Various people talked on the stage, including President of OPEN Karachi chapter and other office bearers. One lady, who was member of OPEN Atlanta, is now part of OPEN Karachi chapter and she along with her team contributed a lot to the event. A short video was also played that showed brutality against women (acid throwing) and how these women were then helped to get on their feet and earn a living. The event gave me a good feel about OPEN which was missing from the university chapters and I seriously believe this initiative can generate a lot of entrepreneurial activity in the country.

Due to various commitments and a time-span of a whole week in writing this post, a lot of details have slipped my mind about this event. A summary is the only possibility from my end and the feeling of great success for OPEN in Pakistan. Entrepreneurship is badly needed in the country because the business institutions as well as other disciplines have been constantly churning out students who are job-seekers rather than job-creators. This mentality continues even after several years of professional work experience and the entrepreneurial spirit remains dormant. With such initiatives, this spirit can be awaken and a positive change in the business environment can be made possible.

Nevertheless, something is better than nothing and therefor when I was invited for the soft launch of Umru Ayyar I tried my best to take out time and attend it at the new acquired office space by the KG team.

When I reached there, at least 50 minutes late as per the invite time, the conversation was underway and I joined in with the group sitting with team as if I lost no time (probably they started very late as well). Ramish, Nofal and their team told us about their plans regarding Umru Ayyar Comic, why they chose that character, what they planned regarding publication, language of the comic (both Urdu and English) and answered quite a few questions (and insistence to eat donuts). They had pinned the comic on a board at one side of the room for easy viewing. Conceptual designs on Umru’s looks were also visible in the room and with a final word about the main launch on sunday, we left for our homes.

Today I attended the main launch of the comic book at T2F (visited this place for the first time, seems to be well established and coffee was good too) and bought both Urdu and English comics (total package cost Rs.400). The English comic is noticeably better in quality in terms of paper as well as visual colors but the rest is the same. The dialogues are not lost in translation (although there are minor grammatical errors in the Urdu version) and for both novels you would need to read from left to right even in the Urdu version.

The story is simple; Umru is contemplating retiring from his demon-hunting and mankind-saving adventure to settle down to a quite life, only to encounter a being from magical realm who offers reward if he agrees to meet his queen in a matter of life and death. Intrigued, Umru meets the queen and hears her story. He eventually agrees to help her by accepting her mission and set-off to a new adventure, one that is quite different from what he has done all his life.

The difference in Umru of comic era from the older days is that he will be more protagonist than usual. Previously Umru was known to be wily and would do anything for money, including murder. That put him in a grey area, neither evil nor good, just plain old greedy with too much intelligence and hidden weapons to kill human as well as non-human beings. This Umru would be the “good guy” who does more for the betterment of the people rather than serve his own ego and greed.

KG team also discussed, at both launches, what they plan to do in future that also includes introduction of a character known as Altamash. Their plan sounds good, let’s hope they succeed in their endeavors.

[48Hour Hackathon] Press Release

IEEE-SZABIST Student Branch is a non-profitable student branch at SZABIST of the international organization IEEE, which works to promote technological and industrial market by organizing various seminars, conferences and workshop catering students from all over Karachi.

From the 22^nd to the 24^th of March 2013, IEEE-SSB (SZABIST Student Branch) organized a 48-Hour application development event, HACKATHON at SZABIST 154, Clifton, Karachi. This event provided a forum for the students of Pakistan to collectively come up with creative ideas and provide technological solutions to real life problems.

The theme that we selected for the HACKATHON this year was ‘To Automate Any Manual Process of Pakistan‘.

IEEE-SSB molded this event to fit best at national level. It was platform and technology independent; the teams comprised of 2-4 participants and were allowed to work on web, mobile or desktop applications. There were a total of 26 teams and overall 118 students that registered for the event from 7 different universities all over Pakistan (SZABIST, FAST-NUCES, University of Karachi, ISRA University Hyderabad, DHA-SUFFA, SSUET, MAJU) who stayed at SZABIST 154 Campus for 3days. Participants were provided with all the necessities to make their stay as comfortable as possible.

There were 3 judges that were there to evaluate the projects of the participants at the end of the third day. The judges were from renowned industries and well reputed personalities including Mr. Syed Asif Shah (CEO, IT Minds), Mr. Owais Sheikh (CTO, Lutebox), Mr. Amir Ali Jivani (CTO, Pi-Labs). The judges were very fair in their judgment and gave ample time to every team to explain their projects in detail.

At the end, all the participants were awarded with a certificate of participation. The top 3 teams, all from FAST-NUCES received shields and cash prizes i.e. the team that came in first position received Rs. 20000, the team that came in second position received Rs.10000 and the team in third position received Rs. 5000.

For accomplishing all expected objects we have with us ICT R&D Funds & KMC, Thank you everyone for everything.

I was contacted by the team responsible for Lahore Literary Festival and asked if I could attend the event. I had to apologize because the event timing clashed with the CSS examinations. Last week they sent me a press release to be posted on my blog and I checked my emails after a week, thereby missing it completely. The text of the press release is as follows:

Bapsi Sidhwa to Launch Junglewalla at Lahore Literary Festival

Lahore, 7th February, 2013: Bapsi Sidhwa, Pakistan’s acclaimed English-language novelist will launch
Junglewalla, the Urdu translation of her best-selling book The Crow Eaters, at the Lahore Literary
Festival being held later this month at the Alhamra Arts Complex.

Sidhwa, 74, who grew up in Lahore, and graduated from Kinnaird College, is flying in from Houston,
Texas – where she lives – especially for the debut LLF, whose organisers say she will be one of the major
draws at the event.

“We’re thrilled that Bapsi will be at this year’s festival,” said Razi Ahmed, LLF founder. “There’s great
excitement from people keen to hear and meet her and pick up Junglewalla.”

Along with Tariq Ali, Sidhwa was one of the first Pakistanis writing in English to win international
acclaim. Sidhwa has authored five books, including Cracking India, which was made into a film, Earth, by
Deepak Mehta. Her books have been translated into several languages, including French and Italian.

The author, essayist, and playwright has been an advisor to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on women’s
development, and taught at Columbia University, Mount Holyoke, Rice University, Brandeis, and the
University of Houston. Sidhwa is the sister of the late M. P. Bhandara, who ran Murree Brewery and was
a Member of Parliament.

“Bapsi is a Pakistani original,” said LLF’s Ahmed. “She was one of the first Pakistani authors to break
through to a wider audience.”

The LLF is being supported by the Punjab government and the city administration. The Festival kicks off
on 23rd February. The open-to-public event will feature some 50 authors over two days at the Alhamra
Arts Center.

—ENDS—

For further information, please contact:

Latitude – Corporate Relationship Solutions
Asma Asif, Junior Account Executive
Ph: +92 (0) 42 3577 4321-23
Email: asma@latitudecrs.com

About the Lahore Literary Festival

Lahore has long been known as the cultural capital of Pakistan. For centuries, this beautiful city has been
associated with great literature, art, theatre and music. The first ever Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) was
conceived keeping in mind this legacy of cultural heritage.

The inaugural LLF, being held at the Alhamra Arts Centre in Lahore from 23rd to 24th February, 2013,
aims to revive the Lahore spirit of art and creativity. The annual event promises to be the first step in
re-establishing Lahore as the cultural heartbeat of Pakistan and enriching the cultural experience of
the city’s residents by creating an institutional platform for fostering and furthering Lahore’s literary
traditions.

For additional information, please visit http://www.lahorelitfest.com

For updates, please join the Facebook page (www.facebook.com/lahorelitfest) or follow the LLF on
Twitter (@lhrlitfest)

Now for Karachi Literature Festival. KLF 2013 was held at Beach Luxury Hotel which was a great decision. There were a lot of rooms, there was a lot of space, there were a lot of people, there was free WiFi internet nearly everywhere at the hotel and the ample space at Main Garden was a blessing as some really great sessions were comfortably held there for larger audience with real-time camera screen right behind the panelists. The speakers lineup was pretty impressive this year and I will review the festival session by session that I personally attended.

Day 1

Inauguration

I was a bit late but managed to come before Intizar Husain’s speech. The host was Sidra Iqbal and she is always a pleasure to listen to. Sidra Iqbal was my senior at Beaconhouse and it was her advise and tips that helped me develop my own public speaking skills (my mediocrity is a separate debate). Intizar Husain was eloquent as ever and he brought the audience to life. Despite his humble literary background most modern day Pakistani writers consider him their hero and he was given standing ovation by young and old alike. It was a great sight to see respect given to literary geniuses of the country where the culture of reading is abysmal and literacy rate is shamefully low. His speech, delivered in Urdu, brought audience to life through smiles and laughter with many locals attempting to translate his words in real time to foreigners sitting beside them.

This was followed by dance performance by Sheema Kermani which was based on Tagore’s teachings. Allow me to clearly state that I didn’t understand this dance at all. Nothing against the KLF management or the dancers, it is just that I simply didn’t understand the dance probably because I do not have that capacity or understanding. I am sure many people must have loved it and commend the dancers for the effort they put in.

Once this was done, I headed for the first session.

Cricket and Cricket Writings

The session was moderated by Murad Moosa Khan and panel included Saad Shafqat, Osman Samiuddin and Kamila Shamsie. It was a fun session, particularly because both Murad and Saad were professional doctors at Agha Khan Hospital during daytime and avid Cricket fans during night (even watch Bangladesh vs Zimbabwe matches, sheesh). The session was fun right from the start, for example another session was suppose to take place that included the great Gulzar (who did not attend KLF due to sudden return to India from Lahore due to personal reasons) and this session gained more audience because of his absence on which Murad commented “Even God is a Cricketer”. Since Murad, in his day job, deals with matters of the mind and Saad brains, he equated them as swinging the bowl in the air and turning it off the pitch respectively.

Kamila Shamsie turned out to be a avid Cricket fan, living very close to Lords Cricket Ground in London and reaching venue within 3 minutes when match ticket was available. Osman shed the most light on his writing experience and he even talked about shortcomings of Cricket writing for a country like Pakistan as well as compared it to more sophisticated sports writings for games like American Football and Basketball. At one point Osman even said that Cricket was a democratic platform for Crickets where their performance spoke for itself. This was a game where Mindad’s 6 is remembered and where young players like Mohammed Aamir and Junaid made a mark based on their talent and skills. I asked about Ijaz Butt during Q&A session regarding his tenure and Osman very frankly answered that he is a good man but an inept administrator, his policies and behavior had troubled everyone. No other ICC member was interesting in directly communicating with him and his attitude nearly got Pakistan banned by ICC.

Rain started in Karachi right about the start of the session and at one point the sound of thunder made everyone jump, including the panel. When the session ended, I went outside and saw the pleasantness of the weather and woes of management. All book stalls were closed, plastics used to cover books in order to protect them while majority food stalls were shut down except Espresso which had sufficient protection. As a result most people purchased burgers and coffee from Espresso throughout the day.

The session that I did not attend due to time clash was a book launch about Abdul Sattar Edhi called Half of Two Paisas: The Extraordinary Mission of Abdul Sattar Edhi and Bilquis Edhi. The author of the book was Lorenzo Raponi.

Writers’ Club: Creative Writing for Young Writers

This was the second session moderated by Aquila Ismail. She told us about her background (graduate of NED university and taught there for many years) and how she came to writing. Her book, Of Martyrs and Marigolds, was launched on the third day of the festival. She gave us an idea about writing, the process of creativity and how to go about writing the story. This session was longer than most sessions and spanned to roughly two sessions, so she had plenty of time and in order to utilize that for better guidance she asked us to come on the stage and read our original writing.

The first to dare was a guy who read a paragraph of his novella manuscript that had a lot of philosophical touch. After listening to him she explained a few things to the audience, critiqued the writing positively and gave directions on how he can further improve the content. When he left the stage she asked for the next volunteer and I raised my hand, as a result I was the next person sitting beside her on the stage.

I had nothing with me to read from except my cellphone and I had used WiFi to open my blog. After introductions where I told that I was a student and a blogger, I read a part of the short story Challenge to the best of my ability. I chose this story because of its simplicity as well as the dialogue process which have not been successfully develop in my other short stories. She explained the importance of dialogues, explained how we can reduce unnecessary content (for example, remove the word “the” wherever it has been unnecessarily used) and how dialogue can be developed between two and more people. I do remember she said I had written the dialogues well and that was an achievement for me. When I took the seat after the applause, the audience had clearly gained confidence and several volunteers came forward to read something, from stories to poetry to articles and one even read a story in Urdu very eloquently.

Aquila also introduced to us Writers Workshop where we could register and a meetup would be held every two months in order to help us improve as writers. At the end of the workshop I signed up, hoping for a positive impact on my writing abilities.

Due to the long nature of this workshop, I missed out on the following sessions:

Pakistan-Russia Relations and Bilateral Cooperation

Moderator: Riaz Mohammad Khan, Panel: Andrey Demidov, Sergey Kamenev, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi

Book Launch: Hassan Dars Jo Risalo

Moderator: Mohammed Hanif, Panel: Masoor Lohar, Erum Mahboob, Mazhar Leghari, Sardar Shah

Book Launch: Confronting the Bomb: Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out

Editor: Pervez Hoodbhoy, Moderator: Raza Rumi, Introduction: Ameena Saiyid, Britta Petersen

Whose Pakistan? Whose Picture? Writing Pakistan in English Today

Moderator: Madeline Clements, Panel: Faisal Nazir, Bina Shah, Zahri Sabri

Readings and Conversation with Amar Jaleel

Attending this session was a must for me. When I saw his name, I did not considered any other session worthwhile to attend in the same timeslot (and luckily there wasn’t any other worthwhile session that may force me to think twice). Amar Jaleel is a brand that drips of wisdom and foresight, his writings incredibly thought provoking and his words, uttered in Sindhi, Urdu or English carrying equal measures of wit, wisdom, philosophy and reality. For the first time I had a chance of listening to him live and there was no way I would miss it.

This session was unsurprisingly attended by a large number of Sindhi speakers that were his avid fans. The moderator of the session was Shah Muhammad Pirzada who introduced himself to the audience, gave a brief introduction of Amar Jaleel and transferred the remainder to Amar Jaleel to speak. He started with the constant sms of Valentines Day (it was 15th of February) he had been receiving from people for the past few days and said that the young people have forgotten about love stories of Heer Ranjha, Sohni Mahiwal and even Romeo Juliet for this Valentine’s Day. He emphasized a very obvious shortcoming that Ranjha loved Heer, Mahiwal loved Sohni and Romeo loved Juliet but who did Valentine loved? His friendly and eloquent way of speaking had a profound effect as the obvious suddenly dawned on the audience and several people burst out laughing. No one knew whom Valentine loved and what was so special about his love that a whole day was celebrated.

Amar Jaleel read one of his works and then talked about various topics, often linking them together. When talking about rights, he explained that how various measures in constitution have given immense power to Mullahs, how they setup multiple mosques in the same vicinity with plenty of loud speakers but never delivering Azaan at the same time, how a Mullah can simply march right up to National Assembly and declare the government as dissolved. He explained it with another example that a person from interior Sindh led several thousand people a few weeks back right up to Tiber Center for protest. If he was to lead these people to Sindh Assembly and declare it dissolved, asking CM Qaim Ali Shah to return back to his village, he and his followers would have been beaten up to pulp by Police and Rangers and court cases would have been initiated against him. But a Mullah leading a procession against government with 40 odd thousand followers, sitting inside a comfortable container the whole time, and declaring government as dissolved faced no consequences even though his action was tantamount to treason and should have been thrown in jail.

Amar Jaleel also talked about Sufism and said that Sufis are often rebels of their religions and are found in every religion like Islam, Hinduism etc. He also said that Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was a partial Sufi because he was still trapped in religion. He also talked about literacy, saying that when you visit a country like Sri Lanka, you can actually feel a literate environment and just by meeting people you can feel their sophistication. He compared Pakistan and said that if we go by the official literacy rate of 58%, the mere fact that total daily newspaper circulation for a country with 180 million people is just 1 million is highly abysmal. A literate person has the appetite to read and newspaper is the easiest source. Other than that it is either books or magazines, none of which have much demand. It is not likely that literate people would be content reading billboards only. As per his view, roughly 5% to 10% Pakistan’s population was literate in true sense and rest was a lie so that the aid money coming in from other countries would not dry up. Many people on important positions pocket this money and present inflated figures and this started with influential people like Wadeiras and all who were muzzled strongly by the Britishers but shot out like wolves when Pakistan gained independence, common person turning out to be easy meal for them. He also said that roughly 20,000 ghost schools exist in Sindh alone which exist on paper along with all facilities and teachers but nothing in reality, only teachers getting their pay while sitting at home. This wasn’t done by any Mohajir, Pathan, Punjabi or even an army person. He clearly emphasized that the abysmal state of education in interior Sindh is created by us Sindhis and no one else.

This way my last session for day 1 and even though a there was choice to attend another session after this, I preferred to go home.

Day 2

Book Launch: Karachi: Our Stories in Our Words

This session was moderated by Durdana Soomro and had Bina Shah as panelist while Muniza Naqvi was the editor of the book. I attended this session believing that another book, Sindh: Stories from a lost Homeland, would also be launched since both were mentioned in the program. That wasn’t the case and I stayed to attend because Bina Shah was in the panel and my teacher from Bahria University, Fehmida Raufi, was also attending the session. As it turned out, Muniza Naqvi on the previous literature festival had thought about finding genuine stories and after discussing with Oxford University Press, put advertisement out on various newspapers in April 2012 inviting people to share their stories/memories of Karachi city.

It started with 2 stories in the first couple of weeks, then more started pouring in and in three months they received 170 stories written by common people. About 60 of these stories were written in Urdu or other regional language and out of the 170 stories, 40 were not really related to Karachi city. After vigorous editing and a lot of thinking, 99 stories were shortlisted and published in the book. Muniza kept on emphasizing that creativity had no boundary and one should never limit themselves, but by the end of the day a person has to realize the reality of life and economics, allowing Editors to cut down their work. Bina Shah lent a strong voice to the cause and gave her views about the book, commenting on some of the stories and even hinting at symbolism that was evident. During discussion she clarified a point she had made day before in a session. She said Pakistan lacks sophisticated writing industry, no reading culture, as practically no one knows the process of publishing a book. Bina’s first book was published by OUP itself and second book was published by a publishing house in Islamabad. In 2004 OUP stopped publishing fiction while the remaining two publishing houses, one in Islamabad and other in Karachi, went dormant and no proper work of fiction was published by them since. This gap has hurt emerging writers as they don’t have an avenue to express their creativity. She also emphasized that writers are starved artists, they cannot earn much through writing books and definitely need a stable day job to pay the bills.

A major interesting part of the session was the presence of Oxford University Press’s representatives. I forgot the name of the male representative who was also present during the Writers Workshop and during the session he mentioned twice about me being present in yesterday’s session (both time it was something about emerging writers/writing fiction/writing book). He kept on adding into the conversation and was unofficial panelist for the session. His contributions made a lot of sense as he filled the missing information and helped in explaining the whole process the printing of the book went through since OUP of Pakistan no longer prints fiction books. Another major feature of the session was the presence of contributors in the hall whose stories were printed in the book, one of them being my teacher. The contributors were not paid for this since this was a voluntary contribution but their names were mentioned, allowing them to actually claim themselves as writers.

During Q&A session one elderly person (claimed he was author of 6 Urdu novels) objected to the fact that stories that were submitted in Urdu were included in the book after translating them to English. He objected quite strongly to which OUP representative said he has gone through tough time in publishing this book and will not argue on the decision taken in this regard. Other than that the atmosphere remained pleasantly charged with beaming faces.

Due to time clash I missed out on these sessions:

The Fall and the Rise of the Pakistani Cinema

Moderator: Adnan Malik, Panel: Meher Jaffri, Jawed Sheikh, Nadeem Mandviwalla

Political Parties and the 2013 Elections

Moderator: Mohammad Waseem, Panel: Farhan Hanif Siddiqi and Syed Jaffar Ahmed

Book Launch: The Baloch Who is Not Missing and Others Who Are

This was undoubtedly the most extraordinary session of the event. Not because it was about Baloch but also because of a background controversy surrounding Ayesha Siddiqa. News had started to circulate (I don’t know if it is true or not) that KLF management had not invited Ayesha Siddiqa this year because of her session with Anatol Lieven on the previous Literature Festival. The army and Britishers were uncomfortable with her and therefore her status for now was Persona Non Grata.

I mention this here because this book was written by Hanif Mohammed, session moderated by Mohammad Ali Talpur and panelists were Farzana Maheed and I.A. Rehman. Farzana was an MPhil Student at Balochistan University when her brother was kidnapped by agencies and for the past four years she has been trying to find him anyway she can. Both Farzana and her uncle Rehman have been using all their resources, including somehow finding their way to the literature festival, to voice their grief and pleading request to help them put pressure on the forces to release her brother or at least give his whereabouts.

Mr. Rehman also told his own story about struggle for Baloch rights, his fighting years during 70s and subsequent 13 year asylum in Afghanistan that ended in 1992. He and Farzana told about situation in Balochistan in detail, provided some gruesome details about how Baloch youngsters belonging to middle class are picked up and their bodies dumped riddled with bullets and how their rights were being denied. Hanif Mohammed explained his role in the process and kept the discussion on track so that more details would be provided to the audience as to what is really happening in Balochistan and how media is unable to or unwilling to cover the stories, how agencies are scared of Baloch getting access to internet to voice their opinions and how tough they are on media to stop covering them Balochistan.

During Q&A one person stood up who identified himself as a Baloch who was picked up by agencies and was released after two weeks. He was willing to not only identify the ones who did it, he was also willing to take them to the place where he was kept.

When an anti-agencies’ session like this can take place, why is that military cannot tolerate Ayesha Siddiqa?

The State of Education in Pakistan

The session was moderated by Baela Jamil and panelists were Pervez Hoodbhoy, Shahid Kardar, Ishrat Hussain and Abbas Rashid. The session was also conducted in last year’s KLF with nearly the same participants and it was carried out in the nearly the same way. Baela started with some statistics regarding students, their education and the medium of their early education. Both former governors of State Bank expressed thoughts and opinions about the state of education, highlighting many things including projects like school adoption and even community led programs where teachers were hired to teach village kids.

It was highlighted that many government had ruined the education by hiring on political basis, favors to their unemployed political workers, who drew salary but did not go to school at all. Most of the schools were ghost schools or lacked all necessary facilities. Many schools were turned into stables or personal space by local influential lords, MNAs and MPAs. In many cases the educated teachers of a certain village who could have stayed and taught there, instead got themselves transferred to other areas through favors. Like teachers in Lora Lai who could have contributed a lot to child education in their areas of study, through political favors, got themselves transferred to Quetta and stayed there. When educated group would stay in urban center, there was no way a relatively backward area like Lora Lai compete with Quetta.

Pervez Hoodbhoy spoke at length in Urdu and explained what he faced since his early days of teaching at Quaid E Azam University. He said he had to learn to teach in Urdu because even saying a simple formula of Physics in English would result in complete blank looks. He clearly said he was willing to call a thermometer as “Hararat Peema” since that is a suitable translation but there was no way he would ever call an electron as “Barqiat”. There is a limit to translation and too much time, effort and resources would be required to translate enormous scientific work in Urdu which is ultimately not even needed since as a medium of instruction it is a dying language which even its native speakers no longer prefer for education. The dishonesty of teachers is also taken into account where Hoodbhoy told about senior professors who downloaded foreign research papers and presented locally with his name. When caught, they took early retirement and became deans at other well known local universities.

In contrast when Hoodbhoy joined LUMS, his students would object and ask him to teach only in English. Hoodbhoy also talked about books of Social Sciences and Pakistan Studies taught in federal capital to school children that literally start from explaining the different between Hindus and Muslims (when a Hindu man dies, his wife is burned along with his body while Muslims don’t do this), followed up with ideology of Pakistan and subsequent chapters that would make no sense.

The sessions I missed out:

Political Engagement in the Pakistani English Novel

Moderator: Muneeza Shamsie, Panel: Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie

Rights and Wrongs: Human Rights in Pakistan

Moderator: Justice Nasira Iqbal, Panel: Ali Dayan, Hamid Khan, I.A. Rehman, Asma Jahangir

Book Launch: A Political History of Pakistan: 1947 – 2002 by Y.Y. Belokrenitsky

Moderator: Jehangir Ashraf Qazi, Panelist, Humayun Gohar

Narratives: The Impact of Political Received Wisdom

This was an interesting session where Cameron Munter spoke at length with Ashraf Jehangir as chair for the session. The former American Ambassador to Pakistan had a lot to say about American viewpoint, the various thoughts and narratives that exist in both countries, the high and low points taking place in recent past and how Americans are trying fit everything right in order to peacefully pull out off Afghanistan.

Munter’s narrative was powerful in the sense he spoke clearly about what has Pakistani government been doing, how press is handling the emotions of the masses, what backdoor diplomacy taking place and why so many anti-Pakistan narratives gained strength over the years. To sum up his various points, the clear case of lying on the part of Pakistani government about various issues that take place between Pakistan and the US, the often double-dealing by some elements, withholding information, lack of cooperation and the constant greed to get more money out of the US has been fueling many critics in the US to take strong action. From the American perspective, they have been spending money and providing cooperation to Pakistani counterparts as per understanding, yet the objectives to be achieved are nowhere close.

But the narrative was not anti Pakistan as it may seem. Munter’s tone remained rather emotional, as if many words that he is uttering are costing him emotionally, and as @robcrilly tweeted

“Cameron Munter rather seeking some kind of forgiveness at #klf. Mix of guilt and bitterness on display. Fascinating”

During his talk, Cameron Munter also explained some of the difficulties that he faced during Pak-US relations, particularly those that were because of certain incident (drone attack, OBL incident, Ramond Davis) and explained viewpoints from both sides. He also explained that many Pakistani leaders are actually providing misleading information to the people, using jingoism and spreading it through media that is responsible in creating divide between the two countries. More honest leaders are needed to step up and lead the Pakistani people and American cannot bring democracy to Pakistan, Pakistanis themselves need to strengthen their democratic process. He made it crystal clear that there is a severe lack of leaders in the country and that is a cause for concern. The victim mentality, a product of misinformation created by the leaders, is also a cause for concern for the nation and Pakistanis would have to come out of that mentality. He also acknowledged the sacrifices by common people, the 30k Pakistanis that have lost their lives in the past decade due to war on terror. He also emphasized that they have done and are still doing all they can to peacefully pull out from Afghanistan and look at Pakistan and other neighboring countries to play a role in Afghanistan’s development.

In response to a question from the audience regarding America’s war on terror that Pakistan was fighting for its behalf, Cameron Munter clearly asked “You are fighting a war for the US? Not for yourself?”

There was plenty he talked about that made sense, I do not recall the exact details and I didn’t get the chance to ask question either during Q&A but I distinctively remember one lady who asked a question that nearly made me smack my head. She asked why the US isn’t paying Pakistan more while asking to do more? Why not pay $100 billion and then expect the work done? On this even Cameron Munter said that don’t say that, don’t play into the American narrative that Pakistan is only trying to fleece money and not do anything else.

The sessions I missed out:

Social Satire: Laughing at Ourselves

Moderator: Nadeem F Paracha, Panel: Ali Gul Pir, Bushra Ansari, Beo Zafar

Pakistan’s New Political Economy

Moderator: Akbar Zaidi, Panel: Aasim Sajjad, Ali Cheema, Faisal Siddiqi

Dateline Afghanistan

This session took place at the main garden right after Cameron Munter’s session and was moderated by Najam Sethi. The panel included Declan Walsh, Zahid Hussain and Riaz Mohammad Khan while Maleeha Lodhi was replaced by another speaker. Each speaker spoke at length about what will happen once the US pulls out from Afghanistan and what will be the impacts on both the country as well as the region. I was particularly surprised and well pleased to note how comfortably and confidently Najam Sethi spoke in English in front of the audience. I noted down some of the points which are as follows:

- Pakistan playing host to 5 millions afghans 1.7 million of which are registered refugees, 1.7 million are unregistered refugees and rest have gained Pakistani citizenship/passport

- Roughly $2 billion is spent annually by Pakistan on the refugees which is a burden on the national exchequer

- Most of these Afghans are working in service sector while agriculture, the main sector of Pakistan, has little to no contribution from afghans

- Karzai needs to become true leader of the Afghanistan in order to lead the country when US pulls out and he requires his peoples trust. The Taliban have refused to dialogue with him and that is a cause for concern.

- Theoretically Afghanistan’s economy has grown 9% annually and that is entirely in service sector. Money is coming in for now but when US pulls out, this income will dry up and Afghanistan’s GNP will plummet. Jobs will start disappearing, NGOs will start shutting down, construction activities will stop and there will be an economic downturn. As a result refugee influx might increase in Pakistan and that would be a burden for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. There can also be civil war in Afghanistan when US exits

- Afghanistan’s exports are $491 million while its imports from Pakistan alone are $2.1 billion, causing a severe negative balance of trade as well as balance of payments

The picture for Afghanistan was overall grim when US pulls out and some suggestions were given to mitigate that, like taking measures to slow down refugee influx when US pulls out and making international community aware of the situation so that other nations can play their part in helping the region out. It was also stressed that Pakistan should not be proactive in Afghanistan’s affairs because Pakistan’s pro-activity makes Afghanis suspicious and that will cause more harm than help.

The sessions I missed out:

Manto: Mera Dost

A Play by Tehrik-e-Niswan

The Other

Moderator: Marilyn Wyatt, Panel: H.M. Naqvi, Nadeem Aslam, Kamila Shamsie

On the Politics of Child Labour

Moderator: Karamat Ali, Panel: Baela Jamil, Samar Minallah Khan, Taimur Rahman

Does History Matter in Pakistan?

This was another history session that truly left a lot of people squirming in their seats. Moderated by Syed Jaffar Ahmed, the panel included Russia’s Andrey Demidov, Pakistan’s Hamida Khuhro and India’s A.G. Noorani. The discussion ranged around the partition theme where roles of sacred cows came under discussion, namely the leaders Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru. The fact that historical figures have been made sacred, depriving the future generations from criticizing their actions has caused some serious problems on both sides of the border. Noorani says the literature on partition has been grossly exaggerated in both countries to fit the official narrative, hiding many historical facts in order to mislead people. There are books and accounts that have been properly maintained in British Library, London where one can see a lot of historical documents, personal accounts and updates on British Indian politics by viceroys as well as notable British office holders. There are documents as well where Jinnah’s hand written notes are present, indicating his views on some of the events taking place. Reading those, one would see a completely different Jinnah than that is portrayed at either side of the border.

Hamida Khuhro stressed on the fact that history was being taught in mutilated fashion and much of what truly constitutes Pakistan is lost. The historical events are not well explained, the wars are also not clearly laid out and mistakes are hidden in guise of misleading information. Noorani criticized writer of the Jinnah Papers, saying that these should be thrown away since the writer had not properly written the accounts of what happened. In fact a lot of information in Jinnah Papers has been not correctly referenced and much of the facts have been ignored to pave way for certain ideological presentation of Jinnah. In Noorani’s support, Hamida Khuhro said that it is vital to improve the process of documentation and there is a need for young, energetic historians to step up and fill in the gap. She also stressed on correcting history but said that correction, in itself, is not enough. K.K. Aziz’s Murder of History was a good attempt at correcting history but the real need is rewriting of history in order to bring forth historical facts in their proper light.

Noorani had clearly stated that Quaid E Azam was born on 23rd March, 1940 who was a non-democratic person. Hamida Khuhro seemed to be in agreement with him and this response was made to a question asked about where Quaid E Azam was really born. Although it is officially claimed that Jinnah was born in Karachi, however it is also known that Jinnah’s birthplace was Jhirk (a hilly area near Thatta) which is also mentioned in most school books of the 50s and 60s.

From what I have heard, Jinnah’s birthplace record was changed at Sindh-Madrassa-tul-Islam during the 70s and since then it has also been made part of teaching curriculum.

A.G. Noorani clearly said that if one wants to know the real Jinnah, they should see the only who was a friend of Tilak and used leave behind his lucrative practice in order to fight for common Indian people, be they of any religion, and made sure policies were introduced that were benefiting for the masses.

During Q&A it was also asked if Jinnah should be left alone because he did a lot to found this country. Hamida responded by asking why should we do that. Founding a country is one thing but learning from mistakes is essential for which even Jinnah should not be spared. By making him sacred we are not helping our people and keeping him out of sphere of criticism automatically gives protection to subsequent material attached by his name, much of which is causing ideological confusion. One such confusion is of two-nation theory which is now buried along with disintegration of Pakistan into Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The session ended with an elderly person’s outburst by grabbing the mic and screaming in support of Jinnah and all that he did.

In Conversation with George Galloway MP

This was the session I waited for the entire day and it was held at the Main Garden in order to accommodate large audience. The moderator was Irfan Hussain and the conversation was interesting. George Galloway told about his past and how he came into politics at the age of 13 while marching behind a Pakistani born Britisher during a protest. He made some witty remarks, most notable of them was about a comment his father made to him when he was a child (the same that I heard from Jamshed Marker during ZABMUN 2011):

The sun never sets upon British empire but that’s because even God doesn’t trust the Brits in the dark

Galloway told about his travel to different Arab countries and his meetings with various leaders including Mubarak and Arafat, he lived for a considerable time in these countries with frequent interactions with their ruling leaders and then came to UK when Labour Party offered him a position. He clearly stated that he was a common and has been chauffeur to many people. He was a complete fan of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and is friends with both Benazir and Sanam Bhutto. He was also an undercover agent during MRD movement of the 80s to support democracy and was honored for his services in late 80s.

Galloway clearly stated that people should listen to Press TV for legitimate news or go for Russian Today. The Bush and Blair Corporation (BBC) is only to present their viewpoints and make a fool of the people. He recounted the events that led to his leaving the Labour Party in 2002 and since then he has twice defeated his opponents. He told about the Iraq War and how on pack of lies a country was destroyed. He also spoke about the Arab revolution, saying that he may or may not like a leader but if people have chosen that leader, it was their choice and that should be respected. In the same way he said he was fan of Yasser Arafat but that doesn’t mean he likes Hammas and if people vote for Hammas, that is there choice and he respects that. He also criticized Israel, making plain that the country is punishing people of Gaza just because they used their power to cast votes.

On a comment against his smoking cigar at public place, he recounted a story about Hookah smoking in a hotel that resulted in fire alarm going off and they coming out drenched. In response to a question regarding Julian Assange, he said he met Julian recently and he has not seen daylight for many months now. He is ill and needs medical attention and he has even offered to cooperate in anyway on the condition that he will not be extradited to USA. His offer has been rejected by his home country Norway. According to him, Assange was evidently sexually promiscuous person and such people are easily seduced by groupies. Galloway clearly stated that it is impossible not to smell the rat in this whole mess because the woman he slept with already had a history of getting deported from Cuba and lending a job in California from where she, coincidentally, ended up in bed with Julian.

George also dismissed the possibility of revolution in Pakistan. Revolutions often take years to complete and they require people to come out on the streets en mass to get their rights. As far as Pakistan was concerned, there was enough democratic space. People know they have the power of ballet and that’s one benefit they have. Tahir Ul Qadri tried to bring a revolution with few thousand people and it failed.

Day 3

Emerging Writers

The first session I attended on the last day was of Emerging Writers which was moderated by Hanif Mohammad. The panel included Syed Kashif Raza, Shazaf Fatima Haider and Masud Alam. A day before, Quetta was once again rocked by bomb blast that killed over 60 Hazaras and one minute silence was observed at the start of the session.

After introductions Mohammad Hanif spoke about writing and publishing, then asked Shazaf to read some from her book. Shazaf read a list that was made by a central character of the story, Dadi (grandmother), about the qualities that the bride should have in order to qualify for marriage with her grandson. The list was hilarious and everyone in the audience thoroughly enjoyed. After her Hanif invited Kashif to read his poetry and I must say Mr. Kashif had some vivid imagination. I am just glad I was sitting alone and not with any female beside because Kashif’s romantic poetry was just too vivid and Mohammad Hanif egged him on to read. As a result we heard roughly 5 romantic poems and since Kashif worked at Geo, his colleague and news anchor Muhammad Junaid was also in the audience (and he clearly stated Kashif never shared his poetry with them and even asked a question during Q&A).

After that it was Murad’s turn who read a passage from his book about travel to see things around the world, particularly northern lights which is a phenomenon commonly observed in countries closer to north pole. His tale was good and brought out laughter at some points from the audience. When Hanif asked him why don’t you write about anything else, Murad said he hasn’t done anything else.

Shazaf said she was part of the audience in the previous KLF and even had her manuscript with her, asking for writers how she can get it published. She found no help and ended up finding out the hard way. She told about the role of editor and how she had to work hard to get the book publish which was as hard as writing the book itself.

The sessions I missed were:

Dynastic Politics

Moderator: Najam Sethi, Panel: Victoria Schofield, Nasim Zehra, Nahmuddin Shaikh, Barkha Dutt

Secularism in Pakistan

Moderator: Irfan Husain, Panel: Hamid Khan, Javed Jabbar, Asma Jahangir, Justice Nasira Iqbal

Tareekh aur Hamaray Masail (History and Contemporary Issues)

Moderator: Kamran Asdar Ali, Panel: Mubarak Ali, Syed Jaffar Ahmed, Sultan-i-Rome

The Dynamics of Karachi

This was an informative session moderated by Kamran Asdar Ali and panel included Laurent Gayer, Steve Inskeep, Aquila Islamil, Bina Shah and Arif Hasan. The session was dominated by Bina Shah’s powerful words where she described both good side and the dark side of Karachi and how it fascinated her that despite being a headache one time it is a great city to live in at the other. Aquila Ismail shared her life story when she left Bangladesh in 1972 and came to Karachi where she immediately found her identity and got admission in NED University, being the only girl among 300 boys. She told her story how she loved to be here and how all changed when Zia Ul Haq introduced Islamization that changed the city.

She recounted the introduction of gun culture when in early 80s students began to bring weapons to institutions that rapidly began to gain notice and the move was resisted. Students died as well as teachers lost their lives, and Aquila suffered from all that while working as a teacher at NED. She shared how she and others formed a forum since student unions were banned and tried to raise their voice. The forum later became APMSO which ultimately led to the creation of Muhajir Qaumi Movement and then the current MQM (Kamran made an obvious witty remark on that). She also claimed she saw Gulbadin Hikmatyar walking down corridor with AK in hand at the institution. The militants first target was universities where they spread militancy. Aquila moved on to a different fact that Karachi is still expanding and 30,000 acres of land is now being added to the city, meaning roughly 5 million more people will be now part of Karachi’s population in the next few years.

Steven shared his experience of Karachi, how he visited the city in the past few years and experienced a vastly different way of living. While interviewing with people he felt the real change. When talking MQM, they said

“You know this is our city, right?”

When interviewing Sindhis, the Sindhis said “This is our city, hope you know that”. The same phenomenon was observed with Baloch and Pushtoons that were interviewed and all have claims on this city. As an interviewer it was strange experience for him listening and documenting various viewpoints. He particularly stressed at a point that the migration of Hindus from Karachi made it less diverse and  that also made it less stable. A census would better explain the demographics of the city and hopefully one should be coming up now in future (he looked pointedly at Kamran for this, to the amusement of the audience. The last census was in 1998 and it’s been 15 years while census is suppose to take place after every 10 years).  He also said that diversity of the Karachi city seems to be the problem but it actually is a big advantage

Laurent Gayer said the nature of violence has not been properly addressed and it has now become an enigma. According to him there’s an ordered disorder in Karachi (which everyone in the audience agreed with). The violence is not between enemies but actually between intimate friends/coalition partners who fight one day and few days later are back to the old self. He had no words to explain a party like MQM.

Arif Hasan spoke most strongly in terms of hard facts, with little to no philosophy that we experienced in Bina Shah’s words. Arif Hasan talked about the resources Karachi had compared to Sindh and then contrasted them with Lahore with respect of Punjab. He clearly stated the Karachi has no governance system and it has been collapsed for vested interests. Whenever government system collapses, turf wars begin to control the city’s resources. This in turn introduced politics of extortion and land grabbing. In 2010 alone, 20 estate agents were killed due to land grabbing and extortion. The land expansion outside the city is fine but change of landscape within city may not be good. A normal residential plot that can house a certain number of people turned into apartments and flats with even more capacity for people may not necessarily bad, but when space is brought down to 2 meters per person for certain population it automatically invites violence.

Karachi contains 62% of Sindh’s Urban population, 78% of formal sector jobs and generates 93% of country’s revenue. If decentralized, like local bodies, it will swallow Sindh since everything of economic value will be in Karachi and it will automatically invite violence. The benefits of decentralization will go to Muhajirs while benefits of centralization will go to Sindhis who are mostly in bureaucracy. He also stressed upon poor urban planners who design without considering people. For example flyovers are constructed without considering pedestrians and are often designed to move/relocate poor population from within the city. These poor people when relocated outside the city are made even poorer due to lack of jobs, facilities and increased travel expenditure.

Steven said the true religion for any city is the religion of real estate. Anything else is just keep people ignored and egged for violence. Aquila said with more people joining Karachi’s population it will reach 24 million and just to contrast, 25 million was the population of Iraq was US attacked (she looked pointedly at Steven Inskeep).

Session I missed:

In Conversation with Najam Sethi

Moderator: Muneed Farooq

Kashmir

The session was moderated by Nasim Zehra and panel included Victoria Shofield, Najmuddin Shaikh and Idrees Lone. I made notes from this session which are as follows:

- 5% of water from the rivers (originating in Kashmir) is consumed for drinking, rest is for agriculture. The shortage of drinking water is not primarily because of shortage of rainfall or dam construction by India, but because of increase in population.

- A non-partisan evaluation is needed to Indian dams regarding flow of water and electricity generation. Indian doesn’t rely on water from these rivers, it already has plenty of rainfall

- Pakistan used to call Kashmir its part (while acknowledging that it is disputed) until 90s. Then the stance changed that Kashmiris should decide their own future

- India and Pakistan often put Kashmir issue on back burner and are now trying to find solution without changing boundaries

- If situation remains the same it will be troublesome for Pakistan but not for India. India can continue to remain the way it is since it holds larger part of Kashmir as well as controls water resources of Pakistan. The incentive for India in resolving Kashmir issue would be

a) Indians are looked as aliens in Kashmir, considering all the check posts and searches that go on

b) Financial cost of maintaining the occupation through armed forces

c) Kashmir remain central problem in making the region peaceful

- There are vested interests at both sides of the border that want to maintain status quo

- The concept of Kashmir independence need clarification. If independence of Kashmir Valley is meant, it is only 25 by 10 square miles and no way to sustain itself. If whole Kashmir is meant, Pakistan will lose Gilgit Baltistan, Azad Kashmir and the important Karakoram Highway

- In India it has been accepted that 1987 elections were rigged which had triggered a wave of violence. It was catch 22 situation for India. Stones thrown at police, police does crackdown, deaths, funerals, anger and more stones thrown.

- Independence of Kashmir is impractical. Pakistan cannot let go of northern areas and India cannot lose Laddakh where significant Hindu population resides. The plebiscite or referendum may not be helpful because these areas are now used to where they are, joining the other side may not be feasible idea

Indo-Pak Discourse: Dissent and Conformity

This session was moderated by Nasim Zehra and panelists included A.G. Noorani, Jehangir Qazi and Zafar Hilaly. I remained mostly distracted throughout this session because must of what was spoken was already known to me in one form or the other but I just noted down some comments which may or may not sound worthwhile

- India sees Pakistani as illegitimate state, a bastard state and considers itself the legitimate heir to Indian legacy

- Media in India has gone haywire

- Nehru backed out of plebiscite because right-wing elements would have taken over if he had fulfilled his promise

- Any negotiations between the two countries on Kashmir without the backing of forces is impotent and forces negotiations without elected representatives’ support is sterile

- India to this day see Pakistan as a state that can destroy itself anytime. The state was suppose to finish within 6 months of independence but that didn’t happen. The issue of Sir Creek was taken up by India because it doesn’t want to conceed any territory despite the fact the issue was resolved by the Britishers even before partition

- MFN status should be tied with non-tariff barriers by India

Pakistan Through Foreign Eyes

This was an interesting session which was moderated by Cyril Almeida and panel included Declan Walsh, Hasnain Kazim and Yassin Musharbash. Both Hasnain and Yassin belong to Germany, one being German born Pakistani and other German born Syrian. Hasnain had recently finished a 4 year assignment and was leaving for Germany.

Hasnain asked a very valid question from the audience and that is why are you obsessed with what others think about you? Declan Walsh worked for Guardian earlier on and now was working with New York Times and he shared his journalistic experience. Yassin had spent only 3 days in Pakistan and knew little about the country itself, though being an expert on global terrorism he had a good overview.

All three journalists maintained that it was difficult to talk about Pakistan without bringing in some form of terror or when writing about Al Qaeda bringing in Pakistan someway or the other. They were linked somehow and Yassin gave an example. For one of his programs he asked the producer to mark on world map major terror attacks, be it 9/11 or 5/5, just mark them. The producer asked if Pakistan was to be included, he said yes. After two hours he gets a call “Cannot do it. Too many terror attacks in Pakistan to fit within the boundaries”.

He asked to filter out those with less than 20 deaths. After sometime he again gets a call “Still too many, cannot fit”. From 20 it was raised to 40, 60 and then finally at 80. This was just how much Pakistan was linked to terror and no matter how much they tried, it was simply inseparable. Moreover he said that in Germany the papers do not separate reporters from the editors. In fact the reporter is responsible for the whole story and is published as he wants it to. This was an old tradition which they maintain, therefor no reporter would want to report anything that is against journalistic values or undermine his credibility as a journalist.

This linked to Hasnain’s another remark that Pakistanis don’t know how to sell themselves to the world. Once someone from the military called him and asked why he is reporting bad things about Pakistan. Hasnain did say if there is a bomb blast then I will obviously report it. When the military person complained that he is projecting bad image of the country, Hasnain inquired what should he write about. He was suggested that he should write about stuff like Pakistan has 4 tallest mountains of the world and is 4th largest milk producer. To this Hasnain indignantly says “Should I interview a cow or something?”

Declan Walsh explained that editorial team was separate in Guardian as well as in New York Times. While he worked well with Guardian’s team, the experience was different at NYT and he fears he successful pissed off people here as well as there (and got himself stuck in between). He said there is no policy of showing Pakistan as militant or ultra conservative like Saudi or Iran or even terror creating country. In fact he and other panelists stressed that terror stories do not sell and now whenever the name of Pakistan or word terror is heard, people do not watch it or read it because they do not want to be depressed. It is getting hard for the foreign journalists to actually find something worthwhile to report.

Declan said a clear example of this was Karachi Literature Festival itself. While planned and executed in excellent fashion, all of a sudden he got call last evening that there is a blast in Quetta with 20 casualties and he should get on with the story. By the time he opened his laptop the casualties were 40, when filed the story the casualties were 50 and soon the number went even beyond. When they had a perfectly good event to cover, they ended up writing up a tragedy. Most countries would shut down for 3 weeks in shock if a terror attack of that magnitude would take place but here the festival continues despite the tragedy.

Hasnain said Pakistan is resilient to these terror attacks but it is complacent as well. If you don’t want us to report a bomb blast, why say anything to us? Why not actually stop those who are responsible for such acts. There have been several positive stories done on Pakistan, such as Edhi and his ambulance service and they have covered various spheres of life but many stories are hard to cover simply because of unavoidable conditions. If he was to write about tourist locations in Pakistan or about journey to Quetta, he would definitely end up getting emails from Germany asking his advice regarding travel plans to Pakistan. What if someone says he plans to visit Pakistan and would love to visit Quetta? What can he tell such a person especially when that city is in grips of violence?

The journalists were also united on the fact that local media was too critical of the country which is both good and bad. Although admirable, but when front page of Dawn can carry news of blasts and deaths on regular basis, why shouldn’t the foreign media? Regarding Karachi one of them said that it is like a walled city-state with politics completely different from the rest of the country. Its dynamics are completely different than other cities, especially Islamabad that lives in a bubble of its own.

During Q&A one woman stood up and shared her story of loss where her loved ones were killed in wave of target killing. This prompted the journalists to talk about the wave of violence and how they are covered in the newspapers. Yassin said in most cases the perpetrators get a lot more attention than the victims and this has become a journalistic debate as to what is better, giving more focus to perpetrators or to the victims. He gave the example of 9/11 where names of the hijackers are memorized but no one can come up with 10 names among the victims.

ToffeeTV Kahani Time/A Carrot is a Carrot: Selected Reading by Zia Mohyeddin

For the last session I decided to attend ToffeeTV Kahani Time. After listening to so much serious stuff, some time of fun and relaxation was needed. The room was full of families and Rabia Garib stood in front with a guitar, Hamza Lari and Hira Ilyas Bawahab flanking her. It was nice to see Rabia singing in Urdu and playing guitar, sweeping the children away in excitement. The play by Hamza and Hira was very good and even the elders sitting behind in the audience enjoyed too.

After the play end I realized I not young to be a child but neither am I old enough to have a child, meaning no matter how much I try I cannot keep enjoying the session since I am mentally not THERE yet, so I left and dropped in on Zia Mohyeddin’s reading. It was a fantastic experience listening to him describe the Bridal Room as Dressing Room for a character and women keep on barging in, accidently or deliberately. His tone was superb and reading enthralling, and I thoroughly enjoyed the little I heard.

Once he stopped (session was not over yet), I left the hall and wandered aimlessly for few minutes. There was still time for George Galloway’s speech and although the lure of listening to him once more was great, my lethargy was greater. Three days of festival had taken its toll on my mind and I decided to head back home.

Conclusion

The experience of Karachi Literature Festival 2013 was simply great and I don’t have a single complaint (except that my friends didn’t attend). The variety of books was great, the sessions were great and there was plenty to listen. From Cricket Writing session to Amar Jaleel’s talk, all was good. Particularly thankful to Espresso’s coffee and burger that sustained me on the first day and the rest of the two days as well. I also got the chance to get my books signed:

- Steven Inskeep for Instant City

- A.G. Noorani for Jinnah and Tilak

Best KLF ever

It is true that blaming the economic factor completely on Tahir Ul Qadri is unfair, simply because around the same time sit-ins in support of Shias killed in Quetta had sprung up throughout the country (I was sitting in a train when sit-in on tracks began and thus ended up missing both my chance to visit Lahore as well as the Table Tennis tournament I was suppose to play to represent my institution). But at the same time it did affected businesses in and around Islamabad as the city remained hostage to Tahir Ul Qadri’s sit-in.

Mr. Qadri is well known scholar in Pakistan with activities in educational, political and religious spheres. His real claim to fame is the making and implementation of Pakistan’s infamous Blasphemy law that has taken a lot of lives including Salman Taseer. More recently, a well know political figure Sherry Rehman has also been affected by this law as petition in court has been added against her citing blasphemy.

While Mr. Qadri took full credit of the law in Pakistan, he completely dusted his hands from the case in front of international media where he cites the law incorrect and against Islamic principles. He has done that multiple times, as it apparent in the following video.

But that is not the end. He went out of the country and seeked asylum in Canada where Canadian passport was issued to him 6 months back. Recent news is that he has been called by relevant authority in Canada to explain why he went to Pakistan since he has claimed asylum based on threats to his life there. As per Canada’s rules, one cannot go back to the country from which the asylum was requested.

But for now, let us focus upon the Long March that Mr. Qadri headed. Lasting 5 days, the march started from Lahore with 100,000 people (as per Mr. Qadri’s claims), reached Islamabad and stayed there for 3 days. Mr. Qadri repeatedly claimed it was a Million March, termed it longest and greatest march in human history (both factually incorrect as longest march had taken place in China that went from one corner of the country to the other, and since there were not more than 200,000 people in the march it wasn’t greatest either). Mr. Qadri stayed in bullet and bomb proof container ALL the time while claiming to follow Hussaini example of facing evil. He kept calling all those power as Yazeed and vowed to bring down the government. He presented several demands in front of the people, including immediate dissolution of assemblies, Election Commission of Pakistan and even said that he himself is declaring the government void. He even started calling ministers, prime minister and president as ex-ministers, former prime minister and former president as if he truly believed they no longer held the posts.

After 3 days of sit-in, while he enjoyed the heated container that had all the facilities needed the people styed out in the open with freezing cold and it even rained, making the air even more chilly, he finally lost his head since government was in no mood to give him any notice. He started giving deadlines to the government, asking it to come and talk to him in order to resolve this matter.

Here are my questions:

- Why would an NGO even bother to use BILLIONS of funds for political purpose?

- Why would a person, who claimed asylum in another country citing security threats, return to create such a mess?

- Why would a person attempt to delay elections especialy when the government is about to end?

- Why would a person kept screaming “If you have bullet, I have chest. Kill me first” from behind a bullet proof glass?

- Why would a person suddenly start talking in English in much moderate style during his speech when his followers don’t understand it?

These are just some of the questions that I had along with many others I would not bother to list down. All those people he had called Yazeed while claiming himself to be Hussaini, he invited them to talk (a big irony, Hussain never talked to Yazeed nor agreed on any compromise) and when they came, they sat down in the container for 6 hours to discuss their gameplan for future.

What was the result?

- Assemblies would be dissolved ANY TIME before 16 March (the date on which assemblies were to be automatically dissolved)

- ECP will continue functioning under the same chairman

- More meetings regarding ECP will take place at Minhaj Ul Quran’s Lahore headquarters

- Qadri will have a say in appointing Caretaker Prime Minister when this government’s tenure ends

- Pre-screening of candidates for one month for elections in order to weed out the bad lot

Despite the fact that the last option is a good one (if implemented, because I don’t see that happening), the whole march became a farce with this agreement. The march that was done to overthrow the government, turned into a coalition partnership WITH the government. The whole social media was abuzz with anger and complete disappointment with the whole episode. People were already against Tahir Ul Qadri for his non-sense march, now they were practically fuming. Anyone following the hashtag #TUQ would understand the sentiments Pakistanis displayed from all-over the world.

Media also fumed visibly and journalists such as Salim Safi, Ansar Abbasi and Talat Hussain were very vocal against Tahir Ul Qadri along with balanced analysis by most seasoned anchors and journalists. I myself have felt cheated, my time wasted and the whole country made fool all over again for practically no reason at all except personal benefits.

The only beneficial point, pre-screening of candidates for elections, is nearly impossible to implement. How? The implementation would be based on certain clauses of the constitution such as the candidate must be of good character, speaks truth etc etc. How will they interpret these qualities? No politician speaks truth. No politician has good character. These clauses would remove more than 90% of politicians, including whole of MQM and PML-Q from the elections if implemented in letter and spirit. The simple purpose of this is to remove competition and a rat race during elections to prove the other party is as corrupt as hell. There will be plenty of false cases, false evidences and even armed struggles to prove the other person does not belong in politics. None will be spared (unless there is under-the-table dealing) and the whole election process could turn into a joke.

The current affairs programs have all done nothing but cover the Long March of Mr. Qadri, so much that I even had a horrible dream of Long March couple of nights back. My friends in Islamabad were stuck in their homes throughout the week and I was stuck in Karachi throughout the week all because of Mr. Qadri’s ill conceived idea of becoming a Muslim hero.

Although there is plenty for me to rant, I will withold my further views since they degrade from generally accepted level of humility. Instead I would express these feelings with the pictures posted below in the gallery that have sprung up on Social Media in response to Mr. Qadri’s adventure.

The location is easy to find (very close to Act One, between Khayaban-e-Shahbaz and Khayaban-e-Sehar) with plenty of car parking space opposite the cafe. When I entered the building, I was greeted with a sober and formal environment. A staircase at the left side led to the first level where an altogether different environment prevailed with a lot of activity. The design was informal, the red and blue color combination playing really well throughout the hall and sofas were well placed to utilize the space for sitting. Talha and Rimsha were already there talking with Saad Saleem (event promoter) to whom I was introduced and received my first insight about the cafe.

Cafe Fusion is designed to cater to two different groups – the business class and family class. The lower level with more formal style was for business people with access to television. First level was for families with informal setting along with a stage for DJ and a projector to play video songs. My first thought about DJ and projector was that these were attractions for the youth since families are not that interested with DJ (unless it’s a Mehndi function) or projector (unless it’s Cricket/Football match). It is to be seen how these two elements can be used to attract families.

The conversation with Saad was pleasant and as he moved away to greet other guests I got the chance to look around and have more discussion with Talha and Rimsha. After a short while one of the owners, Akash, joined us and that’s when I gained more insights about the cafe

- iPads would be used to present menu to the customers (a rising trend and not a bad one at that)

- The food variety will also include Thai and Arabic along with the usual (that is good since most cafes around provide Italian and Continental food)

- Main specialty of the cafe would be steaks (for me that’s a big bonus point)

A lot of stuff is in the pipeline such as regular DJ nights, provision of WiFi facility to the customers and bringing full range of options for both business class customers as well as families. The official launch of the cafe is on 10th January, 2013 (tonight) and that is when we can fully experience what the place has to offer. For this meetup there were plenty of people and I even ran into my cousin Nafay Abbasi who made a brief appearance.

The volume of the music was pleasant, not too loud or too low, and despite the ambiance the visibility was normal. We were served appetizers along with softdrinks of our choice. I would say the taste was good and the dips were great. I relished the food with my usual slow pace (which was a surprise for Rimsha since she’s a fast eater and cannot understand why a person would DELIBERATELY eat slow). We spent a lot of time taking pictures from the Cannon DSLR that was in Talha’s hand. I am still waiting for the pictures; when I get them I will include them at the bottom of the blog along with the ones I snapped with my Samsung S3.

I will update this blog after attending the official launch of the cafe.

Update:

Official launch

I somehow got the chance to visit the launch and from the looks of it I missed out on some of the good moments. Rimsha and Talha couldn’t make it so I went alone and experienced first hand the environment and how the other visitors responded to the launch. From the looks of it, it was a resounding success.

The cafe was lit very well from the outside and that’s where I met Saad as well who filled me in with what had happened so far. There was good media coverage including FM 96 and Express while many celebrities also attended the launch. Some activities were held such as Wish Lanterns and popping fake Wine Bottles to officially launch the cafe.

The ground floor was abuzz today as people were sitting and talking on the sofas while the main activity hub was the first floor where DJ Manal was doing her magic. Despite the fact that I came 4 hours late (around 10 pm), there were still loads of people and all quite energetic. I moved around a bit, clicked a few pictures, ran into my cousin again and after spending some time enjoying the music I left for home.

The gallery has been updated with more recent pictures and I am still waiting for those clicked by Talha. Will include them once he emails them to me.

In the press conference held at Southend Club on February 2, 2013 the management presented details about the event and shared their success story. The “Agency of the Year” is a prestigious award that is well recognized internationally. Digital agencies from round the globe participate and there is a comprehensive screening process that ultimately leads to final selection. There are various categories, including a Pakistan specific sub-category within South Asia that was completely dominated by Symmetry Group. The group not just bagged all three awards from Pakistan category but was also awarded “South Asia Digital Agency of the Year”.

The significance of this achievement cannot ignored or understated. The world has moved on from traditional media to digital and social media at a rapid pace. When most digital agencies started working in Pakistan, the scenario here was much different and way behind to the likes of USA and even our neighbor India. In the past couple of years there has been a significant development in the digital and social media scenarios of Pakistan. As internet has become more accessible, as more people have gained easy access to digital content and as the consumption of digital content as phenomenally increased, so has the work and performance of digital agencies that often apply 360 degree marketing campaigns with great care and effort.

With these awards, Symmetry Group has left a mark on the international community that Pakistan is not a country going backward as most believe. There is more to this country and the progress is going to continue with each passing day despite all difficulties. All things considered, these awards have been a great achievement for both Symmetry and Pakistan for which their team deserve an applause.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 43,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

The class had the usual hustle and bustle. Students sat chit chatting animatedly and gossiping, the girls about the latest fashion and TV dramas while the guys about recently concluded Football league. Ahmed entered and after a general hello to the class he headed towards his usual place beside Sehar and Alina.

“Thank God it’s Sir Ali’s class first, it won’t be a bad start of the day” He said as he fell into the chair.

“You stay up most night talking on phone. Stop doing that and all mornings will be fine” Alina said.

“Sorry, I am not a morning person” Ahmed muttered

“Whatever, at least Sir Ali will keep us awake” Sehar said

“Won’t affect me as I’ll fall asleep” Ahmed said with a smirk

“Stop taking advantage of his nature. He’s easygoing, doesn’t mean you piss him off as well” Alina said exasperatedly

“No need, I’ll just take him off-track again and doze off like before”

“He tells really good stuff, you should listen to him” Sehar said

Ahmed laughed. Alina thumped his head. Both girls knew he was not going to listen. The bell rang and as the class began to settle, the door opened and Sir Ali entered. Thin and tall, wearing rectangular spectacles and tidy hair, Sir Ali seemed calm and peaceful like always as he greeted the class and put his laptop on the table and turned it on. This was perhaps the only class in the university that never required memorizing events and dates in Pakistan Studies course, making it not just easy but interesting as well. The only reason why the whole class found Wednesday mornings refreshing compared to the rest of the week.

“Everyone enjoyed our 1965 War analysis from last week? I hope you guys made the necessary notes, you’ll probably need them for the next quiz” Sir Ali said said.

“Will you be asking us specific questions? I mean like names of battalions and squadrons and all that?” Nooria asked

“I explained that earlier as well. You all need to understand the event AND recall the right names. You can cover broadly but that may not result in better analysis” Sir Ali replied

“That means we will need to remember all the names of pilots of PAF as well? And their squadron numbers too?” Sajjad asked

“Those that matter and the ones we covered. For example, who was Sarfaraz Rafique and why a base has been named after him?” Sir Ali asked

“Best in his batch, top Ace who was unfortunately shot down during 1965 war due to delay in attack clearance and his guns getting jammed. His skills, abilities and caliber was accepted by all and thus a base was named after him” Sajjad replied.

“Precise, to the point and well-worded … that is what I want, well said Sajjad. None of that requires memorizing once you understand from multiple perspectives such as strengths and weaknesses, dots connecting with various events and outcomes of small events that led to the larger impacts in future, you will never need to memorize history. It will become like a map flowing map in your mind where as the date passes, events will unfold and you can actually feel each event affecting the other” Sir Ali said.

“Aren’t you a bit anti-military in your analysis sir?” Ahmed quipped

“How so?” Sir Ali asked

“Even though it is part of history, but what need we have of studying in detail 1965 or any other war. We are not military students, this is a business school” Ahmed said

“True, but without knowing what truly happened in the past how do you suppose you will face the business environment when you graduate?” Sir Ali asked

“It looks less like history and more like you are trying to teach us ethics or morals of events which, even though really interesting, doesn’t really related to history as we know” Ahmed said

“I am ofcourse teaching you history and history is based on facts, verified through different sources which are both reliable and accurate. While teaching history you can include morals or ethics where applicable. For example, the genocide of Native Americans is part of recorded history of the US and that is used for teaching morals and ethics, used as an example of what not to do. They are used as an example to learn lesson in humanity and attempt to curb the brutality man is capable of unleashing” Sir Ali explained

“What about learning ethics and morality from micro level examples, from ordinary lives? Anyone can cite examples from historical events but as you said before, personal examples are the best to teach as they relate to emotions. If so, why are we studying history and not Personal Lives like Biographies?” Ahmed asked

There was a confused silence in the class. Sir Ali looked at Ahmed, frowned, then turned towards his laptop and began the shut off process. Alina leaned closer to Ahmed and whispered

“What are you doing? What kind of non-sense was that?”

“Throwing him off-track. He’ll start babbling about his personal life, and I can sleep a bit” He smirked wickedly

“That’s bad of you. He’s putting effort into teaching Pakistan Studies, not Ethics course” She whispered back heatedly. Ahmed waved his hand dismissively and leaned back in his chair. He had done the same with Sir Ali a couple of times, throwing weird questions and dozing off during the lecture. The last time was fun, he realized when he woke up at the end of the class, as Sir Ali had ended up telling them about his personal life where small decisions led to domino effect and impacted a lot of lives, including an idea to a social worker that turned into a nationwide successful awareness campaign for child education. He wasn’t interested in his teacher’s fairy-tales; he just wanted to sleep it off like the last time.

Sir Ali had packed his laptop and was now looking at the class, arms crossed at chest. His eyes seemed distant as if he could see something in the air others could not. The students had slight unease at the way Ahmed asked the question, but almost everyone now knew what he was up to and no one bothered to interrupt him.

“Are you going to listen or sleep while I talk?” Sir Ali asked, his eyes focusing on Ahmed

“I am alert like a soldier, Sir” Ahmed said

“You said the same last time and look what happened” Sir Ali said. Ahmed smiled guiltily.

Sir Ali unclasped his arms and put his hands in his pockets as he slowly began to pace in front.

“Do you know there are two wolves in every person?” Sir Ali asked. No one replied, all listened carefully instead. Sir Ali often asked questions but never to hear answer, only to build momentum.

“One wolf represents the good of humanity. It reflects ethics, morality, generosity, love for others, kindness, gentleness, loyalty and similar traits that make us good humans. The other wolf represents the darker side of humanity. It represents greed, animosity, hatred, self interest, vengeance, brutality, lust and similar traits that bring out the worst of us.

Which wolf is the bigger wolf? Simple, the one you feed.”

Sir Ali stopped pacing, looked at the class and spoke firmly.

“For the next few minutes listen to me carefully. What I am about to say may end up making, or breaking, your life. You are all young adults and this is something that you have either faced or about to face, therefore choose wisely”.

Sir Ali took the chair, sat down in front of the class, took a deep breath and began to speak.

“The wolves in us have certain affinity with our personality. They thrive on our emotions and as we grow up, so too they with what traits we adopt. Some traits we cannot control, they are part of our core personality and thus unavoidable. A person can be really kind and generous but may have feelings of vengeance against anyone who speaks badly about him. There is a great need to realize what traits you have and which wolf are you feeding, both consciously and sub-consciously, since they define how your life will take shape.

The greatest example is the person’s circle of friends. Your friends define who and what you are, what company you keep and which wolf is potentially dominating you. I have friends who are book lovers. They read volumes I have never even heard of and authors so obscure that it takes them months to track down at old bookstores and dusty library shelves. I have friends who love going to parties and restaurants so much, they spend a significant part of their salaries eating at new places, experimenting with food recipes and enjoying any decent party over weekends and holidays.”

“I also have friends with strong taste for alcohol and equally strong craving for prostitutes.”

Ahmed suddenly felt wide awake as he stared at his teacher. He wasn’t alone; practically the whole class was singularly focused upon Sir Ali. It was hard to believe that a simple guy like him could speak so boldly to the class.

“Your friends circle defines who you ultimately are. When your circle has book lovers, you get to know about facts and figures, fantasy stories and inspiring biographies. You get to meet great writers on their book signing ceremonies, know the best places in town to search for certain books or simply to sit down and read while enjoying the scenery. You also get to know about book clubs, discover people who also love books just like you, go deeper into the storylines and interpret them at a wider-scale, realize the reading habits, judge value of individual books and how the culture being impacted based on recently published literature. You understand the importance of classics and how they shaped modern education, language and even affected society and customs. In effect, you categorize your life, your environment and your neighborhood based on books. You even interpret your country based on books, your friendship value is also based on books and you even base your future decisions based on the books you read.

But on the other hand if your circle has those who crave for prostitution, you would know the location and rates of the best prostitutes in town. You would know how to avoid police or get rid of them when caught, you would know who to rely upon from the underworld gangs to secure time of luxury, to get invited to best private parties with plentiful booze and women to enjoy. You would know the best ways to gain physical satisfaction, experiment with sexual life and easily locate best spots in the city. You will judge friends based on how easily they can find best prostitutes along with alcohol and drugs of best quality at minimum price or even for free. You will also categorize your life and even the whole country based on availability and enjoyment factors of prostitutes. In short, your whole world will be based on those criteria.

If the two people, one who loves books while the other enjoying prostitution, were each other’s neighbors their lives would be totally different. Their friends circle, style of living, how they spend their day, their indoor and outdoor activities, how they spend their 24 hours in general, how they speak, what they say, future aspirations, past experiences, current prospects … all would be different. Even their personalities would be world apart. If they were to be class fellows, even within class they would be different with a distinct circle of friends.”

There was unease amongst the students. A few shot quick glances towards Ahmed. He only hoped that Sir Ali won’t realize the reason behind those glances. Instead of reacting to those glances, Sir Ali stood up and once against began pacing in front of the class.

“It may be that the wolf you fed compels you to seek out company you naturally enjoy. Wolves, in essence, feel secure in packs. A pack of wolves is like a cohesive unit that thinks and acts alike. A murderer would prefer a company of secrecy and solitude, with those equally secretive and solitude lovers. A generous person would also like company of another generous person due to shared interest. That is why many poets that greatly contributed towards the creation of Pakistan were actually friends and spent considerable time in each other’s company at academic institutions or tea houses.

It is also possible to seek out some other company under emotional pressure, as I have learned over the years. True, I may not seem like it, but I have a considerably large social circle which enables me to know more than I should. With that, let me share something with you all.

My primary circle of friends is indeed that of book lovers. We read all kinds of stuff, from fantasy novels to politics and biographies. I have atheist friends who provide compelling arguments against religion and I have feminist friends who point out best literature in support of women rights. It is a quite healthy friends’ circle that shares plenty of information, as some of you may have noticed on my Facebook Timeline.

One of my friends was in love with a girl for a long time and they dated for few years. A few months back the girl got engaged to another guy and my friend, a brilliant researcher, had his life upside down. A guy who was not just an avid book reader but was halfway through writing his own novel was now devastated man. He stopped meeting us and even seldom interacted over phones calls or text messages. Sometime later we realized he was now spending considerable time with a local gang leader, an alcoholic and womanizer who had gained considerable influence in the underworld. We managed to drag him back into one of our regular coffee house meet up and were shocked to realize how much he had actually changed. He was barely interested in new developments in literature and the taste of coffee was ash to him. He knew names of the best alcoholic beverages, described their taste with vivid details and even told the best places to procure them at reasonable rates without police catching them. He had a way of talking that was completely different, not suiting to that of someone once considered an intellectual.

On our way back he asked to stop at the old bookstore. I felt relieved; at least some part of his old self was with us. I enthusiastically drove and parked close to the old bookstore. We entered together and he asked me to calmly look for books I wanted, no hurry. That is how we usually shopped, slowly and carefully analyzing volumes and taking our time in buying the titles we really wanted. I spent a good twenty minutes going through the collection and finally selected about half a dozen books which I brought to the counter. I hadn’t seen him around, thinking he must be in the other section. It wasn’t until I stepped outside that I saw him exiting the staircase beside the shop. It was the first time I discovered that the apartment above the bookstore was famous for extremely private endeavors and he had set a quick appointment with them. He left a satisfied man, and I disillusioned. Our circles were completely different now, the radars in our heads pinpointing targets that were world apart despite in the same geographic locality and activities that were extremely different. While I stand here sharing this story, for the first time, with this class, my friend has shared his sad story over countless bottles of liquor to unknown figures.

The wolf in him had shrunk and the other gained strength and power. He was no longer the person he used to be. He is no different than any other person, be it in the past or present or even in future. But his choices and his wolves shaped his life in ways that has completely different outcome. This situation is not unique, everyone faces them. What if Jinnah had stayed away from the company of Muslim League leaders? What if he had never joined politics? His circle of friends and acquaintance led to the creation of Pakistan, but what would have happened if he was a closer friend of Maulana Azad rather than Liaqat Ali Khan? What would have been the impact on subcontinent then? What if Jinnah had a lust for power and chosen to become Governor General of United India rather than rejecting the proposal and choosing Pakistan?

If that is too big an example for you, Ahmed, then how about we talk about your wolves?”

Alarm bells started ringing in Ahmed’s head.

“M-my wolves, Sir?”

“Yes, yours … which wolf you feed?”

Ahmed said nothing. There was pin-drop silence in the room, all eyes either on Sir Ali or Ahmed. Even the ever critical Alina and the optimist Sehar were looking at Ahmed uncertainly, and they were his closest friends at university. He had no idea what to say or do.

“I do not know myself that well sir”

“Are you sure? What are your routine activities and behaviors?” Sir Ali asked

“Ah-well, for me it is university during day then some fun driving in the evening and home after that” Ahmed replied

“Alone or with friends?” Air asked

“Usually alone sir”

“Before or after?”

Cold shiver ran through Ahmed’s spine. He knows, shit. How is it even possible? The class was looking at him. This was the first time his life was being dragged out into the open, and it was scary. He decided on defiance rather than cooperation.

“It’s my private life sir” He said angrily

“So it is, and as you said that micro-level examples are best to teach, therefore I asked you question about it.” Sir Ali said, then looked around the class and asked, “Can you identify your circle of friends in this class, Ahmed?”

“The whole class” He snapped

“Really?” Sir Ali looked around and pointed at the corner student.”Mr. Asjad, can you please describe us the circle that includes you and Ahmed?”

Asjad looked around bewildered at first, he was shyest person in the class, then mumbled “Our university?”

“I asked about real-life friends circle, not Google+ Friends Cricles” Sir Ali said with a smile. There were some sniggers in the class. Most had no idea about Google+ in the first place.

Asjad kept silent. It was clear he had no answer to Sir Ali’s question. He shot a couple glances in Ahmed’s direction, possibly for a hint but none was available. Sir Ali simply turned back towards Ahmed, then looked at Alina and Sehar.

“What about you two? Please describe the circle you share with Ahmed”

“We, err, argue a lot and he kind of keeps me entertained with his snappy remarks. Plus he takes insults really well and listens well too” Alina said

“I asked about the circle and you explained your friendship with him. Very well, we’ll consider that for now. And you Sehar?”

Sehar looked at Ahmed, then turned towards Sir Ali “We belong to Gaming Circle”

“That sounds pretty generic to me”

“It’s true sir”

“Elaborate”

“Well, we have been friends even before we came to this institution. I met him online while searching for Starlancer’s full game torrent. He not just provided me the whole game we even played multiplayer for some of the missions. We ended up being in each other’s clans in online games like World of Warcraft and League of Legends and sometime play Dota 2 as well”.

Sir Ali looked at Sehar as if seeing her for the first time.

“I am … impressed that I have a female gamer in the class. Which server of LoL you play on?”

There was a loud crash as Ahmed’s cellphone fell on the floor. This time it was him seeing his teacher in a completely new light. “You play LoL too?”

“Indeed. Western European Server, the least with Ping problems and free from Russians that troll the Eastern Server” Sir Ali replied with a smile.

“How long have you been playing sir?” Sehar asked astonishingly

“Past 6 months actually. Not regular player, just occasional. No clan yet. I didn’t play WoW but Starlancer is one of my favorite games. You have a good choice in classic space games” Sir Ali said.

“What other games you play?” Ahmed asked

“Mostly RPG ones like Dragon Age and Elder Scroll. Tried Dungeon Siege 3 but didn’t like it”

“Good graphics, crappy controls but little relation to Dungeon Siege 2 storyline” Ahmed said.

“Completely agreed, they could have done a much better job with the sequel. In any case, can’t waste time on RPG games alone, so I play Modern Warfare as well and the 3^rd installment was …”

“AMAZING” Sehar and Ahmed said in unison.

“The storyline was great”

“And the fight in front of white house”

“And the action sequence at the end”

“I played the end part twice, I wanted to hang that creep so badly” Sir Ali said and all three laughed. Murmurs were exchanged between students as they saw their teacher chatting about video games with two students. Realizing the change in the class environment, Sir Ali moved to the center and asked without looking.

“Felt any affinity yet?”

It was clear he was asking Ahmed, and this time Ahmed felt calm. “I believe so”.

“As part of a pack?”

“Yes sir”

“You were feeling threatened by me few minutes ago, your reaction is completely different now. Which wolf are you feeding?”

“The right one, sir”

It was an obscure answer. Sir Ali looked at him but didn’t ask anything further, only smiled.

Sometime later it was time for a break. As the students exited the room, Ahmed chose to stay back and asked

“How did you know sir?”

“Grapevine … apparently your class knows it, some students from other classes and also a couple of faculty members. Suffice to say I confirmed from multiple sources” Sir Ali said.

“But how did you found out in the first place?”

“It wasn’t hard, your appearance and body language had given you away right in the first class. I have observed my friend closely these past few months, so I know what to look for”

“I keep a low-profile”

“That’s why the whole class knows?”

Ahmed felt sheepish. He had mistakenly boosted to a couple of classmates and the info spread like a wildfire in the class. Except Sehar, he never felt any connection with anyone in the class since everyone kept their distance.

“Do you know the name Michael Jordan?” Sir Ali asked

“Yes, Basketball legend”

“Do you know he once gave in to despair? He couldn’t make it to his school’s Basketball team, so he went home and cried. Can you imagine how big his wolf had become that time?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not so big because he became a really good player later” Ahmed answered.

“Maybe true, maybe not … most people give up, prefer staying second grade and be part of the failures who couldn’t make it. Their wolves become so large and powerful, they prefer to stay part of the pack … the pack of failures whose biggest traits are fear and despair. Jordan chose to not feed that wolf and instead fed the other, became a hard worker and gained his place and respect through sheer force of will and dominating performance. He chose to be leader, a successful player and he became what he “could” have become … a term that we would have used if he had chosen to leave the game instead.

Do you know what other trait he has?”

“What sir?”

“Loyalty. To this day when signing in or out from a hotel, he doesn’t sign his name. He writes and signs the name of his old Basketball friend, and he does it because their bond of friendship is so strong that even fame and money couldn’t overcome it. Do you believe you can become like him?”

“I don’t know sir”

“Think on it. You now have fair warning. Choose wisely the traits you want to adopt and the wolf you wish to feed. Do something positive and make your life worthwhile”.

“Why are you helping me like this, sir?”

“That’s what packs do. We look after each other” Sir Ali said with a wink and smile.

Understanding what he meant, Ahmed smiled too and exited the room after thanking Sir Ali. Sehar was waiting for him outside the class. They looked at each other and all of a sudden identical grins appeared on their faces. As they walked the length of the corridor, Ahmed realized that being part of Gamers pack was not such a bad idea.

I was greeted at the entrance by Farzana Abdullah from Creative Jin and Mr. Ahsan from Zong. From there I was escorted to Bloggers table where I was soon joined by Owais Ahmed and Ibrahim Zafar, representing TECHGLUED. They have also covered the launch of Timepey on their website.

The ambiance of the hall was inviting. In the sea of black, formal suits the dark theme of the hall and occasional well-placed light gave the environment a good feel. The only drawback of this setup was it affected the quality of pictures when I tried to capture moments and videos through my Samsung S3. I was given access to WiFi which enabled me to not just Check-In but also live tweet the event with hashtag #timepey. TechGlued team also supported with Re-tweets and making valuable notes throughout the event.

Event began after some time with beautiful recitation of Holy Quran. The audience included people from press media, industry professionals,  employees of Zong and Askari Bank and key people who made this event possible. A few known celebrities were also attending this launch. The host of the event was Anoushey along with another equally candid male host (I forgot his name but I think it was Umair). It was fairly nice to listen to them, candidly talking about everyday life and how communication and banking has changed. They introduced both Zong and Askari Bank in their talk (which everyone knew were the organizers of this event) and then introduced a theater play.

The play was interesting. Firstly, the room was dark and storyline was well-thought out. Secondly, the acting towards the end seems inspired from London Olympics 2012 where they raise buildings to show Industrial Revolution (in this case, Timepey logo). It started with a person struggling to carry messages back and forth, through tough times and terrain. Then situation begins to evolve as banking institutions are introduced and new technologies of communication made life easier. The music initially was of Pink Panther and the actors showed how transferring money is still difficult because you can be looted anytime. In comes Zong and Askari Bank who join hands to save the day and thus Timepey is born. The music changes, becoming stronger and construction workers are shown trying to raise Timepey after hard work.

Short video of the launch – A must watch

At this moment CEO Zong Fan Yun Jun, President and Chief Executive Askari Bank M.R. Mehkari, Deputy Governor State Bank of Pakistan Kazi Akbar Muktadir and His Excellency the Consul General of China in Karachi Mr. Zhang Jianxin came to the stage and were immediately surrounded by press photographers as the fireworks began around them and logo of Timepey was raised beside them.

After the spectacle Mr. Fan Yun Jun takes the stage for a speech where he shares some of the telecom statistics and how Timepey can take branchless banking to the next stage in Pakistan. He was succeeded by Mr. M.R. Mehkari who also emphasized upon the innovations in banking industry, of which branchless banking was a result, and how this method can evolve further in the future. Both the speakers also spoke about the contributions of their companies to Pakistan and how they plan to not just increase their participation but also help common person in the process.

The last speaker was Deputy Governor State Bank Mr. Kazi Akbar Muktadir who shared with the audience how he had been trying to bring financial services to common people for the past couple of decades and how branchless banking model of Pakistan is considered one of the best in the world due to its effectiveness and reliability. After his speech the TVC’s of Timepey were shown to the audience, all of which I found to be not just informative but also staying true to Zong’s style of advertising. The TVC’s were very family-oriented and showed how common person can benefit from Timepey.

After the TVC’s there was a group photo on the stage of key people involved in this product, then most of them moved towards press area where they briefed the journalists and answered their questions. There was an area dedicated for Timepey experience where the audience was invited to visit and get to know more about Timepey.

On the bloggers table I was tweeting away about the event from my twitter handle @wasioabbasi and TechGlued team were also busy with their notes. The two members of Creative Jin stayed with us till the end and even Mr. Ahsan remained in touch throughout the session.

Considering that it was an event by Zong and Askari Bank, I was expecting a bit more glamour in celebration of their joint-venture. That wasn’t the case and the atmosphere was kept formal to a certain extent. Even some of the media celebrities that were attending the event, I didn’t realized they were there until the very end. The theater performance was well coordinated and except for a minor fault where the speaker’s voice disappeared for about half-a-second, there was no other problem with the performance. The lighting system was also synchronized well and I didn’t notice any mistake.

As for Timepey itself, I must say the name of the service is not just easy but it is also a commonly used word. In fact, too common which means everyone in the country knows it. It is a bold attempt to brand this word as their service, with potentially huge rewards. It is easy, it has local language flavor, it is a common word and it rhymes as well with your daily life. Majority people at least use this word once in two days for one reason or the other while businessmen, teachers and mothers probably use it all day long.

As for the service, it is yet to be seen how well it does. It already has stiff competition, the leading of which is Telenor’s Easypaisa that took the initiative and educated the masses about branchless banking. More banks and telecom companies have joined in, so it will be tough for Zong and Askari Bank to gain market share. However, knowing Zong I am sure they have some strategy because even when it took over Paktel it fought its way hard to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Warid in terms of number of subscribers all over Pakistan.

What I am really looking forward to is the possibility of Timepey and related branchless banking products such as Easypaisa, UBL Omni and MobiCash to find a way and connect with the rest of the world. These products have great potential to change the way we do business and transfer money. If they find a reliable and cost effective method to connect with Paypal using online interface, they will get millions of dollars worth of business within weeks if not days. The whole IT industry would be hugely impacted and freelancer writers, designers, developers, programmers, coders and editors would find easy way to earn their money. Right now the absence of Paypal has been a severely restricting factor for industry’s growth and these financial products have huge capacity to fulfill that gap.

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For recurring newsletters, the plugin allows users to create email templates that can be adapted to each new newsletter, thus avoiding unnecessarily repetitive actions when creating and sending out mails. Most impressively, the plugin has a theme system using HTML, CSS and native shortcodes that can be adapted to match the client site. Up to 10 themes are included with the installation. However, creating a new custom theme is a simple enough matter for anyone familiar with HTML. All that is required is one html page (index.html) holding a few necessary shortcodes (such as [wpmlcontent]) to ensure the correct placement of headings and body content within the theme. Images utilized in the themes are uploaded to the plugin folder in the WordPress installation, which allows them to be remotely loaded for each email.

As a designer, the ability to modify the theme is almost as valuable as the ability to send multipart mails as both HTML and plain text.

One of the most cumbersome requirements I had was a single subscription form for multiple mailings lists. I had previously spent several months and quite a bit of money (on php developers hired to modify the plugin) on a free plugin (WP Autoresponder – which, coincidentally, offers many of the same features as Tribulant), that only allowed one mailing list per subscription form. On a site with different newsletters, this meant having multiple forms, a clumsy approach that I finally resolved when I stumbled upon Tribulant.

Not only is creating a single form a snap, a custom fields option allows for extensive customization of the form. Not to be confused with WordPress custom fields, this option is for additional form fields for data collection (ask your customers where they live, or what their favorite color is, for example) that can be added to the subscription form. The form is available as a widget, but can also be added manually to a template using WordPress Template tags, or using shortcodes in a post or page.

A single-site license (at $54.99) is a one-time cost that includes 3 months of free updates. This can be renewed for a small fee, or you may choose to continue without updates; at any time, updates and support can be renewed at a later date for a small fee. The documentation on the Tribulant site is extensive.  My own experience with the customer support team for Tribulant has been a joy. Not only are they prompt in responding to a query, the last time I contacted them, the owner, Antonie Potgeiter, was online himself to respond to my queries. They obviously take their obligations seriously, a rare quality in today’s world.

Perhaps the only drawback to the plugin is actually buying it. Payment options include PayPal (Pakistan’s kryptonite!) or 2Checkout (a payment gateway for credit card processing). I don’t need to vent about PayPal – we’re all well aware of our limitations in Pakistan. However, 2Checkout has a fairly stringent Fraud Detection process that tags the smallest errors for possible fraud, therefore declining the transaction. If you are going to buy the plugin using 2Checkout, make sure that all credit card details are exact, and that you have a card from a reputable bank (such as MCB or Standard Chartered). Avoid, if possible, UBL’s Wiz card – I had nothing but bad luck when I tried it!

For the sake of Pakistani developers (and any other developers and designers for whom PayPal is inaccessible), I am hoping Tribulant will offer a new payment gateway for their customers. Perhaps if they receive enough requests (hint hint, nudge nudge, know what I mean?), that may yet happen.

http://dawn.com/2012/11/02/divided-we-fall/

by Syed Shoaib Hasan

To understand the genesis and growth of anti-Shia extremism, the claims of both Sunni and Shia leaders must be examined. Shia-Sunni violence in this region precedes Partition but its more recent form has other beginnings. Most analysts are convinced that the present problem is a product of the Pakistan’s security establishment enduring relationship with radical Sunni militancy.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 had a huge impact in Pakistan where Gen Zia’s military leadership had just taken charge.

The Shia community resisted the enforcement of zakat in 1981 by General Zia’s regime. Their interpretation of zakat was different and they said they had already paid it as part of the khums tax under Shia jurisprudence. Sunni jurisprudence holds a differing view which was enforced by Gen Zia’s team.

In defiance, the Shia leadership under the banner of the newly formed Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Jafria (TNFJ) encouraged its community to come out on the streets across the country.

After the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, allegations of Tehran’s direct support to the Shia leadership in Pakistan have persisted. The military regime eventually backed down — but the victory proved very costly to the Shia community that regarded it as a fight for fundamental rights.

But Pakistan’s Sunni religious leadership believed this to be the start of a campaign to turn the country into a Shia state. As a counter campaign, they launched Safwad-i-Azam for the implementation of strict Sunni Sharia law.

The establishment of new Iranian cultural centres were seen as intelligence outposts. The Iranians were regarded as Soviet allies.

This called for a harsher response and the Anjuman-i-Sipah-i-Sahaba, later renamed Sipah-i-Sahaba (SSP) was created in Jhang in 1985 under Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi — then senior vice president of the JUI. Born out of fiery apocalyptic oratory, the organisation set the tone for the future of Pakistan’s minorities, especially in Punjab.

The polemics of the time became tools of the trade — words like ‘Shia kafir’ and ‘Shiagardi’ were invented as extremism gave way to militancy. For thousands of young Sunni men returning home from jihad in Afghanistan, switching their wrath from the infidel abroad to the infidel at home was easy.

Violence usually followed the visit of a firebrand SSP cleric who spoke about insults being heaped on the Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) companions — warning the Shia community to refrain.

Soon, the Sipah-i-Mohammad was formed.

There were retaliatory attacks on extremist Sunni leaders and 1990 saw the death of Maulana Jhangvi in a bomb attack by Shia militants. Subsequently, sectarian violence skyrocketed — with tit-for-tat attacks on Shia and Sunni targets.

It also led to fissures within the SSP with several dissidents breaking away. For them the ‘final solution’ was to declare Pakistan a Sunni state which could only be achieved through militant means.

In 1996, Riaz Basra and Malik Ishaq formed what is now regarded as Pakistan’s deadliest militant organisation, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ). It was believed to be the militant wing of the SSP, created with the idea that the parent organisation could continue to have a political role and eventually win an assembly seat.

As its clout grew, so did its extremism and soon minorities like Ahmedis and Christians were also targeted and in case of the latter, the Shantinagar attack in 1997 materialised. Politicians and intelligence officials agree that by this time it was no longer government policy to promote the Sunni extremists in Pakistan. But in Afghanistan where a civil war was raging the relations between Pakistani Sunni militants and the Afghan Taliban prospered.

The aftermath of 9/11 was to take the Taliban-LJ relationship to new heights. Pakistan’s security establishment finally woke up to the Frankenstein’s monster that it had created but with sympathetic undertones. At this point, the double game cost Pakistan dearly.

Two events which exponentially increased the power of LJ were Musharraf’s ban on SSP, and the 2003 closure of the Kashmir front which led to thousands of Punjabi (mostly Deobandi but also Ahle-Hadees) jihadis to descend on the tribal region.

Chased and harried across Afghanistan and Pakistan — the militants chose a new home around the tribal belt, and joined up with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Thus a new sectarian breed came into being in the form of the Punjabi Taliban, now led by Asmatullah Muavia and loyal to Hakeemullah Mehsud.

Initially based in South Waziristan, the Punjabi Taliban were ousted after the military operation in 2009. In reprisal, they carried out high-profile attacks such as the one on GHQ in Rawalpindi. Sources say that particular incident was the turning point and led to a rethink by the establishment.

Security officials — who wish to remain anonymous — say this was because the GHQ stand-off was resolved mainly through negotiations by Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, chief of the SSP, who convinced those inside to surrender.

Army officials dismiss these claims. They say military action broke the siege and that the Punjabi Taliban remains their number one enemy.

Both stories may hold true, says a security official. Ludhianvi’s intervention, while crucial, was only limited to the GHQ attack. He appears to have little control over the Punjabi Taliban leadership, which continues to wreak havoc across Pakistan.

But it is also clear that Ahmed Ludhianvi now enjoys official protocol. Both the LJ and SSP as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) are proscribed, yet hold rallies in major cities where arms are openly displayed.

Today, it’s obvious that the ASWJ and LJ are one and the same. Maulana Ludhianvi admitted in an interview to BBC that Malik Ishaq, the LJ chief was released on his guarantee and reports to him.

The spike in sectarian violence coincided with Malik Ishaq’s release — following which he declared war against the Shia community perceived to be collaborating with the US.

An abysmal lack of convictions in courts has led to the release of the most hardened militants. Atta-ur-Rahman alias Naeem Bukhari, released in 2009 was among the militants responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. Bukhari now runs LJ operations in Karachi and South Punjab.

In Karachi, LJ has perhaps been on the back foot as most of its activists were killed here. According to security officials, there is strong evidence of MQM activists involved in the killing of ASWJ workers, although it is not a party policy.

ASWJ leaders in Karachi have — time and again — named the MQM as the prime culprit in the attacks against them.

G. M. Syed is a personality that has been obliterated from the history text books of Pakistan. It is as if he never existed as far as Pakistan is concerned and modern generation has only a slight hint that he founded the Sindhi Nationalist party called Jeay Sindh (Long Live Sindh). “This simply makes him a traitor and should be forgotten” is an understanding prevalent among the youth of Pakistan and is a major source of ignorance that is threatening to destroy the province of Sindh itself. It is time to correct history where it needs correction.

G. M. Syed (Ghulam Murtaza Syed) was born on 17 January, 1904 in a village called “Sann” in Dadu district. He was the only male child of the Sadat family when his father, Syed Mohammed Shah Kazmi, got killed due to a family feud and his elder brother died at a young age. G. M. Syed was descendant of a famous Sindhi Sufi saint Syed Haider Shah Kazmi, of whose mosoleum G. M. Syed was Sajjada-Nasheen.

G. M. Syed was proficient in Sindhi, Urdu and English languages while he also had speaking proficiency in Persian and Arabic. He was home-tutored since he was the only male in the family but showed keen interest in politics, philosophy, history and religion. Following are his achievements until he joined Muslim League (Yes, he was its member … seriously).

1919: Became President of Local Board of his own Tehsil, later becoming Vice President of Karachi District Local Board.

1929: Became President of Karachi District Local Board

1930: Organized Hari Conference and became its Secretary

1937: Elected member of Sindh Legislative Assembly

1938: Joined All India Muslim League

In 1937 elections, All India Muslim League failed to win any seat and decided to embroil itself in the politics of the province to gain influence. The first three major personalities to join All India Muslim League were Hashim Ghazdar, Ayub Khuru and Sir Abdullah Haroon who were members of first ministry after the 1937 elections but were maneuvered out; the second ministry formed under Allah Bakhs had a pro-Congress stance and enjoyed Hindu as well as Congress support. Hashim Ghazdar, Ayub Khuhru and Sir Abdullah Haroon joined Muslim League in retaliation and were later joined by G. M. Syed and Pir Ali Mohammed Rashidi (both were instrumental in bringing down the first ministry).

The inclusion of G. M. Syed in Muslim League has been considered instrumental to the party’s success in the province because he had huge influence in landed gentry, particularly among Syeds and Pirs members of Sindh Assembly. On 8-10 October, 1938 Sindh Provincial Conference of Muslim League was held in Karachi by Sir Abdullah Haroon. The following members attended the conference:

Muslim League Center: Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Liaqat Ali Khan, Raja of Mehmoodabad, A.K. Fazalul Haq, Sir Saadullah Khan, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Sardar Aurangzeb, Nawab Ismail Khan, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman

Sindh Muslim League: Allah Bakhs Soomro, Pir Illahi Bakhs, Sir Abdullah Haroon, Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, G. M. Syed, Mohammed Jamal Khan Leghari and others.

The members expressed their feelings regarding Congress and growing Hindu influence on Indian politics at the cost of Muslims and their representation. One major reason why Sindhi Muslims clicked so well with Muslim League ideals was that Sindhi Muslims, despite a majority in the province of Sindh, found themselves a small minority when Sindh was part of Bombay Presidency.

(Some facts on separation of Sindh before returning to the conference)

Summarized chronology into separation of Sindh from Bombay Presidency

(Back to the Sindh Provincial Conference of Muslim League)

The Sindh Provincial Conference of Muslim League held in Karachi on 8-10 October, 19378 was presided by M. A. Jinnah who accused Congress of attempting to destroy Muslim League and dominate Muslims by dividing them. In this conference a draft resolution was tabled by Sheikh Abdul Majid Sindhi in the Subjects Committee which reads as follows:

The Sindh Provincial Muslim League Conference considers it absolutely essential in the interest of an abiding peace of the vast Indian continent and in the interest of unhampered cultural development, the economic and social betterment and political self-determination of the two nations known as Hindus and Muslims, that India should be divided into two federations, namely the Federation of Muslims states and the Federation of non-Muslim states.

The Conference, therefore, recommends to the All India Muslim League to devise a scheme of constitution under which Muslim majority provinces, Muslim Indian states and areas inhabited by a majority of Muslims may attain full independence in the form of a federation of their own, with permission to admit any other Muslim state beyond the Indian fronttiers to join the Federation, and with such safeguards for non-Muslim minorities as may be conceded to the Muslim minorities in the non-Muslim federation of India

This was the first draft to actually demand separate state for Muslims clearly and is much specific than Lahore Resolution which is murky at best, with no clear indication of the term “states” which could either mean several countries or autonomous provinces under Indian federation. Moreover, the resolution was presented by Bengali Nationalist, Fazal-Ul-Haq, which hints that creation of East Pakistan was not part of the plan.

The text of Lahore Resolution is fully reproduced as follows for comparison.

While approving and endorsing the action taken by the Council and the Working Committee of the All India Muslim League, as indicated in their resolutions dated the 27th of August, 17th & 18th of September and 22nd of October, 1939, and the 3rd of February, 1940 on the constitutional issue, this session of the All India Muslim League emphatically reiterates that the scheme of federation embodied in the Government of India Act 1935 is totally unsuited to, and unworkable in the peculiar conditions of this country and is altogether unacceptable to Muslim India.
It further records its emphatic view that while the declaration dated the 18th of October, 1939 made by the Viceroy on behalf of His Majesty’s Government is reassuring in so far as it declares that the policy and plan on which the Government of India Act, 1935, is based will be reconsidered in consultation with various parties, interests and communities in India, Muslims in India will not be satisfied unless the whole constitutional plan is reconsidered de novo and that no revised plan would be acceptable to Muslims unless it is framed with their approval and consent.
Resolved that it is the considered view of this Session of the All India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to the Muslims unless it is designed on the following basic principles, viz., that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute ‘independent states’ in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign.
That adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards should be specifically provided in the constitution for minorities in these units and in the regions for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights and interests in consultation with them and in other parts of India where the Muslims are in a minority adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards shall be specifically provided in the constitution for them and other minorities for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights and interests in consultation with them.
The Session further authorizes the Working Committee to frame a scheme of constitution in accordance with these basic principles, providing for the assumption finally by the respective regions of all powers such as defense, external affairs, communications, customs, and such other matters as may be necessary.”

One major reason why draft resolution of Sindh Provincial Council was not acceptable to the leaders of Muslim League was that it envisioned Pakistan without Muslims from minority provinces. The resolution was rejected.

G. M. Syed was invited to a conference held by Jinnah on 8 October, 1938 with Muslim members of Sindh that decided that all Muslim members of Sindh Assembly should join Muslim League Assembly Party. Allah Bakhs Soomro’s group refused to join. The group was formed in Sindh Assembly with Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah as leader and Bandeh Ali Talpur as Deputy Leader, both of them later joining Allah Bakhs Soomro’s group at a crucial time that left Muslim League Assembly Party stranded during no-confidence motion.

On October 1, 1939 Satyagrah (civil disobedience) movement was launched by G. M. Syed along with Sir Abdullah Haroon, Ayub Khuhro, Wajid Ali Sheikh, Mohammad Hashim Ghazdar, Qazi Fazalullah and Pir Ghulam Mujaddid Sarhandi. Hundreds of Muslims had courted arrest while many had occupied Manzalgah Masjid. Riots in Sukkur resulted in the death of 151 Hindus and 14 Muslims. This resulted in Hindus agitation and they presented 21 points for Allah Bakhs ministry, that included Joint Electorates instead of separate, which he refused. Muslim League group agreed and with support from Hindu members of Sindh Assembly, Allah Bakhs ministry was dismantled. Mir Bandeh Ali formed new ministry with G. M. Syed, Ayub Khuhro and few others as ministers.

The communal tensions could not be resolved by the new ministry and G. M. Syed proposed to either group all Muslim members as a front to force some concessions out from Hindus or go to the masses, organize them and educate them so that they could eventually influence the government. Both suggestions were ignored and Maulana Azad was invited to intervene who used his influence to bring both Hindus and Muslims together and ultimately form a pact, called Azad Pact. This pact was disliked by Jinnah.

In 1940 Lahore Resolution was passed that is considered first recognition of Pakistan, but that is not true. The idea of separation was first mooted in Stockholm Conference of the Socialist International in 1917. In 1924 Maulana Hasrat Mohani presented idea of separation of sub-continent on bi-communal basis. In 1927 Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi proposed re-dsitribution of India’s boundaries into North-Western, Eastern and Southern zones. North-Western zone comprised of present day Pakistan. In 1928 Sir Agha Khan suggested ‘Association of free states’ based on religion, language, nationality and race.

On October 29, 1930 Allama Iqbal in his presidential address at Muslim League’s Allahabad session proposed idea of making a single federation of Muslim majority areas in the North-West India, within or without the British Empire. What is comical is that, despite proclaiming it as a vision that led to the creation of Pakistan in history books, it was not the first time envisioned nor was it supported by Muslim League. The proposal was termed “Chimerical” and “Impractical” by the party, a fact that has been conveniently left out from the history books.

Now G. M. Syed was strong part of Sindh Muslim League and this helped Muslim League to reach to grassroots of Sindh, among the Haris and common masses. In 1943 G. M. Syed became minister in Sindh Assembly and moved resolution in support of Pakistan:

No constitution shall be acceptable to them (Indian Muslims) that will place the Muslims under a central government dominated by another nation as in order to be able to play their part freely on their own distinct line in the order of things to come. It is necessary for them (Indian Muslims) to have independent national states of their own and hence any attempt to subject the Muslims of India under one central government is bound to result in civil war with grace and unhappy consequences.

This resolution was passed by 27 members (from 60) of which 24 were Muslim members. Thus Sindh Assembly became the first provincial assembly to support Pakistan’s cause.

On June 13, 1943 G. M. Syed was elected President of Sindh Provincial Muslim League. He was chairperson of All India Muslim League annual session held at Karachi on 24 December, 1943 where he expressed his line of thinking in the welcome address:

I welcome you all to the land of Sindhu. By Sindhu I mean that part of the Asian continent which is situated on the borders of the river Indus and its tributaries. But as time went on the name began to connote a smaller and smaller area, until now it is assigned only to that part of the land which is watered by tail end of this great river. Today again fully aware of this fact, we are moving to weld together these different parts into one harmonious while and the new proposed name, Pakistan connotes the same old Sindhu land…. From now on well-to-do Muslims of Hind should please direct their activities in the field of trade and commerce to this land, so that it may in future, become economically independent and self-supporting… If people from Gujrat and Bombay could go out to the Frontier to establish Hindu dominance there, could we, too not repose some hope in you friends? The inhabitants of this land mostly belong to the agricultural profession, and are very backward in trade and industry. Your money and experience could remove this drawback. We are prepared to afford every facility for this with a view to making your task easier”

G. M. Syed’s proposal was answered after 4 years when millions migrated to the newly created state of Pakistan and One-Unit was proclaimed after 11 years, neither happened the way G. M. Syed had envisioned. Under bliss of not knowing the future, he got re-elected as President of Sindh Muslim League in 1944 and under his Presidential terms, Muslim League’s Sindh membership grew up to 3 lakhs.

G. M. Syed Vs. M. A. Jinnah

G. M. Syed, being a strong nationalist, expressed priority to his province and resolve conflicts or bring changes which suit the needs of Sindhi people, particularly Muslims. Jinnah, on the other hand, was core member of All India Muslim League at the center of Indian politics and his priorities were different. The central group of Muslim League was heavily dominated by Muslims from minority central Indian states (U.P, Bihar, Assam etc) and their core policies were directly in contrast to those of Muslim majority provinces. That was a major reason why G. M. Syed developed serious disagreements with Jinnah over the course of time.

After Sukkur riots, Hindus had presented Allah Bakhs ministry with 21 points that included introduction of Joint Electorates which he refused. G. M. Syed, on the other hand, agreed and together with Hindus he forced a no-confidence motion in Sindh Assembly. Allah Bakhs could not show the required strength and his ministry was dissolved and new ministry under Mir Bandeh Ali was formed that included both Muslims and Hindus. Jinnah was not in support of this alliance but initially concurred. The problems arose when Joint Electorates were adopted through an act and that was directly against Muslim League’s policy, even though Hindus had allianced on the condition of Joint Electorates. This caused agitation in Muslim ranks and fueled communal instability that eventually led to the arrival of Maulana Azad and agreement for the Azad Pact.

Bandeh Ali’s ministry soon fell and Allah Bakhsh was brought back as premier with the help of Congress. Jinnah had a dislike for Azad Pact and in 1940 he suggested to the Sindh Assembly that all Muslim members should join Muslim League Sindh. If that doesn’t happen, all League members should resign. Allah Bakhs group refused to join and League members ignored Jinnah’s suggestion for resignation.

Because of G. M. Syed’s efforts, the resolution in support of Pakistan was passed from Sindh Assembly and under his leadership Sindh Hari Committee had joined Muslim League (providing great  access to massive Sindhi peasants that formed the bulk of Sindhi Muslim population) and Communist Part of India had endorsed the demand for a separate nation for Muslims. Because of this, Jinnah insisted in G. M. Syed’s nomination as President of Muslim League Sindh when the post was vacated and he became President in 1943, a position under which he chaired the All India Muslim League’s annual session in Karachi in the same year.

The provincial Muslim League had a strong tussle between Syed group and Mir group, the former enjoying a stronger position in the party while the latter holding the ministry. In a political clash between these blocs in 1944, the matter was referred to the Muslim League’s Working Committee for resolving. Jinnah had expressed his anger over G. M. Syed on grounds that he was causing a rift between League’s provincial ranks and was using unconstitutional methods for his personal politics.

Jinnah’s bitterness over G. M. Syed had many reasons. He was not happy with Syed’s proposed amendment to League’s working committee’s resolution on June 16, 1942 where he suggested greater understanding and cooperation between All India Muslim League and Congress. He was also not happy with the coalition Syed had formed earlier with Hindus that eventually led to the passing of Joint Electorate act. The tussle between them slowly increased and got severe when Syed’s supporter, M. H. Ghazdar, was dismissed from the Sindh’s ministry arbitrarily.

The final showdown came when in a no-confidence motion, Syed’s group defeated Ghulam Hussain’s ministry but despite defeat Ghulam Hussain managed to outmaneuver Syed and stayed in power. Jinnah reacted strongly and blamed Syed for rift in the ranks of Muslim League members, breaking party discipline, undermining the objectives of the league and shaking solidarity of Sindhi Muslims. Syed offered full cooperation and even led to more Muslim leaders to join Muslim League Sindh, including Ghulam Hussain (who did it to save his ministry). Despite late joining, Ghulam Hussain received great approval from both Jinnah and Muslim League but the person who made it all happen, G. M. Syed, had became an eye-sore for the same people.

As things heated up, in 1945 Syed disagreed with Muslim League Center’s practices and called on them to not be so authoritative as to leave provincial groups impotent to important matters and decision making. This matter escalated in the Working Committee’s meeting when Syed criticized the Central committee’s leadership and suggested them to cooperate with Congress to put joint pressure on Britishers. Jinnah refused bitterly for any concession to Congress and despite Syed group’s opposition, the powers of Central committee were increased dramatically to completely centralize Muslim League’s parliamentary machinery functioning in various provinces.

This decision had far-reaching impact on the upcoming elections. Three major factions had emerged amongst the Sindhi Mulims for Muslim League tickets. One was Syed group, one was Mir group and third was Khuhro group. On Jinnah’s advice, Syed initiated Provincial Parliamentary Board to resolved differences among warring factions and Jinnah selected board members. They were G. M. Syed, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, M. A. Khuhro, Agha Gulam Nabi Pathan, Pir Ilahi Bakhs, Mir Ghulam Talpur and Sayed Khair Shah.  This put Syed against four ministerial groups who, despite having differences, were united against Syed. Realizing that he cannot get League tickets for his group because of serious minority position he received as a result of Jinnah’s selected of Board members, as President of Muslim League Sindh he suspended the proceedings and adjourned the meetings. Liaqat Ali Khan, Hussain Imam and Nawab Ismail immediately came to Karachi and blamed Syed for all the mess.

Of all the seats, 10 were disputed for the tickets and Central Committee decided to award three of them to Syed group. When Jinnah called members of the suspended Parliamentary Board and asked them to give in writing to uphold the verdict of high command, Syed not only refused but also renounced his membership from Working Committee of All India Muslim League and his membership from the party was suspended. He was supported by Mohammad Ali Shah, Sayed Khair Shah and Pir Bahadur Shah of Hala. They decided to contest elections independent of Muslim League, under the banner of Progressive League.

In 1946 elections, both All India Muslim League Sindh and Progressive League placed big landlords and tribal chiefs as candidates while Congress brought forward candidates belonging to middle class. It is ironic to see these big landlords and tribal chiefs being depicted as villains in history books, cinemas, movies and urban youth of today consider them biggest enemies of Pakistan while the reality is that Pakistan owes its existence to these very people. If it was up to middle class population, Pakistan would not have have formed in 1947.

Following was the result of 1946 elections in Sindh:

Muslim League = 27

Congress = 21

Progressive League = 4

Nationalist Muslims = 4

European Seats = 3

Labour = 1

The total counts come up to 60. Muslim League won 70% of Muslim seats all over Indian subcontinent, except NWFP where Congress won majority of Muslim seats and Muslim League had little to no support. In Sindh, a coalition was formed between Progressive League, Congress and Nationalist Muslims. Muslim League also tried to form coalition with Congress but it refused since it already was in alliance with Progressive League.

Congress presented a different alternative, all parties government. The idea was sound and practical, but Jinnah refused. Jinnah was not ready to give any concession to Syed Group (Progressive League) unless G. M. Syed apologize and surrender unconditionally. In fact, Jinnah was ready to form coalition with Congress but not with Syed and this stance of his had two major reasons:

1) G. M. Syed had defied Muslim League and should apologize for that

2) Muslim League is the only representative body of Muslims

This rigid stance failed all coalitions plans Muslim League Sindh had made. The minority group of Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah was invited by Governor Sir Francis Mudie to form government, which remained very unstable due to constitutional deadlock and was eventually dissolved by the governor and fresh elections were scheduled in December 1946. The rivalry between Syed group and Muslim League Center had risen to a new peak and Jinnah gave its members a mission to defeat Syed group at all cost and by any means.

The Bihar massacre was used by Muslim League leadership extensively throughout Sindh to appeal to religious sentiments of Muslims. The biggest source of voter base that responded to All India Muslim League was of the Sajjada Nasheens (heads of Pir families) of the shrines that left their mentor G. M. Syed (who himself was a Sajjada Nasheen) and supported Muslim League. G. Allana was appointed election secretary who stated that Jinnah wanted all seats to be won, but especially that of G. M. Syed himself. The candidate that contested against Syed himself on Muslim League’s ticket was Mohammed Akbar Kazi and he was provided a sum of 50,000 for this purpose. Muslim League also appealed to the sentiments of Ulemas of both Sindh and Punjab, students from Aligarh University traveled extensively throughout Sindh to propagate message and garner support for Muslim League and Muslim League tickets were offered to influential landlords belonging to Syed’s group. As a result Nabi Bakhsh Soomro, Ghulam Mohammad Bhurgari, Rahim Bakhsh Soomro and Pir Ali Shah defected and joined Muslim League.

The strategy worked, the only seat the Progressive League won was of K. S. Khoso and Muslim League won 33 off 35 seats in Sindh Assembly. For this election Muslim League had used questionable methods to win that were challenged by G. M. Syed. A tribunal was formed (consisting B. P. Dalal, Rahim Bakhsh Sheikh and Feroze Ali Nana) after the creation of Pakistan to look into the matter and in light of its findings, declared Mohammed Akbar Kazi, Pir Ilahi Bakhsh and Mir Muhammad Shah disqualified for 6 years. G. M. Syed was declared winner and he joined Sindh Assembly after the creation of Pakistan.

During 1800s the demand for separation of Sindh had emerged that got stronger and in 1919 Montague-Chelmsford reforms fell short of expectations of Sindh’s province, thereby making it a popular demand by Sindhis at every forum. Finally, the first major success of recognition came on 26 December, 1923 when Indian National Congress in its session at Kanpur agreed to the principle of re-organization of provinces on linguistic basis and demanded the separation of Sindh from Bombay Presidency. This was followed by All India Muslim League session held at Aligarh on 30-31 December, 1925 where resolution in support of Sindh’s separation from Bombay Presidency was unanimously passed.

Following is a summarized chronology of separation of Sindh from Bombay Presidency:

1917: Question regarding separation of Sindh was first time raised in Congress’s session held in Karachi

1918: Sindh Provincial Council’s sub-committee recommended Sindh becoming autonomous province based on a detailed report it prepared

1919: Montague-Chelmsford Reforms fell just short of expectation regarding Sindh’s separation

1923: Congress’s session at Kanpur officially recognized Sindh’s demand for separation and supported it

1925: All India Muslim League passed a resolution unanimously that supported Sindh’s separation from Bombay Presidency

1927: Delhi Muslim Conference put forward proposals to agree to Joint Electrorate provided Sindh separated from Bombay Presidency

1928: All Parties Conference formed Nehru Committee that recommended separation of Sindh, not on communal grounds but on economic. Hindu Mahasaba protested it fearing Hindus will become minority in Sindh. An incident in Larkana regarding forced conversion of Muslim women and children incited communal violence.

1928: A conference involving all communities was called on 18 June in Karachi reached a pact called Sindh Hindu-Muslim Pact, signed and confirmed by 26 prominent leaders belonging to Hindu, Muslim and Parsi communities. The pact demanded Joint Electorates and separation of Sindh from Bombay Presidency.

1928: Simon Commission visited Karachi on 12 November and co-opted two Muslims members, Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto and Sayed Miran Mohammad Shah. Sindh Muhammadan Association prepared detailed report in support of Sindh’s separation and was presented to the commission by Ayub Khuhro. Professor Chhablani opposed the move on financial grounds. Two committees were formed by Bombay Legislative Council to support Simon Commission; Bombay Central Committee clearly supported separation of Sindh while Bombay Provincial Committee opposed the separation. Simon Commission, though in agreement of separation, didn’t recommend it until detailed examination of administrative and financial was completed.

1929: In January, All Parties Muslim Conference was called by Mian Muhammad Shafi and Liaqat Ali Khan. It was presided by Sir Agha Khan and Jinnah’s 14 points were central to this conference. The 9th point demanded separation of Sindh.

1930: Meeting convened by Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto on 31 May at Hyderabad was attended by Nawabs, Sardars, Zamindars and leading persons of lower four districts of Sindh. A special resolution in support of Sindh’s separation was passed.

1930: In the first Round Table Conference, Sindh was represented by Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto and Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah. To look into Sindh’s separation, a sub-committee was formed headed by Earl Russel and comprised of Sir Agha Khan, M. A. Jinnah, Mohammad Shafi, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah and Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto. Committee recommended Sindh’s separation and expert committee comprising of Miles Irwin and Harris was formed to look into financial viability of Sindh after separation.

1931: Conference of Muslim members of Congress held at Lacknow in April supported the demand for separation of Sindh.

1931: Second Round Table conference couldn’t reach to any settlement but agreed to hold a conference of Sindh’s leaders to look into ways to cover financial deficiencies of Sindh after separation, as indicated by the expert committee’s report.

1932: The agreed conference of Sindh’s leaders was held in April at Karachi and its report said that Sindh would require 80 lacs annually for 15 years from Indian government to finance its deficit.

1932: First Sindh Azad Conference was held on 18 April under chairmanship of Sheikh Abdul Majid Sindhi that pressed the demand for Sindh’s separation. Another Sindh Azad Conference was held on 20 August by Sir Shahzawaz Bhutto that decided to observe September 10 as Separation Day; that day was observed enthusiastically and meetings were held in all major cities to support separation, though Hindu communities campaigned against it.

1935: Select Committee by British Government invited M. A. Khuro and Professor Chhablani to present their cases regarding Sindh’s separation. Khuhro successfully presented the case for separation while Professor Chhablani could not impress the committee. In April, government decided to separated Sindh and constitute it as a separate autonomous province. A committee under Sir Hugh Dow was formed comprising Mr. Mocovila, A. I. Brice, Mr. Kola, Sir Abdullah Haroon, Ayub Khuhro and Rai Bahadur Hiranand Khemsingh. The committee was tasked to form machinery for the new province of Sindh.

1935: British Parliament passed Government of India Act 1935 in October and Sindh was declared a separate province with effect from Aptil 1, 1936. First governor was Sir Lancelot Graham and his advisory committee consisted of Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah and Diwan Hiranand.

1935: All India Muslim League session at Howrah on 21 October welcomed the decision

1936: Hindu communalists opposed the separation in a conference held on 26 January in Karachi

In light of the above chronology the claim that Sindh was separated from Bombay Presidency due to Muslim League’s efforts is partially correct, at best.

In Pakistan, the protest that started from social media quickly translated to street power too and small-scale anti-American and anti-Jewish rallies were organized all over the country. Soon Youtube was blocked when movie and its trailer were not removed by Youtube. Pakistani government, in order to appease the sentiments of general public, declared September 21, 2012 as Ishq-E-Rasool (Love for the Prophet) day. The purpose was to honor the Prophet and counter the propaganda shown in the movie, only to see hell breaking loose all over the country.

At the time of writing this blog, the cellular networks in 21 cities of Pakistan have remain blocked for over 18 hours in order to break communication between hostile elements. The city of Karachi recently suffered as three bombs blasts shook one of its populace shopping areas and right now the whole country is under chaos.

-2 cinemas have been burned in Peshawar and 5 in Karachi

-Banks across the country have been broken into and robbed

-Press Club Hyderabad mobbed, trapping roughly 100 journalists inside

-2 policeman killed so far

-Rangers called in Lahore to control the protesters

-All entries and exits of Islamabad sealed to control protesters

-Dozens of people died as a result of clashes between people and with police

-Police beaten, their vehicles burned and their arms snatched in several parts of the country

-Shops and shopping malls vandalized

-Hundreds of vehicles damaged, burned and rendered useless

-Roads littered with burned tyres, American and Israel flags and effigies of prominent US personalities

-Business and industrial activity completely shut throughout the country

-News channels having a field day reporting gruesome details

-Cellular networks still down

-Angry protests and protesters near American consulate in Karachi

Pakistanis on TV and Social Media completely clueless regarding what is happening in the country. Tweets and Status Updates are all against the ongoing vandalism, many of which are also first-hand survivor stories who narrowly escaped being attacked by mobs. Some also stress the need for peaceful protest while others denounce all form of protest.

In my opinion, neither a nation-wide holiday was required to celebrate our love for our Prophet nor any reason was to be given to people to actually come on road in massive numbers because of religious reasons. It is common knowledge that several criminal elements in Pakistan have made rallies and protests their pillars for criminal activities. Under the guise of protesters, in most cases religious and sometimes ethnic, they join the rally, shout slogans and ultimately lead the protest to violence by breaking into shops, cars, malls, houses and destroy both public and private properties. Within hours properties worth billions of rupees were destroyed today and the destruction continues even now.

One major cause, apart from the inflamed religious sentiments, was the fragile emotional status of the masses. The current government has utterly failed in improving economy, education, security and all aspects of life that a government should focus upon. Instead, the government has promoted nepotism, corruption, favoritism, infighting between political groups, conflicts with judiciary and a long list of unfavorable decisions that have left people disheartened and angry. Announcing a day and that based on religious sentiments is akin to handing rocket in the hands of a child and that is exactly what has happened. The masses that came out on roads were not just religiously inflamed but also frustrated with the situation of the country, resulting which the protesters became organized mobs who are taking out their frustration all over the country while criminal elements vandalizing unopposed to satisfy their needs.

The mere fact that current government is trying its best to delay both elections and writing letter to Swiss authorities with regards to cases against current President Asif Ali Zardari (who has utterly failed in fulfilling the needs of his nation, including resolving the case of his wife’s murder) was enough to rile people up. With all that has happened in the past few years and how badly the economy has performed, the government effectively shot itself in the foot.

As for the rest of the people, they certainly proved that they own Pakistan and destroy it too.

Update: I am including some of the interesting status updates that have flooded my Facebook Home Page. I am not sharing the name of the person who shared the status though.

- Do you really think that the Holy Prophet’s honour, is directly proportional to the amount of public property you destroy?

- Because some ignorant idiots said something against my Beloved Prophet (P.B.U.H)….I took my revenge by burning down my brother’s house and making him beg for his life!

- After witnessing ‘Counter strike’ version of Karachi for an year or two, we can now see the GTA version!

- People who were suppose to be on Roads and Protest were protesting on Twitter and Facebook.
And people who should be behind bars or in mental hospital are on Roads.

- Busy event whole day.. got over …finally ..prize distribution and certificates ceremony will be followed soon to the protesters by Muftis ..first second prize will go the lover of Prophet who burned and destroyed most assets…

- Why burn cinemas? They are art! They are part of history! Americans don’t own them. I am in grief

- I just want to ask Rehman Malik : “KIA GHANTA UKHAR LIA APNA MOBILE JAMMED KAR K??” (what the f**k have you achieved by jamming mobiles?)

- Its 3am and the mobile service is already closed !! P.s If you think protestors wont be able to contact eachother and reach in big numbers to kick govt ass !! Your wrong !! # lanat rehman malik

- Dear Government,
No holiday please. I am content while working in office.

Regards [with plea of peace],
Mehnat-kash nokri pesha mazdoor.

- Network phir bund.. ab her aik ghantay network aya karega.. network na hogaya electricity hogai.. (Network blocked again, now it will be resumed on hourly basis. Mobile Network is now practically same as the Electricity Network)

- Jitni ansoo gas humaray paas hai utna dengue spray hota toa bhi koi baat thi (It would have been a success story if we had as much anti-Dengue spray as we do Tear Gas). Although at the moment I’m tempted to condone the use of mustard gas.

- Any nitwit can churn up a mindless anti-Islam movie every month. Pakistan will eventually self-combust. Mission Accomplished,courtesy of our Jahil tareen awaam (uneducated masses)

- Man… These are just random young boys throwing stones at signals and breaking street lights and other things. These are just wanderers – awara Boys who are ruining our city for their enjoyment and fun. I hate them. Want to kill them for ruining the meaning behind celebrating this day. Shame on Us!

- Why not Blasphemy laws for those who are killing innocent people on the name of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)?

- I think ill permanently give up watching and reading news.

- I registered my protest against the blasphemy film by joining a PTI protest rally in Karachi today at Empress Market and the entire rally PEACEFULLY reached Karachi Press Club held a large demonstration and then disbursed. PTI had promised a peaceful protest and we ensured the same

- These looters and criminals destroying and looting the private and government properties, burning bank, vehicles, cinemas don’t look like Muslims.

- Never been such disappointed watching news even about Pakistan Politics. :S

- Has media covered any peaceful protest so far? There are many going on but no one bothers to give ‘em coverage. They only cover violence and that’s what they all care about. *sigh*

- Who needs enemies when our own citizens are bloody idiots..Make a blasphemous video and watch how we tear our own country apart..Too bloody easy.

- Giving Respect to Holy prophet by damaging our own property and killing our brothers and sisters what a sense !! bravo muslims…real bravo!!

- Hence proved . . . Pakistan is not an Islamic Nation else they know how Hazrat Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) have taught us the way we should handle different situations . . .

- If protest means destroying your own economy then why we wait for some stupid movie?

- Most of them claiming #Ishq-e-Rasool and are violently protesting since namaz-e-Jumma, all of them forgot to offer Asar Prayers, Even Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa Sallahu alaihi wassalam never missed a single namaz either in war zone or peace times.

- Dear jahiloon, kya faida mila itna sub kuch kar k? (Dear idiots, what did you achieve by all this?)

Note: The pictures in this post were downloaded from the internet and social media sites and I don’t claim to own any of these.