PEOPLE

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MY CARDINAL SIN

By: Nasser Yousaf

'The proper study of mankind, is man.'

Alexander Pope

Mohsin Dawar is in his younger years. He is from the North Waziristan area to the south of Peshawar. Dawar and Wazir clans inhabit the erstwhile Waziristan tribal area which is in the eye of the storm for pretty too long now.

Mohsin is clean-shaven and fair in complexion. He has big dark eyes under very prominent eyebrows which he pulls up in a way as if to touch his hairline while trying to make a statement with emphasis. His demeanour is authentically urbane. But at public places in his hometown, he has to adorn his head with the broad silky traditional turban to keep up with the Joneses.

Until some years ago, Dawar was one of the leading figures of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) of which Manzoor Pashteen is the head. Several factors must have led to the parting of ways which saw Mohsin founding his own political party. The new party, as its name suggests, flaunts a progressive agenda. Not quite surprisingly, the elderly leftist of yester years, Afrasiab Khattak figures prominently in the new party.

Before long, it would be interesting to state that Afrasiab has fiddled with progressive politics for as long as one remembers. Now he joins this party and now that, and apparently being a restless soul, at times forms his own little party consisting of a motley crowd of fun-loving Pashtun leftists. Of him it could be safely said that his armchair is his handloom on which he could be seen weaving a quixotic communist fabric that his clansmen have stubbornly refused to wear.

There's absolutely little doubt that Afrasiab must have contributed in no small measure to the parting of ways between Pashteen and Dawar. The kind of ideological zealotry that Afrasiab has exhibited, and his trust in his Pashtun clansmen, compels one into believing that had it not been for the powerful establishment, every Pashtun would have been a sporting comrade.

PTM was quite the fad until recently. This scribe too empathized with it for some time by donning its symbolic colourful Kandahari cap. Fashionable women from the upscale localities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad would attend the public meetings of PTM because this platform looked to be enticingly liberal. Young Pashtuns presenting themselves as the liberal face of their conservative-looking clansmen attracted disillusioned socialites and dandies in considerable numbers.

One recently, came across a video interview of Mohsin in which he could be heard railing against Pakistan's powerful establishment. There's little new about that as the same is a popular mantra with the self-styled Pashtun nationalists of all hues. 

For instance, Mohsin says that militant Islamists both in Pakistan and Afghanistan were created so as to create a new identity in place of the 'Afghan.' One cannot take issues with Dawar on this count; Taliban indeed were the brainchild of the powers that be. But Mohsin doesn't elucidate and would not admit that Pashtuns did so of their own volition. As we say in Pashto, people do not throw pebbles in a house that doesn't have a berry-tree. 

Why didn't Sindhis, Baluchis and Punjabis follow the Pied Piper? The schemers must have read the Pashtuns' history and capitalized on their vulnerabilities. Pashtuns have proved themselves malleable to religious influences as often as possible, and have also as conveniently ignored religious injunctions as a toddler's little pranks.

Pashtuns of the elite and somewhat liberal class love to hide behind an absurd argument that 'mullah' is not a Pashtun. These people have certainly picked up this point from the British chronicles where the British civil and military officers posted in the erstwhile British India Frontier would broach this topic with the local khans in light humour. Considering mullahs to be of an inferior breed, Pashtun landlords and literati are given to ingratiating themselves with loftier claims in terms of race and class.

If the mullah is not a Pashtun, then who are those over a million students studying in the hundreds of religious seminaries spread all across the length of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa? Are these students Rohingyas, Biharis, Red Indians, Aboriginals or the Maoris? All these students are dyed in the wool Pashtuns born of Pashtun parents in our native land. 

Circumlocution doesn't help; the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. When cornered, Pashtuns take to expressing their ordeals in lyrics and songs. A common lyrical refrain could these days be heard as a background song to the all round killings and devastations in the Pashtuns' inhabited areas. It says: zama lweya gunah da da che Pakhtun yam (It is my cardinal sin that I am a Pashtun).

Saad Ullah Jan Burk is the putative king of Pashto drama. He is very knowledgeable and can express himself very eloquently even in these late years of his life. Sprawled on a reclining settee, he sounds like a pontiff. One recently saw a clip of one of his interviews in which he could be seen berating 'The Pathans' by Olaf Caroe as a very bad book. His main charge against the book is its title. 'Who are the Pathans, why does he call us Pathans,' Mr. Burk asks angrily.

The Pathan is indeed a very good book. One has read it end to end and loves referring to it again and again. Ostensibly, it was written to introduce us to the outside world and the title 'Pathan' was used as a generic name for the varying dialects of  'Pakhthuns' and 'Pashtuns.' An adjective or two more about the people that one is writing about doesn't take away from the worthiness of that work.

We tend to lose all sense of objectivity when we give in to emotions. Saad Ullah Jan tells the interviewer that we were the descendants of neither Jews nor Aryans. There's little reason not to agree with him; he might be in possession of genealogical evidence though he doesn't produce it. He believes that our origin is much older than that. Perhaps, we, the Pashtuns, were among those who had boarded Noah's Ark to safety, one may surmise lightly. Further hyperbole will take us to the age of apes. 

Both Mohsin Dawar and Manzoor Pashteen may be very earnest. And so must be all others of their ilk. But selected reading has hardly ever helped. Existential matters need thoughtful introspection. Harping on the same theme without substantial scientific scholarship has only helped exacerbate the ordeal of the Pashtuns.

True, Pashtuns have been very successful raiders and conquerors, but they haven't proved themselves as good rulers. We, Pashtuns, cannot hold on to what we acquire. 

Two very pertinent examples about the present era would suffice in defence of this argument: Afghanistan and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan. 

Taliban were announced to have broken the shackles of slavery when NATO left in 2021. But the Irony is staring us in the face as none of the nearly four million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran is willing to return home while the educated among those in Afghanistan are eagerly awaiting to board a flight out of Afghanistan to the west.

Back here, a political party made three straight electoral victories in the name of 'change' but all that we have seen and experienced is a total and complete chaos and indeed breakdown of governance in the province.

The last two hundred years' history of the Pashtuns should provide us some food for thought, provided we need any. Sikhs and British in turn ruled us in what is now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. On the other side, Afghan Pashtuns had to wrestle and contend with the Russian and German factors in addition to the typical machinations of the British. 

We learn from our history that Durranis, Yousafzais, Khattaks, Bangash, Afridis, Mohmands, Khalils, Arbabs etc always busied themselves with selling their loyalties now to the Sikhs and now to the British. In return, some of them got unimaginable stretches of lands or 'jagirs' as gifts both from the Sikhs and British. This indeed was the state of affairs even during the time of our 17th century warrior-poet Khushal Khan Khattak.

Khushal's voluminous poetry should serve as a veritable treasure trove for those who doubt the accounts rendered by non Pashtuns. Khushal had to contend with the Mughals under Emperor Aurangzeb, but he found his own people hobnobbing with his enemies.

Ghani Khan, our most popular poet of the 20th century, had his own reasons to take on the mullah. His rich and vastly popular poetry is replete with taunts directed at the mullah, both in humour and seriously. He made fun of the mullah's gastronomical pleasures while calling his bluff to unsheath his sword.

This is exactly what the Pashtun mullah appears to have done. It's a convuluted situation, one that is not going to correct itself. The least we can do is not to be denialists. Facts are facts, as Wali Khan said. Pashtuns are the second most influential class in civil, military and judicial bureaucracy in Pakistan.