Relic Fervor

Originally published August 21st, 2007 at: http://desicritics.org/2007/08/21/000845.php
Republished by the Sri Lanka Daily News on August 23, 2007
Republished by the South Asian Media Net on August 24, 2007
Images courtesy of Sri Lanka Daily News


Travel with me to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Laxmi Narain Temple in Delhi, The Temple of the Tooth - Sri Dalada Maligawa in Sri Lanka, the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore and the Baha’i House of Worship in Delhi. Each edifice is unique and magnificent, an architectural
statement of the faith of its devotees. Each visit stirs the viewer in different ways; the awe of seeing thousands upon thousands kneeling before Allah in the vast courtyard of the Badshahi Mosque, the stunning, shining glory of the Golden Temple, perhaps the most beautiful in the world, the welcoming warmth of the Temple of the Tooth, the silent, amazing lotus-shaped glory of the Baha’i House of Worship in Delhi and the noisy but colorful welcome of the Laxmi Narain Temple in Delhi where all castes and faiths are welcome.

Such visits were special because they seemed to represent for me an experience that inspires faith in the creator, where I was lifted above the actual gold, stone and mortar, to thoughts of people’s adoration of the eternal. Perhaps each edifice was meant to inspire a phenomenon of faith that transcends logic, transcends the mere physical representations, the icons and brings one to a point of adoration of the almighty, the giver of light. These temples were not for me the actual objects of adoration; rather I perceived them as gathering places where people of different faiths sought peace, calmness, joy, and a hope for an eternity, nirvana. If there was adoration, I did not perceive it was for the physical objects, or for mere men who have lived and walked, rather for what these represented, what they taught.

Now, relics are a different matter to me. They include such items as a bone, a dried up mummy, ashes, a fingernail, hair, a robe worn by the master, a sliver of Jesus’ cross or even a footprint of a prophet. There seems to be an immense social-religious need to venerate such physical objects, primarily made of carbon. There is a current fever for obtaining ‘genuine’ relics. Selling the saints, reported by Phil Lipof, in WHDH-TV Special Report, (8/14/2007) presents a disturbing account of selling relics online. “With a click of the mouse, spirituality is up for sale!!” I wonder about that. Spirituality? E-Bay says that they try to stop the sale of blood, bones or body parts. “But there are so many items like this for sale at any given time; it would take divine intervention to catch them all.” Relics for sale to the highest bidder. Why?

Flash! The Taxila Cross, (8/14/2007), from the book, Shadows in the Dark, by Fr. John Rooney M.H.M. (Pakistan Christian History Monograph, No.1) “There are two further pieces of evidence that might seem to suggest a St Thomas connection with Pakistan, the one epigraphical, the other social. The epigraphical evidence is an interesting cross found at Taxila now lodged in the Anglican cathedral at Lahore, where it is know as the Taxila Cross. The social evidence concerns a fakir community which is said to be connected with Thatta, Sind, and to claims that it has origins in St. Thomas.”

Here we go again! The small cross has been taken over by the United Church there as its symbol, found in the ancient city of Sirkap some forty years ago. And you had better believe that there is controversy over this as well. All sorts of scholarly opinions are being proffered now to challenge the little cross as not being a “genuine Christian relic.” Strongest among the challengers are those who say that it is a type of cross that is more or less equilateral, thus not a Christian cross. This type of cross is similar to hosts of other such crosses which are of Buddhist origin. Oh brother, now the arguments are flying back and forth.

But relics create responses filled with zeal. The helpful and often accurate, Wikipedia says this about Muslim Relics: “While various relics are preserved by different Muslim communities, the most important are those known as the Sacred Trusts, more than 600 pieces treasured in the Privy Chamber of the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. Muslims believe that these treasures include the sword and standard of Muhammad, a hair from his beard, and the staff of Moses.” I was surprised at the last statement, that The Quran has “... been recited next to these relics uninterruptedly since they were brought to the Topkapi Palace.” Such fervor!

World Tibet Network News, (March 5, 2001) reported, “...large portions of the two massive Buddha figures in central Bamiyan province, dating back more than 1,500 years, have already been reduced to rubble, along with thousands of other statues throughout the country. It was reported that an edict had been published and, “... will be implemented Inshallah (God willing).” The article spoke of reports from Taliban officials about the destruction and the nature of the order from the Taliban Supreme Leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar who had authorized the iconoclasm. A hot storm of international protest erupted about this action of these fundamental radical Muslims.

Sadly, I had never traveled in Afghanistan to see the Bamiyan Buddhas, which stood some fifty meters tall. These statues which had existed since the third century BC are no more. Smashed, destroyed in the fever of a religious zeal that I do not comprehend. Such zealous fervor to obliterate the religious expressions of others is ‘old hat’ in many parts of the world, including Christian Europe. Our guide in Cusco, Peru said that a Spanish Catholic Church there was built over the priceless ruins of ancient Inca religious ruins. They even used beautiful hand-formed, fitted stones as part of their church foundations. There are stories galore of this type; one religion obliterating the beauties and joys of another.

Travel with me to Kandy, Sri Lanka and stand near the edge of the lake and look at the Temple of the Tooth. It was a quiet day and I stood with my wife and friends gazing at the temple. A few dozen of tourists and an equal number of those on pilgrimage had come to see the tooth were wandering around, climbing the steps into the temple. No, you can’t see the tooth; it is kept securely behind a protective wall and drapery in the reliquary.

It has not been brought to light since 1990 because of worries that the Tamil Tigers would try to damage or make off with it. Only its casket is now brought out during the annual festival. And what a fever of excitement there is when as many one hundred elephants dressed in finery make their way into the town as drums beat, flutes play and dancers leap about! Attendance at the Esal Perahea may number a million people from all ranks of Sri Lankan society. Tamil Hindus and many Christians take part in the celebration.

How did the tooth get to Sri Lanka? That is a story by itself, but one version is that the tooth was removed from the Buddha when the body was on the cremation pyre and eventually made its way to Ceylon hidden in someone’s hair. But that is not what is important. A tooth is there and it has been revered by millions upon millions for centuries and now there is to be more.

Sacred Hair Relics will be presented to the Sri Lankan on 18th July in Chittaghong, as reported by (narinjara.com, 8/14/2007). “President Mahinda Rajapaksa has offered state patronage to the event and several leading Buddhist monks and Ministers are to take part at the events related to the arrival of the relic in Sri Lanka.” Of course controversy now boils up. Researchers and critics cast doubt about the authenticity of the hair relics. There are obstructive tangles, calls for better means to determine authenticity. Hair, nail clippings, shrouds?Remember Emperor Ashoka? He converted to Buddhism in the third century BC. He was a zealot. He opened seven of the original stupas and collected their relics and, according to The Asokavadana, divided these relics into 84,000 portions and distributed these in his Indian empire, vowing to erect a stupa for each portion. Now that was amazing fervor! Perhaps that number was symbolic, or a scribe added a zero or two.

Is the reverence for relics something that transcends logic, transcends the mere physical object? Of what? Is the reverence for the prophet himself, or is the reverence much higher than that, for the creator, the eternal? Would the one crucified be pleased to see splinters of a cross venerated? What about the message? What does a little silver Taxila Cross have to do with it? Or is it the same feeling that I get when I visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar? Awe.

I have not read the Sermon on the Mount for quite some time. Do you remember it? Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the merciful, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness...Jesus’ message is important. I went back to my library and pulled a little book from the shelf that I had read years ago, The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, by E.A Burtt, 1982, Mentor. I was refreshing my memory about Siddartha Guatama’s teaching because I was wondering how such obsessions with relics, the emphasis on the physical, ashes, the hair, the tooth, fit in with his message of gentleness, serenity, compassion, liberation from selfish cravings for the physical.

E. A. Burtt puts it this way in his Introduction, (page 20.) “Worst of all , perhaps, from Buddha’s standpoint, religion was straying through these and other vices away from the insistent, poignant, practical needs of men and women. It was not leading them toward true fulfillment and more dependable happiness; it was becoming mired in obstructive tradition, repetitious rite, and dead or cantankerous dogma. He conceived it as his task to break through or sweep away these obstructive tangles, to find an enduring solution to the real problems of men and to bring India and the world a saving message of light and love.”

River Dolphins and Baoli - The Passing of an Era

Originally published 8/12/07 on Desicritics.org http://desicritics.org/2007/08/12/002214.php
Commented on August 22, 2007 by http://www.anotherchancetosee.com/2007/08/susu-ganges-river-dolphin.html

At the age of twelve, the Jumna River flowing in the foothills of the Himalayas, a day's hike from Mussoorie, looked forbidding. I stood with my toes in the water and watched the swift, clear water pass by me, crashing against rocks in mid-stream. My bath was short, the water was freezing.

As an adult I stood in the shade of large Neem trees alongside the Indus River near Sukkur and the water was warm, brown and turbid. Boats were pulled up along the bank to the south side of the Ayub Railway Bridge. I was informed that these belonged to the Mohana boat people, who one man said were probably descendants of soldiers who had accompanied Alexander the Great. (You know, grey eyes, fair skin.)

I watched the boatmen ply their boats on the brown surface of the water and wondered how in the world any fish could see the bait on the lines that they put over the side. A man next to me explained that they were catching catfish and that they used the fat of the bhulan as bait. I had no idea what that was and so he drew a picture in the sand of what looked like a dolphin, except that it had a long snout. He assured me that it was a fine animal to eat, it had red meat, and, he laughed, even a penis. The thick layer of fat of the creature, he said, was irresistible to catfish because they could smell it in the muddy water.

Well! That started a treasure hunt. Over the years I have learned more about the habits of this strange creature, a dolphin which swims in the Indus and is blind in the usual sense of the word, though some authorities say it can perceive light. It does its hunting by emitting sounds and finds its prey by echo-location. They are attractive grey creatures with long beak-like noses and eyes that look small and clouded. Adults weigh between 180 to 200 lbs. and can grow as long as eight feet. Local fishermen told me the bhulan fishes on its side on the bottom of the river or even in more shallow tributaries where it can effectively catch its prey of small fish and crustaceans.

This is a whale of a story! A cetacean, or a member of the order of whales, swimming way up the Indus River, going blind in the process because of muddy water, yet surviving some ten million years of evolution, re-birth, in the waters that ran into the sea. But it has been a long, long time since the Indus ran happily into the sea with sufficient flow to support a small whale swimming into it. Then to top it all off, during the last half century these creatures got stranded in the Indus because barrages or bridges were built which limited how far they could go. Many got trapped between construction projects. One report I read said they went all the way to Nepal. But I will get to that later.

How many of these rare, wonderful creatures are left? I poured over the literature and sadly have to report that only four to six hundred of these blind river dolphins exist in the Indus and that their numbers are diminishing rapidly because of a number of factors. Over fishing, dam construction, navigation projects, pollution, habitat destruction and increasing food needs of a fast growing human population have all but made this animal extinct.
So what? Why in the world bring up this matter to readers? For a number of reasons. The words extinction, re-birth, evolution, pollution were mentioned above for a reason. This is a matter of great importance for action, for doing something.

You may recall the man Gaius Plinius Secondus, (23-AD to 79 AD) known more affectionately as Pliny the Elder in your history books. Well, imagine this, he wrote about the river dolphin way back then and listed it among many of the special animals of the part of the world which we now call India and Pakistan. His book, "Naturalis Historia" gave press to our dear friends the bhulan. Asked why he wrote about such things he gave a great answer. "True glory consists of doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read."

The Pakistan government is doing things to help the blind river dolphin, such as prohibitions against catching them, fines for doing so and declarations about their near extinct status to literate populations. However, few local people who happen to get a river dolphin caught in their fishing net will simply throw it back, because it is dead, drowned. Of course not, they will eat it. Knowing that its fat is excellent catfish bait doesn't help, because many river dolphins will be caught for that reason alone. Hunger drives people and necessity is truly the mother of invention; dolphin as catfish bait! Dams on the river have isolated small groups of these creatures thus putting them into danger of inbreeding. It does not look very hopeful for this creature. It may be only a few more years and all of them will disappear. And it has happened before, very recently.

A similar creature called the baiji once flourished in the Yangtze River in China. In 1997 a survey was performed to count how many remained. Only thirteen were sighted. I looked up information about the baiji in the National Geographic News, 2007 and the CBS News of August 10, 2007, 11:20 a.m. and saw the sad words. "The Chinese blind river dolphin is extinct!"
One writer said it is the first cetacean that has become extinct directly because of humans. One reporter said that when he read the news he wept. Twenty million years of birth and re-birth of this creature has been going on, and in 2007 it is no more! Why did it become extinct? For all the same reasons mentioned above. River traffic has increased; populations have exploded with concomitant hunger which drove this animal to extinction.

But India is safe! Right? Is Bangladesh spared? Does Nepal have problems with the blind dolphins? In the Ganges this creature is called the Susu. If you are interested you can go online and watch a video of a Susu leaping out of the water and hear its whistle-like call. It is wonderful to see. Only about six hundred of them still exist in an area of heavy human population which uses their fat, you guessed it, for catching catfish. In the Brahmaputra River, scientists estimate that three to four hundred of the Hihu remain. In Nepal, in isolated sections of rivers a few may still exist.

Now we come to the fate of the baoli. For those who have not had the fun of visiting a step-well, that is what it is, a baoli. And it is really fun. As a child, in Pre-partition India I visited step wells. There was one in Delhi in the Red Fort. It was a 14th Century step-well that existed in a 17th Century building, according to some, built by Tughlaks, who constructed many baoli in Delhi.
Now, for all you Indian history teachers, a wonderful research project for your students could be called "Delhi Baoli". The need for drinking water and bathing water has always been an important part of the life of the common servant, slave or even the emperor of the day. The baoli was a vital part of this history. Has a survey with GPS accuracy been performed mapping defunct step-wells of India as well as currently operating ones? This sounds like a wonderful doctoral dissertation. Pliny the Elder suggested, "True glory consists of doing what deserves to be written..."

My own limited research revealed a sad fact about Indian and Pakistani step wells. Many are neglected and in disrepair. Yet these fantastic structures represent the "life water" of civilizations. Simply for the sake of our precious heritage these treasures need to be preserved so that our grandchildren can do as I did on an outing. Walk down the 84 steps of a baoli, touch the water and look up at the sky from deep within the well. Feel the damp bricks, breathe the moist air, mop a sweating brow and marvel!

Yes, I have seen the Taj Mahal and many, many Mughal ruins. None have stirred me as much as the baoli! Permit me to say Amin to Fauzia Qureshi's Conserving Pakistan's Built Heritage, 1994 in which he, happily, includes a section on step-wells and the neglect of these historical buildings, these underground monuments. I visited the Baoli Sahib Gurdwara, Lahore, near the Dabbi Bazaar to rekindle the flame of awe I felt as a child when I visited various baoli in the Punjab. Even the monuments that stick out above the ground are in sad disrepair and those that tunnel deep into the ground are either a bit dangerous to enter or are in neglect due to lack of funds. The Rohtas Fort in Pakistan, said to be built by the Afghan King, Sher Shah Suri, was an amalgamation of Puchtun and Hindu architecture. There are three wells there and the Main Baoli has 148 steps leading down to water!

Tourism! Sorry I mentioned it. Yet, tourism may in fact help to bring back and preserve India's treasures. Imagine a Baoli advertisement. But why?It matters. Humans are good at destruction, building atomic bombs that can obliterate civilizations. I may ask, but why? We are not good at holding on to our little treasures, even preserving the divine life-line of the little blind bhulan. A blogger, who called himself "stevenga777", wrote these words in 2006. "Thinking that I get to see these dolphins in heaven makes me happy..." What a nice idea, heavenly 'blind' dolphins.
I am thinking that I would like to encourage my grand kids to visit Pakistan and India. Dip their toes in the cool water of a half dozen baoli and search for the little blind water dolphin, the elusive and rare bhulan.

The Real Pakistan - Behind Char Divari

Published 8/04/07 on: Desicritics

The American public is dismally uninformed about Pakistan. What little it knows is tied to the news reports; Pakistan being an epicenter for terrorism, Pakistan being the hiding place for Taliban, Pakistan being the nursery for Al Qaeda, Pakistan as a new nuclear threat, Pakistan as the critical pawn in Southeast Asia for keeping the lid on Afghanistan’s political instability. Those informed Americans who read the journals or the daily newspapers or watch CNN rather than the soaps, see George Bush and Musharraf meeting together in Washington D.C. and Musharraf promoting his new book. The real Pakistani people? Hardly.

Who are Pakistanis anyway? Are they the sophisticated and wealthy elite in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore? Yes. Or are they part of the Diaspora which now lives in Toronto, Seattle, London or Brisbane? Yes. Among these are the well educated, wealthy articulate groups that cluster in the world’s large cites and carry on with their lives, contributing their skills and expertise to the countries they have adopted. Yes, these are in large, the doctor-men, lawyer-men, business men and scientists-men whose expertise is part of what make America great. Their brains and talents become part and parcel of the fabric of our way of life; we are a county of immigrants like none other in the world and we are enriched by their presence, my fellow Pakistani Americans.

Who are Pakistanis anyway? We answered that. Did we? The well educated wealthy elite are a relatively small part of the total population of Pakistan. Who are all those other folk? We see pictures of some of them, almost always men, males, and young men at that, crowding the street, holding banners, shouting and screaming at the camera about a fatwah against an author who blasphemed, an inappropriate cartoon, about holy books being flushed down toilets, about the Iraq War, about the American bombing of a Pakistani village! Many of these young men having finished school, matriculated, at the secondary school level, are often jobless or performing jobs with very low pay, restless youths that cluster together in huge numbers in the ever growing urban populations of Pakistan in Karachi, Rawalpindi, and Lahore. It has been estimated that Pakistan’s urban population has expanded seven fold since 1951. It is a young and restless population.

But where are the girls, the women? Why don’t we see pictures of them? Is Pakistan made up of mostly men? Males? Who are Pakistanis anyway? Are they these male urban folk? Do males dominate? Are they in control? Yes. Some 34% of the total population now crowds into cities. Logically, of this group, almost 50% must be women. Where are they? What are they doing? Why don’t we see them? Oh, but we did see one, a beautiful, articulate one. Pakistan, an Islamic state had a woman, Benazir Bhutto, as Prime Minister, imagine, twice over! Yet where have all the girls and women gone? Oh yes, I remember the striking eyes of the young woman who graced the cover of National Geographic. Yes! And then there is Mukhtaran Bibi, called Mukhtar Mai by many, who was raped five times by members of the same family. Yes! Her book with Nicholas D. Kristof, In the Name of Honor, tells her story for the world to hear. It is an important story.

Behind Char Divari

Of Pakistan’s 169 million people, almost half are women in the vast and diverse rural areas of Pakistan. Rural women, approximately thirty three percent of the total population, reside in the countryside. That sounds idyllic, almost romantic. It is far from it. They bear huge burdens. “Women in Pakistan, particularly the large majority of rural women, bear a number of burdens which Islam and social custom places on them as they interact in a fast changing world. Three major burdens are sex segregation, (purdah) their legal status in Islam, and their role in the family. These are barriers to change; barriers to the ability of women to take part with their sisters in many rural development activities going on in the Third World.”1 Economic development and political participation have been shown to be tied to high levels of literacy in most developing countries and women’s participation is a key element in this equation.

I was in the remote hill station of Nathiagali with my own family and the ill-clad wife of the Forestry Rest House caretaker bent down to touch my feet. I reached out to lift her up and asked in Urdu, “What is it, my sister?” She, with tears in her eyes undid the swaddling clothes of the little child she was carrying in the crook of her arm and held it out to me. “Take her. Take her to America. Don’t leave her here. Please.” Why? What was her burden?

Women in Pakistan, women, who we in American call our better half, bear many, many children, endure poverty, labor unceasingly in brutal conditions in farms, they rear animals, cook, gather manure for fuel, wash clothing, sweep the home from early dawn until dark. My driver, Bashir Mohammed was glum. I asked him what his problem was. He replied, “My wife is pregnant with her ninth child. She is not well and almost died the last time. What can I do?” \

Look in the mosques at the first call to prayer and see how many women you count. Look at those who prostrate themselves in prayer and count the number of women. They are too busy, in most cases to pray along with their husbands, and are prohibited from joining him shoulder to shoulder, kneeling equally before their maker. They were a missing link in the social and economic development of Pakistan in 1989. 2. But this is 2007! The rural women of Pakistan still bear such burdens today; yet they are the tremendous potential for the country’s development. Demographically they are about half of the total, but it is very much a man’s world out there. Purdah is still a reality! What is this char divari business? It relates to purdah. Compare the street scenes in Delhi, Patiala or Dehra Dun to Peshawar, Quetta or Dehra Ishmael Khan and you will understand immediately. The women are absent in the latter three.

During the many years I lived in India in the North West Frontier Province, in what is now Pakistan, as a child, I saw a few women, just here and there, usually from the window of the old 1937 family Ford sedan as we drove past, rural women working outside their homes and in villages. Later in my teens, studying in Mussoorie at Woodstock School in the foothills of the Himalayas, I studied with a few of them, beautiful, bright and talented young Indian women. Later, in 1985, working on a World Bank project for the Ministry of Agriculture in On Farm Water Management, I saw a few women in the cities. I was one of the really fortunate ones. Amazingly, I was assigned a typist, a young woman we will call Naheed, who learned to be a copy-typist and do filing as she worked for me. She was the only woman in the Institute and the faculty dropped by my office with great regularity to talk ‘important business’, with me, of course. In Lahore, I was privileged to attend concerts where many wealthy, elite, sophisticated, educated Pakistani men and women listened to singers, ghazals, and players of musical instruments. I met two very beautiful Pakistani women at cocktail parties in Lahore, imagine that, who worked in the entertainment industry as actresses. I met a few other Pakistani women teachers, one who taught my son, in the American School in Lahore. In 1984 my fellow worker, who was assigned to me from Islamabad to visit rural farmers in Dehra Ishmael Khan, to set up regulations for Water User Associations, was an articulate and fearless young woman, Meher J. who had her BA in Sociology. She had been born a Thalomide baby and had one flipper arm and of course had never married. Yes, I remember each and every Pakistani woman I met and worked with, and know most of their names to this day. They were, as I struggled to do my work, my better half!

Culturally, women, particularly rural women, find little chance to participate in programs for personal and economic development. Yet, much is being attempted to assist rural women. Aid programs target women’s health and attempt to improve their life in a variety of ways, including pre and post-natal child care, improved nutrition and literacy programs. But, in order to be effective, such programs must reach millions upon millions of women, those same women who are, for the majority of their lives behind char divari, the four walls of the hundreds and thousands of compounds in Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province. In order to be effective, all the girls of Pakistan need to become literate, to attend school. One particularly difficult and sensitive area needs much work, that is, women’s reproductive health care. But how does one access rural women, who in the name of honor, are under the protection of their men? How does one communicate with rural farmers and householders about the need to protect women from disease, including AIDS that these very men bring back to their households? How can their wives be protected?

There is one very bright light on the horizon. Pakistani women writers! The world is beginning to take notice of these articulate and gutsy women who are writing about their world. Deepti Priya Mehorta wrote in “Women and Words, A Review of Pakistani Women Writers, Boloji.com on Oct. 9, 2005 these words: “On a question of women’s writing specifically, Guahar remarked, ‘Writing may be the only avenue of expression for many women. Men may whistle, saunter around, behave badly. In Pakistani society, we women do not whistle, wink or make salubrious noises.... but you can write quietly.’”

In the Book Review section of Boloji.com, which means in Urdu, "okay speak up", more than a hundred excellent book reviews are presented! What a fantastic way to expand the voices of women! From my observation, however, unless there is a consistent and effective way for these hundreds of Pakistani women writers to present their valued points of view, their narrative to the world, much will be lost. Many of the publishers are little known and many titles are not easily available in the United States. But one book that should be touted is Hoops of Fire: Fifty Years of Fiction by Pakistani Women by Aamer Hussein, Sagi Books, Feb. 2000. This anthology presents stories that reveal the aching, the love, the frustration and the hope of so many Pakistani women. The more the world hears these, the greater will be the web of understanding, empathy and love for the people of Pakistan. Speaking of the web, the digital linkages that are possible to expand awareness for Pakistan and its people has not been well utilized. My Google perusal of ‘Pakistani bloggers’ was an eye-opener for me. What I often read was, men going about ‘whistling, winking and performing salubrious acts’, or decrying Pakki Bashing. We need quiet and serious women writers here as well. While the elite and powerful men go about planning wars, scheming political campaigns, building and tearing down empires, women, their better half are revealing the soul of their land through their writing. It may well be true that the pen is more powerful than the sword, especially if the better half wields it.

The millions behind the physical real mud-brick walls and the religious-cultural and psychological char divari are, from my viewpoint, the untapped resource for Pakistan’s development. Women’s development is the crucial tool to bring about change in Pakistan. But the high hard walls of fundamental religious belief and rigid social custom are difficult to breach.

Really mighty heart

The new movie, A Mighty Heart, directed by Michael Winterbottom will certainly open the eyes of many Americans to Pakistan our ally on the war against terrorism. Angela Jolie's role will bring many to the theaters to relive the awful abduction and killing of journalist Pearl. Tragic as that death was there is a continuing tragedy taking place; the abductions that go on and on in Pakistan, abductions of girls and young women. In Urdu the words "char divari" refer to the huge walled compounds which are the homes of millions of traditional people. Hundreds of young women disappear behind these "char divari' for life! Their families grieve about their abduction, but know in their hearts that their daughters will not return home. A few have escaped and returned home but the tragedy begins anew for these brave hearts. Their families frequently reject them, they have had sexual experience outside of marriage, they have been raped, they are unclean and non-virginal. They become victims all over again; family rejection, possible court action under "sharia", a trial which condemns them under the Hudood Ordinance, labelling them with "zina" adultlery, and then even a possible death penallty. Does this sound impossible? (What happened in Turkey two weeks ago ? An 18 year old girl was stoned to death, a brutal sight which we witnessed on television? ) One person with a really MIGHTY HEART is Mukhtaran Bibi who is fighting the injustice of the system in Pakistan with her new book, In the Name of Honor" which bravely speaks against her forced rape and their legal system that is based on religious fundamentalism. Now there is a Mighty Heart! Read her book, see her movie and support the battle against unjust abduction and the Hudood Ordinance of Pakistan.
www.haroldbergsma.com

MSN: ONE-WAY TICKET PAKISTAN TO AFGHANISTAN, $4 PLEASE

Interesting articles found on MSN: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/02/23/67163.aspx
http://dailynightly.msnbc.com/2007/02/4_for_a_oneway_.html

Reply posed on Feb.27 2007
"One Way Ticket to Afghanistan" brought back vivid memories of my travels in 1985 to Peshawar and the border area as well as to some of the farmers who had been encouraged to stop growing poppies and grow other cash crops. As we travelled by 4 wheel drive vehicle across the open areas on the Afghanistan border I was struck first by the vastness of the place and how remote this area was. My meaning of remote is not only a geographical reference, rather refers to how little the rest of the world knows about this part of the earth and what goes on here.

Much has happened in the world and Pakistan since then, but one thing has stayed rather constant, that the border is not only porous but it has a fluidity that is hard to comprehend. As I read the account of the travellers in One Way Ticket to Afghanistan I was again struck with the huge problem that both governments face to control human population movements. Pushtun folk have lived on both sides of the "border" for years and have largely ignored it as they consider all of it, theirs. They move back and forth across the mountain passes freely. The implications of this for "security" are obvious. The international concern for Taliban action in the area is in direct proportion to this political and social fluidity. Not only do people move but they move their goods, their high value cash crops, their Katusha weapons, but their collective will to remain fiercly independent moves with them. The world needs to read more about this amazing border area where so many countries have struggled to exert controls. I lived in the area during last days of the British Raj and have read so many stories of conflict that occured there.

Welcome to my Blog

Please visit my blog and feel free to comment on its contents.