The Lion of Mysore Remembered

Today was the 4th of May, the day Sultan Fatteh Ali Khan 'Tipu' (1750-1799), the 'Lion of Mysore', better known to history as 'Tipu Sultan', died in the year 1799, while defending his fortress at Seringapatam against the colonial forces of the British Hon'ble East India Company (HEIC)-- in what is termed as the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War.

The Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent, or South Asia, has indeed produced very few such men of bravery, high integrity, outstanding intelligence and unique leadership and foresight. He was and remains a true hero for all of us here.

Tipu Sultan's rule in Mysore was a truly enlightened one, where tolerance and humanity prevailed-- people of all creeds and races were welcome, a proper public welfare and social services programme was in place, education and economic and trade development were encouraged and the Sultan and his officials were not averse to meeting and learning from foreigners, especially Occidentals. At the same time, they were keen to meet all such people as equals and with dignity and openness and straight-dealing. They were neither outright  slaves and toadies nor rabid, delusional, irrational fanatics.

There are lessons that our government, 'leaders' and people here in Pakistan, can very well learn from Tipu's life, times and rule, at many levels.  Above all, in his words, that it is ''better to live one day like a lion, than a hundred like a jackal''.

When we compare Tipu's life and death with that of the recently deceased Osama Bin Laden, we can see how Tipu emerges as a true, gallant Muslim and a man of honour and a proud patriot; whereas OBL is revealed as the shallow, villainous little creep and hypocrite that he truly was.

One hopes that our youth shall be wise enough to be able to discern the vast differences between these two men who lived and died in this vast subcontinent of ours, and to follow in due course the higher path of the Lion and shun the low one of the Jackal.

Afridi, the Idiot

Many people in Pakistan have big mouths-- certainly bigger than their peanut sized brains-- and the best example of this sort of bewakuf bakwasi in recent times, in Shahid Afridi the Idiot.

Shahid Afridi the Idiot is (was?) the Captain of our national Cricket Team. The bunch which recently got a rather well-deserved thrashing at the hands of the Indian team in the semi-final of the World Cup, barely a few days ago. Cricket, as most people around the world probably know, is a game, a sport, but we in South Asia somehow manage to imbue it with the spirit of a war, an inimical contest that is totally irrational and immature.

This time round, the traditional India-Pakistan rivalry in the semi-final seemed, for once, to take a back seat and a great deal of good sportsmanship and positiveness prevailed, both amongst the teams and off the ground, amongst people in both countries, at all levels, official and unofficial. There was a joyous feeling, a sense of happy contest, a serendipity that had to do with mutual goodwill between the public in both India and Pakistan-- hey, one thought, are we perhaps maturing and getting over our mutual hates and inhibitions and phobias, fostered by six decades of enimity, at last, somehow, via this great sport? Our leaders, our media, even our players exuded goodwill and respect for each other at Mohali. The self-same idiotic Afridi, as captain, said good things there (maybe drilled into his thick and bigoted little skull by someone else, it seems in retrospect). Though Pakistan lost the semis, the crowd accorded them a little of the general accolade, too.

But witness this idiot, this ape after returning home!

He went on air, with the comments that, despite the semi-finals loss, Pakistanis were still 'braver' and 'better' and 'bigger-hearted' than the Indians. Wow. How? Why? Our pocket philosopher believes this is because 'most' Pakistanis are 'Muslims' and 'Muslims are braver than Hindus'.  :(     To cap it all, a silly TV audience of nit-wits clapped themselves insane at these sagacious pronouncements.

Thus, very effectively, Mr Shahid Afridi has, by putting his big foot into his even bigger mouth, killed any goodwill or fellowship that had been engendered over the past month or so and once again shown the people in India, and the world in general, that where pure stupidity is concerned, we have no match whatsoever.  Shabash, Afridi, you bloody cheendakh.

I wonder what special criteria, or yardstick Afridi applied in this lick-spittle, Jingo-istic outburst, to 'measure' bravery? Was it some dubious historical standard or example, of the sort drilled into Urdu-medium critters of this ilk, in illiterate schools where fake and propagandist versions of history are 'taught' via sarkari textbooks? Or was it some sort of quasi-anthropological-mythological-militaristic hypothesis somehow ingrained in what passes for Afridis 'brain', of the type our mullahs pump up young lads with, to make them think they are 'superior', and then send them out to make mince-meat of poor civilians in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? Or was it just simple (the key word here) Pathan/Pukhtun machismo that spoke out, unbidden?

For Mr Afridi's information, I belong to a senior Pukhtun/Afghan tribe and clan compared to his. My ancestors are genuinely in all the history books, for deeds spread out over a couple of thousand of years at least. When the likes of him were feeding off semi-raw lamb meat in some god-forsaken hole up in the hills, we were ruling in Delhi and Kabul. What I have learnt, what I have found out from the collective ancestral wisdom and experience, is that there is no 'superior' race. People all over the world evince extraordinary courage at different times. Let go of these silly, dangerous notions-- dont forget that it was a similar folly that brought Hitler and his insane Nazi Party to power in Germany and resulted in a Second World War, and poor Germany's eventual grief.

As far as 'racial' bravery is concerned, that is an equally fallacious argument. In the annals of the military history of the British Raj in India, Mr Afridis' tribe faced the little Gurkhas from Nepal in at least 42 pitched engagements over as many years. The Gurkhas trounced them every time. If we, in Pakistan, have 'martial' races (a term coined by British colonisers to encourage recruitment of soldiers in certain less-developed areas) such as Pathans/Pukhtuns, Turks, Punjabi Jats and all, then India also has its Rajputs, Jats (Sikh and Hindu), Dogras and Marhattas.

Finally, regarding 'Muslims' in Pakistan and India-- is Mr Afridi the Learned at all aware that Muslims in India outnumber Muslims in Pakistan in at least a 3:1 ratio?! So much for his 'religious' views.

Very honestly, if I were the Pakistan Cricket Board, I'd take a big stick to Afridi's fat behind and make him smart for some days.

Yallingup

I should right out confess that I’ve never been to Australia. Indeed, I know very little about the place per se, beyond what little I can remember from school geography lessons, long ago. Thus, like the redoubtable Messrs Sellars & Yeatman (who wrote those great classics, 1066 and All That, And Now All This), all that I do know about Australia (oddly referred to as ‘Oz’ by its natives) is all that I can remember.

So what do I know/remember of Australia? Mainly, that it’s the “Antipodes”—like, in the old days, when people didn’t like someone and they’d wish them ‘at the Antipodes’—and that it’s largely inhabited by marsupials i.e. a popular local term for the selfsame natives, which include such notable creatures as Kangaroos, Koalas, Wombats, Wallabies, Captain Cook, Shane Warne, Mark Waugh and Steve Waugh etc. Apparently, because they have pouches and extra toes, these odd Australian creatures are supposed to be very good at cricket; which is a game they play a lot in the Outback, a sort of blasted heath surrounded by ocean and comprising of most of Australia. According to a friend who’s a bit of an expert on this bizarre land, “they have nothing else to do down there” and that’s why Australia is also sometimes referred to as ‘Down Under’ or ‘Under Wear/Where’ and so on.

But the strangest thing—or place?—in Australia, is Yallingup. I am attaching a photo of this place or thing, taken recently by yet another friend, who was brave enough to go to Yallingup, ‘Down Under [Wear]’. We must accord such bravery due recognition. Now, Australia has many places and things with strange, outlandish names, “imbued with mystic significance”, again according to my expert-friend. Names such as Opal, Offal, Awrful, Oh-phal, Awpull, O-pulo, and many others of similar provenance are rather common there, and generally encouraged by the government, for reasons of its own (also mystical); but one may also find unlikely and exciting place-names such as Didgerry-doo, Ooohoohoo, Yahoo, Poo-Poo, Loo (named after the second most famous battle of the Napoleonic Wars c 1815, in which Australian or ‘Ozzie’ troops, mostly blonde women archers with only one breast called ‘Anzacs’, participated with glee)—and then, again, who can forget Alice Springs (named after the famous Australian movie star, Sharon Stone, who used to ‘spring’ upon people here, rather suddenly) ; or Wollangong? Or for that matter, Wikileakia? But, as every ‘Ozzie’ will tell you, there’s “Only One Yallingup!” (Thank God).

So there you are. Yallingup. The most famous place or thing in Australia, where everything is ‘Down Under [Wear]’ but only Yalling is ‘Up’. Nobody seems to know, what or where exactly Yalling is ‘Up’ but does that really matter very much? Suffice to say, Yallingup is in Western Australia (as opposed to the Eastern side) and is an ancient locale, almost 50 years old, with a beach, some water, some sky painted rather nicely behind it, and some rocks and things to one side. You can see it for yourself thanks to the photo taken by my intrepid friend. Take a look.

Photo, courtesy ICF, 2011

A National Treasure for Sale?

All nations around the world celebrate and honor the deeds of military bravery of their troops by awarding special medals for gallantry through which these brave soldiers are forever commemorated. In Pakistan, too, we have several such medals for military gallantry awarded to a select band of heroes, since Independence in 1947.

However, the historical antecedents of the Pakistan Army (and the present Indian Army too) are even older than Independence/Partition and have their origins in the old British (colonial) Indian Army; dating back to the ‘raising’ or founding of some of the most prestigious cavalry and infantry regiments, generally in the 1840s and 1850s and in some cases, even earlier. Thus, many of the famous regiments of our brave forces today e.g. 5^th Cavalry (Probyn’s Horse), 6^th Cavalry (DCO’s Lancers), Guides Cavalry, 19^th Lancers (King George V’s Own), the Punjab Regiment, the Frontier Force Regiment, the Baluch Regiment and so on, had their beginning in colonial roots and traditions. Indeed, some of the brave sons of this soil proved their valor in various military campaigns even back then—in particular, during the First (1914-18) and Second (1939-45) World Wars and their deeds still live on.

During the two World Wars, native soldiers from these parts (especially the former NWFP and Northern Punjab) won great renown for their bravery and were awarded many medals by the British government, of which the highest, rarest and most coveted was the Victoria Cross (VC)—awarded to only a handful of soldiers between 1914 and 1947. Of this brave handful of recipients of the VC, the most significant , perhaps, was the very first such medal ever awarded to a native soldier i.e. that given to Sepoy Khudadad Khan, a gallant Minhas Rajput from the Salt Range, serving with the old 129^th Baluchis (later the 4^th Btn, 10^th Baluch Regt) at Hollebeke, Belgium, in October 1914. According to Dr S.D Najmuddin, a military historian, this medal “was earned for truly exceptional courage, after being surrounded and attacked by vastly superior numbers and left for dead…Khudadad Khan alone survived and reached back his battalion”.

Khudadad Khan was greatly honored and respected throughout Pakistan, UK and the Commonwealth even after 1947, as a brave man, and he went to many countries as a guest speaker to speak of his own experiences and was received by many heads of state and famous people. Then, alas, to our shame, a shocking tragedy occurred—in 1950, in Pakistan, his VC and some other medals, were stolen by some unscrupulous thief, or thieves. Despite registering an FIR back then, neither the thief/thieves not the stolen medal were ever found.

Many decades have passed since then. Khudadad Khan also passed away, his medal stolen but his name forever enshrined in history; and his family settled in the UK. Today, the very few VCs awarded to native soldiers are deemed as ‘national treasures’ and generally to be found in big museums, or preserved faithfully by the families of recipients. In the rare cases where these medals are sold they are extremely valuable and in major auction houses in the West, might fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars. But selling them is not easy. Prof. Khan, a colonial studies expert, informs us that “Medals such as the VC have a special historical value that goes beyond just rarity or material considerations. Often, a sense of national honor, national prestige, is associated with these. International auctioneers and dealers are very hesitant to sell them, without the prior approval of the recepients’ families and that of the government of the country they belong to. There are certain very strict international laws and procedures that are involved”.

Yet, despite such dire warnings, greed seems to be a strong motivation. Recently, according to confidential sources, Khudadad Khan’s VC, stolen in 1950 and never recovered by the police, has suddenly reappeared in the market. It has supposedly been ‘offered for private sale’ to rich collectors in Pakistan and abroad, secretly, but it is not clear who is the party making this sale. Sources believe that it is some jeweler or goldsmith either in Rawalpindi or Haripur area of Hazara. Would such a sale be legal, as the medal is a stolen one and, moreover, there are larger issues and international laws and procedures involved, as already mentioned?

Finally, another question: Pakistan has already been denuded of many precious antiques, historical relics and artifacts dating from ancient times. Will Khudadad Khan’s VC also fly away out of the country, forever, or will someone act now to trace and save this national treasure for posterity?