All posts by Zubeida Mustafa

Sister Mary Emily—building the ‘builders’

Archive Edition, General

By Zubeida Mustafa

“IT is a wonderful thing to work with young people,” says the Principal of the St. Josenh’s Government College for Women. “What thrills me most,” she continues, ”is the awareness I have that I am helping to build the builders of tomorrow.”

Any one who has studied at St. Joseph’s can understand her feelfngs fully for every student of the college has heard the principal speak again and again about what the goal of college education should be. She repeatedly emphasises that a college should prepare its students to face life as mature and responsible adults.

 

St. Joseph’s has changed in many ways over the years. The building, although the basic structure remains the same, has been expanded in some places. And, of course, the enrolment has grown phenomenally. Continue reading Sister Mary Emily—building the ‘builders’ →

The Quaid’s tragic last hours

Archive Edition, Guest Contributor, Politics

By Zuhair Siddiqui

geust-contTHE obscurity that still partly shrouds the childhood and earlier years of the creator of Pakistan is understandable. Some of the story will ever remain untold. The child who was destined to carve out a new State was born to an ordinary family of Khoja tradesmen practically unknown outside business circles in Karachi and Bombay.

The young Mohammad All was no prodigy and his name does not feature on the roll of honour of any school. The records of the schools that he attended tell us little beyond his registered date of birth and the dates of his joining and leaving. He left his last school, and the country, before matriculation. Continue reading The Quaid’s tragic last hours →

Rape of the law

Archive Edition, Constitution, Guest Contributor, History, Human Rights, Justice

By Zuhair Siddiqui

geust-contThe sweep of events during the past half year has been dramatic and fast, and the Bhutto and Indira regimes already seem to belong to a distant past; but as their leaders desperately try to pull themselves out of the meshes of the law, one is struck by the contrast between their past contempt for “Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence” and their present determination to exploit its mechanisms to the full.

“Certainly no man can over estimate the importance, of the mechanisms of justice. There have been greater avenues to freedom than that beaten out by the writ of habeas corpus…

“What seem, on the surface, insignificantly procedural changes — as when a man becomes entitled to a copy of the indictment upon which he is charged, or is able, in the witness-box, to testify upon his own behalf, or may appeal from the verdict of a jury and the sentence of a judge to a body of legal experts beyond them — these, for all their forbiddingly technical character, are more nearly related to freedom than the splendid sentences in which Rousseau depicts the conditions of their attainment. Continue reading Rape of the law →

Why Bhutto fell

Archive Edition, Constitution, Economy, Guest Contributor, Human Rights, Media, Politics

By Zuhair Siddiqui

geust-contTHE despotic personality is immune from many “weaknesses” to which ordinary mortals are susceptible. One of these is a willingness to admit failure. The King can do no wrong, nor can he fail.

Even in the spring of 1945, as the Reich that he had built crumbled, most of Germany lay in ruins and Russian tanks rolled into Berlin, Hitler remained unshaken in his confidence that all that he had done was right. “From first to last,” says his biographer, Alan Bullock, his will and political testament shows “not a word of regret, nor a suggestion of remorse. The fault is that of others, above all that of the Jews, for even now the old hatred is unappeased. Word for word. Hitler’s final address to the German nation could be taken from almost any of his early speeches of the 1920’s or from the pages of Mein Kampf. Twenty odd years had changed and taught him nothing.” Continue reading Why Bhutto fell →

Quaid for young readers: half-truths

Archive Edition, Book Reviews, Children and Youth, Guest Contributor, History

Reviewed by Zuhair Siddiqui

Father of our Nation: Early Life Story, by Hamid Ahmad Khan. Pp. 35. Rs. 5.00. Published by the National Book Foundation for the National Committee for the Quaid-i-Azam’s Centenary Celebrations.

geust-contAPART from being a distinguished scholar and teacher, the late Prof. Hamid Ahmad Khan wielded a facile pen in English as well as Urdu. He was, however, never known for any interest in politics, and when he died a few years ago nobody knew that he had left among his literary remains an unpublished manuscript on the early life of the founder of Pakistan. This is presumably the first part of a full biography for the benefit of the younger generation which he had planned but did not live to complete. Continue reading Quaid for young readers: half-truths →