Karachi Needs a King
WHY should one write and on what? Should one pontificate on education, on agriculture, on child labour, on the budget , on inflation, on Wattoo 's chances of survival, on the England victory at Lord's, on Wimbledon , on the virtues of democracy, on the plight of pensioners, on the exploitation of labour, on the state of the Press , on the weather, on food adulteration, on spurious drugs, on pollution, on family planning? On what and why?
I have concluded that I am a mercenary. Armed mercenaries kill people to make a living. I kill words to make a living, which makes me a more dangerous mercenary than the other, more orthodox type. Take Karachi , for instance. Anybody who is anybody at all has written on what is going on in that luckless city. I do not have anything to add to what the editorial writers, columnists, analysts, and the others have said on the subject, except for the following:
We called Mujib-ur-Rehman a traitor-we got Bangladesh . We hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ; we got the Daughter of the East. Now we are calling Altaf Husain a traitor. What shall we get? I know, but I dare not tell you.
But I will tell you this much:
The Quaid is dead; the quacks and quislings are alive.
Compassion is dead, cruelty is alive.
Courage is dead, cunning is alive.
Politics is dead; politicians are alive.
The horses are dead; horse-trading is alive.
Life is dead; death is alive.
Reason is dead; obduracy is alive.
Hope is dead; fear is alive.
Austerity is dead; ostentation is alive.
Tolerance is dead; intolerance is alive. Patience is dead; impatience is alive. The poets are dead; the versifiers are alive.
Words are dead; the writers are alive.
Planning is dead; the planners are alive.
The Press is dead; the newspapers are alive.
Charity is dead; caprice is alive
Rights are dead; might is alive.
The mind is dead; the body is alive.
The truth is dead; untruth is alive.
Culture is dead; the vultures are alive.
The way is lost; we continue to travel.
Destiny is dead; despair is alive.
The children are dead; the father is alive.
Faith is dead; the faithlessness is alive.
Unity is dead; disunity is alive.
Discipline is dead; chaos is alive.
I could have gone on in this vein but suddenly, Martin Luther King 's "I have a dream" speech, which he had made in Washington in 1963, came flashing back into my mind. As someone commented, this address has since "entered the literature of American thought." King had called upon the American to rise "from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood."
He called upon fellow-blacks not to seek "to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred," but "to conduct our struggle on the highest planes of dignity and discipline." He spoke of "a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."
He had a dream that black children and white children would one day grow up as brothers and sisters. " . . . when we allow freedom to ring . . . from every village and every hamlet . . . we will be able to speed up that day when all of God 's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles , Protestants and Catholics , will be able to join hands and sing in the worlds of the old Negro Spiritual , 'tree at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last' . . . ."
It is a shame I do not have the full text of this historic address. Should any of my readers have it, he or she may please send it to me care of Dawn . I'II be mightily obliged. Karachi needs a Martin Luther King desperately quickly to put out the flames of bitterness and hatred, and to persuade those Karachites who call themselves Mohajirs "to conduct their struggle on the highest planes of dignity and discipline."
Isn't there a single man in Karachi who can turn hatred into love, fear into hope, tears into laughter, and death into life?
Friday, June 30, 1995
