Monthly Archives: May 2015

Save Karachi

RCover

By Zubeida Mustafa

RUMANA Husain’s recently published Street Smart: Professionals on the Street comes as a reminder of how we are losing the city where many of us have lived and worked for most of our lives. Karachi is no more what I remember of it when I was a child.

Some categories of the blue-collar workers, as Rumana calls the people who are the subject of her book, no longer exist. Mechanisation, technology and lifestyles have made them redundant. That is change, as the new replaces the old. But the tragedy is that the street professionals no longer knit the community together as they once did. Continue reading Save Karachi

A people’s man

By Zubeida Mustafa

asadAsad Husain Shah, 35, is Project Manager at the Ali Hasan Mangi Memorial Trust (AHMMT) in Khairo Dero (KD), which was set up in 2008 by the late Mr Mangi’s granddaughter Naween. Its goal is to create a model village.

What distinguishes Asad from numerous others in his village is his sensitivity to his environment and his immense capacity to think issues through  philosophically. In fact his colleagues have nicknamed him ‘The Philosopher.’ It is this quality that gave him courage to shun the ‘privileges’ that birth bestowed upon him and adopt a lifestyle that he believes has given him self-esteem.

Born to a Syed family in Balochistan, Asad remembers his childhood as an unsettled one. His father migrated to Sindh and was constantly on the move. Being the imam of a mosque, he enjoyed  a special status in society. By virtue of his ancestry that he traced to  the Holy Prophet (PBUH), he could claim the privileged position of a pir in Sindhi culture. Continue reading A people’s man

Changing mindsets

By Zubeida Mustafa

TALKING about prisons, the chief justice of Sindh said last Saturday that more than retribution and deterrence the main purpose of imprisonment should be reform and rehabilitation. In Pakistan, where the prison system is by no means in ideal shape — Karachi jail has 6,000 prisoners when its capacity is for under 2,000 — the need to address the moral correction dimension is conspicuously inadequate.

To step into this unsavoury situation with the idea of bringing about reform is in itself an act of courage. Saleem Aziz Khan, the founder of the Society for Advancement of Health, Education and Environment (SAHEE), has nevertheless decided to meet the challenge. Along with Azhar Jamil, he launched the four-step Criminon Programme in the Karachi jail in 2007. The two now want to expand the project as they feel they are making an impact.

Having borrowed the concepts from internationally recognised and tried projects, Azhar defends the project as being “a secular programme that teaches common-sense values”. Continue reading Changing mindsets

Where are the readers?

By Zubeida Mustafa

I met Moinuddin Khan, the author of In Search of Readers, in 1962 when I joined the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA), Moin Sahib, as we have always called him, was the librarian at PIIA. He is mainly responsible for kindling in me an interest in libraries. Books have been my passion all my life but previously I did not see the library as anything more than a room to stock the books in. The librarian was the person who manned this room, rubberstamped dates on the inside of the back cover, and arranged the books in their places on the shelves when readers scattered them thoughtlessly on the table. He also supposedly kept an eye on visitors to ensure they didn’t pinch any volume! Continue reading Where are the readers?

Insecure rights

By Zubeida Mustafa

A WEEK before Sabeen Mahmud, the ever-smiling ‘active’ human rights activist was gunned down in Karachi, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan launched its annual State of Human Rights report for 2014.

It is widely believed that Sabeen’s decision to host a seminar on Balochistan invited a terrible retribution from the powers-that-be. It is indeed saddening that this staunch defender of all the rights covered by the HRCP report is no more amongst us to act as society’s conscience to remind us that each of us becomes an abettor when the state violates any right the citizen is entitled to and we remain silent onlookers. Continue reading Insecure rights