Jinnah, Jaswant and the BJP: An analysis by Aakar Patel and Ghazi Salahuddin

Jinnah, Jaswant and the BJP

Sunday, August 23, 2009 Aakar Patel Jaswant Singh has not been expelled from the BJP for his book on Jinnah. He could not have been, because it does not say anything untrue. Very quickly, this is what his book says: 1) In 1940, Jinnah's Muslim League proposed that Muslims should have self-government 2) Between 1940 and 1946, Jinnah gained electoral support and was open for negotiations. However, he was snubbed by Congress leaders whose actions were either illogical (Gandhi) or tactless (Nehru). They wanted to rule India as a unit; Jinnah wanted a federation 3) On March 8, 1947, as killings began in Punjab, on both sides, Vallabhbhai Patel and Nehru accepted Partition in a resolution they passed in Gandhi's and Azad's absence 4) Congress could have done more to prevent Partition 5) Jinnah was modern and secular and would have been appalled by how Pakistan turned out None of this is wrong, or new. Much of it is taught in history books. Does Jaswant say Partition was a good thing? No. Does he blame Patel for it? No. If there is one man Jaswant holds most responsible for Partition, it is in fact Jinnah and his "continued rigidity, his fixed stand on an ever-increasing charter of demands for the Muslims, an ever-larger share of power for them in Independent India (page 504)." Patel is mentioned in the book in six places (pages 13, 289, 418, 459, 461 and 488). Not in one place has Jaswant said an unkind word about him, though he has been honest in reporting fact. So when BJP President Rajnath Singh is angry with Jaswant's views on Patel, he must be hallucinating. But he is not. And that is because Jaswant's punishment is not for his book at all. It is about the elections that the BJP lost under Rajnath's presidency, Advani's candidacy and Arun Jaitley's management. It was the second general election in a row that the party had lost. The only change that came about after the first defeat was that Atal Behari Vajpayee retired from active politics. After the defeat this year, Jaswant Singh told the BJP's Core Group at a meeting on June 10 that leaders should be held accountable if the party was to progress. They should not be rewarded for failure, he said, by hanging on to their party posts. Advani initially made a show of retiring (he is 82 and unlikely to lead another campaign). But none of the three men left. Rajnath Singh remains the BJP's president, Advani is leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha and Jaitley leader in the Rajya Sabha. They must deal with dissent and the Jinnah issue was handy. The book was released on the same day, August 17, as the BJP's three-day meeting to introspect the election defeat began. And so it is Jaswant Singh who must go instead. A minor royal from Rajasthan in western India, Jaswant won the election from Darjeeling in eastern India. Why Darjeeling? Because it has a large population of martial Gurkhas. They would vote for Jaswant because he fought nine years with the Central India Horse, including the wars of 1962 and 1965. For a soldier, raised on black and white certitude, Jaswant Singh has written a remarkable book. It is free of prejudice and the BJP should have been proud that one of their own wrote it. Instead they have punished him. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. But if it is so obvious that Jaswant Singh is right and Rajnath Singh is wrong, then how will Rajnath get away with it? He will because he is confident that nobody will actually read Jaswant's book. This includes the media which carried headlines like 'Jaswant blames Patel, Nehru for Partition'. In India we like the idea of controversy, the details bore us. But what this episode has done is made Jinnah more accessible. It has thrown up things that we did not know about the man. Asked in an interview whether he thought Jinnah was a great man, Jaswant said: "Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him... Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don't we recognise that? Why don't we see, and try to understand, why he called him that." Indians are not used to this sort of language about him because for us Jinnah is the man who broke up our nation. Jaswant discovered that Jinnah has an attractive personality. He does not come across as a normal Indian. This is because, for most of his life, Jinnah does not carry the prejudice of faith that we are burdened with. Secondly, his manner of dress and conversation is European and correct. This is also unusual. Europeans themselves might not find this characteristic remarkable, and this explains why Attenborough's Jinnah is such a cardboard figure. But for us the man stands out. The men around him in his early days, mainly South Bombay Gujaratis (Hindus and Parsis), were very fond of Jinnah and their memoirs of him, many written after 1940, have warmth and respect. Jaswant says that Jinnah was a tough negotiator and should have been negotiated with. Instead the Congress tried to win him over because they thought his cause was futile. Gandhi, especially, made the mistake of going to him without accepting that he represented only Congress. Indians are not taught the sequence of Partition in school. One reason is that the Congress's role in the freedom movement is inviolate. Nothing bad can be said about Gandhi in particular. The other reason is that the two-nation theory is still applicable in India which has 150 million Muslim citizens. Pakistan, which is now almost entirely Muslim, does not have to live with religious tension. Partition made Pakistan quite pure ethnically. But to Indians, Partition is easier explained away as something one man did, rather than say 'Muslims think they are a separate nation' because that is a formula for perpetual violence. For Jaswant Singh the original sin is not Partition; it is the Morley Minto reforms of 1909. The concession of separate electorates to Muslims once, he believes, is what has made this problem a recurring one for India. No democracy in the world has separate electorates. Muslims, writes Jaswant, were willingly Indian as long as they ruled India. By the end of the Simla conference in 1945, Jinnah wanted as many reserved seats for Muslims as there were for all other communities put together though Muslims were a quarter of the population. Jinnah rejected one-third representation that the Wavell plan gave Muslims. He said this was because "all other minorities" had the "same goal as Congress". Jinnah's Muslim nation did not include Christians because "ethnically and culturally they are very closely knitted to Hindu society (page 346)". The Congress was not, and is not, a religious body. It had no response to the cold logic of community that Jinnah presented to them as his argument. And then 1946 brought to Jinnah the sweeping electoral victories that settled the matter because the League campaigned on Partition. Would Partition not have happened had Nehru not been so tactless after the Cabinet Mission plan? It would have. The Congress alone struggled against the British (it is why the party still has presence on the ground politically). The League abstained, waiting for the struggle to end so that they could achieve their aim of Pakistan. Exhausted and frustrated, having spent most of the 1940s in jail while the League gained strength on the ground, the Congress leadership gave in. But Indians are not taught that, because that would reveal weakness in figures like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. And so one man was demonised. Patel is a hero to the BJP, but Jaswant points out that Patel banned the RSS after Gandhi's murder. Jaswant Singh is one of the BJP's founding members when the party was set up 30 years ago. He has served as India's finance minister and foreign minister. It is extraordinary that he should have been executed without even a hearing (he was expelled over the phone). But this has given him the opportunity to take his case to the media. In the coming weeks, we shall hear a lot more about Jinnah the man in India, and that's a good thing. The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay. Email: aakar @hillroadmedia.com A voyage round Jinnah Sunday, August 23, 2009 Ghazi Salahuddin In some ways, August, like T S Eliot's April, is our cruellest month, "mixing memory and desire". It does breed, against the backdrop of ritualistic celebrations, some sombre thoughts about what we have made of our freedom and how we had envisioned this freedom in the early days of Pakistan's existence. As another poet said, "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts". One of our regrets, to be sure, is that in the past sixty-two years, some of our fundamental issues have not been resolved. Many of us have tirelessly invoked the Quaid's speech on August 11, 1947 to argue that this was an obvious prescription for a modern, democratic and almost secular dispensation. Meanwhile, the religious elements, the likes of Jamaat-i-Islami, have usurped what they claim is the ideology of Pakistan. But what was their stance before and at the time of the creation of Pakistan? The truth of the matter is that we have not been able to come to terms, objectively, with the history of our freedom struggle and the role that Jinnah and other leaders of that time had played. We have not resolved the crisis of our identity. Hence, we must be grateful for the controversy that has been created in India over the publication, on Monday, of Jaswant Singh's laudatory biography of Jinnah. Almost immediately, the former foreign minister of India and a major leader of right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was expelled from his party and was highly censured for praising a leader who has generally been demonised in India. Not only that, his book – "Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence" – was banned in the state of Gujarat, where BJP wields power. The reason given was that it had "defamatory references" to Vallabhbhai Patel, India's first home minister and a political icon in Gujarat. Now, BJP is an ideology-driven party, like our religious outfits, and these parties tend to suppress free thinking and views that challenge the official line. While discussions that portray the urgency of breaking news have continued on the electronic media as well as in newspapers in both India and Pakistan, there is little evidence that we, in Pakistan, are willing and capable of exploring that critical phase in our history and go beyond our 'zindabad' platitudes. At the same time, we do have a reason to celebrate the vindication of our Founder in an analysis by a Hindu nationalist leader. But what does it all mean in the context of the creation of Pakistan and its national sense of direction? It does not make much sense that our view of Jinnah should be same as that of an Indian leader who has manifestly been opposed to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Jaswant looks at Jinnah as a great leader because, as he told Karan Thapar in a television interview, "he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood up against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him". Yes, Jaswant recognises the fact that Jinnah fought for the interests of Muslims of India but his view is that for most of his political career, he was a nationalist and worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. His image as a secular leader is what endears Jinnah to many Indians. If you remember, L K Advani, of the same BJP, had submitted his resignation in June 2005, at the end of his six-day visit to Pakistan where he had praised Jinnah and this had created a huge controversy in India. He had described Jinnah as one of the "very few who actually create history". Incidentally, Advani was born in Sindh and had migrated to India. Irrespective of how we interpret the Hindu-Muslim conflict in the freedom movement, the great communal carnage that took place at the time of the partition and the unprecedented migration that resulted from it is something that we are yet not able to fully comprehend. Should that momentous dislocation, attended by heart-rending tragedies, call for some serious deliberations in the two countries in how they should evolve domestically and in their bilateral relations? After all, the leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League were not expecting and were not ready for this surge in primitive passions. So, was this the reason that Jinnah made that speech on August 11, 1947, that actually seemed to be a repudiation of many of his earlier assertions? Indeed, many issues are raised by that speech that we need to bear in mind on the basis of historical research and intellectual honesty. That Jinnah was an exceptional leader in history is beyond question. In fact, there can be nothing more deferential than the first sentence of Stanley Wolpert's preface to that great biography: "Jinnah of Pakistan". This is it: "Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three". Read it again and it would lift your spirits. Yet, how do you contend with his speech as the newly elected president of the Constituent Assembly in Karachi on August 11, 1947? This must have been the most glorious moment in his career. Pakistan was now a reality. But perhaps he was looking at the unfolding developments and considering the justification for Pakistan's survival. Be that it may, the speech makes great sense to at least the liberal elements in Pakistan and it has become more relevant now that the religious extremists have flourished and have caused so much trouble. Even before the eruption of the Jaswant controversy, August 11 this year underlined the Gojra incident in which religious fanatics had brutally attacked a Christian community. I do not have the space to quote the salient passages from that speech. The gist of it, as I see it, was: "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state". Alas, the leaders who came after Jinnah, with the connivance of the ruling establishment, have subverted this basic principle of a modern state and we can see that all citizens are not equal in the eyes of the law because of so many discriminatory laws. As I have said, we should welcome the controversy that is sparked by Jaswant Singh's book. But not just to gloat over this appreciation of the Father of our nation and the biased reactions of Hindu communalists. Here is an incentive for us to find our own Jinnah and save our country from those of his detractors who are averse to rational thinking and who do not want to understand the historic forces that have shaped our times. The writer is a staff member. Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com

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When time is the enemy: Extremism, Long March and a Fragile Democracy

When time is the enemy
Sunday, February 01, 2009

by Ghazi Salahuddin

....Coming back to other reports published on Friday, the main headlines belonged to Rehman Malik, the interior adviser, who seems to stride across the corridors of power with more authority than other, popularly elected ministers. He spoke in the Senate about Swat and this is what he said, apparently addressing the militants: “Get out of Swat, we are after you and we will get you, as the armed forces and secret agencies are now re-energised to complete the task.” What brave words. Ah, but why so late in the day? What were they waiting for until now?

In one respect, he was right. “If not stopped in Swat, tomorrow they would be in Hazara and then one fine morning in Islamabad.” The question that readily comes in one’s mind is, if the threat is so deadly, why has there been such a delay in taking decisive action. Malik said that they would now adopt a new strategy. How long does it take for a government in power, blessed with one of the largest standing armies of the world, to devise a strategy and get into action?

In this case, the price of a delay in taking decisive action is phenomenal. What were they waiting for? The incredibly tragic story of Swat has been gnawing at us for weeks and months. Perhaps they were waiting for some given number of girls schools to have been bombed and people beheaded by the militants to earnestly get into action. Hence, it did not apparently seem to excite them into action when, say, ten schools had been bombed, or twenty, or even one hundred. Now the score is about two hundred. Brutal killings have also recorded an impressive total.

Meanwhile, of course, the situation in the previously serene valley of Swat continues to worsen. We have had, in recent days, very graphic accounts of what is happening there. Considerable comment has already been made on what has gone wrong and analysts have debated on how the challenge should be met in the overall perspective of our wider struggle against religious militancy and terrorism.

On the political front, the temperature has risen to almost a boiling point. The latest press conferences by Nawaz Sharif signal a fearsome confrontation that we can hardly afford in our present circumstances. The focus, at this time, is on the scheduled Long March of the lawyers that the PML-N has vowed to support with full force. There is a rising sense of disarray in the country.

Friday’s reports included the coverage of parliamentary affairs minister Babar Awan’s speech in the National Assembly. Awan is another heavyweight in a popular party that has redesigned itself by changing its lead players. He underlined the achievements of the 10-month-old government to consolidate what he called “a beautiful system” of democracy. And he added that there was no ‘Aladin’s lamp’ to ‘immediately’ right the wrongs of military dictators.

This, again, means that we should wait, that more time will be needed to set things right. In some ways, it is true that you need time to do certain things. But the issue here is that promises made have not been kept and an attitude of business-as-usual was adopted in situations that required emergency care and a revolutionary zeal. (The News)


The writer is a staff member.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com
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Barbarians at the gate

Sunday, December 21, 2008
by Ghazi Salahuddin

There has been no dearth, for some time, of foreign experts and analysts who imply that Pakistan is becoming a failed state. That Nawaz Sharif should now have reasons to corroborate this assessment is surely ominous. Reflecting the impression that the global media has projected about Pakistan being the most dangerous place in the world, he has said that the country has become ungovernable, though he pointedly attributes this to the damage done by the dictatorial rule of Pervez Musharraf.

If Pakistan is beginning to present the look of a failed state and if it is ungovernable in the eyes of a politician of Nawaz Sharif's importance – and that too in the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage that has planted frightening thoughts in the minds of most Pakistanis – what lies ahead?

At one level, remarks made by the leader of his faction of Pakistan Muslim League in Geo's 'Aaj Kamran Khan Ke Saath' on Thursday evening signal the advent of a flaming confrontation in domestic politics. But this confrontation can only be played out on the sidelines of the great crisis in which Pakistan finds itself. Given the stance that has been adopted by both Pakistan and India with relation to the terrorist attack in Mumbai, the situation is likely to get worse, at least in the near future.

As for Nawaz Sharif taking an offensive against the Pakistan People's Party-led government in Islamabad, the bugle had actually sounded on Wednesday when he revealed that he had been offered a deal to keep quiet over the Farah Dogar case. That this time was chosen for an offensive against the ruling coalition has intrigued some observers, though many had seen it coming against the backdrop of politics in Punjab and the red rag that Salman Taseer has become.

However, the main crisis of Pakistan transcends this confrontation and the other issues that keep bubbling in the media. I have always held – and this view has repeatedly surfaced in my columns – that the conflict between the potentially militant Islamist forces and the democratic forces of enlightenment will decide the fate of this nation. This historic contest is surely becoming rather ferocious, mainly because of the complexity that has been injected by the global war against terrorism and the social and economic deprivations of the people of Pakistan.

Unfortunately, not all our political players and opinion makers are aware of the seminal nature of this antagonistic tussle. Hence, there are parties and leaders who straddle the dividing line, often for short-term expediencies. But the time has come when all of us should be aware of what is really at stake and have the courage to speak out and act in defence of our beliefs and, indeed, our survival.

One problem in this encounter is the power and the role of the establishment that had initially promoted Islamist militancy. There is general confusion about what the establishment has learnt in the face of emerging realities and the imperative for Pakistan's progress and prosperity. At the same time, the parties that have supported the jihadist sentiments have to understand the consequences of their approach.

Let me now refer to a few instances of what the jihadists are doing in this age and time. On Tuesday – this was December 16, a day that lives in infamy – there was this report published in some newspapers that the militants exhumed the body of Pir Sameeullah and hanged it along with four followers in a public place in Mingora. The pir had been killed in a gunbattle with the militants. Have the leaders of the likes of Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Imran Khan expressed their horror over this act of barbarism? Have the people of Pakistan had time to contemplate the meaning of this incident which, alas, is not out of character for militants who have been allowed to thrive in our northern areas?

The next day, on Wednesday, I read this report, quoting BBC Urdu, that the "Pakistani Taliban have issued a video of five slain people, accused of spying on key Al Qaeda leader Abu Laith Al-Libi". The report added that the beheaded bodies were found in different parts of North Waziristan Agency at different times. For many people, this may not be totally surprising because this is how the jihdists have behaved as a matter of routine. Remember Daniel Pearl, who was brutally killed in front of a video camera in early 2002?

In a different context but relevant to the struggle for enlightenment and sanity in the country, there are increasing reports of honour killings and inhuman, tribal ways of administrating 'justice'. For instance, this newspaper's Islamabad/Rawalpindi edition published on Tuesday a large picture of a man walking on burning coal to prove his innocence in a murder case in Dera Murad Jamali in Balochistan. What is more lamentable is that a tribal leader, when interviewed by a private TV channel, defended this practice. Remember Mir Israrullah Zehri and Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, now members of the federal cabinet?

Coming back to the thought of Pakistan becoming a failed state and being ungovernable, who should we expect to pick up the pieces and set a direction for Pakistan that is in consonance with the dictates of the modern world and, to invoke a cliché, the vision of Mohammad Ali Jinnah? I wonder if Jinnah would be able to live in Pakistan of today without feeling threatened and insecure.

We know that Pakistan of today is beset by grave challenges, the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage being only one dimension of what our ruling ideas have wrought. One of my major regrets is that the forces that should be on the side of democracy and enlightenment are not united and have not been mobilised into action. This is one reason why I feel disenchanted with the leadership of Asif Ali Zardari and mourn his apparent loss of credibility and moral authority.

Could Benazir Bhutto, had she been spared by the forces of evil, done better – given the 'deal' that was made? Well, this is the week that will revive our memories of a great charismatic leader who symbolised, in her person, the struggle for liberal values and our political emancipation. She had the capacity and the courage to take difficult decisions and to adjust to emerging realities. She was the only major leader of Pakistan to have come out so forthrightly and boldly against religious militancy and terrorism.

As we grieve for a leader whose assassination – (and who were her murderers?) – has left a void in our polity, it is necessary, as the poet said, "to find strength in what is left behind". We still have our ruling ideas and we do not know if the establishment has the power and the will to finally slay the monster of militancy.

The writer is a staff member.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com (The News)
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Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama, the rulers in Pakistan appointed Israrullah Zehri and Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani as ministers.

Our patch of darkness
Sunday, November 09, 2008
by Ghazi Salahuddin

At a time when the world is illuminated by the miracle of democracy, manifested in the election of an Afro-American as president of the United States of America, we remain imprisoned in our own patch of darkness. And a fresh reminder of this bondage was quite timely. One day before Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama, the rulers in Pakistan expanded the federal cabinet and appointed, among others, Israrullah Zehri and Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani as ministers.

The contrast in the two unconnected events – one a monumental shift in global history and the other a typical aberration in an unfortunate land of sorrow – is remarkable. "Change we need" was the slogan of Obama's campaign. "Yes, we can," was its inspiring refrain. Obama has personified the realisation of a dream that had yet seemed impossible. In its time of troubles, America has been gifted with a charismatic leader who signifies hope in the midst of fear and uncertainty.

In our case, the rulers have effectively extinguished the hope that had heralded their assumption of power. In some ways, the yearning for change has been countered with a partial reassertion of primitive, tribal and feudal values. That is how the presence of someone like Israrullah Zehri in the cabinet becomes symbolic. What is truly incredible is that this choice has been made by the leadership of a party that had initially promised progressive social change and empowerment of the oppressed people of Pakistan.

Zehri, a senator from Balochistan, hit headlines some weeks ago when he defended the honour killing of women in his province. It related to an incident in which three women were reported to have been buried, either alive or after being killed, in the name of honour. Zehri had argued that "these are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them." Irrespective of how such remarks can be explained, brutal killings of young women who cross boundaries that primitive customs have set for them remain frequent in the domain of the tribal and feudal lords who make it to the federal and provincial legislatures on tickets awarded by our major political parties.

There has been considerable comment this week on the expansion of the cabinet – 40 of them in one go – at a time when the country is in dire straits financially. Zehri's inclusion has rightly angered our social activists. One does not know if all this criticism can ruffle a few feathers in the corridors of power. Still, it is not possible that at least some stalwarts in the Pakistan People's Party, with their professed commitment to liberal and progressive values, are not privately troubled by these developments.

The party has a number of women leaders who have struggled for the emancipation of women and against such practices as honour killing. Why are they not able to raise their voice and defend the image that their party has had? This, perhaps, is another tragedy of how party politics has evolved in our present circumstances. It was also sad to see Makhdoom Amin Fahim finally falling in line, though he too belongs to the feudal sphere of the party's influence.

Now, the choice of Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, PPP MNA from Jacobabad, as the Minister of Education also deserves attention. It goes to Hamid Mir's credit that he highlighted the incongruity of this appointment in Geo's "Capital Talk" on Thursday. It so happens that Bijarani was allegedly involved in a jirga decision to hand over five minor girls to settle an old dispute. This issue, if you remember, was heard last year by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and he had ordered Bijarani's arrest.

Irrespective of the details of that case, and even if we accept Bijarani's argument that he had been cleared by a lower court, the fact that a feudal leader should be assigned to steer the educational policies of this government is in itself very instructive. Education, we know, is the seed of social change. It has been certified that educating the girls is the most effective and fruitful strategy for modernising a society.

Consider, also, how we are caught in a pincer movement from the religious militants on one side and the tribal and feudal leaders on the other. As a consequence, the majority of women in our country are generally considered less than human. This is a tragedy that our rulers are apparently not able to even comprehend. The irony is that the PPP is the only national party we would expect to make some decisive moves in this respect. Incidentally, a symbiotic relationship between suppression of old customs and the expansion of literacy and education was properly underlined in Thursday's "Capital Talk."

I suggest that the PPP should conduct an objective analysis of what its elected members have done in their own constituencies to promote education, social awareness and enforcement of human rights. If the level of corruption in the education departments of Sindh and Balochistan is any measure, the findings of this study should be unbearable for any leader who has a conscience and a sense of responsibility.

With this focus on how our present mode of governance is unmindful of the imperative for social change, I have been distracted from celebrating the phenomenal triumph of Barack Obama. We were lucky to be able to witness this emotionally overpowering event. Let me confess that I was almost in tears when I watched Obama making that acceptance speech in Chicago's Grant Park in front of hundreds of thousands of his jubilant supporters. It had come after a sleepless night when results from different states built up a scintillating climax.

It should take some time for us to fully absorb the significance and the meaning of the historic transformation that democracy has made possible in America. One point that I want to stress is that in a deep crisis, the task of a leader is to inspire hope. This is only possible when the people from across the national spectrum, particularly the young, are mobilised into social action, to participate in the political process.

Can this irrationally bloated federal cabinet of ours generate hope and confidence in our people? Alas, the state of affairs is so grim that our loss of hope is deepening by the day. Every conversation you make with friends or acquaintances – or even with complete strangers in the bazaar or a restaurant – is infused with deep anxiety and apprehension. On the face of it, the challenges that we face are also an opportunity for our rulers, if only they have the courage to creatively respond to the needs and aspirations of our people. And they can begin with decisive action against primitive, inhuman customs that have suppressed our women.

The writer is a staff member. Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com
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