train.
Operating at a two-minute headway — the time between two successive trains — these trains can carry up to 36,000 passengers per hour in each direction.
While the above are theoretical capacities, these numbers can fluctuate depending upon population and employment densities along the transit corridor, feeder routes to augment the high-capacity train and transit fare.
Given the high demand for mobility along the primary commercial arterials, such as Ferozepur Road, high-capacity public transit is better.
Unlike the downtowns in cities in Europe and North America that have high concentration of employment, South Asian cities instead have employment concentration along major arterials, which makes it difficult to serve these cities with high-capacity transit.
Still, corridors like Ferozepur Road and Multan Road are strong candidates for higher-order public transit systems because the transit demand they generate cannot be efficiently served by the regular bus service.
Fact 5: Visual encumbrance and elevated tracks are common in New York and Chicago
Even in New York and Chicago, cities much wealthier than Lahore, elevated rail tracks can be seen in several neighbourhoods.
Though these tracks are a permanent source of visual encumbrance, they are much cheaper to build than the alternative that involves tunnelling.
Since urban Lahore is already built-up at moderate to high densities, rights-of-way are not readily available to build and operate rapid transit.
Tunnelling will prove too expensive given the consumers' lack of willingness-to-pay and the political leadership's lack of willingness-to-charge.
Fact 6: Ridership depends upon fare
Urban transit differs from intercity transit in many ways, including fare and revenue.
Consider that when an intercity bus leaves the terminal in Rawalpindi for Lahore, the expected revenue per seat is generated by the same passenger. Why? Because we do not expect the same seat to be occupied by more than one passenger during the same trip.
It is quite a different story with urban transit. One designs the transit fare in a way to maximise the throughput capacity so that the revenue generated by one seat relies on it being occupied by more than one passenger during the run from one terminus to another.
If the fare is too high, ridership will be low as passengers will use the alternative modes.
If transit fare is too low, as is the case with a Rs20 fare, the ridership will still be lower than the optimum ridership because the seats are likely to be occupied by passengers who travel the greatest possible distance.
This implies that the BRT on Ferozepur Road will have the buses fully occupied by passengers boarding at Shahdara and heading to the other terminus at Gajjumata.
A preferred option for structuring transit fares is to avoid blanket subsidies that subsidise all passengers. Instead, only low-income passengers be subsidised to prevent leakages in the subsidy regime.
This can be achieved by integrating smart mobility cards with other government interventions, such as the Benazir Income Support Program cards.
Furthermore, fixed fares must be replaced by zone-based fares to promote transit ridership.
Does Lahore need high-capacity rail transit?
The answer to the above question is an unequivocal yes. The high-capacity transit systems on Ferozepur Road and Multan Road must be complemented with bus-based feeder networks.
Thousands of additional buses plying in mixed mode traffic are needed to make transit a viable option against motorized two-wheelers and cars.
While Lahore needs more transit infrastructure, its construction and finances should be made transparent to the public.
It is not obvious from the conflicting statements whether the Orange Line is a gift from the people of China or a loan from the Chinese banks.
A lack of transparency becomes a breeding ground for conspiracies and reduces trust in public institutions. Public transit should be built to improve mobility and trust in democratic governance.
Illustration by Zoha Bundally
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One of the characteristics of the modern weltanschauung (worldview) is to identify religion as distinct from culture.
Islam, and Islam in Pakistan, doesn't escape this bifurcation either. One popular example is qawwali.
The recent secularisation of qawwali — the shift away from Sufi dargahs to concert halls and recording labels — has led to a re-imagining of qawwali as expressive of the cultural traditions of Pakistan and (north) India, related only marginally and incidentally to the religion in whose cradle it developed.
Such a secular understanding of qawwali is anachronistic to the pre-modern progenitors of the art form.
The Chishti order, the most prominent Sufi brotherhood in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, has long celebrated the normativity of qawwali as an expression of divine love.
Annemarie Schimmel has noted the phenomenon in the Mystical Dimensions of Islam as "the most widely known expression of mystical life in Islam."
American author Leonard Lewisohn, in his article The Sacred Music of Islam: Sama in the Persian Sufi Tradition, points out that qawwali is stressed upon by some South Asian Sufis not only as legally permissible (halal), but as a required religious practice (wajib).
Inherent religious pluralism
Qawwali also has a long history of engaging with multiple religious traditions. The religious landscape of north India and Pakistan provides a literary context of diverse religious motifs, metaphors and symbols.
Sufi repertoire traditionally includes non-Islamic, particularly Hindu, religious leitmotifs.
Such a pluralistic approach is evident in a representative qawwali, Kanhayya (Krishna), composed by Nawab Sadiq Jung Bahadur Hilm and performed by Abu Muhammad and Fareed Ayaz.
The qawwal sings of his love for Krishna and relates a heart-wrenching account of the afflictions he endures through separation with his beloved.
Kahuun kyaa tere bhuulne ke main vaarii Kanhayya yaad hai kuch bhii hamaarii
What can I say, even for your neglect I could give my life. Do you remember me a little, O' my tormenting Kanhayya!
Radha-Krishna as the archetype of spiritual love is based on the 12th century lyrical epic, Gita Govinda (Love Song of the Dark Lord), composed by the saint-poet Shri Jayadeva of Bengal, and is considered a religious work in the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism.
It describes the seeker's longing for the divine through the idiom of human love and courtship. Metaphorically, the epic narrates the yearning of the devotee to achieve union with the beloved.
It corresponds roughly, in terms of spiritual symbolism, poetic beauty, and literary influence, with the Layla-Majnun trope in Persian poetic tradition.
Payyaan parii mahaadev ke jaakar Tonaa bhii kar kar haarii Kanhayya yaad hai kuch bhii hamaarii
I threw myself at the feet of Mahadev; I even tried wizardry but lost. Do you remember me a little, O' my tormenting Kanhayya!
Expanding mental horizons
In the popular Muslim imagination, Hindu beliefs and symbols have sometimes served to illustrate 'inferior' forms of belief.
In the Sufi tradition, however, such symbols were often inverted to evoke the highest form of love, ishq-i-haqiqi.
Sufis favoured paradoxical and perplexing statements and symbols in poetry and music to encourage listeners to transcend the norms and conventions.
Such hermeneutical exercises share some parallels with the tradition of Koan in Zen Buddhism — Koan is a paradoxical statement or question intended as a rhetorical tool to guide the seeker towards a higher level of Selfhood.
Perplexity (hayra) in the Sufi context seeks to de-stabilise pre-supposed categories — the understanding of Islam learnt by rote.
Sufis have long criticised this type of adherence to Islam limited to exteriorised and formal aspects of the religion.
The abandon with which Sufis treat Islamic rituals and forms has been misinterpreted to support a view of spirituality, or Sufism itself, disassociated with religion.
The modern category of religion which allows for an understanding of spirituality independent from religion would have been anachronistic to any pre-modern Sufi.
Through such daring and critical statements, Sufis entreated the Muslims to transcend these forms through spiritual realisation — the ascending stages of human perfection resulting in proximity to God.
One can only transcend what one has mastered, and these Sufis sought to master the external religious forms to access their inner reality, which as veil, al-hijab in Islam and maya in Hinduism, at once hides and manifests.
Krishna in qawwali rests on the paradox of religious forms, where an Islamic tradition valourises Hindu forms and symbols.
Such performances of perplexity signaled the move to de-exceptionalise Islam in the treatment of other religious traditions, to the ire of stricter theologians.
Sufis exhorted the listeners to see beyond forms (surat) to the underlying spiritual meanings (ma'na) — towards the realisation of an inner kinship of religions.
Hindu symbolism in qawwali signifies, above all, the possibility of many religious paths leading to the summit of salvation and enlightenment.
Qawwali seeks to guide the listener beyond the multiplicity of religious forms to the underlying unity at the heart of religions.
Illustration by Zoha Bundally
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It took two decades for Asma Nawab, 37, to walk once again on the sands of Karachi’s Clifton Beach.
The vast expanse of the Arabian Sea is in many ways an apt representation of endless opportunities — a concept unbeknownst to her until a month ago.
This was because, for the last 20 years, the only future that Asma could envision was confined to the 8x10 perimeter of her death row cell in Karachi women’s jail.
In 1999 an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) sentenced Asma to death for the murder of her parents and brother.
Sixteen-year-old Asma’s innocence plea that the murders were committed during a botched robbery was brushed aside by the special court.
Thereupon, Asma’s quest for justice became entangled in the myriad of delays that define Pakistan’s broken criminal justice.
It took another nine years for the Sindh High Court to finally decide her appeal in November 2008 with a split decision from the two-member bench.
The matter was then forwarded to a referee judge, who after another seven years upheld the conviction and death sentence in 2015.
It was not until recently that the faulty investigation propping up Asma’s conviction was finally called into question by the Supreme Court.
The Court observed that the entire case was built upon weak circumstantial evidence which was collected in blatant violation of mandatory rules of criminal procedure.
Asma Nawab (C) gestures before entering her house alongside her lawyer Javed Chatari (L) after her release in Karachi. —AFP
As a result, Asma was finally returned the liberty and dignity that was unjustly wrested from her.
The justice system’s cruel response to Asma, a victim of a crime that left her without a family, underscores the urgent need for fundamental reform.
Inherent flaws
The first instance of violation occurred when the case was booked by police under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).
Enacted in 1997, the ATA is the Pakistan’s primary anti-terrorism legislation, promulgated to increase the power of law enforcement agencies to prevent and investigate terrorism and to create special ATCs to expedite trials of terrorist suspects.
However, more than two decades following its operation, the law has been largely ineffective in fulfilling its mandate.
By virtue of a broad and vague definition of terrorism, the law allows for ordinary crimes bearing no nexus to terrorism to be tried under the special regime.
Section 6 of the law defines terrorism as any crime or threat designed to create a “sense of fear or insecurity in society.” Subsection 2 broadens the scope of the law by listing over 18 crimes that could fall within the meaning of terrorism.
This includes ordinary crimes already criminalised under the Pakistan Penal Code, such as any crime that “involves grievous violence against a person or grievous boy injury or harm to person” and “doing of anything that is likely to cause death or endanger a person’s life.”
A study by Justice Project Pakistan noted that around 88 percent of those sentenced under the ATA were convicted of non-terrorism crimes.
Subsequent interviews with police and prosecutors revealed that booking crimes under the ATA was a means to appease politically influential complainant or the general public in high profile cases.
Asma Nawab (C) reacts as she enters her house in Karachi. —AFP
United Nations Treaty Bodies have consistently called on the government of Pakistan to ensure that persons convicted for ordinary crimes are not tried under the special procedures of the ATCs.
However, no measures have been taken thus far.
Need for circumspection
The overuse and abuse of the law holds disastrous consequences. Firstly, with a back log of thousands and thousands of cases, the ATCs are riddled with delays which inevitably impact the timely prosecution of actual terrorists.
Similarly, as the law waives key procedural safeguards guaranteed under the ordinary courts and provides enhanced police powers and fast-track investigation and trials, the eventual convictions rest on faulty investigations and severe fundamental rights abuses.
Consequently, a significant number of convictions under the ATA are overturned by the superior court in appeal.
But the rectification of injustices, such as in the case of Asma, comes after suspects have effectively served entire life sentences.
It was in this vein that the Supreme Court in August, 2017 cautioned lower courts against including ordinary crimes like murder within the ambit of the ATA.
Justice Dost Muhammad Khan in his judgment stated that “the courts of law shall not lightly ignore that being a harsh law enacted to punish terrorist or hardcore militant, the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 will not be extended liberally to cover criminals who commit the crime of murder or attempted murder for any reason or motive that has no connection with terrorism or militancy.”
However, no demonstrable change has been seen in the jurisprudence of the lower courts.
Justice is blind... to gender
Public discourse in Pakistan, in the wake of the few heinous crimes that manage to make their way into headlines, inevitably demands booking suspects under the ATA for speedy justice.
What’s missing from the narrative are the countless victims, like Asma, who pay the price for the temporary assuaging of public outrage.
In addition to falling victim to Pakistan’s anti-terrorism regime, Asma's identity as a woman also made her susceptible to the violations of justice that she inevitably fell victim to.
Interventions on access to justice for women in Pakistan remain inordinately focused on victims of crime. Missing from the debate are women who are accused of committing crimes, especially under the ATA.
Owing to stigma attached to crime, women accused of criminal activity are more likely to be abandoned by family or support networks.
As a result, they are less likely to have access to effective legal representation during the course of trials and appeals.
This leads to gross miscarriages of justice, particularly under the parallel regime of expedited trials and investigation under the ATA.
Additionally, women are also vulnerable to torture and abuse by law enforcement during interrogation and investigation.
This likelihood quadruples under the ATA, as the special law, under Section 21H, allows for the admission of confessions and statements awarded in police custody as evidence.
This is in contravention to Pakistan’s evidence law under the Qanun Shahadat Order that only permits confession recorded in the presence of a magistrate to be admissible as evidence.
As a result, police under the ATA routinely extract confessions from suspects on the basis of torture. The risk of torture is additionally heightened by the police powers to detain a person for up to 30 days without review or the possibility of habeas petition, and another 90 days through application to the courts.
These powers facilitate the police’s extraction of coerced confessions and statements from accused parties and witnesses.
Call for reforms
The UN Committee Against Torture in its review of the government of Pakistan’s initial report in March, 2017 asked the government to ensure that all persons tried under the ATA “have access to legal safeguards against torture, including prompt presentation before a magistrate and the possibility of a habeas petition, and to ensure that confessions obtained outside the presence of a magistrate are inadmissible as evidence.”
It is evident that Pakistan’s criminal justice has failed to protect women like Asma from abuses of power and misconduct by police.
Asma Nawab, free finally after spending 20 years in jail.—Fahim Siddiqi / White Star
These instances of severe fundamental rights violations are far from isolated and represent the reality for the majority of Pakistan’s prison population.
It is critical that the government of Pakistan reform its laws to reduce the definition of terrorism under the ATA through restrictive language and by explicitly excluding common crimes such as murder or hurt from its scope.
It is also necessary that provisions giving overarching powers of interrogation and investigation to the police, such as section 21H, are excluded from the law to avoid gross miscarriages of justice.
Only once these reforms are initiated can cases like Asma's be avoided.
Illustration by Zoha Bundally
Are you an activist or lawyer working on criminal justice or prison reform? Get in touch with us at blog@dawn.com
I take pride in knowing Soon Valley like the back of my hand.
So when Saad, the young, bright analyst in our office mentioned the abandoned city of Tulaja in Soon Valley, I was a bit unsure.
But that brief conversation got me curious and one spring morning, we were on our way to the Valley.
From the motorway, we exited at Bhera and took the under-construction road to Khushab, where we bought the traditional dhoda and pateesa from one of the 30 so-called original and genuine Ameen Dhoda House outlets, all on the main road, all in complete disregard to each others’ copyrights.
From Khushab, we took the road to Soon and, in 30 minutes, we entered the Valley, where we were welcomed by the World War I monument celebrating the sons of the soil who laid their lives for the Crown, from Ypres to Normandy.
After another 30 minutes of twisting and turning through the shrubby Valley, we saw a small sign pointing right to the shrine of Baba Kachhaywala.
Here, we left the paved road and entered a dirt track barely wide for one jeep. On the track, we crossed many small coal mines and, in 20 minutes, we were at Baba jee’s shrine. There was a little stream nearby and a small congregation had gathered there to pay respects to the Baba.
The ancient city of Tulaja is little known save for a few pictures on the internet showing a huge boulder, several hundred feet high, rising out of the earth like a natural fortress.
The rolling mountains of Soon Valley.—All photos by author
Before my trip, I could find no credible references or any pictures of the city itself. All we knew was that the abandoned city is on a plateau on top of the high cliff. So it was time to climb up.
We left our jeep at the Baba Kachhaywala shrine as we needed to trek from here.
We asked if there was anyone who could guide us to Tulaja. But while locals had heard of it, we found no one who had been to the actual place.
People looked at us with some suspicion and tried to dissuade us from going there. However, we were able to convince three boys to accompany us.
The trek started with a small water bottle each and a few snacks. We began walking towards the cliff and on to a path which took us close to the bottom of the high cliff.
Climbing up turned out to be the wrong move. And here started our ordeal.
The long unused steps.
We were not really prepared and wearing t-shirts while having to go past thorny bushes was not a great idea. The boys leading us were adept, but even they had no clue as to the right path to Tulaja.
There was no track and we were making our own way, climbing up at a nearly 70-degree angle, jumping from one rock to other and using all fours at times.
Soon, we were sweating and panting and remembered we had one small water bottle each. After about 30 minutes of this vertical climb, we reached a grassy, flat plane at the side of the main boulder.
The boulder indeed looked like a natural fortress, with a sheer drop of several hundred feet on each side and slanting backwards. Our guess was that there should be some way to the slanting back of the boulder.
We were surrounded by dense, high shrubs as we tried to find our way to the wall of the boulder.
We were hopeless and thirsty, and were trying to accept failure and hurry back as the trek going down seemed even more dangerous. It was then that we saw a man at the top of the boulder looking our way.
We gave him a shout and he shouted back. There were introductions and he signaled us to one side of the boulder.
Hesitant but still up for another attempt, we followed his directions.
The cave entrance on the right flank of ther ock, the only entrance to Tulaja.
We again hit the side wall of the boulder, and while trying to manage through loose rocks and thorny bushes, we came across the small, centuries-old and apparently the only entrance to Tulaja.
It was a small cave-like entrance and, as we climbed up, we found the steps leading us to the plateau above.
The myth is that the inhabitants of Tulaja would seal the cave entrance with large rocks every night and remove them in the day.
As we climbed up the now well-formed staircase, soon the steps opened up to an expansive plateau, and we were surrounded by ancient structures all around.
Most of these structures appeared to be living quarters or one-room houses, but some were bigger and multiple-room structures.
Though we did not explore the whole plateau, it seemed around 10 or 12 acres.
We were able to see small pits dug into the rocks to store rainwater, similar to many ancient cities around the world.
With roofs long gone, the crumbling walls of Tulaja housing.
The water pit dug into a number of rocks to preserve water.
While exploring the structures, we found chiseled rocks, at times eight-feet long, making up the walls. It can be anyone’s guess how these rocks were chiseled and moved to form part of the walls.
The edges of the plateau were sheer drops of hundreds of feet and provided astounding views of the Punjab plains towards the south and Soon valley towards the north, with miles of rolling mountains and jungles all around.
My best guess is that Tulaja was a Hindu settlement like many other similar settlements, such as Katas Raj, Tilla Jogian, Mallot, Amb or the Mari Indus temples, continuing across the Indus to Kafir Kot.
Most of these settlements were strategically located natural forts providing a bird's-eye view of the plains for miles. All of these archeological sites are historic gems and must be preserved and protected.
The rolling hills of Soon valley.
While exploring the plateau, we found the man who had signaled us to right path. Between us, we first thought of him as a potential fugitive and were a bit hesitant to even climb up, but we were completely wrong.
Habib, the shepherd, was sitting in the middle of the plateau with his jute-covered water bottle with him.
He generously offered water to us despite having just one bottle, and then showed us around like he was Lord of Tulaja — and indeed he was.
I remembered with a strange feeling that I had seen Habib before, in another hiker’s video from six years ago, the lord present in the loneliness of Tulaja.
With Lord of Tulaja
It was time to head back. We were worried about the steep descent, but Habib showed us another route parallel to the ridge with a slower descent.
We climbed down from the plateau on a semi-visible track along the ridge rather than climbing down to the base of the boulder.
The track became more visible as we descended and, in about 30 minutes, we could see the shrine. The sight of the shrine gave us a bout of energy and we reached down in no time.
Taking the wrong route to the base of the rock.
For future explorers, I would suggest to park the car at the shrine. There is a narrow, rough road ahead of the shrine and around three tracks branch off in quick succession.
Start your walk on this track, leave the first left track and take the second left track up into the mountain.
Walk about half a kilometre and try finding a barely visible path to your right. Once you find this path, it should be an easy one hour trek on the ridge to the side of the boulder. Then, find your way up the plateau to Tulaja.
Tulaja is like a dream, it is mysterious, abandoned and few people know about it. Go explore it.
Have you ever explored any off-the-beaten paths? Share your experiences with us at blog@dawn.com
With manifestos, hundred-day plans and agendas making headlines recently, one can earnestly hope that all the promises made by political parties will, one day, be executed in their entirety and the impact will be visible for all to see.
This, however, sounds way too optimistic. Policy plans do not always translate into results as hoped for when they are being crafted.
When applied and subsequently met with failure, post-implementation analysis is peppered with generic and often meaningless terms like ‘lack of institutional capacity,’ ‘political economic constraints,’ and ‘non-conducive ecosystem’ that do little to help diagnose the causes of the shortcomings.
I am not attributing failures to lack of political will at the top, as one may think. Let me make my case with a short story.
Blind spots
Before 1997, all teachers in Punjab were hired on a permanent contract by the Punjab Public Service Commission. The process was marred with inefficiencies.
Teachers were posted away from their hometowns without sufficient incentives, and the ensuing discontent led to reverse transfers within a few days of being posted.
Teacher expertise, experience and specialisation were unevenly distributed, which meant that far-flung, rural areas suffered from a shortage of teachers, let alone good teachers.
The result was high student-teacher ratios and multi-grade teaching (one teacher simultaneously teaching several grades), especially in primary and rural schools.
This, together with several vacant posts and increasing student enrollments, necessitated the introduction of teacher rationalisation policies in the province; policies that aimed to equitably distribute teachers throughout the province.
Years 1998, 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2014 saw the implementation of these policies.
A thorough dissection of the 2014 rationalisation policy reveals that, while the policy was a very comprehensive document, developed by a consortium of international consultants, the implementation staff i.e. the clerks working under the District Coordination Officer did not understand it.
The policy contained a formula for equitable distribution of teachers with finer details that the clerks did not want to invest time in understanding and had no incentive to do so.
Hence, while some districts were able to implement the new policy, most districts relied on the age-old mechanism of near-random allocation they had always been using, resulting in uneven distribution of teachers in terms of experience and expertise once again. This did not allow any room for teachers’ preferences either.
This was one of the several reasons why the results were no different than they had been before the new policy was drawn up.
So while it was a well-intentioned piece of policy crafted by experts, the implementation failed to meet the expectations of its creators.
The policy's focus was the correction of unequal deployment; it did not take into account the fact that its underlying cause was not only the political and economic mesh that defined it, but also how the policy vision was lost further down the implementation ladder, especially since the policy, when designed, had not engaged key stakeholders such as teachers, district education management and implementing officers in districts.
Making policies effective by design
Before one delves into policy design, a rigorous analysis of the underlying causes is critical to assess the factors that contribute to the problem.
It is even more crucial to go beyond the obvious and address these causes so that a sustainable solution can be devised.
Using data is vital to gauge these deep-rooted problems and design a long-lasting policy solution that go beyond just the symptoms. This exercise often results in unexpected conclusions.
Here is one example:
Italian economist Oriana Bandiera (with Andrea Prat and Tommaso Valletti) analysed purchases of 21 generic goods made by 200+ public bodies in Italy. The findings were surprising on various levels.
Firstly, there was a vast difference in the average prices paid for similar goods — a 55% difference between 10th and 90th percentile.
Goods bought at the same time, in the same location and of the same quality were bought at different prices. The variation may have been expected, but it was the scale that was more concerning.
It is worthwhile to mention that we conducted a comparable exercise in Punjab, which resulted in similar baseline conclusions.
So, why was this happening in Italy? What could be the most obvious hypothesis? It is a natural instinct to blame it on corruption.
However, that was not the case. It was not the bureaucrats’ corruption, but passivity that was the reason.
The experiment showed that 83% of this ‘waste’ was due to bureaucrats' apathy towards the expenditures in their offices.
The bureaucrats being negligent and lazy turned out to be a bigger problem than active corruption.
This revelation changes the nature of any possible policy solution. Data generating from this experiment debunks the commonly held hypothesis.
The analysis further added that these findings could potentially lead to savings of up to 1% of Italy's GDP.
This study's conclusions mean that Italian governments will not be required to raise taxes in order to expand the fiscal space, but can use the data to design smarter policy.
Data can steer the course
These anecdotes powerfully drive home the importance of using data for accurate diagnosis. It is one of the key inputs in breathing life into the hundred-day plans, policy vision documents and reform agendas we discuss and debate.
Once a data-led solution is in place, more data collected on implementation and impact does not only ensure that the ensuing action is effective, but also feeds back into the design to iron out any kinks and further improve the policy.
Implementation data from the Benazir Income Support Program gives us similar valuable results that may help cast the programme's net wider, bring more recipients under its coverage and enhance impact, simply by the addition of numbers to the policy mix.
So here is what we have in a nutshell: better diagnosis, smart and human-centred policy solutions and solid implementation may help us fully cash in on the optimism of the policy plans presented during the electoral campaigns — much beyond the election hype and the first hundred days.
These policy solutions will steer this momentum to initiate change and accelerate progress, for change and continuity together is what we need, with data to help us stay the course.
Are you an analyst working on policy reform? Get in touch with us at blog@dawn.com
Formerly vice-captain of Pakistan women’s cricket team, 26-year-old Bismah Maroof was appointed captain in September last year.
Since her tenure, the team has played two ICC Championship series: one home series against New Zealand in November 2017 in Sharjah and another away to Sri Lanka in March 2018.
In the November series, Pakistan came very close to winning the first match and subsequently won their first ever ODI against the Kiwis in the third match.
The ODI and T20 series against Sri Lanka were clean sweeps — this is only the second time that Pakistan women’s team has won an ODI series 0-3.
Bismah’s own performance has also been consistently strong. She is one of Pakistan women’s top batters, bowls well and is a keen fielder, helping her side secure many of the wins during her captaincy.
Bismah is currently the highest-ranking T20 woman player from Pakistan at 11th in the ICC Women’s T20 batters and 12th in the ICC Women’s T20 all-rounders.
But while Bismah’s on-field exploits are well known, her personal history and the story of her career path are not. In this interview, I try to bring that to the fore.
I spoke to Bismah over the phone recently to get to know her a bit more. The interview below is translated from Urdu and edited for brevity and clarity.
This is the first of a four-part series of interviews with two senior and two newcomers to the women’s squad, which is currently playing the Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup in Malaysia from June 3-10, 2018. Read part 2 here.
Interviewer
What is your earliest memory of playing cricket?
Bismah
The first time I remember playing cricket was when I was six or seven, when my father brought me a toy plastic bat.
I used to play cricket with my elder brother. I live in a joint family with my paternal uncles and their families; and all of them were very supportive and happy when I played. My mother used to say that as long as you study well, it's okay.
She also believed that sports are a healthy pursuit, so she was supportive though she wanted me to study well too.
I was the youngest of three children. I have an elder brother and an elder sister. When I was born, my brother had been hoping for a younger brother so that he would have a playmate.
But he took me on as his playmate regardless of the fact that I was a girl. Whatever he did, he took me along with him; whatever he played, I played with him.
When I was 14, my uncle suggested that I go for open cricket trials. At the time, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) used to hold open trials for girls.
Imtiaz Ahmed was the chief selector then. At the trials, I was selected for an upcoming Pakistan versus Hong Kong series.
When I went to the trials, I used to play with a tennis ball, so Sir Imtiaz advised me that I should practice playing with a hard ball. I had to learn how to play with a hard ball and I spent three months practicing that.
I didn’t get to play the first two matches but I played the third match of the Hong Kong series, in which I scored 82.
My whole family had come to watch me play. They were so excited when I made 82 runs.
I got cramps in my leg after the match. Without waiting for the physio, my mother started bandaging me in the ground right after the match.
After playing against other countries and meeting other players, I realised that if I am to be a serious cricketer, then I must work on my fitness.
My international debut for the national team was in the Asia Cup 2006, where I made 43 against India.
In the beginning it was difficult for me to stay away from my family because I was very attached to them. But the seniors — Taskeen Qadir, Qanita Jalil, Sajida Shah, Batool Fatima, Urooj Mumtaz and Sana Mir — really helped me.
When I made friends in the team and got the support of the seniors, I became more comfortable. Then it became easier to be away from family.
Pakistan captain Bismah Maroof and New Zealand captain Suzie Bates unveil the trophy at Sharjah Cricket Stadium ahead of the ICC Women’s Championship series ODI match in November 2017.—Photo by ICC
The seniors guided me on how to conduct myself off the field as well as on the field. I have had a lot of personal growth because of cricket. I may not have grown so much if it had not been for the sport.
Right in the beginning, I learnt humility because in this game there is both winning and losing.
Interviewer
You mentioned humility; what are some of the other key lessons have you learnt in cricket?
Bismah
I have been very close to Sana and she has helped me a lot personally and professionally. She is one person I discuss everything with.
I have also worked with her as vice-captain for a while, so I have learnt a lot from her — how she works with honesty, how she helps out others, how she makes decisions.
I try to cultivate all these in myself: to make decisions that are helpful to others and I try to judge my own self with sincerity.
Interviewer
You took over captaincy in 2017. What is the difference between you as a player and as a captain?
Bismah
Before, I used to help out Sana. If I had any ideas I would share them with her to assist her. But I didn’t have full authority and also I didn’t have the responsibility.
As captain you have to take the decision and own it fully.
So I feel it makes you more passionate and also increases the sense of responsibility. When you make decisions you have to be clear about your reasoning, so I have learnt to be sharper in decision making.
Also communicating with the girls to understand them — this is something I am doing more of but also something I'm still learning and trying to improve.
Interviewer
What have been your challenges over the past seven to eight months?
Bismah
As captain if I have to compare, I would say that I’ve seen Sana and she had to do a lot of things herself because before maybe the management was different and her vision was much broader.
The new management I have to work with is much more supportive because their vision and my vision are much more similar.
So I have not had to face such a challenge because management handles many aspects and the new coach, Mark Coles, also has been a big help.
Mark handles a lot of the team issues off the field and I would say he is doing very well. My responsibility is much more on the field as captain.
Interviewer
How do you balance your own performance as a player and your responsibility as a captain on the field?
Bismah
I fully captained the New Zealand ICC Championship series in November last year and at the time, I felt the pressure for my own performance and as a captain as well.
But when I returned from the series, I spoke to the coach and he explained that once you go on the field to bat, then you no longer have the responsibilities of a captain. Then you should just go and enjoy your game.
So during the Sri Lanka tour, I tried to stay in the present moment and play according to the requirements of the given situation. This was very helpful to me.
Interviewer
Two series, against New Zealand and Sri Lanka, were a big success. What do you attribute these successes to?
Bismah
Definitely the win against New Zealand was a success. The way our World Cup 2017 campaign had gone … I was with the girls and I know how hard everyone had worked. But we couldn’t get the results we wanted in that tournament.
We were very disappointed that we weren’t able to convert our hard work into results. So for the New Zealand series, the girls themselves were very enthusiastic. Every girl wanted to show that we can do something for Pakistan, so I think the unity of our team really helped us.
Bismah Maroof, the Pakistan captain, led the bowling attack finishing with figures of 3/17 in 5.2 overs.—Photo by ICC
We had never defeated New Zealand before, but this was a home series and we had an advantage which we wanted to utilise fully.
I would also like to mention that the new coach gave us self-belief and confidence that we could defeat New Zealand. The atmosphere in the dressing room was very light.
We all felt confident and every girl wanted to improve herself and play better. Our first match against New Zealand was very close and then we defeated them in the third match.
After that series we were confident that we could easily win against Sri Lanka. But we never got carried away. Everyone still played with responsibility according to their role and that is what helped us to win both the ODI and the T20 series against Sri Lanka.
Interviewer
You have achieved the top position in your field. If someone wants to excel in theirs, what can they learn from Bismah Maroof?
Bismah
I believe very strongly in hard work. And I believe that whatever lies in my hands I should try and control that and whatever doesn't lie in my hands I shouldn’t try and control that.
I think hard work and being honest with yourself are very important. If I need to improve in a certain area but I go into denial that I don't need improvement, then I can’t improve.
Also focusing on my own work, my own contribution and not focusing on what others are doing or not doing. I think these things have really helped me and have increased my self belief. Therefore I can back myself.
I've never looked for shortcuts. I believe that we should keep putting in our effort and Allah will reward us. I have always believed this and Alhamdolillah, Allah has given me a lot of respect.
This 22-year-old medium pacer, Diana Baig, burst into prominence in the Women’s World Cup (WWC) 2017.
The young athlete from Gilgit is one of the most animated players on the field. She dives, runs and chases with a palpable energy, bringing the field to life.
Diana was effective with her pace in the recent ICC Championship series against New Zealand in November 2017 and Sri Lanka in March 2018, fielded with characteristic enthusiasm and was handy with the bat in some key moments.
One of the emerging stars on the women’s team, I spoke to Diana on the phone about her childhood and how she made it from Gilgit to the national squad.
The interview below is translated from Urdu and has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This is the second of a four-part series of interviews with two seniors and two newcomers to the women’s squad, which is currently playing the Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup in Malaysia from June 3-10, 2018. Read part 1 here.
Interviewer
How old were you when you first developed an interest in cricket?
Diana
I think I was around six or seven when we would play cricket at home. We wouldn't play football that much; we mostly played cricket.
We used to stuff old socks with shoppers (plastic bags) to make balls. We couldn't even afford to buy balls at the time. And for a bat, we would use our own wood or sometimes a spade with the handle removed.
We made our own cricket equipment because we were very young and we couldn’t afford to buy it.
Our parents were very keen that we study. My father had not been to school, so he really wanted us to study. He sent us to good schools, even though he couldn’t really afford it.
My father was very keen that the girls in the family study well. I have two elder sisters and an elder brother and my father never compromised on my sisters’ education; he sent them to good schools and universities
Interviewer
How did you go from there to being on the national team?
Diana
I wasn't very interested in studies but I was very interested in sports.
I played any sport; whatever was available or being played, I would play that. I didn't exclusively play cricket, though it was what we played more often.
But when I was a child, I once watched a women's cricket game between India and Pakistan on TV and that got me very interested because it showed me the possibility that girls can also play for a national team.
—Photo by ICC
So after I saw that match, I would visualise myself opening the bowling attack for Pakistan. Before going to sleep, I would often imagine myself playing cricket for the team.
I used to play with my elder brother and I really liked his bowling. Whenever we played cricket with other boys, I really liked the way my brother played. I followed him. My cousins would also play with us.
There was some space in our house where we would play. We would be five or six cousins and we would bat and bowl by turns. Often my brother won because he would bowl us out quickly and he himself would bat for long.
Interviewer
Can you talk about some of the biggest hurdles you faced, and how you overcame them?
Diana
First of all, the problem in our area is that a girl cannot play in an open ground. She can only play in her own chaar diwari. If you do go out and play in a public or open ground, then people talk about you.
There is more support in my community because the Aga Khan Youth and Sports Board would arrange sporting events for us, so then it was okay if we played in public grounds. But for girls from other communities, it is much more difficult.
When I was little, we would mostly play in our home compound but sometimes when we played on the street, people would say to my father your daughter is playing on the street; it was not considered appropriate.
—Photo by ICC
But my father never said anything to me. He would say she's my daughter; he was very supportive. My mother, however, would be a little affected and would say don't play on the streets.
When my mother realised that I'm doing something serious with cricket, she became more supportive.
So one problem is not being able to play in open grounds and the other problem is that travelling from Gilgit to Islamabad is a long way and if you are taking a team of girls then security is a big issue.
Parents are reluctant to send their daughters with other young girls and just a couple of coaches such a long way.
Interviewer
So how did you get to be included in the national team?
Diana
I played at the regional level and Madam Ayesha Ashhar (formerly the manager and now the general manager of PCB women’s wing) liked my bowling. She had her eyes on me for the future. Then I also played two under-19 tournaments. At that level my batting was also good, so I was an all-rounder.
Then I got selected for the Pakistan team in 2013. At that time I was 17 years old. But it was a bit strange; I was not settled. I got into the team quickly, but then I was out just as quickly. Then I was out for two years until 2015, when I got on the team for the Bangladesh series.
Interviewer
What did you do in those two years?
Diana
During that time, I was mostly in Gilgit, so there was very little practice. When there was a tournament, I would come play for the region and then go back. If I performed, I performed; if I didn’t, I didn’t.
After that, I shifted to Lahore for studies and joined the Lahore College for Women. There we had grounds and practice and coaches. They provided everything and that's how I got into regular practice, which improved my game.
—Photo by ICC
Though I was on the team, I didn't get to play in the 2013 Women’s T20 World Cup, which was held in India. I debuted in 2015 against Bangladesh in Karachi, but it was not very good.
I was on the team for the West Indies series in 2015 and for the New Zealand series in 2016, but I only really got a chance to play back-to-back matches in the WWC 2017.
Interviewer
What would you like to tell young people who are aspiring to excel in the field of their choice? What are some of the key things that helped you to get here?
Diana
You have to keep setting goals — you start with small goals and once you meet them, you set bigger goals and keep moving forward. So every time I achieved one goal, I would set a higher goal and try to achieve that.
I was also motivated because I knew that other girls from my area were following me. If I failed to achieve anything, then people would say to other aspiring girls, “What did she (Diana) achieve that you will now go achieve?”
I thought that since I have stepped out from my area then I must do something and not waste the opportunity.
I would also say that if you like something then pursue it and work hard at it. In life, I have never searched for shortcuts because when you work hard, you learn something from it and you become stronger at it.
—Photo by ICC
If you get something very easily, you can lose it very easily too, which is something I learned early on when I was selected quickly, but then dropped just as quickly.
Progressing slowly towards your goals is not a bad thing, as long as you are growing and moving forward. When you learn as you progress, even if you lose the game, you still have your learning with you, you still have your growth with you, so you are not as disheartened.
That's why it's important not to look for a shortcut, but to work hard and learn as you go forward.
I also tell parents that it's very important for them to support their children. The rest of the world doesn’t matter as long as you have your parents’ support.
Interviewer
Do you have a sense of responsibility to your area like you do towards the other aspiring young athletes as you mentioned?
Diana
Yes, I do. I want to be a torchbearer, which means that I have to stick to my values.
Being away from family can be difficult, so we need guidance. I get guidance from my seniors. We spend a lot of time together in camps; they are like our elder sisters.
When your parents support you and trust you then you have to use your independence and freedom properly to honour their trust and support.
Interviewer
So there's a good message for elders too — that if we trust and support our children, they will not use their freedom inappropriately. Anything you’d like to say to the fans or general public?
Diana
As for the fans and the public… You know we work hard. No one plays to lose, but we don't always win. It’s okay.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's government finished its term on May 31, 2018.
When it came to power after sweeping the 2013 elections, the PML-N, which prides itself on prioritising economic growth and development, set out ambitious policy goals in its manifesto that year.
How many of those promises did the party live up to five years later? Let's look at what the data says.
***
Agriculture and food security
Claims:
—Ensure universal access to affordable food grains in all parts of the country by legislating the Right to Food as a fundamental right.
—To implement the Right to Food policy, the government will formulate, in consultation with the provincial governments, a National Strategy for Food Security to achieve an average agricultural growth of at least 4 percent per annum in the next decade, evolve an equitable system of food procurement and distribution, improve the access of poor households to food at affordable prices and evolve a transparent system of safety nets for very poor households.
—Strengthen the procurement programme to ensure all farmers receive the guaranteed support price for grains and improve arrangements for storage and subsidised distribution to ensure relative price stability throughout the year.
After five years:
The government didn't follow through on its promise to legislate a right to food policy. The target of 4 percent growth in the agriculture sector was also not achieved, with the sector's performance remaining unimpressive throughout, peaking at 3.81 percent in 2018 and falling to 0.15 in 2016.
The federal government's goal to procure food grains from all farmers to ensure they all receive a guaranteed price was unrealistic from the start due to the simple fact that such an endeavour would have been too costly.
At its maximum, only one fourth of the total wheat production was procured by the government, in 2017.
However, the government ought to be commended for keeping the support price stable at Rs1300 per maund of wheat during its tenure, unlike the previous Pakistan People's Party government. As a result, the PML-N was able to reduce food price inflation.
Food price inflation was also brought into check thanks to the government's Kisaan Package in 2015, which included benefits in terms of tax reduction on agriculture machinery from 45 percent to nine percent, reduction in sales tax from 17 percent to seven percent on cold chain machinery, tax holidays and mark up-free loans for farmers with less than 12.5 acres of landholding.
Education and health
Claim:
—The PML-N aims to achieve public spending of four percent and two percent of the GDP for education and health by 2018 to achieve the targets set by the United Nations.
After five years:
The government did increase spending on education and health, but only marginally so. The abysmal numbers fall well short of the intended targets.
Budget deficit and tax-to-GDP ratio
Claims:
—Through reforms in the Federal Board of Revenue and the tax system, the PML-N will strive to improve the tax-to-GDP ratio to 15 percent by 2018. Informal economy will be brought into the tax net and the tax base will be broadened.
—To tax all income and to achieve greater equity in the tax system by increasing dependence on direct taxes.
—Budget deficit will be brought down to four percent of GDP.
After five years:
The government did consistently improve the tax-to-GDP ratio, but still wasn't able to achieve what it promised in its manifesto.
But what's more important is that the PML-N increased indirect taxes and the overall ratio of direct and indirect taxes did not change. This also means that the tax base was not broadened.
The government did, nonetheless, made progress on reducing the budget deficit and almost met its target in 2018.
Inflation
Claim:
—Inflation will be brought down to single digit in the range of seven or eight percent by limiting government borrowing and lowering interest rates through effective monetary policy.
After five years:
The PML-N succeeded in curbing inflationary pressures due to a host of factors, including low oil prices, stable exchange rate as well as its decision to stabilise the support price for wheat.
The food and general inflation figures are now at the lowest since a decade at 1.6 percent and 3.2 percent respectively, which is a great achievement and must be acknowledged, though the question of sustainability still lingers, especially since international oil prices are out of the country's control.
The government also performed respectably on reducing the interest rate by bringing it down to six percent most recently, as opposed to 15 percent at the start of the PPP tenure in 2008.
It is important to note that low interest rates help reduce borrowing cost and encourage investments via bank borrowings.
Housing for low income families
Claim:
—At least 1,000 clusters of 500 houses each for lower income families will be developed on a public-private partnership mode, and the industry will be encouraged to expand investment and to provide employment opportunities in the adjoining areas.
After five years:
This was an over ambitious target without realising the cost of setting up 500,000 houses in five years — that is 100,000 each year.
Suppose that the construction of a single house costs a minimum of Rs1 million — the expenditure of building 100,000 houses each year would be Rs100 billion.
The annual cost alone would have been 60 percent of the total development expenditure outside the PSDP during the entire tenure of the government.
How would the government have allocated resources to such a project when it failed to achieve its revenue target each year and consistently cut back on development expenditure?
In the end, there is no proof in the spending budget that shows that the government actually built any of the houses it had promised.
Macroeconomic stability
Claim:
—In order to decrease the fiscal deficit, we will eliminate VIP culture and launch an austerity drive. Expenses related to the presidency, prime minister, governors and chief ministers will be significantly reduced.
After five years:
Contrary to the promises, the budget for the Prime Minister’s Office went up consistently. In fact, the budget each year had to be revised and increased.
Energy crises
Claim:
—Investment of about US$20 billion to generate 10,000 MW of electricity in the next five years will stimulate overall growth of the economy.
After five years:
The government initiated several coal-fired plants in places such as Sahiwal, Port Qasim, Jamshoro, Faislabad, Mianwali and DG Khan; a solar park in Bahawalpur; and wind farms in Sindh.
But despite this show of resolve, a load shedding-free Pakistan is still very much a dream. Not to mention the fact that coal power plants are major pollutants as well.
Claims to bring about US$20 billion for the energy sector were a reach. It is as if the PML-N did not know Pakistan's record and potential for attracting foreign investment.
In 2014, foreign investment stood at US$4.44 billion, with a 36 percent reduction in the subsequent year to US$2.83 billion and consistent declines thereafter.
Over four years, the total foreign investment, including CPEC projects, was at around US$11.7 billion — a far cry from the government's goal of having US$20 billion investment in the energy sector alone.
A new framework for social change
Claim:
—In cooperation with the provinces, the PML-N government will raise the total spending on non-pension social protection from the current level of one percent of GDP to at least two percent by 2018.
After five years:
The non-pension social security and welfare includes expenditures on the Benazir Income Support Program, Social Development Goals and the Pakistan Bait-ul-Maal. The allocations to these remained less than one-third of what the manifesto promised.
According to the World Social Protection Report 2017, Pakistan spends the least among South Asian countries when it comes to social protection.
***
A new elections cycle brings in new electoral promises. To begin with, parties should present a fair assessment of the needs of the country and make realistic promises that they can more or less keep. This applies to everyone and not just the PML-N.
Pakistan ranks an abysmal 147th on the human development index. Whoever comes to power later this year will have to keep this statistic in mind. It's only by improving the lives of the people does one fulfill a democratic mandate.
Illustration by Nabeel Ahmed
Are you researching Pakistan's economy? Share your expertise with us at blog@dawn.com
This 20-year-old left arm, leg spinner from Lahore has been on the squad for the past 16 months or so and has swiftly become one of the most reliable, consistent and economical bowlers on the team.
Sandhu’s 4 for 26 in the Women’s World Cup 2017 match against India reduced India to their lowest total in the tournament — a match we lost due to our batting.
Sandhu then had a consistently tight and economical showing in the ICC Championship series against New Zealand in November 2017 and Sri Lanka in March 2018 — keeping run rates down, striking at critical moments, and taking key wickets.
This quiet, unassuming and calm bowler is certainly one of the emerging stars to watch out for in the future.
I spoke to Nashra about her childhood, how she made it to the national squad, and how she keeps her cool and bowls those consistent lines and lengths against the best batters in the world.
The interview below is translated from Urdu and has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This is the third of a four-part series of interviews with two seniors and two newcomers to the women’s squad, which is currently playing the Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup in Malaysia from June 3-10, 2018. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
Interviewer
How old were you when you realised you like playing cricket?
Nashra
As a child, I used to play in our house with my father, sister and twin brother. Even my mother used to play with us. On Sundays and whenever we were off from school, we’d all play together.
Interviewer
Many children in Pakistan play cricket at home but not everyone makes it to the national team. Tell me about your journey.
Nashra
There wasn't much support in my school for cricket. Other games like volleyball were played more.
When I finished my matriculation, I spoke to Madam Ayesha Ashhar (formerly manager, now general manager of the Pakistan Cricket Board’s women’s wing), and she recommended I consider Kinnaird College or Lahore College for Women, which provide support for women’s cricket.
At the time I used to be a fast bowler. But my brother was a spinner, so when I played at home I also learnt how to spin. I would try and spin the last ball of my over.
When I went to college, my coach Sir Shahid said, “You are short for a fast bowler, so try to spin instead.”
My heart was set on fast bowling but Sir Shahid said I’d be more effective as a spin bowler because I was already good at it and if I practised more I’ll improve. That's how I became a spinner.
I started off playing for Lahore College for Women at the board level. Then Alhamdolillah I was selected to play for Lahore in the under-19 tournament in my first attempt. Afterwards, I also played under-21 for Lahore in a tournament in Karachi.
Nashra Sandhu.—Photo by Asian Cricket Council
Then there was a regional tournament. There was not enough space for me on the Lahore team, so I played from Abbottabad under Qanita Jalil, who was the regional captain.
I thought it was a very high-level tournament as all the seniors were playing in it, and so I didn't sit for many of my first-year board exams.
When I got my date sheet, I noticed that most of my exams were on the same days as the matches, except for English.
I hadn’t really studied much and I had not prepared for it, but I still asked Madam Ayesha for permission to go to Lahore to take my exam.
She said okay. So I went to Lahore to take my first-year English exam and then returned the same day to Islamabad to play the tournament.
After that there were smaller local tournaments. Then there was the SAGA Premier League T20 tournament, which the selectors came to watch and where I bowled very well.
After that, I was included in the Pakistan fitness camp in Abbottabad and eventually played for Pakistan A.
Then the Pakistan team had a tour of the West Indies in 2015 and Sir Basit [Ali, head of junior selection committee and head coach of women’s cricket team] called me to the women's cricket ground.
He said, "I want to see you bowl," so I did and he appreciated it. He said, "We will see next time."
The next time there was a selection in January 2017 for the World Cup Qualifiers in Sri Lanka. I was included in the camp for the qualifiers in Karachi, where I bowled really well and got selected for the team.
Interviewer
You mentioned there was no support for cricket in your school, so where did you practise and with whom?
Nashra
When I was in matric, there was a teacher who encouraged me to take up cricket seriously. Both my baba (father) and I were very interested that I play, and on the teacher’s recommendation, I joined a cricket academy for boys that was relatively close by.
I was a fast bowler then. Spinners would get to bowl first and then the fast bowlers got a chance, so I had to wait a long time.
I used to bat a lot more at the time. But it would take a long time to get my turn at batting too.
I couldn't pay attention to my studies, but then I wasn't really getting a chance to practise at the academy either.
So I left the boys’ cricket academy and we decided to construct a cement pitch in our home.
Later, we put up proper practice nets around the pitch and I practised target bowling at home. Eventually, I joined the college as Madam Ayesha Ashhar had suggested.
Interviewer
It sounds like your father supported you a lot?
Nashra
Everyone in the family supported me. My mother also used to play on Sundays. She and I would be on one team and my brother and father would be on the other team. My brother liked cricket, but he didn’t pursue it like I did.
Interviewer
Tell me something memorable or something that you learnt since you have been on the national team.
Nashra
In the beginning I knew Qanita aapi and Sana aapi. Sana aapi has supported me a lot right from the beginning. I would talk to her and she would explain things very clearly and nicely to me.
The environment at the qualifiers was really good; I never felt like I was a new person on the team.
Nashra Sandhu with Sana Mir, Bismah Maroof and Diana Baig after their first ODI win in the ICC Women's Championship against Sri Lanka in March 2018.—Photo by ICC
It never felt as if there were seniors and juniors, and there was no difference in the way we were treated.
It was a wonderful environment and therefore I performed so well — I was the highest wicket-taker in the World Cup Qualifiers, my first international tournament.
Interviewer
Tell me how you work on yourself to be so consistent and disciplined even in high-pressure games like against India in the World Cup, where you took 4 for 26.
Nashra
There was a summer camp in college after my matriculation examinations. It was very hot and it would be just me and a few other people. I was trying to practise left-arm spin.
Sir Shahid would give me a target; he would place a cone or a glove, and tell me to bowl at that point. So whether he was there or not, I used to practise the same way.
Often there was no one to keep while I bowled. For about three hours every day, I would set a target, bowl my over and then pick the balls up to start again.
I think that practice formed a foundation and made me consistent in my bowling. Even though I was alone, I kept practising and I think that has made me really consistent and it helps me to focus and bowl on target.
Interviewer
Do you ever get stressed out?
Nashra
Mostly, thank God, I have a lot of confidence in my bowling. I think when I'm in form then no one can play a big shot on my bowling.
Sometimes when I'm not in form, the other team members support and encourage me and give me confidence.
Interviewer
How many times did you bowl out Chamari Atapattu, the Sri Lanka team’s captain and best batter, in the recent series?
Nashra
Four times.
Interviewer
How did that feel?
Nashra
It felt awesome. I kept bowling a good line and length and she kept losing her wicket. She should have played according to my bowling, but she tried to play big shots.
Interviewer
Do you have a message for young people who are aspiring to excel in sports or any other field of their choice?
Nashra
You should practise a lot and then assess how far you can go. If you have a coach, ask how far they think you can go so you don’t waste your time.
Interviewer
Anything you want to tell your fans or the public about how to support the team better? Often, there are expectations and, I think, unfair criticism.
Nashra
People who don’t have knowledge can criticise or comment unfairly. First, they should follow the game more closely and watch the live matches or follow the live scorecards.
They should get to know the history of the game and the team so they understand us better. Then they can comment better on our performance.
Zulfiqar Ali, a 54-year-old terminally-ill Pakistani on death row in Indonesia, passed away on May 31, 2018.
He was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to death on drug charges, following a forced confession and an unfair trial.
An Indonesian government inquiry concluded that he was innocent in 2010.
Nonetheless, his incarceration continued and in July 2016, warrants for his execution by firing squad were issued.
The execution was stayed after a last minute intervention by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Ali was diagnosed with stage-4 liver cancer in January 2018 and was told he only had three months to live.
He leaves behind five children, a wife and mother.
Zulfiqar taught me how to be compassionate
When the poor prisoners in our jail could not afford anything better than the inedible prison food, Zulfiqar decided to distribute packets of noodles from his own pocket.
He didn’t know who these people were, where they came from, what they had done or what languages they spoke, but Zulfiqar helped them — not once, not twice, but on most days.
I remember seeing long queues outside our room of people thanking him and asking him for food. He never refused.
He was hopeful that he would eventually be saved and taken out of his misery with Pakistan’s efforts — the same country that had neglected him for years, the same country he still had pride in.
The Pakistani embassy did pay for his medical bills when he ran out of money, but what he needed the most ever since he was in jail was to be set free from the stain of the crime that he never committed and to die at home with his family.
In the five years I was in the jail with him, I never saw anyone from the Pakistani embassy visiting him, to help him fight his case, to help him gain freedom, to help bring him back home.
But I always saw Zulfiqar’s unwavering trust in his country.
Zulfiqar taught me how to be forgiving
Can you imagine being subjected to the pain that was inflicted upon him and still have no desire for revenge in you?
For days, he was kicked, punched and beaten so horribly by the police that he had to be rushed into emergency surgeries.
There was no evidence that Zulfiqar was involved in drug trafficking.
But they brutalised him so severely that he was forced to sign a self-incriminating confession.
All that torture left him with stomach and kidney injuries that lasted him a lifetime.
Zulfiqar said he wouldn’t even wish the agony he went through upon his enemies.
Reverse the roles, put the officers who tortured him in front of him and hand him a baton, and he still wouldn’t do it.
There were some people who saw the kindness in Zulfiqar, but there were more who took advantage of him.
Every day, I would see the jail officer come to him and ask for money.
He was so heartless, he wouldn’t even let Zulfiqar go to the hospital if he didn’t pay him.
Another officer who would take him to the hospital would also ask for his share.
Then there were police officers for whom Zulfiqar used to buy lunch every now and then.
For Zulfiqar, nothing was free. And his health wasn’t on his side either. I remember him being weak, and always with a fever.
Many times, I would see him vomiting blood. He had to take several medicines every day that cost him a fortune.
Yet, the corrupt officials around him kept extorting money out of him. And Zulfiqar kept on complying.
Zulfiqar taught me how to be patient
Every day, for six years, Zulfiqar waited for the proof of his innocence to come out.
It did in 2010 when an inquiry commission formed by the then-Indonesian president found him not guilty.
The authors of the report even publicly confirmed that Zulfiqar had not just been wrongfully sentenced but had also been subjected to severe human rights abuses. Zulfiqar was finally proved innocent.
And then, for eight more long years, he waited to be sent home. His body had already weakened because of the injuries and scars caused by the torture. His pockets had already been emptied with all the bills.
But his heart was full of hope. He knew his place was not inside the prison, and there was still goodness left in the world.
Sana Mir, the former captain of the Pakistan women’s cricket team, is quite likely the most admired and successful female athlete in the history of Pakistan.
She has had a very interesting past year, marked by a difficult showing at the Women’s World Cup (WWC) 2017 but also some memorable personal performances.
After our team lost all its matches at the WWC 2017, the conflict between Sana — who was the captain at that time — and the coach was made public by the ‘leaking’ of the coach’s confidential report to the media and Mir’s public response via social media.
However, she returned to the team and has been in good form. In the ICC Championship series against New Zealand in November 2017, her four-wicket haul helped her team make history and secure Pakistan’s maiden ODI win against the Kiwis.
In the recently concluded ICC Championship series against Sri Lanka in March 2018, Sana helped secure two of the three ODI wins for Pakistan in their clean sweep of the ODI series and is now ranked number four in the ICC women’s ODI bowlers in the world.
This is the highest ODI ranking any Pakistani woman cricketer has ever achieved. She is also ranked number six ODI all-rounder in the world.
We talked about the past year — the transitions, challenges and triumphs and her definition of leadership.
The interview below has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This is the first half of the final installment of a four-part series of interviews with two seniors and two newcomers to the women’s squad, which played at the Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup in Malaysia from June 3-10, 2018. Read part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.
Interviewer
The past couple of years have been both challenging and important for you in terms of transitions, difficulties, achievements. Let’s start with that….
Sana
The year started with a big challenge with the Women’s World Cup Qualifiers (WCQ) in Sri Lanka in February 2017. To qualify for the tournament was important for two reasons.
First, to qualify for the WWC 2017, but more importantly for all the ICC Championship bilateral series that we are now playing — like the ones against New Zealand and Sri Lanka.
The future of women’s cricket in Pakistan depended on the WCQ as we don’t get much bilateral cricket other than the ICC Championship.
Qualification for this tournament not only guarantees you a place at the world cup, it also guarantees the top eight teams seven ICC Championship series with each other for two years.
This gives us more opportunities to experiment with youngsters and help them develop because now we have at least three matches per series.
In these series, we can give new players leeway. But in tournaments like the qualifiers, you have to get results. You can’t develop players like that.
So qualifying in that tournament has been really good for women’s cricket in Pakistan.
The preparation for the WCQ and WWC 2017 were affected by the constant change of coaches and players and last moment injuries.
It was harder to stay with the team at that time than to leave. But I felt that leaving was not the right thing to do at that point. So I chose to do it after the world cup.
Interviewer
You chose to step away after the world cup?
Sana
Yes, after the world cup because once the team had qualified, there was a future for women’s cricket.
The departure of a senior player before a world cup or a qualifier would have impacted the team for the whole tournament and in the coming years.
It could have had a negative impact on the younger players as well. They would have felt abandoned and I didn’t want to do that.
I knew it was going to be a tough world cup with a new coach. It would have been difficult to be on the same page or make effective strategies to win, because everything would be so new.
But I still took on the challenge because walking away at that point would have been more disastrous for the team.
I quite willingly walked into what I anticipated would be a difficult situation.
Interviewer
I understand why you walked into fire, so to speak, but I want to know how you did it….
Sana
I think the only thing that helped me was taking it one day at a time, doing my best in the moment and trying to be present for the people who were around me.
Not thinking: What will happen to me after the world cup? What will people say about me? How will we do in the world cup? Will we win or lose?
For example, I came in to bat against New Zealand after we were three down with the Kiwi bowler on a hat-trick. I just did what I could and scored a 50 in that match.
So, it helped me personally and it helped us to do whatever we could as a team.
We fought in every match. Yes, we didn’t win, but even with the new team and other changes that posed difficulties, every day when we went to the ground — each and every one of us — we fought our hearts out.
That’s something I am very proud of. We came close to beating other teams in at least three or four games and it couldn’t have happened if the girls were not ready to fight.
This is something that makes it worth the struggle and difficulties we went through.
Sana-Mir-2 top scores 45 WWC Aus v Pak —Photo by ICC
When I came back, I wanted to step away, but Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Najam Sethi, [former chief selector and current director cricket operations] Haroon Rasheed and [chief executive] Subhan Ahmed called me and we had a meeting.
We got a foreign coach, we got new selectors, we got new management. So I think things are getting better and we are moving in a good direction. There’s always more to do but crucial changes have been made.
Right after that, in the first ODI against New Zealand that we played in November 2017, we did the same thing we had done in the world cup: we choked.
But this time the coach stood up. We were looking for leadership and I would like to give credit to Head Coach Mark Coles because he was calm and told the girls not to sulk.
That’s what we had done in the world cup after coming very close to beating South Africa in our first match but losing in the second-last over. It was something we weren’t able to recover from in subsequent matches.
But in the series against New Zealand, Mark helped us keep our nerves and maintained his confidence in every person — the captain and all the players.
He strengthened the team. We weren’t able to do well in the next match — we lost by eight wickets again — but he kept giving us confidence and we were able to win the third and final match.
A lot goes on off the field. That’s something that changed in the series after the world cup. All these changes were quite good for us. And Bismah Maroof was also doing well as a new captain and the team was gelling together.
Then after the ODI series, we didn’t have a very good T20 series against New Zealand. We worked hard and prepared for the Sri Lanka series and Alhamdolillah we were able to do pretty well as a team.
Individually, I was able to reach my highest ICC ODI player ranking. So I think all of it is coming into place, all the hard work and changes.
Interviewer
Would it be accurate to say that the stand you took after the world cup and the meetings you had led to some of the changes we can see now?
Sana
Yes, I put forward my suggestions and recommendations. The PCB top management asked if I could move forward with the same setup. I said, “If I stay in women’s cricket, I want to contribute.”
But if certain mindsets, strategies or policies, or things that might be a hindrance in taking women’s cricket forward continue, I would not endorse them.
So in that way I would say that I did make some strong recommendations, but I am thankful to the PCB that they brought in a new vision, made commitments and followed through.
And it is helping everyone — the new captain, the new coach and the team.
We have new policies. We have the captain and coach on the selection panel now so the team cannot be selected until the captain and coach are involved. This is a huge thing.
So cricket, unlike other sports, is basically led by the captain, not by the coaches or selectors. It’s something we need to understand while making policies.
If the captain is strong, if the coach is strong, then the team will be strong.
Interviewer
What were the key lessons you learnt during this time?
Sana
I think one thing that I have learnt is to not try and control things. We tend to make a lot of calculations, that if I do this then the other person will do that, or the media will do that, or the management will do that.
And sometimes we don’t take the decisions we should.
What I have learnt is to do the right thing, no matter what the result might be. And that takes a lot of courage, but in the end it’s really good for everyone.
I didn’t walk away before the qualifiers or the world cup, thinking that it’s better for the team for me to stay with them.
But once I walked away, to be very honest, I never thought that I would play again.
When I wrote my report and that open letter, I thought that was it.
But because I was courageous and took a stand for the betterment of women’s cricket, God had His own way to give me what I also wanted.
I also wanted to continue playing, but I couldn’t at that point. But then the setup changed, and I was playing again.
I think if you are brave, if you try to do good for other people, you do get a return.
Sometimes the favour is returned instantly; sometimes it takes time.
So, we don’t have to worry too much about results and trying to safeguard our own selves.
If you speak up for other people, that’s all that’s needed.
Many times, you can’t see it instantly, but when you see it in the bigger picture, it usually turns out that if you have done something right, it will be beneficial for you in the end.
It can take one year, two years, five years, ten years. That’s something you can’t predict but it’s for your own good.
Through arch of snowy marble
A throng of people pours
To worship in the temple
With shimmering silver doors
O Man! What pious spot is this?
Sadh Belo…Sadh Belo…
With saints and temples white –
The islet of delight
—Elsa Kazi
Sadh Belo — whenever I heard the name, it felt like an ancient incantation, a wave on water, a ripple caressing the smooth surface of the Indus.
I came across this beautiful temple complex while writing on Udasipanth in Sindh. Whenever I went to an Udasi establishment and interviewed someone there, people would ask, Have you been to Sadh Belo?
And after discovering I haven’t, they would exclaim, But that is exactly why you must visit it, because that is the most important centre of Udasis in Sindh.
The beautiful marble balconies of Sadh Belo.—All photos by the author
So, like magnet pulled by metal, I found myself drawn to it. That’s how my longing to see that famed place with my own eyes grew immensely, but it took me some time before I could materialise that dream.
The dream finally came true one fine morning in late spring 2017. Accompanied by one of my students, I travelled to Khairpur and stayed at Shah Abdul Latif University Khairpur’s guest house.
Shankar Mahadev Temple.
The very next morning, we went to visit the temple.
A few men were sitting under a makeshift shelter, two or three boats were moored to the platform and right in front stood the majestic white marbled and buff-sandstone building of the Sadh Belo.
The sun was still low and a gentle breeze was setting the waves in motion.
Sadh Belo from a distance.
We sat in a boat; the fishermen had oars in hands, their sweat-soaked dresses reminded me of the indigenous inhabitants of the Indus valley.
Sitting there, we could see the Lansdowne Bridge and its graceful arches on one side, and the island shrine of Zinda Pir Khwaja Khizr on the other side.
An inscription.
Sadh Belo is an Udasi tirath (pilgrimage) founded by Baba Bankhandi, an Udasi missionary and who came from Nepal to settle in Sukkur in 1823.
Udasipanth is a religious tradition that was founded by Sri Chand (1494-?), the elder son of Guru Nanak (1469-1539), founder of the Sikh faith.
Door leading to Sri Chand Mandir.
The Udasis are ascetics, they do not possess any property and spend their life disciplined by yoga, meditation and reciting the prescribed texts.
The island was just a clump of trees when Bankhandi first arrived there, but he liked the place so much that he chose it as a place to set up his dhuni (sacred fire).
Looking out from the balcony.
It is said that once Baba Bankhandi saw Annapurna, the goddess of grain, in a dream. She gave him an oblong metal object called Kamandal and told him that, as long as this object is in the complex, there won’t be any shortage of grain for the community kitchen.
Later, Baba Bankhandi established various places of worship, including temples, dedicated to Annapurna, Hanuman, Ganesh and Shiv Shankar, and places for Granth Sahib and Bhagavad Gita.
An Usadi saint.
The temple complex is spread on two interconnected islands; Sadh Belo having kitchen, verandah, many temples, and Deen Belo which houses samadhis, a park, and Rishi Nol mandir.
Baba Bankhandi had many disciples who succeeded him one by one as the mahant or custodian of the place; the most notable among them are Swami Achal Prasad, Swami Mohan Das, and Swami Harnarain Das Udasin.
Sadh Belo attracted many people in search of spiritual enlightenment and had a thriving community of monks and devotees.
A marble panel showing singers and musicians.
In front of the complex, there is a huge marble wall with many engravings depicting various scenes that are related to the local Hindu and Udasi traditions, including a depiction of hell and heaven, musicians and Udasi saints.
The glory of Sadh Belo came to an end on the fateful day of Partition, when most of the Hindus of Sindh, including the inhabitants of Sadh Belo, crossed the border and left it deserted and forlorn.
A Shiv mandir.
The current gaddi nashin (custodian) is Swami Gauri Shankar Das who lives in Mumbai and comes here for Baba Bankhandi’s annual anniversary celebrations that take place in June.
Currently, Sadh Belo is under the custody of Evacuee Property Trust Board and is managed well, but the absence of the former administration of Udasi mahants is felt immensely.
Some paintings in the library.
The place was once crowded by the monks living in cells, writing manuscripts in Hindi and Gurmukhi, cooks preparing food and devotees gathered across the sanctum to pay their respects.
However, the monks’ cells lie empty with cobwebs and dust, the library is devoid of readers, the books are mired in dirt and the verandahs show the stark absence of devotees.
Still, if you close your eyes for a while, the wooden balconies, marble columns, and staircases seem to echo the footsteps, chatter, laughter, and whispers of the monks and devotees once here.
Watching the sun setting over Sadh Belo, Iqbal’s verse came to my mind:
Awwal-o-akhir fana, batin-o zahir fana Naqsh-e kuhan ho kay nau, manzil-e akhir fana
Annihilation is the end of all beginnings; annihilation is the end of all ends Extinction, the fate of everything, hidden or manifest, old or new
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Mrs Safia Saifuddin (not her real name) refused to take her husband of 10 years back home from the hospital when she found out that he had tested positive for the dreaded Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
While he suffered from the devastating symptoms of immune deficiency, she told him off incessantly for bringing shame to the entire family.
She called him immoral, accused him of going to ‘bad women’ and being a drug addict.
Mr Saifuddin vehemently denied these accusations, himself baffled and shocked about his newfound HIV-positive status.
Specialists at the hospital sat down with Safia and explained to her that besides sexual encounters, there were other plausible reasons her husband could have acquired HIV.
However, Safia refused to listen.
Perhaps the stigma of a husband with HIV was so profound that rationality had abandoned her.
This scenario brings into sharp focus to the societal view about HIV and its outcome, the horrifying Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (AIDS).
The stigma surrounding this disease is so profound that those living with this virus are often abandoned and ostracised by their families.
A major reason for this is that the virus is poorly understood among the general population with respect to the way it is acquired and transmitted.
Although there are no nation-wide studies with respect to knowledge about HIV among the Pakistani public, a survey in Lahore with 580 educated respondents — most of whom were highly qualified, with 16 or more years of education — brought out some of the misconceptions.
While a significant majority of the respondents knew that HIV is transmitted through sexual contact, sharing of needles and transfusion of contaminated blood, there were at least 35 percent who erroneously also believed that it can be transmitted through exchange of saliva.
Another 14 percent stated that, in their mistaken opinion, even sharing utensils could also lead to transmission of the virus from the infected to the healthy.
One can only assume the extent of misinformation among the less educated amongst us.
However, the picture is grimmer. Given the lack of open discussion regarding HIV and AIDS in our society, one can perhaps understand lack of awareness among the general public.
But it is difficult to comprehend the fact that often even those who are part of the medical community demonstrate not only limited information about the virus, but also a lack of empathy towards those stricken by this disease.
Meet Khuda Bux (not his real name). He is admitted in the general ward of a tertiary care hospital for pneumonia.
He is being provided routine care but there is something different about this patient.
His file has a red tape attached to it.
All the healthcare professionals know that this means he is HIV-positive.
Some of the patients are also smart enough to pick this up. Consequently, they stay away from Khuda Bux, and do not talk to him, occasionally whispering about him when they think he is sleeping.
One night after dinner, as the dishes are being cleared, a junior doctor comes and yells at the cleaning staff.
“Why are this patient’s dishes being kept with other patients’ dishes? Don’t you know this patient is HIV-positive? This will spread the infection to other patients,” the junior doctor scolds, not only demonstrating his own lack of knowledge, but also reinforcing the stigma and unfounded fear associated with caring for such patients.
An infection control specialist standing nearby hears this and says to the junior doctor. “Where is your information coming from? HIV does not spread through sharing utensils!”
The cleaner looks from one doctor to the other, not knowing whom to believe. Khuda Bux, feeling exposed to a ward full of people, looks embarrassed, eyes downcast.
This real-life case illustrates the manner in which HIV patients are often treated at some hospitals.
Not only are these patients made to stand out from the others, but they are also treated differently.
Labeling is quite common, a process which can be psychologically damaging for the patient suffering from the disease.
And this happens within the confines of an environment that is supposed to provide respite from suffering, often at the hands of healers, their messiahs.
Consider the case of 32-year-old Arif Ali (not his real name) suffering from an infection due to stones in the gallbladder, necessitating an emergency surgery.
The surgeon, once he discovers his HIV-positive status, refuses to operate on him.
His concern rests on the fact that he may acquire the infection while operating and simply does not want to take the risk.
Acquiring the infection, for example through a needlestick injury, is a real fear among medical professionals, and perhaps not a completely misguided one.
However, is the fear justified?
After all, physicians are duty bound by their oath to provide healthcare to patients, particularly in times of emergency.
But how far does this duty extend? Does it extend to putting their own lives at risk?
There are no easy answers to these questions but very often the typical “fright and flight” reactions of the care providers are out of proportion to any real risks they may be facing.
The issue is not merely at the level of individuals, but rather reflects a much broader systemic issue.
It is also the callous disregard to established protocols that contributes significantly to this problem.
We saw evidence of this two years ago during an HIV outbreak at a hospital in Larkana.
This serious and unconscionable outbreak, which was caused by unscreened tainted blood provided by unscrupulous blood banks with poor infection control practices for dialysis, not only increased the infection’s already notorious reputation, but also further eroded public trust in the healthcare system.
Following standard guidelines and procedures for safe blood transfusion practices and adequate cleaning of dialysis machines through proper infection control methods could have easily prevented the outbreak.
While one can hope that the healthcare system becomes better equipped by providing better infection control facilities and enforcing stronger regulatory mechanisms, it is also equally important to tackle societal attitudes among medical professionals.
We realise that medical professionals do not practice in a vacuum and dominant social beliefs will also influence their behaviour but they have a higher moral responsibility to treat patients in an unbiased fashion.
We need to start with dispelling the myths surrounding HIV among the healthcare workforce primarily but also within the larger society.
Acquiring HIV is not a death sentence and with proper treatment, those living with the condition can lead almost normal lives.
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In the neighbourhood of Ichhra in Lahore, hundreds of people gather every Thursday night at the shrine of Shah Jamal, a Sufi of the Suhrawardi and Qadiriyya orders (silsila).
Under the sacred peepal trees, devotees sit in a circle to witness and experience the sacred dance: dhamal.
Repetitive rhythmic beats of dhols and correspondingly frenzied barefoot whirling of the devotees create a trance-inducing effect on the audience.
Participants reverently witness the performance, while collectively partaking in hashish-smoking — a derivative of cannabis.
Devotees indulge in hashish intoxication as a communal activity complementing the sacred ritual of dhamal.
Sufi shrine culture in Pakistan is multi-faceted and diverse; while hashish does not feature uniformly across cultures of traditional shrines, hashish-smoking is a visible, communal, and conspicuous activity associated with Qalandari shrines in Pakistan.
Paradoxically, it is also one of the least studied phenomena as meaningful in terms of Islam; despite its prominence in Islamic settings, it is frequently dismissed as merely illegal and representative of the degeneration of Islamic ideals.
Sufis dance outside the Data Darbar during the three-day annual Urs of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh in 2016.─AFP/File
In the popular imagination, the use of hashish in Islamic settings, and as an Islamic activity, is explained primarily within two discursive frameworks; it is explored through its legal status in Islam or through the category of “folk” or “popular” Islam.
Deeming hashish to be one form of intoxicant, Islamic legal prohibition of intoxicants is extended to censure the use of hashish.
The illegality of the activity serves as the premise for the “un-Islamic” and irreligious characterisation of hashish-smoking.
When explained in non-legal terms, hashish is described as an aspect of “popular” Islam, or particularly “popular” Sufism, representing the beliefs and practices of non-literate masses belonging to the “lower” social strata.
Such phenomenon, by definition, is assumed as self-evidently distinct from proper and official Sufism.
It rests on a trickle-down movement of beliefs and practices, where the activities of “elite” are assumed to be “pure,” which undergo a process of distortion, degeneration, and vulgarisation as they are popularised and lived by the masses.
Under both rubrics, hashish is characterised as intrinsically “non-religious” and devoid of Islamic normativity.
Because such an understanding of hashish is secular, the affiliation of hashish with Islamic thought and settings is rendered meaningless.
It is helpful to note here the modern constitution of the analytical categories of religious and secular, which may not always be applicable to phenomena meaningful in terms of Islam.
Disruptions in the processual constitution of Islam through colonialism and modernism in the 19th and 20th centuries are reflected in the loss of meanings of hashish, poverty, Qalandariyya, and asceticism in the conceptualisation of modern Islam.
Legality of hashish
The history of Islamic legal thought surrounding the status of hashish does not display uniformity in legal opinions.
He notes that while jurists traditionally equate intoxication with inebriation, they reflect far greater diversity of opinions in qualifying hashish as an intoxicant, and thereby, legally impermissible.
Since every intoxicant was deemed forbidden in Islamic law, categorising hashish as an intoxicant was the logically necessary premise in framing its use as prohibited in Muslim societies.
However, it has proven rather difficult to consistently equate the effects of alcohol and hashish.
It has been noted that alcohol largely has the same effect on everyone; its consumers get exhilarated and joyous, numb from the painful sensations and prone to violence.
Hashish affects its users according to each’s temper and induces trance-like states of silence, calmness, and acuteness. It turns the concerns of its users inward and is conducive to contemplation and meditation.
Considering the different natures and effects of wine and hashish, Islamic jurists have offered legal opinions ranging from strong negative evaluation to its legal sanction.
A highly respected Hanafi judge, Jamal-ad-din al-Malati (d. 1400) issued a fatwa permitting the use of hashish.
However, such opinions remained in the minority, while its legal status was discussed largely in terms of its intoxicating or corruptive effects.
Hashish and ascetic practices
Legal framework alone, therefore, does not get us very far in terms of understanding the supra-legal Islamic value of hashish.
The mystical paths (tariqa) of Sufism, at the basic level, require strict adherence to the Sharia before journeying inwardly to the ascending stages of spiritual perfection and proximity to God.
As anthropologist Jurgen Frembgen points out, well-established mystical paths are known as tariqat-i shariat, implying the close relationship between observance of law and institutional Sufism.
There is, however, a not so small minority of mystics in Pakistan which does not accept this premise, and are distinct, in thought, practice, and identity, from institutional Sufism.
Known by different names, such as qalandar, malang, faqir or malamati, the mystical path chosen by such mystics lie outside the Islamic law (bi-shar), as opposed to “mainstream” ba-shar Sufis (observant of law).
Underlying such an attitude of religiosity is the devaluation of the external world, where social life and norms are considered to be impediments to salvation.
Based on the concept of tawwakul (trust and reliance on God alone), qalandars live out the doctrine of reliance on God in its extreme form, by completely rejecting the world in favour of exclusive orientation towards God.
Abhorring property ownership and choosing voluntary poverty as a mode of piety, qalandars offer a “sobering critique of society’s failure to reach God.”
Society inevitably draws and ties the devotee to the affairs of this world to the detriment of complete faith and trust in God.
Qalandar, therefore, strives to achieve independence from the world by rejecting every form of social association and Islamic institutions, in effect becoming “dead” to society, interpreting radically the Prophetic tradition, “Die before you die.”
Accordingly, some mystics follow the practice of uttering “four takbirs” — a reference to the funeral prayers, and live in cemeteries and shrines.
Having rejected the social values and formalism of the external world, qalandars disassociate themselves with the institutionalised forms of Islam, primarily Sharia.
Since law governs external behaviour, Qalandars view inherent in it the danger of riya (self-conceit).
Public adherence to legal and social norms can be a danger to a truly spiritual life, where the performance of public piety may be directed towards audiences other than God.
Such performative piety can act as an obstacle to spiritual purification. Qalandars choose to flaunt and deliberately violate Sharia to attract public blame and censure.
Blame (malama) has a great effect in “making love sincere,” as noted by the Sufi saint Ali Hujwiri (d. 1072-77) — better known as Data Gunj Bakhsh.
As a pietistic attitude, it requires “covering up of one’s laudable deeds and erecting a façade of blameworthy behaviour,” notes J. T. P. de Bruijn.
It allows the mystic to seek the path in a more focused way, by becoming indifferent to public opinion, both positive and negative.
Followers light incense and candles at shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh during the three-day annual Urs in 2016.─AFP/File
Malamati piety inevitably leads to behaviour censured by the norms and prescriptions of the legal discourse. Acting against legal norms serves a deeply Islamic purpose for qalandars.
Qalandars openly display disregard for prescribed ritual worship, violate public norms of decency by adopting minimal clothing or wearing black woolen cloaks (signifying social withdrawal), and use hashish religiously.
As an active rejection of established social customs and norms, qalandars seek the effacement of the individual or self, which forms the constitutive unit of modern society.
Mahmud Shabistari (d. 1337), one of the most celebrated Sufi poets, writes:
To be a haunter of taverns is to be freed from self,
Self-regard is paganism, even if it be righteousness.
Contravention of legal norms, in such a context, acquires positive meaning while retaining its disrespectability.
It reinforces the separation between society with its worldly concerns and Qalandari mysticism with its Malamati piety.
Historian Nile Green observes that hashish “was lent religious value as evidence for renouncing the world and as an instrument for reaching the other world.” It was “attributed with moral value and epistemological meaning.”
Hashish turned the seeker away from the lower passions related to this world, and elevated his concerns to matters of spiritual importance.
It purified the seeker’s devotion, by turning away from this world to prepare for the inner flight to the Divine.
A verse by a medieval poet, Al-Is’irdi (d. 1222-1258), on the spiritual meaning of hashish puts it as:
It is the secret. In it, the spirit ascends to the highest
Spots on a heavenly ascent (mira’j) of disembodied understanding
Modernity and transformation of hashish
In Pakistan, Qalandariyya traces its roots to the 13th century saint, Sayyid Uthman Marwandi (d. 1274), popularly revered as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.
Qalandars, faqirs and malangs, as “holy men,” operated in relative autonomy from the norms of social institutions.
Such radical embodiment of asceticism and renunciation came increasingly under attack with the advent of modernity through European colonialism.
Nile Green notes that through colonial laws, moral and scientific discourses, modernity displaced the foundations of Qalandariyya as constitutive and representative of Islamic values.
The capitalist ethos of the colonialists could not accommodate the values of asceticism, and in turn, sought to de-emphasise Islamic valourisation and understanding of “voluntary poverty” and homelessness.
Reducing it to its material aspect, poverty was characterised, not as symbolic of spiritual wealth, but as evidence of the downfall of Muslim societies.
Victorian morality denigrated hashish as “profane,” opposed to “religion.” It conveniently conflated Islam with colonial conception of religion.
Colonial critics criticised faqirs’ drug use, and explained the behaviour as “not the result of devotion to and absorption in God, but instead as the voluntary degradation of the work-shy addict.”
Scientific discourse was instrumental in associating drug use with criminality and insanity, through efforts such as the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893-1894.
Colonial construction and representation of qalandars and faqirs as symptomatic of the decay of Muslim society was, in turn, fundamental in justifying the moral authority of the colonial order.
Muslim reformers of the 19th and 20th centuries — troubled by the eclipse of Muslim rule in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere — embraced colonial criticism against Muslims practicing corrupted and denigrated forms of Islam.
The decay of Muslim political rule was explained through the anti-work ethic, antinomian practices, and other-worldly piety of qalandars and faqirs.
Seeking to re-form Islam to bring it in harmony with the modernist values of progress, reason, and law, Muslim reformers marginalised those modes of religiosity and piety which protested against such a worldview.
—Haseeb Amjad
In terms of Qalandari mysticism, hashish was meaningful and instrumental in dissolving the self (fa’na) through detachment and antagonism towards the “World of Exile” (i.e. material world).
It represents a radical interpretation of Islamic themes such as salvation, poverty, fa’na and tawwakul.
Orientalist and reformist categorisation of hashish as profane demarcated it from religion proper, rendering it meaningless in the constitution of modern Islam.
For Muslims of Pakistan, the transition from the colonial order to the post-colonial was marked by the insistence upon an Islamic identity of state. Islam was defined through the state as primarily law.
Katherine Ewing notes that the relationship between traditional Sufi shrines and saints attached to them, and the state of Pakistan has been geared towards reforming the image of the Sufi saints as “originally” ulema, reflecting the stress on conformity with Sharia.
Hashish as a ritual, as performed in the Sufi shrines associated with the Qalandari path of Islamic mysticism, represents “pockets and currents of resistance” to the modern conceptualisation of Islam, with its unprecedented privileging of legal and prescriptive discourses as primarily and exclusively definitive of Islamic values and meaning.
Liberal reframing of cannabis against its legal prohibition in terms of its medicinal and economic benefits, as recently echoed by Shashi Tharoor, merely reinforces the secularisation of hashish, despite noting the traditional use of cannabis in Hindu rituals.
In the context of such loss of meaning of bi-shar mysticism in modern Islam, Pakistani academic Hasan Ali Khan notes that the spiritual centre of the Qalandariyya, Sehwan in Sindh, represents its “last remaining bastion in this world.”
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This was the first Ramazan and this will be the first Eidul Fitr when you will not be physically present with us.
There will be Eidul Azha, your birthday on December 1, the new year, birthdays of your siblings, matriculations and graduations, marriages, each of those without your beautiful presence.
Nothing is able to explain away the grief that we feel every single day. Nothing can fill the most gut-wrenching emptiness and the most painful hole that our family carries in our hearts wherever we go.
The tragedy — that you were snatched from us just days before you were scheduled to return home for Eid — is so profound that it will forever remain incomprehensible.
That Pakistan lost a young ambassador in you — who only knew respect, who only had love to give, and who was so determined to grow up to work for peace — to terror and violence is so profound that it will forever remain nonsensical.
I would often imagine, unsuccessfully attempting to rationalise how families of children lost in war, in conflict, in violence, and in accident, grieve.
I would often wonder if their grief is disenfranchised grief, a grief unrecognised by society.
I would wonder if their grief becomes even more disenfranchised when the world around them is in celebration.
I would wonder if the loss of a child, a sister, a cousin, a friend, incapacitates them from finding joy in festivity.
I would wonder and I would try to empathise, not knowing that the answer would hit so terribly close one day, that it would hit home one day.
Some days, in their entirety, feel like a scene out of an extremely gloomy movie.
Your excitement for returning to Pakistan in time for Ramazan, your enthusiasm for celebrating Eid with your entire family after having spent a year away, you counting the days to your flight, and your anticipation for getting to eat Pakistani food again, especially during Eid — all of it now seems surreal. Sorrowful and surreal.
Perhaps the only solace in your farewell is that you returned home draped in your beloved country’s green and white flag, the country which you so passionately wanted to serve.
Perhaps the only comfort in your departure is that while you departed from your own home, you were welcomed into homes across Pakistan.
And perhaps the only harmony is that while our family lost its daughter, sister, cousin and niece, you now belong as all of these with hundreds of families who embraced your memory as that of their own.
I remember standing, on May 20, 2018, at the back of Masjid Sabireen in Houston where your funeral prayer was being performed, and I remember looking from there at the countless people who had come there bearing the sincerest emotion and the most heartfelt prayer for you.
I remember the umpteen mothers, daughters and sisters who had never met you but who spoke of you as if you had been a part of them all these years.
It is this powerful memory of yours, Sabika, which still allows us to feel empowered in knowing that your name travelled across two worlds not because you were killed with brutality, but because you lived with humility.
Not because you were taken away so young, but because despite that the lives which you entered, touched and impacted — in both your home country and host country — testify to your humble legacy of peace, empathy, and equality. This legacy deserves celebration.
A special tribunal was set up to hear what eventually came to be known as the First Lahore Conspiracy Trial. Under it, multiple cases were heard, the first batch of which began on April 26, 1915.
The judgement was read on September 13 — 24 of the accused were sentenced to death and 27 to transportation for life, while the others received varying sentences.
One of those sentenced to death was 19-year-old Kartar Singh Sarabha, who had returned to Punjab from San Francisco to take up arms against the colonial state. During his trial, he spoke eloquently and passionately about the injustices committed by the colonial state.
Sarabha had been associated with the revolutionary Ghadar magazine in San Francisco since it was founded in October, 1913. The magazine was published in several languages and distributed to Indian expatriates all over the world.
Sarabha had taken up responsibility for the Gurmukhi edition, even contributing poetry and articles to it.
With the onset of the First World War in 1914 and the decision of the committee responsible for the magazine’s publication to wage war against the British state in India, Sarabha headed home along with thousands of others, convinced that their heroism would inspire the local population to rise against their colonial rulers.
They could not have been more wrong.
The majority of the revolutionaries were originally from Punjab, having been inspired by the Ghadar magazine. But on their return, they found Punjab firmly within the embrace of the colonial empire.
Most of the villagers had benefited from the agricultural policies of the state while the recruits to the army were pro-empire.
Thus, upon landing in the various cities of British India, many of the revolutionaries were betrayed by their fellow villagers and arrested. Those who escaped were forced to go underground.
What also did not help was the lack of discretion shown by the revolutionaries. Infused with an inspiring patriotism, many preached on their ships in an attempt to recruit more to their cause. To keep the passion alive, many sang patriotic songs on the way.
Thus, even before the first boat had landed on the shores of British India, the colonial state, through its network of spies and the vocal proselytising of the Ghadari revolutionaries, was prepared.
No plan, no leader
There was also never a particular plan of action or a central revolutionary party organising the movement. It was entirely centred on a magazine published in San Francisco.
While the articles that appeared in the magazine were high on rhetoric and passion, it never offered any concrete plan of action for the imminent revolution.
Perhaps Hardayal, Sohan Singh Bakhna and Pandit Kanshi Ram, the founders of the committee that published the magazine, had anticipated that revolution was a distant reality.
Hardayal, particularly, the intellectual inspiration behind the magazine, was more inspired by Russian anarchist political thinkers than Marxist literature. For him, revolution was spontaneous individualistic acts of bravery against an oppressive regime.
The anarchists, unlike the Marxists, did not believe in one party guiding the revolution, for they believed that, eventually, even this party would form the ruling class.
People needed to be prepared for this eventual uprising. Hence, the need to set up a magazine to create an environment conducive to a revolution.
While the magazine romanticised arms, bombs and violence and promoted their use, it never set out to plan the course of action to be taken.
The situation, however, changed drastically after the First World War broke. With multiple powerful forces joining hands against the British, it was felt the opportunity was ripe for an armed revolt against the colonial state.
Indian migrants all over the world were exhorted to return to the motherland to free her from the shackles of slavery. Thousands responded to the call, embarking on boats from various ports of the world.
But there was no clear plan as to what was to be done when they reached home. It was imagined that individual acts of bravery would inspire the entire country to rise against the colonial state.
The conspiracy trials
Those who managed to avoid arrest returned to their home towns and villages, forming little groups, each one working on its own, independently. Many of these groups began reaching out to Indians within the army.
The plan was to instigate a rebellion similar to the war of 1857 — when Indian sepoys at the Meerut cantonment had rebelled against their British officers, starting a year-long struggle for freedom.
Other groups continued with their own efforts to collect arms, raise funds through armed dacoities and manufacture bombs.
A semblance of a central leadership was given to the movement in January, 1915 when Rash Behari Bose was convinced to take up the mantle.
Bose was a revolutionary nationalist from Bengal who had gained popularity in radical circles because of his involvement in a plan to assassinate Lord Hardinge, the viceroy, in 1912.
Connections were established within several army units, including Lahore, Ferozepur, Meerut, Agra, Benares and Lucknow, who gave assurances that they would defect when called upon by the leadership. February 21, 1915 was fixed as the day the general revolt would start.
The British, however, had already learned of this plan and before the date, many of these army units were either moved or disarmed, while several leaders of the movement were arrested.
Bose managed to escape to Japan. He later set up the Indian Independence League in exile, a precursor to Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army.
Others who were caught were tried in the First Lahore Conspiracy Trial.
The Ghadar movement received a semblance of a central leadership when Rash Behari Bose took on the mantle in 1915. After the revolution failed, he escaped to Japan, where he got married and went on to set up the Indian Independence League in exile.—Wikimedia Commons
An inspiration to others
For all practical purposes, the Ghadar Movement failed to achieve its political goals. The colonial state remained deeply entrenched in Punjab. However, something had changed.
The spontaneous acts of bravery of these revolutionaries became part of folklore. While in their lifetimes they failed to see the fruits of the seeds they had sown, for generations to come after them, tales of their bravery were recalled to instill nationalist fervour in people.
Bhagat Singh was one such young man who was moved by the passion of these revolutionaries. It is believed he always carried a picture of Kartar Singh Sarabha in his pocket. And that all the meetings of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the party he founded, had a picture of the young revolutionary as well.
16 years after the First Lahore Conspiracy Trial, a second Lahore Conspiracy Case was heard against Bhagat Singh, which he — taking a leaf out of Sarabha’s book — used to promote his ideas of revolution.
Like Sarabha, he became another young intellectual-revolutionary, whose sacrifice was meant to prick the conscience of the people.
Many other revolutionaries of the Ghadar Movement who escaped the wrath of the empire eventually formed other political organisations, the most prominent of which was the Kirti Kissan Sabha, a Marxist party particularly popular in the rural areas of Punjab. In 1928, they formed a crucial alliance with the Naujawan Bharat Sabha.
Thus, while the Ghadar Movement failed to achieve its revolutionary purpose, it managed to set into motion a series of important events — Jallianwala Bagh, the Non-Cooperation Movement of the 1920s, the demand for Purna Swaraj or complete self-rule — and inspired key figures in history such as Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose and the Kirti Kissan Sabha.
Through their heroism, it may be said the Ghadaris managed to spark a revolution.
This article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.
