Is it an exorcism, or is it a terrifying, arcane ritual devoid of any notion of modern medicine (leave alone human and social cost)?

Imagine yourself to be the girl being exorcised. What would you feel? Terror? Helplessness? Would you play along just to appease your family who has put you in this position and this big bearded man calling you a devil? Would you fight back, and to what end, given that your struggle will be called further proof of the presence of a jinn?

Now try to imagine that you are actually someone who is mentally ill, trapped in this same scenario. What would happen? What could happen?

This YouTube video contains a link to a (English/Urdu) website run, assumedly, by this same cretin by the name of Baba Abdullah Bin Haroon alias Ejaz Ahmed alias Baba Welfare. And what is this welfare the good Baba supports? According to his website:

Welfare: Services to the poor and needy people for the sake of Allah.

Centre activities : Supernatural Exorcism Clinic for Male/Female patients suffering from evil jinn’s or demons, free dispensary for all, Emergency Ambulance Services, Umra and Hajj Services.

How does one identify whether they or their loved ones are possessed by jinns? Baba provides a set of diseases on his site for your assistance:

1) Walking in sleep

2) Those illness which cannot be cured by any kind of medication

3) Cancer, kidney decease, hepatitis B and C, asthma, breast cancer etc

4) Illness which cannot be diagnosed by any doctor

5) Some illness where a detail examination report fail to identify

6) Such body pain which cannot be cured by a strong pain killer

7) People suffering from long term chronic back problem

8) Husband and wife relationship problem

What if none of the above applies to you? Baba is also an expert in black magic, for which he provides a list of symptoms:

1) Bleeding from any part of the body due to Black Magic etc

2) Pins and needles feeling in all around the body

3) Headache which cannot be cured by any form of medication

4) Unconscious or passed out without any reason

5) Red eyes looking upwards

6) Eyes burning without any cause

7) Business not making any profit or constant lose

8) Feeling dizzy or absent minded

9) Failing to make important decision in important business meetings

10) Feeling heavy minded at Magrib time or all the time

11) Do not like to associate with wife or like children any more

12) Feeling suicidal or punishing oneself out depression or anxiety

13) Blood running through the tap instead of water or see oily patches at home or at work place

The site also has an examples section of the work jinns do, ranging from your average husband-wife quarrels, up to an excessive desire to go out and of course, lights and fans coming on on their own.

In case the video above did not highlight their case enough, the website has over 50 Jinn exorcism videos in its archive section. Take for example this video titled “Real Ghost (Jinn) in Child Babawelfare”

Or this confession of an exorcised woman:

Luckily I do not have to turn to anecdotes or conjecture to answer what harm this Baba and his superstitious hogwash is causing – instead I can refer to some past news reports:

Exorcism: ‘She’ll never walk but at least she’s free of the djinn’

Excorcism: 16-year-old tortured with hot knives

After skeletal remains unearthed in Shah Faisal Colony house, a tale of madness unfolds

Son arrested for father’s ‘exorcism’ death

Epilepsy patient killed during ‘exorcism’

Till the day such ignorance continues to persist (and make its way onto YouTube and websites no less), no one can convince me that there is no harm or great danger in the unchecked spread of poisoned religion and spirituality. It is, in fact, the moral duty of every citizen (be they religious or not) to condemn such acts unequivocally. It is also our duty to teach others about this plague of superstition in our society that is used to torture those with mental illness, and those who do not submit (read: women, restless youth, children) to this pathetic status quo, this tragedy, that is our society.

What you can do:

1. Ensure that you are vocal in condemning the notion that jinns are the cause of mental illness or physical ailments, regardless of whether it is coming from your elders (I have had to argue with a senior doctor at Karachi’s best private institution who said she believed jinns were indeed the cause of ‘some’ mental illness), your cousins or your neighbor. Most appalling will be when you clash with so-called ‘religious’ people who will (knowingly or unknowingly) provide pseudo-intellectual religious arguments to provide cover for such horrors. In such instances, direct those people to the news reports above, and if they haven’t ever been exorcised (or are in the class of society where they are not likely to be exploited in this manner) they should keep their mouths shut.

2. Educate yourself in this matter. Educate those around you, especially those who cannot access information you can. Educate your children. Educate the world by writing against this form of torture and build websites to track and monitor such travesties.

3. Pressure those in power to take action against such false peers and exorcists. Start small. Form a pressure group and look close to your own neighborhood and target these criminals individually, one by one. Start with the man hosting the above website for one. His contact details and address listed on the website are:

Abdullah bin Haroon (Ejaz Ahmed): 00923002363667, 00923312203417

Addresses:

R-773, Pak Kausar Town, Saudabad, Karachi (‘Treatment’ at 9pm every Thursday night begins in Karachi)

House B1/623, lane no 1/2, Muslim Town, Sadiqabad, Rawalpindi

Email: babawelfare@gmail.com , babawelfare@yahoo.com

Management and Administration Team

Chairman: Baqir bhai (BA) (Businessman)

Vice chairman: Mohammad Sarfaraz bhai (MA)I-R (Businessman)

President: Razi Hussain bhai (Civil Engineer)

Vice President: Mohammad Ahmed (Inter) (PIA service)

Treasurer: Akmal Hussain (Inter) (Businessman)

Chief Organizer: Noor Rahim bhai (BSc) (Government servant)

We read the headlines, and exclaim our shock and horror at Moore’s “pathetic” behavior. Unable to keep her much younger man,  losing the battle with Mother Nature, guilty for beginning to show her true age, Moore reportedly turned to substance abuse to keep her fledgling self-confidence afloat. We can balk as much as we want at Demi Moore’s troubles, but how long can they distract us from our own insecurities?

With the deluge of bad press Demi has recently gotten it is easy to forget who this woman used to be, and I am sure somewhere deep inside, still is. Demi Moore was an icon in the 1980′s, an original member of the “Brat Pack” with movies such as St Elmo’s Fire, Ghost, A Few Good Men amongst countless others under her belt.

She was also a trailblazer for women in Hollywood, breaking the film industry’s glass ceiling by becoming the first female actress to secure a $12 million paycheck, a salary once only paid to male actors.

But apparently all that is irrelevant now, none of it matters anymore as Mooresits  in rehab in Utah with Brooke Mueller, the infamous ex-wife of Charlie Sheen known for her addiction to crack cocaine. Could this story get any sadder?

When news of Moore’s troubles first broke, I found myself reading the news on my computer screen in shock and disbelief, but also in anger and guilt. “Look what we have done to this woman,” I thought to myself. We can all try to wash our hands of Demi’s demise, but we are all ultimately responsible for it. Every time we looked at a picture of her, or any other “ageing” actress and poked fun at her looking old, looking “tired” we fed the machine that makes us believe that somehow ageing is wrong.

Moore is a product of our youth-obsessed culture which teaches women from when they are girls that we are valued by our beauty. We are taught to stay young and thin at any cost, and there is no other industry that consistently reinforces that message more than Hollywood. It is clear that we are all buying and believing this message.

The fact of the matter is the film industry, in the US and around the world, have pitted women against Mother Nature. It’s an impossible battle to win and we all know it. But when women remind other women of that fact, like Demi Moore has, we blame and label them as failures, shower them with pity and disgust. We think they are “pathetic.”

What makes it even easier for the public to “ooh” and “aah” over Demi Moore’s troubles is the added element of heartbreak from her divorce from Ashton Kutcher. This layer of rejection frames Moore as a failure, completely masking her once stellar and iconic career.

What is even more depressing about this story is that when you look at pictures of Moore, her insecurities appear to be tangible, you can almost reach out and touch how badly Moore feels about herself. Her lack of confidence is palpable.

Abandonment coupled with age in a town like Hollywood makes us feel sorry for Moore, but deep down we are actually terrified because we know what happened to her can happen to us. We are all equally vulnerable to our insecurities. Everyone of us fears rejection and heartbreak.

We are all products of our society and that society is youth-obsessed. Demi Moore embodies that obsession. Can there be a worse place to grow old than in Hollywood where as a woman you can literally find yourself out of work because you had the audacity to age? The sad fact is as we grow older, women around the world, but especially those working in films, are told that they are worthless. How ridiculous and wrong is that?

There are countless stories about how infatuated Moore was with youth, surrounding herself with young people, partying with her daughter, and hitting on teen heartthrobs such as Zac Efron. She was apparently obsessed with staying thin and before the actress’s now infamous 911 call, Moore’s weight had dropped to scarily unhealthy levels.

At the age of 50, a woman should be comfortable in her skin, glowing in her life’s accomplishments. One look at Moore and you can tell she would rather be anywhere else but in her own body.

I can only hope that Moore comes out of this with her honour and self- assurance in tact. She is Demi Moore! I still cannot believe we are feeling so sorry for the woman who once lit up the screens as a goddess in films like GI Jane, Disclosure, and of course, Ghost.

Whether or not Demi survives this challenge in her life, the sad truth is that it will only be a matter of time before another actress falls to a similar fate. That is until we break the cycle, redefine what society tells us is beautiful, and embrace the fact that ageing is a fact of life.

This post was originally published here.

Let’s not put down the entire thing to a liberal win. The impact of the social media’s protest over this issue, in particular, was hugely galvanised because it struck a chord with a vast majority. In principle, nearly every person who saw the show and was not a mullah or a cranky old aunty with religious notions of Ziaul Haq, was horrified. And that, precisely, is what took the dissent to a proportion where Samaa TV was eventually forced to take down the show and sack the perpetrators.

That being said, it doesn’t diminish the significance of social media as a very effective medium. It has been central to many civil movements around the globe, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street. But we have to pause here for a second and see if the role of social media in Pakistan is overstated. The Maya Khan episode was perhaps the only occasion where social media did play a decisive role. There have been numerous other issues over which Twitter was clogged with dissident discourse and Facebook statuses sprung up to register protests and yet it all resulted in absolutely nothing. One such case in point: Salman Taseer’s assassination.

This brings me to the chief point of my contention: perhaps, the increasingly active social media is, at the same time, polarising the two divides in our society – that of conservatives and liberals. While liberals have traditionally been aloof from Urdu dailys and widespread publications, they have now found a new medium in Twitter and Facebook to actively further their point of view. But at the same time, this seems to be happening at the cost of an erosion of liberals’ presence in the streets which now seem crowded by banned terrorist outfits openly rallying in provincial capitals and claiming to bring back the glory of an Islamic caliphate.

At the same time, there is also the problem of social media etiquette which was highlighted in the anti-Maya Khan campaign. When lambasting a person for invading other’s privacy, how fair is it to publish her personal pictures on Facebook and Twitter and dig deep into her personal background to reveal anything that may remotely amuse a furious audience? The importance of this question couldn’t be more pronounced as millions of Pakistanis flock to these sites which are fast becoming the next ‘main’ mode of public conversations. We saw the manifestation of this phenomenon well when a video of Mansoor Ijaz was widely used to take cheap sling shots at his personal life. If the propriety of a public conversation can’t be observed by social media, there’s no point in the same social media pointing fingers at others.

A concerted effort has been launched by eminent journalists and media personnel to agree to definite set of rules which shall serve as self-regulatory inunctions for TV channels. A similar measure should also be taken for the social media which asserts its position as a portion of citizen journalism and yet is far removed from any journalistic norms. There’s already a raging debate in the West over where the line should be drawn for social media commentators and we ought to address it before social media becomes the next vigilante. It’s essentially the same age-old question of who will guard the guards.

This blog was originally published here.

However, the encounter turned out to be lopsided as the whites were no match for the phoenix’s tenacity, determination and skill. England came to the Middle East with great confidence but was found wanting as their much-vaunted batting line-up collapsed time and again against what is possibly the best bowling attack in the world.

It was the middle order that painted a gloomy picture. Bell, Pieterson and Morgan were instrumental in posting big totals  in the past few series but here they were all at sea against quality spin bowling. Pieterson’s technique was exposed ruthlessly and his dismissal in the last innings, where he was bowled through the gate by Ajmal, showed it.

Bell, who averaged over 100 last year, was Ajmal’s bunny this series and couldn’t read the doosra at all. Eoin Morgan, whose reputation before the start of the series was of a player who could play spin well, a reputation built on innings played in the shorter versions of the game, was also unable to make a statement. Ajmal and Rehman’s control over the English side was complete.

Team Green re-wrote a number of history books as they marched on their way to victory, clean sweeping England in the process. It was their fifth clean sweep ever and the first against England. They also became the first team in 105 years (since 1907) to win a match after posting fewer than 100 runs in the first innings.

Ajmal took the first shot as he made a statement, Shane Warne style, before the start of the series, claiming to unleash a devastating teesra at the visitors. Although the teesra barely made an appearance on the field, it continued to haunt the English psyche. So afraid were they of the teesra, that the English couldn’t even play the pehla (regular off-spin) let alone the doosra! Ajmal was rightly named man of the series for his 24 wickets. Rehman, the unsung hero, provided adequate support and together they took 43 wickets between them.

Misbah is a man of few words. He is not as charismatic as some of the others that have preceded him, neither is he in the same class as Mohammad Yousuf, Inzamam or Javed Miandad with the bat. But he is a worthy competitor and a captain that has united the team under one flag. United is not a word that has not been used often to describe Pakistan. Talented, mercurial, interesting – but never united. Usually, it is the individuals who win matches for us singlehandedly and not the team as a whole. Misbah’s team is bent on changing that outlook. They have given up some of their flair for consistency. There have been far more talented individuals who have represented Pakistan concurrently than the current bunch. However, this bunch punches harder as a whole, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The future of Pakistan’s batting was on display in this series as Azhar Ali and Asad Shafiq showed their temperament and soaked the pressure at crucial junctions. They will form the bedrock of Pakistan batting in the coming years around which the rest of the batsmen will play. It was fitting that the highest individual score of the series was made by Azhar.

The number one Test ranking currently seems to be a curse as the two teams to have held it recently have been whitewashed in a period of less than eight months. England remains the number one side, even after this defeat, but it doesn’t have a resounding sound to it anymore.

For Pakistan, the saying ‘we create our own destiny’ has come true. For a team that continuously lives out of a suitcase and has no home to call its own, this victory is no mean feat. Sterner tests will follow when the team travels outside Asia but for now Team Misbah and the nation should savour this win.

Here’s a short excerpt from my previous blog to establish the idea behind this otherwise puerile exercise:

I’m going to try to complete the list (of)  reasons – some small; some serious, some funny; some definitive and some not so evocative or significant… but each in its own way a contributing factor to why that tiny spark somewhere inside each one of us still remains buoyant… because let’s face it we all love Pakistan

So, here goes.

6.  Truck art:

Granted it’s only found the kind of respect it deserves recently what with some goras giving it their stamp of approval a few years ago. However, I’ve always found this fascinating kaleidoscope of unapologetically flat motifs, wild cats and prey birds done up in rich, screaming colours to be rather dazzling. Ghich-pitch and totally kitsch, these brilliant canvases on wheels depict the true zinda-dil colours of Pakistan and its people perfectly.

7. “Free” media and badass journos

From merely three channels back in the 90s, Pakistani telly now comprises of a whopping 150 channels that are actively broadcasting their (mostly crappy, but what can we do) content throughout the country. Whether its reporting or entertainment, our journalists and anchors have truly mastered their craft and continue to impress with their talent and prowess. There’s enough drama, god-awful yet sadistically addictive morning shows, breaking news bulletins and highly enjoyable rabid mud-slinging prime time talk show ho-downs to keep us all well entertained throughout the day, every day… and  if that’s not positive growth I don’t know what is!

8. All the drama!

Let’s be honest; nobody cerates drama like we do. Sure, we went astray for a couple of years a few years ago, but boy are we back on track and producing some of the best television drama ever… Hum TV, Geo, ARY, and now Express Entertainment: the choices are virtually innumerable! Soppy romantic shadi-biyah fodder for aunties and teeny-boppers, check. Conniving saas-bahu shenanigans for potential crafty saases and bahus, check. Hard-hitting reality-check-type storylines for the art lovers, check, check, check!

9. Our landscape

Pakistan has five out of 14 mountain peaks of height over 8,000 meters. That’s over 26,000 feet! Murree’s altitude is merely 2,300 meters! These attract adventurers and mountaineers from around the world, especially to legendary K2 that stands at a staggering 8,600 meters. It is also the only mountain that has six names: K2, Savage Mountain, Mountaineer’s Mountain, Mount Godwin-Austen, Chogori and Mount Qogir.

10. Pushto cinema:

‘Nuff said.

11. All the repair men

Seriously, in Pakistan, there’s nothing—and I mean nothing—that can’t be fixed… if you know where to find the right person to do the job, that is! In Karachi, Saddar is usually a good place to start, and I’m sure there’s at least one such hub in all the other cities as well where you can go with your damaged possessions and return with a big smile on your face. Whether it’s your heirloom furniture or the circuit of the little red bulb on a Rs100 remote control; a cracked prosthetic limb or an otherwise disposable electronic gadget – Pakistan truly is the anti-spendthrift’s heaven!

12 All the random holidays due to political strife

Don’t we just love the fact that except maybe a few war-torn countries in Africa, we’re probably the only modern-day republic where children get more days off from school in a year than they do on? Moreover, the entire workforce only has to go to work an average of four days a week instead of five! Who cares about the kharaab haalat (bad conditions) as long as you get to laze around the house and watch all the action on live TV, right?

13. Cheap domestic help

Before you roll your eyes and dismiss me with ‘whatever,’ do a little mental math: an average upper middle class Pakistani family these days hires two maids, one of which is more than likely to be a full-time employee earning no more than a four-digit salary (with perquisites like constant bickering and nitpicking, of course). The usual responsibilities of these maids usually include, but are not limited to everyday chores like sweeping, doing the dishes, washing clothes, ironing, cooking, looking after children, and sometimes even doing the groceries… you know, regular everyday help you’d very well have to be a member of the millionaires club to avail anywhere else in the world!

14. Our resilience

One of my readers pointed out our ability to be extraordinarily pliant by saying “We are resilient in the face of adverse events like floods, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and Zardari,” and I couldn’t agree more. We’re a tough bunch if there ever was one. Of course some people may compare us to cockroaches, and rightfully so, but still, I think our deep rooted resilience and infallible spirits have more to do with the belief that Allah Mian will eventually make everything alright (read: strong faith) rather than us simply having evolved to make the best of what we’ve got! We may not be rich in a lot of virtues, but resilience and faith are certainly not two of those.

15. Arfa Karim

Although it shames and saddens me to admit that I did not know who Arfa Karim was until a couple of weeks ago when news of her unfortunate illness started doing rounds, I now couldn’t be more proud of the young prodigy who was indeed, in retrospect, Pakistan’s very own miracle child.

Recipient of the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology, a Salaam Pakistan Youth Award as well as the Presidential Award for Pride of Performance, Arfa, as I’m sure we all know by now, was also dubbed the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in 2004. Her sad, unexpected demise at such a young age is a national tragedy and I have no doubt that everyone will agree when I say that Arfa and her legacy is indeed one of the 65 reasons we’ve got to love Pakistan.

 Read more by Saad here.

Khirad on the other hand, played by the cherubic Mahira with bright makeup, and translucent skin, appears surprisingly asexual — the recipient of the man’s desire, derision, and disdain – not interfering too much with the screen appeal of Ashar, with nice beauty, but insipid enough to not be threatening to female viewers. She is also surprisingly silent, when all you want is for her to sit him down and feverishly explain the terrible misunderstanding the entire infuriating play is constructed on, over a cup of coffee or a glass of vodka.

If Khirad’s father taught her such great values, why was her marriage into an affluent family (mild protestations notwithstanding) and its inevitable accompaniments – an abusive mother-in-law, and a passive aggressive unpredictable husband — the only way to material security?

Her mind that works faster than a calculator could also have landed her a PhD stipend at the University of Punjab where she could have raised her daughter modestly, but well. If not, then perhaps a junior analyst position at Engro where she would have adequate medical coverage for her child. And if not that, there could be situations around inflation and lack of opportunities. Eventually, she could have met a man less verbally challenged than Ashar and they would have actual conversations instead of old words reverberating in their heads like bipolar memories. In fact, what Khirad’s father taught her was the hegemonic values – where honesty is inextricably entwined with being a good wife and a submissive, self-denying woman whose moral sexuality is her ticket to livelihood.

The house is central to the play. It is luxurious. It has a swimming pool (virginal) in the background, and tasteful art. It is sterile, hotel-like, and it’s the woman’s object of ultimate attainment. Khirad got thrown out, and in a scene that played cruelly on all women’s insecurities, we are shown that what capitalist patriarchy giveth, it taketh if you can’t abide by bourgeois society’s moral ethics. Underlining Khirad’s dramatic eviction from the house is the fact that she did abide by these ethics and is of unblemished character. It is she of moral purity who deserves the house rather than the manipulative mother-in-law.

In an earlier episode, it is the mother-in-law who is threatened with eviction if she does not agree with her husband’s decision to respect his dying sister’s wish. But the mother-in-law’s non-nuanced evil aside, isn’t it troubling that women despite age, motherhood and having maintained homes are always on the verge of losing it all — always at the whim of later apologetic, yet unapologetic men? Sadly, after this they have to rely on puppeteering their sons for personal fulfillment. Note that the mother-in-law has a possibly satisfying career in an NGO – but this worldly fulfillment fades in comparison to the infinite delights of tormenting her child.

If Khirad had not submitted happily to Ashar’s gradual advances, and had asserted sexual autonomy or indifference, then what? When she does give up on him, it is because he is weak and could not protect her. But imagine a Khirad who is coming of age and is actually exploring multiple, conflicting sexual emotions towards her cousin-husband and maybe even her classmate, and later, raising her child as a single mother and meeting a man of her choice? But this would, of course, mean complexity and a screenplay that does not rely on overly simplistic archetypes. Functioning within the confines of patriarchy, Khirad cannot lose her chance of reunion with Ashar by responding to any other man in her four and a half years as a single woman. Playing on scenes in Bollywood, where the woman’s purity is depicted through devoted, childlike prayer as the male voyeurs, here too in Episode 19, Ashar is shown after Khirad has vulnerably bared it all before her God.

Ashar, too, stays pure. But promiscuity will not cost him a home. His celibacy (and virtual impotency) is affirmation of his unattainability. No wafer (think vamp) like Sara sink her claws in him. Sara’s character, again, is monosyllabic evil. And the fact that she runs the show at corporate HQ when Ashar is in the doldrums is not commendable, but rather evidence of her manipulative abilities. That she uses yoga to keep herself grounded in her evil designs is yet again weird social commentary as is her always western attire. And since the drama is PG, we never see Ashar succumbing to Sara’s advances (though it would add a twist and a moral dilemma) despite being in hotels together and constantly in each other’s homes.

The terrible appeal of Humsafar is that it confirms characters and stories set in deeply patriarchal frameworks. It is sexist justice that soothes the hearts of patriarchal vigilantes, and keeps us on because we want to see the mother-in-law shamed, humiliated and thrust out, and moral purity rise to the top in the reunion of Khirad and Ashar. 

It is a modern day fairy tale, better than Cinderella, worse than Shrek; the born again revival of TV drama in a tweeting world.

This blog was originally published here.

Read more by Abira here. Follow her @oil_is_opium.

Iftikhar Gilani, a journalist by profession who is also well-connected with political circles in Delhi, was picked up in 2002 by security agencies from his Delhi residence on charges of espionage.

The allegation was that he was providing information to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. He was released only after a gerat media furor but not before spending seven harrowing months in Delhi’s Tihar jail.

He wrote a memoir of his days in incarceration“My Days in Prison”.

Anjum Zamarud Habib, the founding member and patron of Muslim Khawateen of the Hurriyat Conference, was falsely implicated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), a draconian law that didn’t have provision for bail. She spent five years behind the bar and her book “Prisoner No 100” is a rare and shocking account of tortured years spent in Tihar jail and a critique of the judicial system.

After over 18 years as a special correspondent and investigative journalist with one of the mainstream newspapers, Sahil Maqbool – the third author – was arrested as a spy and imprisoned. The time he spent in jail came to be published as a “Jail Memoir”, in which he narrates not only his own ordeal but the pains of other prisoners who have fallen prey to the arbitrary application of laws and rules.

So what do these three stories tell us about the relationship between India and the state of Jammu and Kashmir? They tell us how Kashmir has become a prisoner of the Indian establishment’s paranoia.

Recently, a prominent institute in Pune was barred by the youth wing of a Hindu rightist party from screening a documentary, “Jashn-e-Azadi”, and holding a seminar called Voices of Kashmir. The short film explores the struggle for azadi, freedom, and the conflict in the Kashmir valley. The seminar was an attempt to decipher the voices of the Kashmiri people who feel suffocated by the suspicion and ham-handedness of the security forces.

Not long ago, activist lawyer and leading light of the Anna Hazare Movement, Prashant Bhushan, was thrashed by some extreme right-wing Hindu groups for advocating the cause of the Kashmiri people. The debate that followed largely focused on Bhushan’s so-called transgression rather than the attack on his freedom of expression and violence against him. Even his mentor Anna Hazare didn’t criticise the attackers but repudiated the lawyer for questioning India’s hold over Kashmir. He further added that Kashmir is an integral part of India.

It is this paranoia that has characterised India’s policy towards Kashmir for the last 60 years. The kind of democratic choice and freedom that define other Indian states have been absent from this bordering state. The peoples’ voice has always been perceived as a threat rather than a call to mend ways. By suspecting the intention of our own people, we have been insulting the genuine voices of the masses who want their own democratic rights and freedom of choice.

For other parts of India, democracy has been acting as a catalyst that liberates people from years of political oppression and empowering them to be political stakeholders. But the same democracy becomes a prisoner of tunnel vision in Jammu and Kashmir – we rig our own potent idea in the disputed territory.

In his book “India and Pakistan” Stanley Wolpert writes:

The people of Kashmir themselves must be permitted to choose their own leaders in free and fair elections, as do Indians in every other states in that union, and New Delhi solemnly commit to supporting Kashmir’s provincial autonomy and rights of its people, as it does the autonomy and rights of the people of Punajb,Maharashtra or West Bengal.

But on the contrary, these liberal and democratic values are given a short shrift in the state. And in this crime, the government and the Indian people are complicit. The moral courage and intellectual integrity that is needed to stand up against the brutalities of the forces in the valley is missing. We tend to largely ignore the widespread human rights violation and suppression, and never support their urge for liberation and freedom.

Still, we expect them to stand by us and sing the national anthem at every Independence and Republic Day.

In his book “Until My Freedom has Come”, independent documentary film maker and activist, Sanjay Kak writes:

Today the Kashmir Valley has the highest concentration of soldiers in the world – more than Afghanistan, Iraq or Burma. It is only in the last five years that the shape of this intervention has been dragged out of the guarded penumbra of Indian national interest.

He further writes:

 …seventy thousand Kashmiris have been killed since 1989,and 8,000 have gone missing. To this must be added the less visible costs of torture, rape,life long physical incapacities and grievous economic, social, and psychological damage.

Pakistan also cannot absolve itself from bringing trouble and hardship to the Kashmiri people it claims as its own. It cannot escape the blame of radicalising the society and precipitating the crisis by its support to militancy and the destructive elements in the valley. By making Kashmir a prestige issue, Islamabad has forgotten the plight and pain of the people.

Wolpert, an old hand in South Asia and a professor emeritus at the University of California, writes:

(Pakistan’s) failure to sustain a freely elected civil polity and its inability to control the al Qaeda and the Taliban militants who inhabit its entire Afghan frontier, and to end the nurturing of the Pakistani soil of suicide bombers, its demand for a democratic resolution of Kashmir conflict will have little credibility and win scant support.

At the same time the South Asian expert argues that India should stop the military occupation and “praetorian attacks on Kashmir’s Muslim majority”.

More than an issue between India and Pakistan, Kashmir is a challenge to India and its idea of democracy and pluralism.

It is a slap to our claim to be a true democracy.

By not honouring our commitment to our Constitution and its values in the disturbed valley, we are inflicting injustice and injuries to our own idea of India.

Kashmir is the place where Indian democracy comes to weep.

Supporters of Jammu and Kashmir Libration Front (JKLF) shout pro-freedom slogans during a protest. PHOTO: AFP

Read more by Sanjay here.

The 90-year-old was accused of helping the Pakistan Army in the 1971 debacle. What was shocking was the unrelenting resolve for revenge among the Bengalis, and their hatred for the Pakistani military, a hatred which refuses to die even after the passage of forty years. They were not willing to pardon the 90-year-old man for his alleged association with the killers of their loved ones.

This thought gave me chills as I read a statement by the US State Department official about the ongoing violence in Balochistan. Here again, there are allegations against the military of being involved in human rights abuses.

Reading this made me fearful because I do not hate my country’s army, yet I cannot deny the bitter realities either. I do not want to be hated and I wish the same for my military. But I am worried: what if we are making the same mistakes again? I would despise the day when the people of Balochistan hold me and my army, as Pakistanis, guilty for ‘atrocities’ against them.

Like many other Pakistanis I, too, believe that the army’s honour and respect lies in staying in the barracks and not involving itself in politics or matters of the state. What we need to emulate is what Turkey has done in recent years, with its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, taking the lead, with the full support of the Turkish people, in ensuring the primacy of elected civilian rule. One day, I hope, Pakistan’s prime minister can also say in public that coups are a thing of the past.

Reading the news and following politics on television and online has helped me understand how our policy makers think and what issues matter to our general public.

If you have done the same, you will know that every effort to modernise our educational system and make it more culturally and religiously neutral has met with stern resistance from political, religious and other factions of the society. But one day, while sitting in class, I finally had an epiphany of sorts.

What happened was unbelievable.

A Pakistani undergraduate class was shown a Richard Dawkins documentary in a sociology course. Now, for some of you who don’t know Richard Dawkins, he is a prominent atheist scholar and an active opponent to organised religion. Although his book is available at a few book stores, showing it to students as part of their learning process has to be an unprecedented incident in our academic history.

To put things in perspective, I’d like to just point out that we live in a country where a female minister, Zille Huma Usman, was killed because a lunatic thought the idea of women ruling  is not prescribed by Allah; a country where Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti were killed for speaking against the blasphemy law, January 4 is celebrated as “Mumtaz Qadri day” and Ahmadi students are shunned out of school for their beliefs.

So, showing a Richard Dawkins documentary which ascribes religion as the root cause of all evil is simply overwhelming. Now, whether one agrees with what Mr Dawkins believes (or rather disbelieves) is an entirely different debate. But for a Pakistani teacher to be able to show his class something this controversial is a gigantic step in itself.

We all have different views on religion and most don’t agree with Dawkins. But what’s worth noticing is not that students were shown something that was sacrilegious, it is something else. It is not about Dawkins at all.

This is about the freedom and tolerance that our society and educational system has lost or rather, never had. It’s about people being empowered to ask questions about centuries old religious and cultural dogmas and to challenge the relevance of medieval practices in the 21st century.

This is where that documentary comes in. It allows us to think out of the comfortable narrative that has been concocted for us by the state and its right-wing allies. Watching it allows us to digest opinions wildly diverse from ours and still give them their due consideration and appreciation. This is what made me happy.

The path to our renaissance is difficult and dangerous but it is these little steps that make a difference. Little things like the incident when a black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to sit at the back of a bus and became the symbol of the civil rights movement; like when a group of middle class women called the Suffragettes asked why they didn’t have the right to vote (now the term suffrage literally means the right to vote). I know we are light years away from achieving our goal of a pluralist society but the abovementioned struggles took decades too, so not all hope is lost.

The role of modern, non-partisan education in all this is critical. It’s the first step, for it prepares the mind for the battle ahead. It gives you the ability to take in different views and not shout “blasphemy” or “heresy”.

It allows you to analyse situations rationally without emotions or religious indoctrination clouding your judgment. And maybe this is why no one in the class left in disgust or started an argument with the teacher about their religious sensibilities being disturbed.

This is exactly what the clergy of this country is afraid of; the power of neutral education to marginalise fixed religious views.

I have no doubt that eventually it will happen. It has to happen. The only question is, will we be around to witness it?

The Pakistan – England Test series finally witnessed a century, and it came from none other than the most reliable batsmen out there – Younis Khan.

I had been waiting for a Younis Khan century throughout the series and last week, he made it happen. Younis’ performance was most satisfying because I had been anticipating it for some time and to top it off, I was at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium to witness it.

I could go all the way back to the start of his career, when Younis cracked a debut Test century against Sri Lanka, but this table ends at England’s tour of Pakistan at the end of 2005. This ‘home’ series against England brings the whole analysis full circle while also putting things in perspective with regards to the last time Younis failed in a Test series.

He hasn’t played as much as Sachin, Kallis, Dravid, or Ponting but he is right at the top of the pile in terms of batting average for Tests played since November 2005. Imagine what his numbers would look like if Pakistan played as much Test cricket as India, Australia, and South Africa  - or if he wasn’t out of the team for almost 18 months due to an ego clash with Ijaz Butt!

It is no surprise to me then that Michael Atherton said what he did after the end of play:

He (Younis) is one of the giants of the game. You talk about Sachin, Ponting, Kallis and Dravid. He (Younis) averages over 50 with a triple 100 and couple of double 100′s, He is right up there with them.

It is unfortunate that in a Test career spanning 12 years, Younis has played only 76 Test matches. If you take a look at where these batting greats stood after their first 76 test matches, the statistics paint a startling picture.

Can anyone now claim that Younis is not one of the best batsmen out there?

At this stage of his career, no one besides Rahul Dravid had more runs than Younis. There is a big difference between the averages of Younis and the rest, however after 76 tests Ponting had the same number of Test centuries as Younis has now, with only Sachin ahead of the pack.

It is tragic that we will never know what Younis Khan could have achieved had he played as much as Sachin, Dravid, Ponting, and Kallis.

I salute the true King Khan – Younis Khan!

This post was originally published here.