Book Review

Book: What Plagues Pakistan?

Author: Dr Tanvir Hussain Bhatti
Pages: 213
Published by: M.B Law Associates
Available at: Mr. Books, Saeed Book Bank(Islamabad),
Ferozsons, carvan, Fiction House(Lahore),University of
Washington Library and Quaid-e-Azam library
The book is a collection of Dr Tanvir Hussain Bhatti articles published as
leaders in the national daily newspapers enjoying wide circulation
throughout the country. The writer, broadly speaking, is motivated by three
overriding factors. First, his irrepressible love for his country where he was
born, nurtured and educated and blossomed into a youth of impeccable
integrity in an ambiance reeking of deceit and duplicity, dung and
corruption; second, his deep concern with the ideological moorings of his
country being eroded by the voracious greed and power lust of its rulers or
looters; and thirdly, his immeasurable love of his own religion, the religion
of true peace and progress, growth and nourishment, not the superficial and
cosmetic development which the west never tires of boasting but which has
largely produced tainted glamour and spawned sleaze and immoral rubbish.

Dr. Tanvir is steeped in religious feeling, not in an aura of religiosity which

is more synthetic than real. For most of us religion is only a series of rituals
which we perform as drills, without any emotional involvement. But for
Tanvir religion is alive, tingling with the warmth of divine presence. Our
religion says “don’t lie” but most of us lie, our religion says “don’t backbite”
because it is like eating the flesh of your dead brother but most of us
backbite and relish it more than we relish our prayers or other acts of piety;
our religion says “help the poor”, but what one would think of a Muslim
country where even zakat is doled out to the deserving poor on a chit of
recommendation from a person who is leading an immoral life and who has
come up in the world through deceit, duplicity and double-dealing. In the
early days of Islam when people really practiced what they preached,
Shakespeare’s quotation “One may smile and smile and be a villain” did not
apply to the Muslims at least because there was no incompatibility between
their outer and inner selves. A Muslim was supposed to be a paradigm of
honesty and integrity and the rulers specially were known for their piety and
humane attitude. No body branded a Muslim as dishonest or inconsistent.

But now the table have turned. Muslims are humiliated all over the world,
and they have acquired such notoriety that all acts of terrorism are slapped
on them. Even when they are innocent, their innocence is dismissed as
another act of deception. The Nine Eleven episode was engineered and
masterminded by the Jews but the west found a handy scapegoat in the
Muslim community and very conveniently, and without a qualm of
compunction or scruple of regret, slapped the stinking allegation on the
Muslims. The post-Nine Eleven scenario was also hatched by the Jewish
conspirators as they have some old scores to settle with the Muslims though
the absence of all the Jews from the scene of mayhem and carnage is an
eloquent proof of their involvement which is reinforced by the absence even
of those Jews who were notorious atheists and agnostics. The situation is
totally reversed; the Islamic code of honour is now being labelled as the
code of dishonour, especially by the westerm media which are trigger-ready
to pick on the slightest foible’s of the Muslims and balloon them out of all
proportion as monstrous deeds. And our rulers compound the heart-burn;
instead of siding with their own people and flapping their wings to defend
them, they side with the western world to makes some quick illegal bucks
and build spurious reputations for themselves. Little do they realize that this
is absolutely against the spirit of the Quran which debars the Muslims from
befriending the Jews and the Christians. In total defiance of the Quranic
injunctions they are playing right into their hands and patronize everything
that comes with the western slap.

Dr. Tanvir, being a true Muslim, has reacted against the inhuman and evil
practices that have bombarded the world of Islam as a result of the Muslims’
deviation from its original message and which is as transparent as a believers
conscience. He is totally unbiased and his coterie of friends is drawn from
all Muslim sects. When somebody asks him what sect he belongs to, he
instantly replies, he is a Muslim and Islam is above sectarian divisions. His
mission is to unite the Muslims, especially those who are living in the
country of his birth. The articles in his “maiden” book are particularly
designed to shake the Muslims out of their rabbit sleep to underscore the evil
practices that have permeated all walks of human life. His style is quite
congruent with his emotional pitch and the brood and extensive sweep of his
sentences conveys the depth and intensity of his feelings. Sometime he even
uses slang to make his message more effective because an ordinary word
would have proved ineffective to express the oven- heart lava of his
sentiments. Here are some of the nuggets from his well-reasoned passion-
packed articles:

 Emergence of true national democratic leaders through crystal- clear

polls is necessary to cultivate mutual trust to reduce mounting tension
among the federating units, which is indispensable for national integration,
progress and prosperity of this ‘Land of the Pure’. (Free and fare elections).

 The army, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the print and electronic
media, the clergy and the politicians should come down from their high
horse and play a constructive national role in beefing up the foundations of
democracy. They should join hands to uplift the public. They should work
for the betterment of the public rather than safeguarding their vested
interests, otherwise, their titles would be mere shadows and their crowns
sheer empty things. (Democracy and feudalism)
 Democracy cannot flourish in the presence of shackled judiciary.
(Democracy and judiciary)
 The suburbs, the shantytowns, and the countryside are the hunger
domains of those born with a wooden ladle in their mouth. (Socio-economic
stratification in Pakistan)
 The national economy has sunk into state of torpor due to the ad hoc
polices of the fact-twisting myopic top cats. (Strangulations in the economy
of Pakistan)
 The western people have been harvesting the bitter fruits of this blatant
genealogy degradation in the form of progressively increasing tempos of
uncontrolled extramarital relations, constantly on the rise digits of
homosexual adventures, steadily increasing numbers of rapes, continuously
rising figures of illegitimate children, swiftly mounting divorce rate, rapidly
growing suicide rate, quickly escalating sexually transmitted diseases like
AIDS, Hepatitis B and syphilis, and hastily upward numerals of deeply
affecting psychological illnesses, etc. To telescope a cherry in the unbridled
sexually lavish west is becoming problematic. (Rejuvenation of family to
curb extremism)
 Dumb cluck and toe-rag Rushdie is a long thin streak of piss and a
byproduct of all deteriorated social institutions. (Dilemma of twin
extremisms)
 The western countries honor those debased and crude persons who
promote vulgarism in the society and vent prejudice against Islam, while
they label those having some grains of morality as conservatives.
(Conservatism and vulgarism)
 The government should mull over and pay heed to alleviate steam-
rolling poverty, which is forcing the teeming millions living from hand to
mouth to sell their body parts and honor to breathe at subsistence level.
(Commercial butchers of humanity)
 The people who once gorged themselves on yummy food are now in
search of yucky food to survive. (Mournful wails of the impoverished
victims.)
 Our cheapskate leaders should also learn to sacrifice personal
preoccupations over national imperatives. Everyone should perform his
duties sincerely and ardently instead of taxing each other with avoiding
responsibilities; otherwise, we cannot make any headway in the welter of
contemporary melting pot.(Pride of performance)
 If amateurish WAPDA cannot fulfill its responsibility, it is necessary to
modify its name from “Water and Power Development Authority” to” Water
and Power Depriving Authority” so that people may pray to God for
reducing temperature instead of protesting against a heartless and insensitive
institution which has turned a deaf ear to the public screeches and a blind
eye to their woe-begon condition. (Merciless and indifferent WAPDA)
 Knighthood of the apple-polisher, butterfingers and worsted egg of the
universe that is rotten to the core, Salman Rushdie, who has illusion that his
bum is ice cream and everyone wants a bite, is not the first assault of the
west on Islam and sentiments of the 1.4 billion Muslims. (Global hypocrisy)
 Kashmir has been burning and bleeding in the yoke of slavery. The
unfortunate dwellers of this glaring terra firma have been languishing in
their own homeland due to atrocities perpetrated by the colossal army of the
largest democracy of the world. Democracy teaches its followers
egalitarianism, but why have the democratic principles crumble to dust in
the beautiful and charming valley of Kashmir?(Kashmir in the yoke of
slavery)
 Media violence and xenophobic distortion of facts are as unjustified as
backbreaking poverty in the midst of spilling and oozing affluence or as a
color spot on the forehead of a Hindu virgin. If one is prepared to clamp a
charitable spin on this kind of violence, the only justification happens to be
commercial. By flaunting mayhem, mutilation, brutalization and airing of
deprecating scandals the media moghuls are raking up fat wads of bank
notes. But they should slither out of the cocoon of their penny-scraping
mentality and think of the moral grooming of the generations to come. The
violence they are generating will have a boom rang impact on their own
children and it is most likely that their own progeny will tumble into the
trenches of immorality they are digging out for others.(Media violence and
xenophobic distortion)
 Institutions, which are erected by the bricks of corruption and
insecurity of job, cannot provide any guarantee to dispense justice and
provision of shelter to the life and possessions of the citizens.(Volatile law
and order situation)
 A country where knowledge parched bureaucrats are more respected
than genuine intellectuals, men of brawn are more honored than men of
brain, and injustice, favoritism, nepotism, insecurity to life and property
compel its talented people to leave the country for good, ensuing a vicious
cycle of “Brain Drain”, cannot make progress in centuries. (Silence-a sign
of weakness)

Dr. Tanvir is a highly individualistic, independent person and he is

outrageously critical of all human parasites who depend on other human
beings for their survival. His articles are consonant with his creative
approach to life and to all that life entails. Allah has blessed him with a first-
rate mind and an unquakable faith. Persons like him can change the destiny
of a moribund, sleep-rumpled, fatigue-frumpled, and sloth-crumpled nation
like ours. What Ann Rynd has expressed in one of her most popular novels
about man and his contribution to mankind fits Dr Tanvir to the dot.

“Man cannot survive except through his mind…But the mind is an attribute
of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no
such thing as a collective thought…We can divide a meal among many men.
We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No one can use his lungs to
breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another…The
moving force is the creative faculty. This creative faculty cannot be given or
received, shared or borrowed. The creator originates, the parasite
borrows. The creator faces nature alone, the parasite faces nature through an
intermediary. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with
others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught
that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man
who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to
stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.”

Iftikhar Ahmed
Professor of communications
University of Central Punjab, Lahore
Former Chairman English Department,
Punjab University Lahore.
Former Chief Instructor in English language,
Civil Services Academy, Pakistan.
September 7, 2007.