Category: pakistan

  • New York, March 21, 2025—Pakistani authorities must immediately and unconditionally release journalist Farhan Mallick, detained in Karachi Thursday by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and cease harassing journalists in retaliation for their journalistic work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

    Mallick, founder of the independent online media platform Raftar, was arrested on accusations of running “several programs against the security establishment.” The FIA had visited Raftar’s office a day earlier, harassed Mallick and his staff, and verbally summoned him to appear at their offices on Thursday, according to a post by Raftar on social platform X. Upon his appearance, he was detained without any official legal notice.

    “The alarming detention of prominent journalist Farhan Mallick, along with the disappearance of journalist Asif Karim Khehtran and the abduction of exiled journalist Ahmed Noorani’s brothers, shows how the Pakistani government has no regard for press freedom and independent journalism. This must stop, and the state of Pakistan should respect the law,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Officials must immediately and unconditionally release Mallick and allow him and his media outlet to independently carry out their work.”

    On Friday, Mallick appeared before the Judicial Magistrate (East) court in Karachi, where the magistrate ordered him placed in FIA custody for four days. The journalist’s lawyer told the court that he was detained despite previous orders from the Sindh High Court preventing any legal action against him.

    In late 2024, Mallick said that FIA agents briefly detained him at Karachi’s airport and stopped him from boarding a flight to Doha, telling him after the flight left that he was on a travel ban list. After being subjected to two FIA inquiries the month before, he had petitioned the Sindh High Court to stop the harassment, he said.

    Raftar, whose YouTube channel has about 750,000 followers, describes itself as “a dynamic platform dedicated to driving social change through the power of storytelling.” The outlet produces reports and documentaries on economic, political, and security issues in Pakistan. Mallick was previously news director of privately owned TV channel Samaa TV.

    CPJ’s messages for comment to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar have received no response.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • They say only bad news from Balochistan makes the headlines–Pakistan’s largest and most impoverished province marred in a decades long insurgency. The local newspapers are flooded with the news of people being killed in bomb blasts, target killings and the loss of lives in incidents of terrorism. However, amid this backdrop of turmoil, a problem that is just as terrible is subtly developing: climate change. Its perennial consequences are changing the lives of women and children, particularly in the remote and underprivileged parts of Balochistan.

    Noora Ali, 14, was oblivious to the temperature shifts because she had grown up in Turbat, a city around 180 kilometres Southwest of Gwadar, the center of CPEC( China-Pakistan Economic Corridor)–a bilateral project to would facilitate trade between China and Pakistan valued at $46 billion. There was frequent flooding during the monsoon season and blazing heatwaves during the summer, with temperatures rising above 51 centigrade. Compared to other cities in Balochistan, Turbat experiences horrible summers and typical winters. As a result, the majority of wealthy families in the city travel to Gwadar, Quetta, or Karachi during the sweltering summers and return to Turbat during the winters. The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) moved Noora’s father, who works there, to the neighboring Coastal city of Gwadar in 2022.

    In February of 2022, the sea seemed calmed while boats of the fishermen busily dotted the waters of the Padi Zir (Gwadar’s West bay). It was a typical Thursday morning when rain started pouring down. The rain was so intense that the sea became wild. The roads were washed away, bridges collapsed, streets were inundated with flood water, and the port city became completely disconnected from the rest of the country. Back in Turbat, her ancestral hometown was also submerged under flood water.

    Noora had also heard from her schoolmates that Gwadar and Turbat had never experienced such heavy and intense rainfall before. She knew and felt that the temperature of her native city was rising and that Gwadar beneath flood water didn’t seem normal. “This is due to climate change,” her elder brother tells her. At the age of 14, most youth in Pakistan’s Balochistan have no idea what climate change and global warming are, but they are already feeling it impacts.

    Like Noora, thousands of children in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Afghanistan are at the risk of climate related disasters, as per the UNICEF 2021 Children’s Climate Risk Index. The report further reiterates that children in these countries have vigorously been exposed to devastating air pollution and aggressive heatwaves, with 6 million children confronting implacable floods that lashed across these countries in the July of 2024.

    On November 11 and 22, 2024, over 20 youths urged the world leaders to come up with plans to mitigate the impacts of climate change on children at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Among those 20 resolute children was 14-years-old Zunaira Qayyum Baloch, representing the 241.5 million children and women of Pakistan.

    Dressed in her traditional Balochi attire, with a radiant smile and resolute in her commitment, Zunaira Qayyum Baloch has startled everyone. Hailing from the far-flung district of Hub in the Southwest of the Pakistan’s Balochistan, Mrs. Baloch went to represent the children of a country whose carbon footprint is next to zero, yet suffering some of the worst climate-related disasters. Her message to world leaders was clear: step up and combat climate-induced inequalities, particularly those affecting women and children.

    She had always remained conscious about the changing climate in her city, observing the floods of 2022 that had wrecked havoc in Hub Chowki, initiating awareness programmes and youth advocacy guide training in her home city to advocate for girls right to education and climate change.

    “After my father passed away, my mother became the sole breadwinner. She helped us get an education and met all our requirements,” Zunaira explains. “During the catastrophic rains of 2022, an incident changed my perspective on climate change. Rain water had accumulated in the roof of our home and streets were flooded with water. The destruction was so overwhelming, and I realised that such events were no longer rare but increasing constantly.”

    Zunaira Baloch basically hails from the Zehri town of the Khuzdar district. With her journey starting from the Zehri town of Balochistan, she became completely determined to make a difference–initiating awareness drives in her community and educating the people particularly children about climate resilience.

    During the COP29, she expressed her concerns with the experts about how Pakistan, particularly Balochistan has been detrimentally affected by climate disasters like frequent floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and droughts. Lamenting that climate change was a child-rights crisis, she told the world how changes in the climate had jeopardised the lives of millions of women and children throughout the world.

    Asking the world leaders to join determined children like her to combat climate change, she addressed them in the COP29: “Climate change matters to me, and it should matter to you too.”

    Both Noora and Zunaira are children’s of a backward region of the world, grappling with the harrowing reality of climate change. Given that Noora represents those children unaware of the technicalities of climate change, Zunaira is a resolute hope for Balochistan, leading children like Noora to recognize and combat the stark reality of climate crisis.

    Stark Reality of the Past

    Bibi Dureen, 80, is a witness of how climate is continuously transforming. With wrinkles on her face and a pointed nose, she hails from the outskirts of the Kech district in a town called Nasirabad.

    “The seasons are changing,” she says, her voice laced with sorrow. “The heatwaves have become more aggressive and floods are common. It all started in 1998 in Turbat. Then in 2007, a devastating flood destroyed our homes, date palm trees, livestock–and worst of all, it took lives.” She pauses, her wrinkled hands trembling.

    As she talks to me in front of her thatched cottage, through which sunlight streams in, tears well up in her eyes as she recalls a haunting childhood memory. “I was a small child at that time. It was a pitch-black night and the rain was pouring down mercilessly when a man came shouting that the flood water had reached the fields.” She exclaims, “My mother, desperate to save what little we had, sent her only son, Habib, 16–our family’s only breadwinner–to find the only cow we had in the fields. Neither the cow nor Habib came back. Later some men found his dead body in the jungle.”

    In June 2007, when the Cyclone Yemyin hit the coast of Balochistan, it wrought unprecedented damage to the province, particularly Turbat, Pasni and Ormara. It rendered 50,000 homeless within 24 hours, including children. According to reports 800,000 were affected and 24 went missing.

    The 2022 floods had a devastating impact across Pakistan, Balochistan being one of the hardest-hit. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) reported that 528 children had died nationwide, 336 from Balochistan.

    Tragedy struck again in 2024 when torrential rains engulfed 32 districts of Balochistan, particularly the port city of Gwadar and Kech district. The PDMA put the death toll at 170, 55 of which were children.

    These statistics highlight how urgently appropriate plans and proper strategies for disaster preparedness and loss mitigation in Balochistan must be developed. While extreme weather events such as floods become more common, the need to fight climate change has never been greater.

    The Double Crisis Facing Girls: Heatwaves, period poverty

    Regions in Balochistan have seen severe heatwaves in the past few decades. In May 2017, the mercury rose to a record breaking 53.5 centigrade in Turbat, making the district the second hottest locale in 2017 after Mitribah, Kuwait. During heatwaves, cases of fainting and health-related illness among residents, particularly among children are common. According to a 2023 report by the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Balochistan has seen a 1.8°C rise in average temperature over the past three decades, leading to longer and harsher heatwaves.

    Dr Sammi Parvaz, a gynaecologist at the teaching hospital in Turbat, relates that rising temperatures in the district not only contribute to higher dropout rates among school-age girls, but their menstrual cycle is also affected.

    “According to the recent research of the National Institute of Health (NIH), menstruation … is severely affected in countries which are vulnerable to climate change and Pakistan is one them,” she explains. “The menstruation in girl children living in extreme heat, such as in Turbat and Karachi, becomes very intense, painful and with cramps.”

    Dr Sammi further elaborates that this phenomenon is linked to the increased release of cortisol and estrogen, the hormones which regulate the female reproductive cycle. “Girl children exposed to harsher environments such as severe heat or cold, experience hormonal imbalances leading to irregular periods and severe menstrual cramps. The hospitals in Turbat are frequented by patients suffering from intense cramps or irregular periods.”

    Hygiene becomes another pressing issue during floods, especially for young girls. Research published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health states that floodwater contains lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other chemicals which are cited as causes of irregular periods.

    Overcoming the stigma around periods is a daunting task, particularly in small towns in Balochistan where cultural norms and practices have a strong hold on communities. During floods, thousands of girls struggle with menstruation amid the disasters and lack of menstruation products. For instance, after the 2022 floods, 650,000 pregnant women and girls in Pakistan were without essential maternal care, with a significant proportion from Balochistan.

    Amid all this chaos, climate activists like Zunaira Qayyum Baloch helped raise awareness while women like Maryam Jamali work directly on the ground to ensure that every women has rations in her household and had access to feminine hygiene products during catastrophes.

    Madat Balochistan–a non-profit organisation–has supported 31,000+ people across 34 districts in Sindh and Balochistan. With its major work concentrated in and around Quetta, Dera Bugti, Jaffarabad, Jhal Magsi, Sohbatpur, and Khuzdar, the proudly women-led NGO prioritizes women and girls in its work because even on the frontlines, they are bearing most of the cost of climate change, according to its co-founder, Maryam Jamali.

    “Our conversations on climate change vulnerability often treat everyone as ‘equal’ in terms of impact, when that is far from the truth. Vulnerability is a multi-dimensional concept and in a country like Pakistan where most of the women and girls are pushed to the margins of society in every way possible–we cannot just overlook their struggles,” says Jamali.

    Take the 2022 floods, for example–the most recent catastrophes etched in our memories. Women and girls were responsible for most of the labour when it came to evacuating to safer places. As soon as they did, their needs when it came to menstruation or pregnancy care were completely ignored by aid agencies as they sent out packages or set up medical camps. Most of our work at Madat was compensating for things like this. We worked with midwives to ensure that women who could not stand in lines for ration received it regardless or women who did not want to interact with male doctors didn’t have to. In our housing projects, we prioritize women especially those who don’t have a patriarch in the household because that severely limits their access to resources for rehabilitation.

    Floods, heatwaves, and other natural calamities are gender-neutral. However, girls are more likely to be negatively affected. According to the UN Assistant Secretary-General Asako Okai, when disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men. In Pakistan, 80% of people displaced by climate disasters are women and children, and the province of Balochistan is a stark reflection of this statistic.

    In patriarchal societies, women and girls are the primary caregivers of the family, and they are the only ones growing crops, doing household chores, and fetching firewood and water. With little or no potable water nearby, girls have to travel far to help their parents, making them vulnerable.

    These household responsibilities create an educational gap, and girls are taken out of schools in Balochistan during floods. With Pakistan’s lowest girl literacy rate at just 27 per cent , the International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that the province of Sindh and Balochistan have seen greater educational disruptions due to heatwaves and floods, with the 2022 flood causing more educational institutions closure than the combined two year COVID-19 pandemic.

    With 47 percent of it’s child population out of school, extreme heatwaves and recurrent flooding in Balochistan have further compounded this absenteeism. For instance, the 2022 flood damaged or destroyed 7,439 schools in the province, affecting the education of over 386,600 students, 17,660 teachers, and staff members. Reports also mention that most of the government schools were used as flood shelters in the province. In the 2024 floods, 464 schools were again damaged.

    The destruction of educational infrastructure has forced many children out of school, contributing to the province’s high out-of-school rate.

    Monsoon Brides during floods

    Though floodwater is no longer accumulating in the Mulla Band Ward of Gwadar district in Balochistan, the damage it has wrought will stay with the people for a long time for many years. For 16-year-old Gul Naz–a pseudonym–the loss has been devastating.

    She was only 16 years when flood water entered their home in 2022. Her father, being a fisherman, struggled to make ends meet, as the sea was completely closed for fishing, cutting off the family’s only source of income.

    “I was in the Jannat Market and when I returned home, I was told by my mother that my marriage has been fixed to a man twice my age in exchange for money.” She discloses that her parents were given Rs.50,000 ($178.50) which is a whooping sum for a poor family who survive on around one dollar a day.

    “I have two kids now, and I am a child raising a child.”

    The sadness in Gul Naz’s voice is palpable, and she isn’t alone in her predicament. During floods and emergency situations, families in Balochistan resort to desperate means for survival. The first and most obvious way is to give their daughters away in marriage for financial relief–a practice that usually surges during monsoon season, earning the name monsoon brides.

    In Pakistan’s Sindh province this trend is more prevalent, with a spike in the number of monsoon brides during the last flash floods of 2022. In the Khan Mohammad Mallah Village, Dadu district, approximately 45 were married off in that year, according to an NGO Sujag Sansar which works to reduce child marriages in the region.

    Pakistan stands sixth in the world in marriages below age 18. While there has been a reduction in child marriages in Pakistan in recent years, UNICEF warns that extreme weather patterns put the girl children at risk.

    Madat Balochistan has also been in the forefront in reducing child marriages in Balochistan. “It’s not intuitive to think of girls’ education or loan relief or housing provision as measures to build climate change resilience, but in our contexts these are the very things that drive vulnerability to climate change,” says Maryam Jamali. “We have been working on supporting farmers with loan relief so that young girls aren’t married off to compensate for the financial burden of loans after a lost harvest. We are also working on initiatives for sustainable livelihoods for women as well as ensuring that young girls in all the communities we work in have access to education despite geographic or financial limitations.”

    Maryam Jamali thinks that gender inequality is one of the biggest aspects here which makes it absolutely necessary for a region like Balochistan, where physical vulnerability and socio-economic vulnerability is high, to have young girls at the decision-making table.

    “Activists like Zunaira can ensure that when we come up with solutions for climate change, we contextualize them through a gender lens and make sure that this does not become another instance of taking away women’s agency, but becomes an opportunity to involve them in climate change policy decision-making,” Maryam discloses. “ It is rewarding to see the girls we support do great things. One of our girls from Musakhel is studying at Cadet College Quetta, the first in her family to be able to pursue education beyond 8th grade.”

    The Way forward

    “Extreme weather can fuel conflict and be a threat multiplier,” says Advocate Siraj Gul, a lawyer at the Balochistan High Court, Quetta, citing the recent research published in the journal Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.

    Hailing from the Makran division , he stresses that the decades long running insurgency in Balochistan stems from human rights violations, inequality and government negligence. “Climate related catastrophes further destabilise the region’s development. For instance, there was a surge in the number of protests during the 2022 floods in Gwadar, Lasbela and Turbat, reflecting the deep frustration and despair of the people.”

    According to Mr. Gul, if children like Zunaira are given a platform to speak and work for Balochistan, they are not merely advocating for the environment; they are working for a more peaceful and tranquil region.

    In the impoverished regions of the world where climate change fuels droughts, flood and heatwaves, children are the ones to bear. Some are taken out of school, pushed into labor or given away in marriage but if empowered, can become advocates for change like Zunaira Qayyum Baloch. The world needs to provide climate resilient infrastructure and child-oriented disaster relief programs while the global leaders at COP30 had better ensure that climate-torn regions like Balochistan receive the technical and financial support they desperately need.

    The post When the Earth Heats Up: Zunaira Baloch and the Human Cost of Climate Change in Balochistan first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Pakistan is one of the largest countries in South Asia. Ever since its formation in 1947, it has been politically dominated by a coalition of landed and military elites who rule over millions of impoverished citizens mainly by force. Attempts to break this dominance and establish a truly popular government independent of the military establishment have mostly failed. Meanwhile, the ruling classes in Pakistan have been unable to industrialize and democratize the state. Their deep dependence on rent and the interests of the imperialists are in complete opposition to the popular aspirations and sentiments of the people.

    The post Will Pakistan Remain A US Proxy Or Become A Regional Partner? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Media’s Role in Fueling Misinformation

    British society has been dealing with organised child exploitation through grooming gangs for an extended period. Official data contradicts media perceptions about who engages in these criminal activities by showing Pakistani men are not the main offenders. Official Home Office data indicates that defendants facing child sexual abuse prosecution in England and Wales are predominantly white since their number reaches 88 percent. News reports on offences by South Asian individuals receive unusually high attention from media outlets thus perpetuating racial misconceptions that deepen societal rifts.

    The Origins of a Racialized Narrative

    Forces of public discussion concerning grooming gangs grew stronger as three important cases occurred in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford during the early 2010s. Policing and child protection institutions revealed organisational breakdowns in their investigations while media discussion primarily focused on the racial backgrounds of the offenders. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) produces reports showing child exploitation happens throughout all racial and social backgrounds but Pakistani and South Asian men still face political accusations as chief perpetrators.

    The selective nature of this presentation has occurred previously. A series of investigative reports from The Times during 2011 identified Pakistani men as responsible for most grooming incidents. The overall issue of child sexual abuse transcends specific ethnic groups even though select cases linked South Asian offenders to the crime. Statistics from the National Crime Agency (NCA) confirm that white men carry out most cases of organised child exploitation but these crimes remain substantially underreported in the media.

    How the Stereotype Affects Pakistani Families

    The institutionalised stereotyping of Pakistani families in the United Kingdom has produced severe negative results. The students of Pakistani descent experience school discrimination through stereotype abuse which links them to sex exploitation gangs. A 2020 Runnymede Trust report documented Pakistani students who described teacher and peer bullying together with being labelled as “rapists” and experiencing suspicion. Community members and employers also share the same prejudice toward Pakistani families that starts in educational institutions.

    Research shows doses of bigotry against Muslim communities have grown because of recent media accounts. Statistics gathered by Tell MAMA demonstrate that reports about South Asian male grooming incidents led to an increase in Islamophobic incidents. Social isolation and vandalism attacks against Pakistani businesses and their families can be found in certain areas.

    Systemic Failures in Addressing Child Exploitation

    The genuine matter at hand concerns institutional missteps rather than the ongoing focus on ethnicity in political discussions. Vulnerable children received failed protection from both the police force and social services departments and government agencies because these institutions did not respond to abuse reports because of limited resources and poor management. The Jay Report (2014) uncovered that agency authorities neglected multiple reports of child exploitation in the Rotherham child abuse scandal for more than a decade.

    The collective resources should move away from ethnic considerations so they focus on enhancing child protection legislation while training police forces and improving victim assistance services. The Children’s Commissioner has reported significant issues in both the reporting and handling of child sexual abuse incidents regardless of the racial background of abusers.

    Why Pakistanis Are Targeted in This Narrative

    The way grooming gang discussion has turned racial shows how British society generally views Asians and Muslims. Right-wing media together with politicians exploit this topic to advance immigration control measures and strengthen Muslim community monitoring. The English Defence League (EDL) uses Pakistani and Muslim communities as a focal point to rally their members while they organise protests that lead to violent incidents.

    Throughout history the United Kingdom tends to blame minority communities for addressing broader social issues. The criminal investigation of Pakistani men for grooming gangs matches historical patterns of moral panics that previously targeted black muggers during the 1970s and Irish immigrants throughout the 20th century. Extending responsibility to an individual ethnicity creates diversion from institutional breakdowns that exist in police organisations and welfare agencies.

    A Call for Evidence-Based Solutions

    To combat child exploitation effectively, the UK must adopt a zero-tolerance policy that is not influenced by racial biases. Recommendations include:

    • Improved police training to handle child exploitation cases effectively.

    • Better data collection on grooming gangs that avoids racial profiling.

    • Stronger victim support services to ensure survivors receive adequate care.

    • Accountability for institutional failures, including oversight of law enforcement agencies.

    The UK is implementing key recommendations to combat child exploitation effectively. These include improved police training, better data collection, stronger victim support services, and accountability for institutional failures. Police training should focus on recognising signs of exploitation and understanding grooming complexities. Data collection methods should focus on behaviours and patterns, avoiding racial profiling. Stronger victim support services should ensure survivors receive adequate care and support. Independent oversight bodies should monitor law enforcement and other institutions. Additional strategies include community engagement and awareness campaigns, partnership and collaboration between law enforcement, social services, schools, and community organisations, and the development and enforcement of robust legal frameworks. These strategies aim to move towards a more equitable approach to combating child exploitation. For more insights, refer to the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s report.

    National authorities in the UK execute essential recommendations to overcome child exploitation better. The UK is adopting four primary measures to enhance child exploitation combat through upgraded police teaching combined with better statistical data acquisition and enhanced victim care programs and institutional oversight systems. The training curriculum for police officers must teach them to detect exploitation indicators as well as complex grooming procedures. Data collection systems should analyse behavioural activities and detect patterns instead of adapting racially biased approaches. The delivery of victim support should achieve complete care and support for survivors through improved service approaches.

    External supervision institutions need to monitor both law enforcement departments along with other institutions. Effective child exploitation prevention strategies necessitate active collaboration between law enforcement, social services, schools, and community organisations, as well as community outreach and public education programs. Strict legal systems are also necessary. Such measures work toward building a more fair method of fighting child exploitation. The complete UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s report contains additional detailed information about this subject.

    Conclusion: Separating Fact from Fiction

    The obsessive focus on Pakistani males in grooming gang stories produces misleading information which proves detrimental to both social harmony and genuine investigation. Racial stereotyping exacerbates social tensions, obscures institutional shortcomings, and places an undue burden on communities that bear no responsibility. The UK needs to stop blaming racial groups for its child protection problems while establishing complete child safety measures that approach the fundamental causes of child exploitation. Society guarantees child protection for children of every background through such measures alone.

    The post The UK’s Grooming Gang Narrative first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ruttie Jinnah and M.A. Jinnah IMAGE/Dawn

    Read Part 1
    .

    Drugs

    Ruttie’s rush to dash off to Paris was to get drugs. Mrs. Naidu’s letters from Paris and New York to Padmaja make that clear.

    While in Paris in 1929, Mrs. Naidu incidentally discovered from a princess (cousin of queen of Italy), who knew Ruttie, the reason for her visits to Paris. She said that “Madam Zhinna” had been getting drugs through “the long needle,” that is, morphine since her Paris visit in 1924. The concerned princess informed Mrs. Naidu that she had warned Ruttie: “she was ruining her life with drugs and how all her beauty was being destroyed.” (Reddy, p. 314-15.) But Ruttie was in no mood to listen; she just wanted to cope with the crisis, chaos, and commotion that were destroying her from the inside.

    Incidentally, Mrs. Naidu was told the same thing by another person, Princess Journevitch (wife of a famous Russian sculptor), with whom she had lunch in New York in 1929 who said that years ago in Paris Madam “Zhinna’s” drug habit was playing havoc with her gorgeousness and life. (Reddy, p. 364-65.)

    In the US, Mrs. Naidu learned from Syud Hossain that Ruttie was taking drugs while she was in the US. Hossain alerted her of the harmful effects. (For religious violation, Gandhi had ejected Hossain out of India, see note <9> below.)

    That means halfway through their marriage, Ruttie started taking drugs the kamikaze way, i.e., carelessly taking drugs and ignoring warnings of their harmful effects on her mental and physical health. It must have been depressing to watch such a brilliant person travel over 4,000 miles to find solace in drugs.

    Moved out

    On January 4, 1928, Ruttie and Jinnah got down from the train at Bombay’s Victoria train station. They came back after attending the Muslim League session in Calcutta. Mrs. Naidu was on the same train too. Ruttie informed Jinnah that she’s moving to Taj Mahal Hotel. She left with Mrs. Naidu and got a room next to hers. Jinnah went to South Court alone. Kanji helped Ruttie in moving her belongings. Mrs. Naidu’s letter to her daughters:

    “It is extraordinary how few people have even an inkling of what has happened in the very heart of Bombay. Fortunately, everyone is so used to seeing her [Ruttie] here at all hours [that is, in Mrs. Naidu’s room] that no one suspects her being here with her cats and he at home alone.”

    Reddy, p. 333.

    Ruttie and Jinnah’s separation had disturbed Mrs. Naidu more than the couple who got separated, as is obvious the way she put it to her friend Syud Hossain: “The really tragic part of it is that both seem so relieved.” (Ibid, p. 336.)

    An old Parsee friend tried to reunite them. Jinnah shouldered the blame:

    “It is my fault: we both need some sort of understanding we cannot give.”

    In April, Ruttie, joined by her mother Dinbai Petit, left for Europe. Jinnah was already in London with his friend Chaman Lal who had gone to Geneva to attend the ILO (International Labour Organization) Conference.

    Chamanlal then went to Paris. Upon learning of Ruttie’s illness, he headed to the Champs Elysee clinic where Ruttie was bedridden and had 106 degree fever. Ruttie handed him a book of poems by Oscar Wilde and requested him to read. Chamanlal:

    “When I came to the closing lines of The Harlot’s House:

    ‘And down the long and silent street,
    The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
    Crept like a frightened girl.’

    “I looked up and Ruttie was in coma.”

    Chamanlal’s impression of Ruttie:

    “… I had always admired Ruttie Jinnah so much: there is not a woman in the world today to hold a candle to her for beauty and charm. She was a lovely, spoiled child, and Jinnah was inherently incapable of understanding her. …”

    Ritu Marwah, Jinnah’s daughter, India Currents.

    Chaman Lal informed Jinnah that Ruttie wasn’t feeling well. Jinnah, who was in Ireland, rushed to Paris where he booked a room at George V. Jinnah went to the clinic as Chaman Lal waited for him at a nearby cafe. Jinnah returned after three hours in a relaxed mood and informed him Ruttie was to be transferred to a new clinic with a new medical adviser.

    Money was no deterrent. Jinnah held constant vigil by her side. He stayed with Ruttie at the clinic for over a month. He took care of her and even shared the clinic food with her. She recovered and left for Bombay but without Jinnah.

    Could any one have saved their marriage?

    Interceder

    The thought that crosses one’s mind when reading Ruttie and Jinnah’s story is they needed intercession and someone should have mediated to save their marriage. Was there anyone who could have saved their marriage? The only person who had such credentials and could have gotten any success in reconciling Jinnah and Ruttie was Sarojini Naidu — a devoted friend of Jinnah and a mother figure to Ruttie. And she, in fact, did try to mediate.

    Actually, it was the pitiable state of Ruttie that had prompted Mrs. Naidu to make an effort. Mrs. Naidu’s letter to Padmaja:

    “Well, Ruttie has only us really. Her own people are strangers to her. Her poor mother loves her but drives her distracted … She loves us and trusts us and so she comes to me for sanctuary., poor child. She feels safe here. Safe in her soul.”

    Reddy, p. 335-6.

    It was her genuine love for Ruttie that led Mrs. Naidu to talk to her very good friend Jinnah. Mrs. Naidu continues:

    “Jinnah has grown so dumb. No one can even approach him. I think he is hurt to the core because she left him like that, almost without warning. In any case no one can interfere with him. He is too hard and proud and reserved for even an intimate friend to intrude beyond a certain point. All he says is, ‘I have been unhappy for ten years. I cannot endure it any longer. If she wants to be free I will not stand in her way. Let her be happy. But I will not discuss the matter with anyone. Please do not interfere.’ And he is I suppose like a stone image in his loneliness and Ruttie is, although reveling in what she believes to be the beginning of liberty for her–liberty costs too dear sometimes and is not worth the price.”

    Ibid, 336.

    Mrs. Naidu was writing to her elder daughter but her younger Leilamani was not far from her mind. She continued:

    “I am writing a line to Papi today. Poor child. She must like Ruttie be clamouring for ‘freedom.’ This freedom!!”

    Ibid.

    The only person whose mediation could have bore some fruit, failed. If Mrs. Naidu couldn’t, then probably no one could.

    Author Sheela Reddy believes Ruttie should have consulted Gandhi.

    Could Gandhi have played the savior?

    Reddy (p. 271.) writes: “… Ruttie, without sharing Jinnah’s animus against Gandhi, turned away from the one man who might have saved her.”

    Ruttie, as far as her own life or marriage were concerned, was a very private person. She never mentioned the inner turmoil she was going through or her marital problems even to Kanji, one of her best friends. With Mrs. Naidu and her daughter Padmaja, she was close in that regard and would vent her exasperation and would tell them her problems and frustrations.

    Gandhi and Ruttie met a few times. They did correspond sometimes. Once Ruttie donated money to his fund for Jallianwala Bagh memorial. Jinnah didn’t know about it — not that Ruttie was hiding it from him, it was an spontaneous act. Gandhi wrote in his newspaper column:

    “Mrs Jinnah truly remarked when she gave her mite to the fund, the memorial would at least give us an excuse for living.”

    Reddy, p.230.

    Gandhi’s April 30, 1920, letter to Ruttie asked her to cajole Jinnah to learn Gujarati and Hindustani (a mix of Hindi/Urdu):

    “Please do remember me to Mr. Jinnah and do coax him to learn Hindustani or Gujarati. If I were you, I should begin to talk to him in Gujarati or Hindustani. There is not much danger of you forgetting your English or your misunderstanding each other, is there? … Yes, I would ask this even for the love you bear me.”

    (Kanji was another person to be reminded by Gandhi that his mother tongue was Gujarati. See the letter written in 1947 here. ( https://pennds.org/doing-research/exhibits/show/dwarkadas/gandhi )

    In a June 28, 1919 letter to Jinnah, Gandhi had urged him to learn those languages:

    “I have your promise, that you would take up Gujarati and Hindi as quickly as possible. May I then suggest that like Macaulay you learn at least one of these languages on your return voyage? You will not have Macaulay’s time during the voyage, i.e., six months, but then you have not the same difficulty that Macaulay had.”

    Unlike Ruttie, Jinnah’s background was that of a middle class family from Gujarat and spoke Kuchchhi and Gujarati “beautifully,” per Chagla. His Hindustani was not that good. Both Jinnah and Ruttie were comfortable speaking English. Gandhi knew his letter was unnecessary, but couldn’t resist playing politics.

    (For Jinnah’s Gujarati handwriting, see “Rare Speeches and Documents of Quaid-E-Azam,” compiler, Yahya Hashim Bawany (Karachi: Mr. Arif Mukati, 1987, p. 39. Jinnah was answering questions for a Gujarati monthly Vismi Sadi or Twentieth Century in 1916. The questions were about favorite author, flower, etc. Jinnah is known as Quaid-E-Azam that translates to a Great Leader. See also Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh, “History: Becoming Jinnah,” Dawn,)

    In the above letter, Gandhi also asked Jinnah to inform Ruttie,

    “Pray tell Mrs Jinnah that I shall expect her on her return to join the hand-spinning class that Mrs Banker Senior and Mrs Ramabai, a Punjabi lady, are conducting.”

    Ruttie never joined the spinning classes. (Her mother Lady Petit had joined and she used to go to those classes).

    In 1924, Gandhi wanted Ruttie to convince Jinnah to boycott British and all other foreign goods. Ruttie didn’t see any political wisdom or practicality in such actions. (Dwarkadas, p. 18. Kanji had similar ideas as Ruttie and he elaborated those in an interview to the Evening News of India May 1924. Ibid. p. 19-20.)

    The question remains: would Gandhi have been the right person to save Ruttie?

    Looking at Gandhi’s

    • married life,
    • his views on sex,
    • his relations with several women (including philosopher/poet Rabindranath Tagore’s niece Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, an educationist and political activist, and
    • young, golden-haired, blue-eyed Danish beauty,” Esther Faering1, a devout Christian missionary), and
    • his mistreatment of his wife Kasturba,
    • his constant juggling to please and/or to save his girls/women friends from Kasturba’s justified wrath,
    • his experiments of sleeping with young girls to control his sexual urge,
    • his idea of restricting sexual activities to just procreation without any element of pleasure,
    • asking husbands and wives to consider each other as brothers and sisters,
    • and his so many other eccentricities don’t seem the right qualities to qualify him for that role.

    Here is one of the Gandhi advices to Indians:

    “It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife.”

    B. R. Gowani, “Was Gandhi Averse to climax?”

    Very strange and unhealthy advice, indeed. The institution of marriage was and, to a great extent, is still a legal outlet for most people to relieve themselves of troublesome hormones.

    And what was the guarantee that Gandhi, a hardcore politician, wouldn’t have played Ruttie’s request for help to further humiliate Jinnah?2

    Ruttie was a very reserved person when it came to her personal life and so would have never allowed Gandhi to play any role in resolving any of her problems. Gandhi’s intervention wouldn’t have solved anything but could have had detrimental outcome.

    Let’s assume that Ruttie had approached Gandhi for help. (Jinnah would not have stopped Ruttie from approaching Gandhi.) The most Gandhi could have done was to convince Ruttie to join his Ahmadabad ashram where, undoubtedly he would have given her special treatment (as he had offered to Motilal’s daughter Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit who was sent there to wean her away from her Muslim husband). For Ruttie, the stay there would have been worse than the “slave” like life with Jinnah. She was a free bird and thus couldn’t be caged — not only she would have flown out of the ashram in no time but would have probably persuaded many other ashramites to flee with her.

    Another thing Gandhi would have done was to assign Ruttie some social or political work to keep her busy and thus caused her to forget her depression and other problems. But then, she was already doing some of those things with Kanji, but it seems that she didn’t stay too long in those ventures. Dewan Chamanlal had asked her to join trade union but she declined that.

    The final letter

    On a ship back to India, Ruttie poured out her torment and hurt in her letter to Jinnah:

    S. S. Rajputana.
    Marseilles 5 Oct 1928.

    Darling – thank you for all you have done. If ever in my bearing your over tuned senses found any irritability or unkindness – be assured that in my heart there was place only for a great tenderness and a greater pain – a pain my love without hurt. When one has been as near to the reality of Life – (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon.

    I have suffered much sweetheart because I have loved much. The measure of my agony has been in accord to the measure of my love.

    Darling I love you – I love you – and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you – only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls.

    I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that our tragedy which commenced with love should also end with it.

    – Darling Goodnight and Goodbye

    Ruttie

    I had written to you at Paris with the intention of posting the letter here – but I felt that I would rather write to you afresh from the fullness of my heart. R.

    Shagufta Yasmeen, “Ruttie Jinnah: Life and Love” (Islamabad: Shuja Sons, no date, p. 71-2, for the original letter in Ruttie’s handwriting). For online, see Letters of Note.

    Final months

    Ruttie left Paris just a few days before Mrs. Naidu arrived on October 10. Mrs. Naidu wrote to Padmaja:

    “I think Jinnah tried very hard to get her to come back.” “But Ruttie is, so I am told, beyond all appeal. Her health is still very precarious. But I have had no talk with Jinnah as yet.”

    Reddy, p. 348-9.

    She met him the next day and discussed the political situation in India where politicians were waiting for Jinnah’s arrival and response to Nehru Report.

    Once in India, he got busy. On December 28, at the All-Parties Convention in Calcutta, Jinnah’s demand for 33% Muslim representation in the central legislature was met with derision. One of the Congress leaders Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru ridiculed him and said give whatever this “spoilt child was asking for and be finished with it.” (Wolpert, p. 100.) M. R. Jayakar, spokesman for the Hindu Mahasabha, a communal outfit, said Jinnah represents “a small minority of Muslims.” (Ibid. p. 101.) (The Muslim population was around 25%. Jinnah wanted some kind of parity to secure Muslims with the majority Hindu population.)

    Jinnah calmly requested:

    “… Minorities cannot give anything to the majority….Believe me there is no progress of India until the Musalmans and Hindus are united, and let no logic, philosophy or squabble stand in the way of coming to a compromise and nothing will make me more happy than to see a Hindu-Muslim union.”

    Ibid.

    He also said:

    “We are all sons of the soil. We have to live together… If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.”

    A. G. Noorani, “Assessing Jinnah,” Frontline ( https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30205988.ece )

    Jinnah’s plea fell on deaf ears; he failed miserably. (This is a universal problem, the majority lacks a genrous spirit to concede something concrete to the minority which could make it feel secure.)

    All through January and February 1929, Ruttie remained ill which in turn made her depressed.

    Depression was not restricted to Ruttie, it affected many of her friends in her age group or younger, Reddy notes (p. 352). Mrs. Naidu’s son Ranadheera was addicted to alcohol and so was his sister Leilamani who was teaching in Lahore and surviving as a single woman. Their older brother Jaisoorya was in a Berlin sanatorium, the city where he was studying medicine. Padmaja drowned in melancholy at her own problems. (Years later, Padmaja had a live-in relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.) The only difference between the Naidu children and Ruttie was that the former had their father Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu who was a source of great support to their children while Ruttie didn’t have that kind of continuous help. Lady Petit’s visits to Ruttie were not helpful either. Sarojini Naidu was in North America. In February, Jinnah was off to Delhi for government work. Only Kanji was around who tried his best to give Ruttie as much time as possible.

    Jinnah regularly visited Ruttie in the evenings where Kanji was present too. Their discussions reminded Kanji of the good old days when all three of them used to meet, eat, and discuss politics.

    Ruttie who loved going out, had almost confined herself indoor except for short walks with Kanji. Theosophist Krishnamurti and his secretary came for tea on February 1 at Ruttie’s place. Kanji was there too. Krishnamurti then invited Ruttie at Kanji’s friend’s place for dinner which she attended with Kanji. Around February 11, Jinnah had to leave for Delhi. A couple of days later, Ruttie, Kanji’s wife, and Kanji went for a night show movie.

    On 16 and 17 February, Kanji was on night duty as an honorary magistrate due to the riots in Bombay. On the 17th morning, Kanji picked Mrs. Besant from the train station and had lunch with her. After that he went home for a little while where Ruttie showed up “terribly depressed and unhappy.” (Dwarkadas, p. 56.)

    After four hours he went to drop Ruttie at her place where she served him tea. (Kanji was supposed to have tea with Mrs. Besant.) Kanji stayed there till 7pm due to Ruttie’s “terrific depression,” and left with a promise to return back at 10:15. Mrs. Besant understood and asked him to take care of Ruttie. Upon his return, Kanji was horrified to find Ruttie unconscious but was able to revive her.

    On the 18th morning, Ruttie called and told him to drop by on the way to his office. Her state of depression hadn’t disappeared yet; he did his best to cheer her up. Before leaving, he said: “I’ll see you to-night.” Ruttie’s gloomy reply:

    “If I am alive. Look after my cats and don’t give them away.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 57.

    Kanji writes: “These were the last words Ruttie spoke to me.” Kanji stopped by at 11:15 at night but Ruttie was asleep. He left as he hadn’t slept for two nights. A telephone call on the 19th afternoon informed Kanji that Ruttie had lost consciousness and her surviving chances are minimal. Right away he went to her place but couldn’t find her. (Dwarkadas, p. 57.)

    Ruttie no more

    Jinnah was in Delhi for the Budget Session of the Assembly. On the night of 20 February, 1929, Chamanlal was in Jinnah’s Western Court house in Delhi when Jinnah received a trunk call about Ruttie’s illness. He told Chaman Lal:

    “Rati is seriously ill. I must leave tonight.” “Do you know who that was? It was my father-in-law. This is the first time we have spoken to each other since my marriage.”

    Dewan ChamanLal, “The Quaid-i-Azam As I Knew Him” in Jamil-ud-din Ahmad compiled “Quaid-I-Azam as Seen by his Comtemporaries” (Lahore: Publishers United Ltd., 1966, p. 172.)

    Actually, his father-in-law had communicated the sad news of Ruttie’s death to Jinnah. She had passed away in the evening.

    One hundred and thirty eight days after her last letter, Ruttie died of an overdose – exactly on her 29th birthday. The clutches of sickness, insomnia, drugs, inner anguish, piecemeal companionship instead of constant comradery, inability to cope with life, and anxiety had gotten to the resplendent Ruttie.

    Mrs. Naidu’s January 1928 letter to Padmaja had mentioned about Ruttie’s previous attempt at suicide, “… as I have only now learned–how difficult have been those ten years,” “and how she even tried to put an end to herself deliberately …” (Reddy, p. 335.)

    Ruttie must have thought death was the only way out; so she annihilated herself.

    Funeral

    On the morning of 22nd February, Kanji with Col and Mrs. Sokhey picked up Jinnah from the Grant Road station.

    Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Kanji Dwarkadas, M. C. Chagla, and a good many people (both men and women) had gathered at Arambagh, a Shia Muslim cemetery in Mazgaon (Bombay), for the burial ceremony.

    Jinnah sat next to Kanji during the five hour long rites, and gave an impression that he was alright. After a while, he broke the silence and started talking hastily how he assisted Vittalbhai Patel, speaker of the Assembly, who had gotten himself in a tight corner with the government. He also talked about his work in the Assembly.

    But when the process of placing Ruttie’s body in her final abode began, Jinnah couldn’t maintain the facade of stoicism any longer. Kanji described the scene:

    “Then, as Ruttie’s body was being lowered into the grave, Jinnah, as the nearest relative was the first to throw the earth on the grave and he broke down suddenly and sobbed and wept like a child for minutes together.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 58.

    Jinnah was followed by Kanji:

    “I followed Jinnah and looking for the last time through sorrowful and tearful eyes at the mortal remains of the lovely and beautiful immortal soul, I promised to Ruttie that one day I would write her full story….”3

    Ibid.

    M. C. Chagla described it thus:

    “She was buried on February 22 in Bombay according to Muslim rites. Jinnah sat like a statue throughout the funeral but when asked to throw earth on the grave, he broke down and wept. That was the only time when I found Jinnah betraying some shadow of human weakness. It’s not a well publicised fact that as a young student in England it had been one of Jinnah’s dreams to play Romeo at The Globe. It is a strange twist of fate that a love story that started like a fairy tale ended as a haunting tragedy to rival any of Shakespeare’s dramas. ”

    Darwaish, “The Softer Side of Mr. Jinnah” (Globeistan.com).

    Religion restricts, politics prohibits

    her parents would have consigned her
    to a
    Tower of Silence
    she wanted to be cremated
    but as Jinnah’s wife
    she was caged underground

    religion restricts
    politics prohibits

    Mahbano, Masoumeh, and Morvarid
    are to be left at dakhma
    Manisha, Manorama, and Menka
    are destined to be burned
    Mariam, Mahjabin, and Mominah
    are to be imprisoned 6 feet under …

    religion is like a life sentence,
    freedom or parole are hard to come by

    Jinnah meets Kanji

    Next evening, Jinnah met Kanji to know about her final days. Kanji:

    “Never have I found a man so sad and so bitter. He screamed his heart out, speaking to me for over two hours, myself listening to him patiently and sympathetically, occasionally putting a word here and there. Something I saw had snapped in him. The death of his wife was not just a sad event, nor just something to be grieved over, but he took it, this act of God, as a failure and a personal defeat in his life. I am afraid he never recovered right till the end of his life from this terrible shock.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 58.

    Jinnah and Kanji received condolence messages from India’s Viceroy Lord Irwin, Sarojini Naidu (who was in North America at that time), Jiddu Krishnamurti, and others.

    Could anyone be blamed?

    We know about Ruttie’s pain and suffering through her correspondence with Mrs. Naidu and her two daughters, Leilamani and especially Padmaja. and the exchange of letters between the Naidu women. Also Ruttie’s friendship with and her constant need for Kanji throws some light on her sadness and depression. But from Jinnah’s side we know almost nothing of his intense sorrow except for a few sentences spoken to his close friends here and there on rare occasions.

    Thirty nine years after Ruttie’s passing, Kanji was interviewed by an Urdu writer from Pakistan Syed Shahabuddin Dosnani in February 1968, in his apartment in Bombay. Acording to Kanji, sleeping pills were always by Ruttie’s bedside and she ended her life with it. Kanji:

    “She [Ruttie] chose to die on her birthday.

    Reddy, p. 358.

    It is very tragic that such a wonderful person went to waste and met an untimely death.

    Years later, Jinnah told a friend’s wife:

    “She was a child and I should never have married her. The fault was mine.”

    Reddy, p. 362.

    Let us suppose Ruttie was born in 1880. and was in her mid thirties at the time of their marriage, would it have made their married life more workable? That is doubtful. The problems of time, attention, intimacy, and communication would have cropped up even with a spouse of same age group whether it was with Ruttie or some other person. It was not Ruttie’s age but her passion to live life to fullest and her need for companionship that would have created problems. The marriage would have worked whether the spouse was a “child” or same age person if that person was of a quiet and introverted nature, and not as needy.

    One could say that with Ruttie, Jinnah’s was a second marriage — in a sense that Jinnah was already wedded to politics and was committed to it. But then one has to take into account the fact that Ruttie was almost cut off from her family and from her community (Parsis). Also, Ruttie’s age and her vulnerability made her dependent on Jinnah for all kinds of support, so Jinnah was somewhat right at the assessment.

    To be fair to Jinnah, Ruttie also caused, consciously or unconsciously, immense pain to Jinnah. It is almost impossible to find any of Jinnah’s contemporaries with similar tolerance power as him. One wonders who would have tolerated in the 1920s India, hundred years ago, that his wife was living alone in Paris for months while he was paying the expenses. And his door was open for her upon her return. Jinnah was a very liberal person, ahead of his time. What needed was a bit less solemnness and a little more fun on part of Jinnah which his serious personality and commitments didn’t permit. It was unfortunate.

    When Ruttie was in Paris for a long period, she had met Bhikaiji Rustom Cama (1861 – 1936), a friend of Hamabai Petit, Ruttie’s aunt. Madam Cama, as she was known, was a wealthy Parsi woman who had separated from her husband in India and was residing in Paris and was involved in women’s rights and Indian freedom movement. Upon learning from Ruttie about her nightclub visit with some nobleman whose overdrinking caused a car collision on their way back, Madam Cama flared-up:

    “When such a remarkable man has married you, how could you go to a nightclub with a tipsy man?”

    Reddy, p. 272.

    Madam Cama’s admonishment was harsh but could be overlooked because she was unaware of what Ruttie was going through.

    Ruttie’s was a restless soul full of energy, ideas, curiosity, intellect, bravado, knowledge, literary treasure, and more. She was a romantic but was unable to instill similar feelings in Jinnah, after a couple of years into their marriage, because of his heavy involvement with his professional and political engagements.

    Her illness and reliance on drugs cut her life prematurely short. If she would have gotten more attention from Jinnah, the multi-talented Ruttie could have utilized her potential to the maximum and could have lived longer. She would have been Pakistan’s First Lady if death had not brutally snatched her. And who knows, after Jinnah’s death, she may have been a governor of a state in Pakistan like her contemporaries Vijaya Laxmi Pandit and Padmaja Naidu were in India- or an ambassador, or she would have represented her country at United Nations or would have become a renowned poet/author. Sadly, it was not to be so.

    Two and a half decades after her death, people in Bombay reminisced about Ruttie to Hector Bolitho in these words:

    “Ah, Ruttie Petit! She was the flower of Bombay.” “She was so lively, so witty, so full of ideas and jokes.”

    Hector Bolitho, Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan (London: John Murray, 1954, p.74)

    Dr. Muhammad Ali Shaikh in his article “The Women in Jinnah’s Life” puts the blame on Ruttie,

    “While Jinnah was purpose-oriented and wanted to accord adequate attention and time to his causes in life, Rattanbai wanted to continue living a fairytale romance.”

    Shaikh is entitled to his opinion. However, Ruttie was young and may have gotten over the romantic phase, like most do, and channeled her vigor on issues that were important to her. As we have seen, Ruttie was active at women’s issues, animal welfare, etc. Her intellectual curiosity, her interest in varied subjects, and her prolific reading wouldn’t have permitted her to be in the romantic state for too long. Who knows, she could have been a great writer, poet, or activist.

    The time and company she was not getting from Jinnah, she was looking or begging from Mrs. Naidu and Kanji. At the end of April 1927 Ruttie and Mrs. Naidu met in Lahore. Ruttie begged her to spend a few days with her. Ruttie’s troubled state prompted Mrs. Naidu to accompany her till Rawalpindi but she couldn’t part due to Ruttie’s insistence and went to Kashmir. Upon Mrs. Naidu’s departure, Ruttie wept. Mrs. Naidu to Padmaja:

    “Poor child!” “How she cried when I left. How she pleaded for me to stay and for me to bring you in June. …”

    Reddy, p. 326.

    It was indeed a tragic end.

    Cruel contrast

    Jinnah founded a nation; Ruttie didn’t even manage to find herself.

    Post Ruttie

    Jinnah was heart broken.

    All Ruttie’s books, jewelry, clothes, and other items were packed and put aside.

    Religion had been used in India before but Gandhi exploited it on a national scale. Post three Round Table Conferences between the British government and Indian politicians (November 1930 to December 1932), achieved nothing of significance, Jinnah, attended the first one.

    Jinnah decided to settle in Hampstead, an area in London, where he bought a house in September 1931. He was joined by his daughter Dina and his sister Fatima, who had quit her dental practice in Bombay. She devoted the rest of her life to Jinnah. Dina joined a school and Jinnah started his practice at Privy Council.

    The Manchester Guardian had in 1931 described various groups’ perception of Jinnah at the Round Table Conference:

    “Mr. Jinnah’s position at the Round Table Conference was unique. The Hindus thought he was a Muslim communalist, the Muslims took him to be pro-Hindu, the princes deemed him to be too democratic. The Britishers considered him a rabid extremist-with the result that he was everywhere but nowhere. None wanted him.”

    In 1934, when prominent Indian Muslim League leaders begged him to come back and take over the party leadership, Jinnah returned to India. Dewan Chamanlal also wanted him back in politics. Jinnah took over the leadership of Muslim League, which didn’t do very well in the 1937 provincial elections. In Bombay and UP (the United Provinces), the Congress refused Muslim League a place in the cabinet unless they switched over to Congress. Jinnah’s plea for a “united front” of Muslim League and Congress was rejected by arrogant Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress Party, including Gandhi. (A. G. Noorani, “Why Jinnah became defiant,” Frontline, August 21, 2013.

    Aijaz Ahmad points out Congress leaders’ folly in refusing Jinnah’s offer.

    “Few realized that such acts of generosity were necessary if the Congress was to win the confidence of those who felt threatened by the size of its victory; if Jinnah was capable of seeking a ‘united front’ he was also capable of whipping up hysteria on the charge that the ‘Hindu party’ which had taken over was refusing to share with the Muslims any part of its power.”

    Ahmad, p. 14.

    The Congress Party perceived itself as a vast umbrella which wanted all the groups belonging to different castes, ethnicity, and religions to be a part of it.

    So Jinnah used his religious card, vehemently.

    “… The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and litterateurs. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. … To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.”

    Banglapedia, “Two Nation Theory.”

    (Jinnah was not the first to propound the two-nation theory; several Hindu leaders, including Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, had offered such plans, as far as 1860s. See Shamsul Islam, “Guilty men of the two-nation theory: A Hindutva project borrowed by Jinnah,” Sabrang, 16 May, 2018.)

    In 1936, Jinnah’s daughter Dina fell in love with Neville Ness Wadia, a Christian. (Wadia’s father was born in a Parsee family but had converted to Christianity.) Later on, Neville Ness Wadia converted to Zoroastrianism. Dina had her maternal grandmother’s approval but not of Jinnah.

    Dina countered Jinnah:

    “Why don’t you grant me the freedom which you had in choosing your lifepartner.”

    Saadat Hasan Manto, “Mera Sahab” at Rekhta in both Devanagari & Urdu scripts.

    Jinnah’s reason for insisting Dina marry a Muslim man was a political one because by this time he was deep into the religious swamp. Dina went ahead with the marriage and their relationship got strained.

    Jinnah was a tough person but once in a while he was overcome with memories of Ruttie and Dina so he would order a trunk with Ruttie’s and Dina’s clothes and would reminisce over them; his eyes would get wet.

    (Great Urdu short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto got the above and many other tidbits from Jinnah’s driver Mohammad Hanif Azad. See Manto’s Mera Sahab at Rekhta which has it in both Devanagari & Urdu scripts. Azad4 has narrated the incidents in an interesting manner.)

    Memory Lane has nothing but agonies

    in the middle of the night
    when darkness and loneliness commingled
    the heart wept in whispers
    the mind strolled down memory lane
    there is no joy or bliss
    only pain, sorrow, and agony
    solace is urgently needed–
    it’s the necessity of the moment
    the ship-shaped trunk was ordered to be opened
    Ruttie and Dina’s clothes were spread out
    Jinnah stared at those clothes

    recreating the happy family moments
    remembering the two beautiful women
    one a wife, other a daughter
    one no more, other estranged

    like a dead man standing,
    heart’s pain expressed through tears
    monocle removed, tears wiped off

    After sometime the daughter-father reconciled. Dina and Jinnah corresponded regularly. In 1943, Dina and Neville divorced.

    [Jinnah’s (1939) Will also had Dina and her children as beneficiaries. Jinnah didn’t make any changes to the Will. The Will in its entirety is in Khwaja Razi Haider, “Ruttie Jinnah: The Story Told and Untold” (Karachi: University of Karachi, Appendix IV, p. 155-7.)]

    In August 1947, before departing for Karachi, Jinnah visited Dina and her two children. He gave the Karakul cap he was wearing to his grandson Nusli Wadia. Jinnah also stopped by Ruttie’s grave to say goodbye.

    IMAGE/Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh/National Archives Islamabad/Dawn/Duck Duck Go

    The love between Ruttie and Jinnah was never lost and they always had it in their hearts till the end.

    Jinnah never got married or had an affair with any one. Ruttie was close to Kanji and she could have found loving comfort in his company if she wanted too, but she never did. She loved Jinnah only.

    Perhaps, some romances are destined that way.

    Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity who took a 180 degree detour from secularism to don an Islamic cap was back to his secularist self when he got Pakistan. On August 11, Jinnah addressed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan:

    “… You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State….

    “… in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

    On August 14, Pakistan came into existence and the next day India got its independence. It was one of history’s greatest tragedies with communal killing on a vast scale, accompanied by vast scale destruction and innumerable refugees.

    Gandhi. In less than six months after British left, on January 30, 1948, Gandhi became the victim of a Hindu fanatic — Nathuram Godse who pumped three bullets in his chest. One has to really appreciate Gandhi’s efforts during post Partition butchery to save Muslim lives in Delhi and other areas. The shots fired at Gandhi were forewarning of the Hindu fascist raj India will one day become.5

    Jinnah. More than seven months after Gandhi’s assassination, Jinnah passed away on September 11, 1948 after suffering from tuberculosis which he was infected with many years ago but was known only to his Parsi doctor J. A. L. Patel, his sister Fatima, and very few other people. Jinnah was a chain smoker who had smoked for three decades 50 or more Craven “A” cigarettes a day. In May 1946, Dr. Patel had warned him to take things very easy because he only had a year or two left to live. Jinnah had survived the past ten years, in the words of Dr. Patel, on “will power, whiskey and cigarettes..” [Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975, p. 124-6.)]

    From Quetta, where Jinnah was recuperating, he was flown back to Karachi. The ambulance carrying Jinnah, then Governor General of Pakistan, from Karachi airport to the government house broke down. It took a long time for another vehicle to arrive. Military Secretary Colonel Birnie was the only person sent to receive Jinnah. There was no other person or vehicle. It definitely was strange and suspicious. Was Liaquat Ali Khan’s (Jinnah’s right hand) government waiting for Jinnah to die as soon as possible? Jinnah said so, according to his sister.6

    Sister Phyllis Dunham, the nurse who was attending Jinnah in the ambulance, said they were near the refugee camp. There was mud and hundreds of flies. She fanned Jinnah’s face with a piece of cardboard to keep the flies away.

    “I was alone with him for a few minutes and he made a gesture I shall never forget. He moved his arm free of the sheet, and placed his hand on my arm. He did not speak, but there was such a look of gratitude in his eyes. It was all the reward I needed, for anything I had done. His soul was in his eyes at that moment.”

    The same evening, that is, September 11, 1949, Jinnah passed away.

    Dina flew into Karachi from Bombay to attend her father’s funeral. She then returned back to Bombay. After Partition, Dina had decided to stay in India but later on moved to New York, USA.

    Dina Wadia (extreme left), Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s only child, flew in to attend her father’s funeral. Second from right is Jinnah’s sister Fatima. PHOTO/The Press Information Department, Ministry of Information, Broadcasting & National Heritage, Islamabad/Dawn

    Sarojini Naidu (known as “Nightingale of India” or “Bharat Kokila,” a name given by Gandhi), became the governor of Indian state of UP or United Provinces after independence. She had a fatal cardiac arrest on March 2, 1949.

    Fatima Jinnah. (In Pakistan, she is known as Mader-e Millat or Mother of the Nation.) On the first couple of death anniversaries of Jinnah, his sister Fatima was not allowed to make radio speeches. In 1951, she was allowed but was censored. Some pages had disappeared from her book My Brother before it reached the publisher, because they were deemed to be “against the ideology of Pakistan.” (See the pages here for the ideology crap.)

    In 1965, the opposition parties contesting the elections against the US supported military dictator Field Marshall General Ayub Khan persuaded Ms. Jinnah to contest the presidential election against Ayub Khan. Fatima gave a good fight but lost the election because it was rigged. However, she won in both Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, and also in Dacca, East Pakistan’s capital. Fatima Jinnah passed away on July 9, 1967.7

    Kanji Dwarkadas was the senior-most personnel officer and labor consultant in India. In 1946 and 1951, he was invited by the United States government to study housing and labour problems. He passed away in the early 1970s.

    Padmaja was the fourth governor of the Indian state of West Bengal from November 1956 to June 1967. Padmaja waited for Nehru to propose but he never did because he wanted to avoid offending his daughter Indira’s feelings. But they lived together. Nehru had affairs with many other women8 too. Padmaja was aware of it. She once said: “Nehru is not a one woman man!”

    Independent India’s first prime minister Nehru’s seventeen year rule deserves high praise; it was good for minorities. Nehru was worried about the majority communalism when he said: “Communalism of the majority is far more dangerous than the communalism of the minority.” He passed away on 27 May 1964. Since Hindu nationalist Modi came to power in 2014, his government never misses a chance to vilify Nehru.

    Padmaja Naidu passed away on May 2, 1975.

    Dina avoided state invitations from Pakistan but did visit again in March 2004 at the invitation of former chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board Sheharyar Khan to watch India/Pakistan cricket match in Lahore. It was termed “cricket diplomacy” as she and her family, like so many Indians and Pakistanis, wanted to see good relations between both countries. She and her son Nusli Wadia and her grand sons Jehangir and Ness, visited her father’s mausoleum in Karachi. In the visitors’ book, she wrote:

    “This has been very sad and wonderful for me. May his dream for Pakistan come true.”

    Dina passed away on November 2, 2017.9

    ENDNOTES:

    The post The Tragic Tale of a Flower that Wilted too Soon (Part 2 of 2) first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Gandhi’s political power provided him an opportunity to have many girl friends. Whereas his genius let him juggle and manage these relations while having a wife. Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn), Sushila Nayar, Bibi Amtus Salam are some of the females Gandhi was close to. Some of the extracts from Gandhi’s letters:

    You will continue to haunt me in my sleep. No wonder that [your husband] Panditji (Rambhuj Dutt) calls you the greatest shakti. You may cast that spell over him. You are performing the same trick over me.”

    In another letter dated January 23, 1920, Gandhi wrote, “Saraladevi has been showering her love on me in every possible way.”

    The nature of their relationship is further uncovered in a letter dated August 23, 1920: “You are mine in the purest sense. You ask for a reward of your great tender, well, it is its own reward.”

    Acutely aware of how jealous Kasturba was of several of his adoring disciples, Gandhi tried at first to disarm his wife of such feelings by asking Esther “to help Ba in the Kitchen”. But he warned his “Dear Child” that

    “Ba has not an even temper. She is not always sweet. And she can be petty… You will therefore have to summon to your aid all your Christian charity to be able to return largeness against pettiness… To pity the person who slights you… And so, my dear Esther, if you find Mrs. Gandhi trying your nerves, you must avoid the close association I am suggesting to you.”

    It did not work, of course. Kasturba treated his “Dear child” so harshly in her kitchen that Esther soon broke down. “You were with me the whole of yesterday and during the night. I shall pray that you may be healthier in mind, body and spirit,” Bapu wrote to console Dear Child Esther, “with deep love.”… Gandhi was “glad you opened out heart” about his “difficult” wife. He immediately insisted that Esther must have a “separate Kitchen” for herself. “My heart is with you in your sorrow.”
    2    See “Gandhi Kept On …” (Counterpunch, August 14, 2015).
    3    Kanji: “… It has taken me more than thirty years to fulfil this promise. I dedicated to Ruttie my 85 page “Gandhiji through my Diary Leaves” (1915-1948), published in May 1950.” Dwarkadas, p. 58.
    4    Prior to joining Jinnah, Azad used to work as an extra in Bombay film industry. Post Partition, he worked as a character actor in Pakistan film industry.)
    5    Since 2014, Hindu Modi has created internal partition in India by turning Muslims, over 14% of India’s population, into second class citizens. Other minorities are not doing any better either. Modi’s rise to power, i.e., from Gujarat state’s chief minister to India’s premier, was on the Muslim corpses piled under his watch. He was termed the “butcher of Gujarat.”

    Aijaz Ahmad: “… communal violence always leads to very rich electoral dividends for the BJP [Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party] and its associates …”

    Modi government has banned the recent two part BBC documentary on Gujarat genocide. Many websites, including Elon Musk’s Twitter, have been ordered to take down the documentary; they have complied. Musk, “a free-speech absolutist,” had no qualms in carrying out Modi’s order because India is a huge market. In 2019, the US government overthrew Bolivia’s government. Musk boasted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” One is prompted to ask Musk: How about a coup in India.? No way, Musk is waiting for a tax break for Tesla in India. One of opposition politician in India, Mahua Moitra, had posted the video on her twitter account but has been taken off; same with the US actor John Cusack‘s twitter account.
    6    Why was Jinnah transported in a broken ambulance and why was there not a spare vehicle? The question has been raised many times but the people in power are neither in a hurry nor are willing to answer. Just after three years, Liaquat Ali Khan, born in 1895, was shot twice during a public rally on October 16, 1951. He was rushed to a hospital but didn’t survive. Within a few seconds after shooting, the police killed the assassin. Pakistan was just a four year old baby then, but its police was far too mature in this matter. It finished the assassin and thus saved lot of the poor country’s money and time from being wasted on finding the real culprits. (In November 1963, US President John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot dead in the Dallas Police Headquarters, just two days after Kennedy’s murder, by a nightclub owner Jack Ruby.)

    First week of March in 1949 witnessed Allah, Muhammad, and Koran making inroads in Pakistan via Objectives Resolution. Four years later, the Islamists went after one of the Muslim minorities, the Ahmadis, to declare them non-Muslims. They succeeded in 1974. Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Hindu, whom Jinnah had chosen as one of his ministers, had felt insignificant after Jinnah’s death and handed his resignation to Liaquat Ali Khan and migrated to India.

    (Those interested in understanding the tragic condition of minorities in Pakistan should read Mandal’s entire letter.

    Unlike the Hindu parties in India, the Islamic parties in Pakistan have never reached the corridors of power, but then have never been far from the people in power. They have forced politicians to do things in the name of Islam which have done great harm to the country. On the other hand, the army and politicians also use them when needed. On January 17, 2023, the Pakistan’s National Assembly voted to broaden the blasphemy laws by including Prophet Muhammad’s companions which may be a huge number. It seems, pretty soon, the National Assembly will add another clause to the blasphemy laws declaring anyone criticizing the members of the ruling class for their corrupt, criminal, conscienceless actions as blasphemous because they are relatives of Muhammad or of Muhammad’ companions. Nothing is impossible for people in power. (Look at Planet’s Earth’s current Landlord who wants Gaza as “Riviera of the Middle East” which is now in the ruin due to former Landlord‘s genocidal war on Palestinians who are all alone.)

    Pakistan imported 2200 luxury cars in the second half of 2022. A country with more than 232 million people has mere $16 billion in reserves as of February 2025! Every now and then, Pakistani beggars have to rush to China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, or IMF (International Monetary Fund) for either a few billion dollars loan or to extend the payment time. IMF loans are accompanied with harsh conditions — and as usual, the common people bear the brunt.

    S. Akbar Zaidi puts it bluntly:

    “The irony of ironies. An institution which across the globe has been acknowledged as anti-people, elitist and responsible for increasing poverty, misery and destitution across dozens of countries, is now being seen as Pakistan’s only saviour, as it seems the rulers in this country have come round to restarting an agreement which has been in abeyance for almost a year.”

    Another thing the government does, with the blessing of the army, is to apply censorship. In February 2023, access to Wikipedia, a free source of information for students and other people in a country where the government doesn’t provide much, blocked. The reason: Pakistan wants Wikipedia to remove “blasphemous content.” How could you fight this idiocy. After a few days, the ban was lifted. In January 2025, some important amendments were passed to the 2016 Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) which has become a tool to harass media people and journalists — more than 200 such incidents have happened. The army is also good at silencing or disappering its critics or people asking for their rights, such as people of Balochistan.

    The main opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan (a Pakistani version of Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Tayyip Erdogan, and Victor Orban) is not any better.
    7    If common sense had prevailed over the US supported generals and the elite that this was a golden opportunity to repair relations with the eastern wing, which had been turned into West Pakistan’s colony, it would have saved the break up of Pakistan. It didn’t. After a bloody war, fought in East Pakistan with killings, rapes, and devastation, in December 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
    8    Nehru’s sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit: “Didn’t you know, Pupul?” They lived together for years–for years.” “He felt that Indu [Indira Gandhi] had been hurt enough. He did not want to hurt her further.”

    Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi: A Biography, p. 92.

    Nehru had affairs with some other women too, including Lady Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, who presided over India’s partition. Mountbatten’s was an open marriage
    9    In 2007, Dina wrote a letter to India’s then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh requesting to hand over Jinnah’s Bombay/Mumbai house (South Court, also called Jinnah House) to her with an assurance the house will be used for personal use without any commercial motive.

    “It is now almost 60 years since my father’s death and I have been deprived of my house where I grew up and lived until I married.” “I request you return it to me.”

    Dr. Singh never replied back; had no intention to return back the property.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.


  • IMAGE/Dawn/DUck Duck Go

    She eloped

    Over a hundred years ago, on February 20, 1918, she escaped from her parents house to unite with her love. Two months later, on April 19, at her sweetheart’s huge house atop Malabar Hill in Bombay, she got married and went to Nainital for honeymoon.

    All over India, the news of their wedding caused a huge uproar and spread fast – it became the main talk of the town for many reasons:

    • The girl was Parsi;
    • the man was Muslim;
    • she was 18;
    • he was 41;
    • she was the daughter of one of the richest men in India then;
    • he was a self-made wealthy person – a very successful lawyer;
    • the girl’s family broke all relations with her;
    • the man was estranged from his;
    • she was expelled from the Parsi community;
    • he had already left his religious sect Nizari Ismaili;
    • the girl was at ease in western or local stylish clothing;
    • the man was well known for his well-tailored English suits.

    The girl was Ruttie Petit; her husband was M.A. Jinnah.

    They both were nationalists and wanted an end to the British colonial rule in India. Both were handsome with great sense of dressing, albeit, pricey.

    Ruttie’s beauty and dressing had impressed many personalities:

    Lady Reading:

    “Her attire was a Liberty scarf, a jewelled bandeau, and an emerald necklace. She is extremely pretty, fascinating, terribly made up. All the men raved about her, the women sniffed.”

    and

    “Very pretty, complete minx. A tight dress of brocade cut to the waist back and front, no sleeves, and over it and her head flowered Chiffon as a Sari.”

    — Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Some Aspects of Quaid-I-Azam’s Life” (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978), p. 50.

    Lady Wavell was taken by Jinnah’s striking form:

    “[Mr. Jinnah was] one of the handsomest men I have ever seen; he combined the clear-cut, almost Grecian features of the West with Oriental grace of movement.”

    — “Wanted: Jinnah’s Pakistan,” Dawn, July 31, 2009.

    Mrs. Freeth, (wife of British Major-General G. H. B. Freeth, Deputy Adjutant-General) wrote to her mother how much she was impressed by Jinnah, whom she met at the viceregal dinner in Simla in May 1929.

    “After dinner, I had Mr. Jinnah to talk to. He is a great personality. He talks the most beautiful English. He models his manners and clothes on Du Maurier, the actor, and his English on Burke’s speeches. He is a future Viceroy, if the present system of gradually Indianizing all the services continues. I have always wanted to meet him, and now I have had my wish.”

    — Akbar S. Ahmed, “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin,” New York Times.

    Ruttie

    Ruttie was born as Rattanbai1 in an orthodox Parsi (Zoroastrian)2 family on February 20, 1900, one of four children, the only daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit (1873-1933)3 and was affectionately called “Ruttie.” Today is her 125th birth anniversary.

    Ruttie was a bold, brilliant woman who was well versed in many subjects, including literature and politics. She didn’t get the recognition she deserved either in India or in Pakistan. mostly due to her marriage to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan.

    The Pakistani governments have ignored Ruttie because she was not a Muslim and the Indian governments, particularly the current Modi regime, have avoided mention of anyone/anything associated with Jinnah.

    Even decades after the creation of Pakistan, authorities wouldn’t consider a suggestion for naming an area — Ruttie Jinnah Grove in Karachi!

    The young, bubbly, and vivacious Ruttie was interested in politics and the British colonial rule in India. Accompanied by her maiden aunt, Hamabai Petit, a multimillionaire philanthropist, she used to attend public meetings in Bombay.

    M.A. Jinnah, a close family friend, often spoke4at these gatherings.

    Jinnah

    Jinnah’s parents Mithibai and Jinnahbhai Poonja hailed from Paneli, Gondal, in Kathiawar part of Bombay Presidency then, but now a part of Gujarat state. In 1875, they moved to Karachi where a year later Mohammed Ali Jinnahbhai was born on 25 December 1876. Karachi, a small Indian town then, is now Pakistan’s largest city.

    In his teens, in 1892, his father’s English business associate Frederick Leigh Croft offered Jinnah a London apprenticeship with his firm, Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, which Jinnah accepted. To prevent him from not getting tempted to marry an English girl, Jinnah’s mother got him married to 14-year-old Emibai, the daughter of a wool businessman, and a distant relative.

    After a few months at Graham’s, Jinnah got bored with routine work; quit his job, and got himself admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, in order to study law. He then informed his father about the admission with a promise he wouldn’t ask for any more money.

    Some friends of Jinnah took him to a theatrical company where the manager asked him to read some extracts from Shakespeare’s collection. The manager and his wife were extremely delighted. Jinnah was invited to work and he signed the contract but then due to his father’s letter and a stern warning, especially the sentence, “Do not be a traitor to the family”, he left acting. (Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 56.)

    Less than a year after Jinnah left, Emibai died of cholera, and a few months later, his mother died during childbirth. His mother’s demise was a great loss for Jinnah but he determinedly held on and passed the bar exam, becoming the youngest Indian to achieve such feat.

    M.A. Jinnah (he shortened his name in London), upon return to Karachi in 1896, discovered his father was bankrupt. A year later, Jinnah left for Bombay where he had once lived as a teen with his paternal aunt Manbai. The first three years were an immense struggle. The beginning of the new century was a good omen for him. John Molesworth MacPherson, the acting Advocate-General of Bombay offered Jinnah work in his chambers. Jinnah was the first Indian ever, according to Sarojini Naidu, to be granted such a favor. (Hector Bolitho, Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, p. 15.)

    In early 1900, he got a recommendation letter from MacPherson and became a temporary Presidency Magistrate. In 1901, Sir Charles Olivant offered Jinnah a salary of Rs 1,500 (Bolitho, p. 17) a month. He refused the offer saying he was confident that very soon he could make that much in a day, which proved to be true.

    A liberal non-practicing Khoja Muslim, Jinnah left Shia Nizari Ismaili5 branch when Imam, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah (Aga Khan III) (1877 – 1957), refused to bless his sister’s wedding6 because she had married an outsider.

    Soon, Jinnah became very successful, had a huge house, and looked after his siblings and relatives, but preferred to live alone. He brought his little sister Fatima and another sister Shirin, who was fourteen years old, to live with him. Shirin stayed with Jinnah till her marriage a few years later.

    Jinnah, who had been associated with the Indian National Congress (INC) since 1904 became an official member in 1906. In 1913, he joined All-India Muslim League (AIML). Many Muslim leaders, including Aga Khan III, had wanted this brilliant and successful lawyer to join the League7 for a long time.

    The Affair

    Jinnah used to hang out with crème de la crème of the Bombay society. Many of his clients were wealthy Hindus, Parsis, and Muslims. Parsis also let Jinnah into their exclusive club. Many club members were his clients, including Sir Dinshaw Petit, who was also a personal friend.

    In summer 1916, the Petit Family invited Jinnah for a vacation at their residence in Darjeeling. Ruttie and Jinnah spent a lot of time together during these two months at the Petit chateau, which was 7000 feet high, with view of Mount Everest. Jinnah and Ruttie indulged in horse-riding and other activities.

    Poetic portraiture:

    Romance in the lap of the Himalayas

    the beautiful Darjeeling
    the aesthetic hill station
    the intellectual exchange
    the mutual attraction
    Jinnah’s long road of loneliness
    and Ruttie’s erupting adulthood
    brought them closer, and closer
    the air emitted fragrance of love
    her talk enraptured Jinnah
    his personality awed Ruttie

    in the lap of the Himalayas
    the romance blossomed

    she was almost sixteen
    he was thirty-nine
    love found them
    vows bonded them
    she was Ruttie for him
    and he was “J” for her

    no hindrance was the different age
    no worries about that social-cage
    custodians were left to worry that
    lovers were unfurling a joint page

    Jinnah approached Ruttie’s father with a question about his views on interfaith marriage. Sir Petit thought it would do good:

    [Interfaith wed-locks would] considerably help national integration and might ultimately prove to be the final solution to inter-communal antagonism.”

    Jinnah asked for Ruttie’s hand. Not expecting such a question, Sir Petit got caught off-guard, but then gathered composure and refused Jinnah’s proposal. Ruttie was 16 so she and Jinnah decided to wait till she turned 18. Sir Petit was against this union, and went to the length of getting a court injunction in June 1917 against Jinnah, restricting him from meeting Ruttie.

    They, however, stayed in contact through correspondence conducted via intermediaries, and met when they could.

    Meanwhile, Ruttie kept abreast of Jinnah’s efforts with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 – 1920), the efforts culminated in the Lucknow Pact confirmed December 29-31, 1916 and helped form cordial relations between Indian National Congress and Indian Muslim League to fight the British jointly.

    However, Jinnah’s mentor G. K. Gokhale (1866 – 1915) wasn’t around to witness Jinnah’s success. Gopal Krishna Gokhale had passed away in February 1915. Gokhale’s quote on Jinnah:

    “He has true stuff in him, and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.”

    Bolitho, p. 55.

    Jinnah’s desire:

    “It is my ambition to become the Muslim Gokhale.”

    In A.G. Noorani, “Jinnah in India’s History” (Frontline, August 12, 2005). https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30205784.ece#! )

    To attend this important Lucknow session, Ruttie had traveled by train to Lucknow with her aunt Hamabai and Barrister D. N. Bahadurji (Jinnah’s Parsi friend, whose wife was a Hindu Brahmin.) In Lucknow, Ruttie met Jinnah.

    (Interestingly, they heard vendors at the train station shouting: “Hindu chai” (tea), “Mussulman chai,” “Hindu pani” (water), Mussulman pani.” )

    Hamabai

    Hamabai was a very wealthy philanthropist. Her relations with Ruttie were very good. With her brother Sir Dinshaw (Ruttie’s father) she was very close but when it came to the Ruttie/Jinnah affair, she avoided siding with either her brother or Jinnah. During this time, she offered her free services to Jinnah, who was president of the Home Rule League then, later she became the honorary vice president of the League.

    She did her baccalaureate from a French boarding school in Nice. She was her own person and married in her thirties to a nephew of late Sir Pheroeshah Mehta (Jinnah’s friend), who was one of the founding members of Indian National Congress. Sir Dinshaw didn’t like that Hamabai’s husband was not wealthy.

    Ruttie’s romantic turmoil

    Back in Bombay, Ruttie had changed, as witnessed by her letters to friend Padmaja, daughter of poet/politician Sarojini Naidu (1879 – 1949). One letter written on 27 January 1917, expresses her state of mind:

    “Life has been such a medley of wild excitement and cold depression!” “And yet it has been so full–so full because of its hollowness! So empty because of its fullness!

    “I am joyous and I am sad. But they are the emotions of the soul–and not of the heart! By soul I mean temperament–I long for peace and yet I dread the very idea of it. I revel in the storming passions which burn and tear at the fibres of my being till my very spirit writhes in an agony of excitement. And yet were I asked the cause of all this I could only answer by that one word–temperament! Ay, you may almost call it a form of hysteria.”

    Quoted in Sheela Reddy, Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India (Gurgaon, Haryana: Penguin Randon House India, 2017, p. 53.)

    Much has been gleaned from journalist/author Sheela Reddy’s book Mr and Mr Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India  as the content of letters exchanged between Ruttie, Sarojini Naidu, Padmaja and Leilamani (Naidu’s two daughters) exhibit Ruttie’s innermost thoughts. The book throws new light on many aspects, hitherto unknown, on Ruttie and Jinnah’s relationship, and exposes the anguish she was experiencing. The book has shortcomings8 including chapters without headings and it has no index.

    Ruttie shared her poems with Padmaja and younger sister Leilamani:

    Why should I weep / Or groan in despair / While the stars still peep / At a world so fair?

    A flower came to me one day in its natural lovliness and it told me the secret of its colours and then faded.

    Sorrow came to me with its black robed beauteous form, but it has not forsaken me. I have drunk deep of its cup of gall and I taste it when I wake and when I sleep; when I smile and when I weep.

    Sorrow knows no satiety!

    Ibid. 33, 34.

    Marriage

    Ruttie and Jinnah waited two years to unite through marriage. On February 20, 1918, Ruttie’s 18th birthday, in Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel with Frederic Chopin‘s “So Deep is the night” being played in the ballroom, Ruttie proposed marriage, Jinnah accepted, and they decided to get married.


    Ruttie Jinnah (left) and M.A. Jinna
    PHOTO/BBC/Duck Duck Go

    Sir Dinshaw filed another lawsuit against Jinnah accusing him of abducting his daughter. But Ruttie told the court,

    “Mr. Jinnah had not abducted me; in fact I have abducted him; so there is no case and he should be immediately exonerated of all charges.”

    In Ajeet Jawed, Secular and Nationalist Jinnah (New Delhi: Kitan Publishing House, 1998, p. 14.)

    Ruttie and Jinnah wanted a civil marriage but for that Jinnah would have had to resign from the Central Legislative Assembly where he was a member.

    … the Civil Marriage Act at that time was rigid and stipulated that those marrying under the Civil Marriage Act had to affirm solemnly that they belonged to no religion. This would have made it impossible for Jinnah to remain Member of the Central Legislative Assembly representing a Muslim Constituency.

    Kanji Dwarkadas, Ruttie Jinnah: The Story of a Great Friendship (Bombay: Kanji Dwarkadas, year not given, p. 12).

    Ruttie converted to Islam in presence of Maulana Nazir Ahmad Khujandi, a day before the wedding, in Jamia Masjid. The Muslim name given to Ruttie was Maryam. (Pirzada, Some Aspects of Quaid-i-Azam’s Life.)

    Saad S. Khan in his book, Ruttie Jinnah: The Woman Who Stood Defiant, (written with his wife Sara Khan), falsely claims:

    Jinnah, however, had a religious bent of mind and wanted his would-be wife to be Muslim.”

    This is not true as post marriage, neither Ruttie nor Jinnah started praying or going to the mosque. She remained Ruttie to all. Nothing about her changed: she wore what she wanted to, smoked cigars and drank alcohol like Jinnah, who also heartily ate pork, prohibited in Islam.

    After the wedding, Ruttie’s clothes, books, and jewelry were transferred to South Court, Jinnah’s huge house at Malabar Hill, Bombay.

    The Statesman announced:

    “Miss Ruttenbai, only daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, yesterday underwent conversion to Islam, and is to-day to be married to the Hon. Mr. M. A. Jinnah.”

    On April 19, 1918, in Jinnah’s South Court home, the wedding ceremony was conducted according to Shi’a rites. Ruttie’s name on Nikahnama document (in Persian) read “Ruttenbai.” Shariat Madar Aqai Haji Mohammad Abdul Hashim Najafi signed the marriage contract for Jinnah. For Ruttie, Maulana Mohammad Hasan Najafi signed it. Things were moving fast and Jinnah forgot to get a ring for Ruttie so Raja gave his ring to Jinnah which he then presented it to Ruttie. The witnesses and attorneys present were Raja Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan of Mehmudabad, Sharif Devji Kanji, Ghulam Ali, and Umer Sobhani. Jinnah accepted just 1,001* rupees as a dowry, a symbolic gesture. His gift to Ruttie was 125,000 rupees.

    (*Some outlets falsely reported Jinnah received dowry of Rs 30 lakh or 3 million. Pirzada, p. 47.)

    In a letter to Dr. Syed Mahmud (a fellow Congressite), the noted poet/politician and Jinnah’s friend Sarojini Naidu observed:

    “So Jinnah has at last plucked the Blue Flower of his desire. It was all very sudden and caused terrible agitation and anger among the Parsis; but I think the child has made far bigger sacrifices than she yet realises. Jinnah is worth it all – he loves her; the one really human and genuine emotion of his reserved and self-centred nature. And he will make her happy.”

    In Darwaish, “The softer side of Mr. Jinnah

    According to Motilal Nehru’s (1861 – 1931) daughter Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900 – 1990):

    “Mr. Jinnah’s marriage to Ruttie Petit, daughter of a wealthy Parsi banker, Sir Dinshaw Petit, caused a nine-day stir in India.”

    Ruttie, according to people familiar with her have said, was fond of reminding people: “Wake it up.”

    Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz described Ruttie in these words:

    [Ruttie was] … a very vivacious person and full of life. She often used to be in the mood of shocking people, which some persons did not approve of, but those who knew her well laughed over it. She was fascinating young lady, had beautiful hands and made lovely gesture, and was always dressed in elegant saris of the latest fashion.”

    Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit writes:

    “Ruttie was a friend of mine. We were the same age but brought up very differently. She was spoiled, very beautiful, and used to having her own way. She was much younger than Jinnah and it was certainly not a “love match.” But Jinnah was a Muslim, and the Parsis were, in those days, a very conservative group. This in itself seemed reason enough to Ruttie to shock the community — ‘Wake it up’, as she was fond of saying. ”

    In Vijaya Laxmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir (New York: Crow Publishers Inc. 1979, p. 201.)

    (It was a cheap shot at a friend, a very mean one.)9)

    But this time Ruttie, along with Jinnah, had woken up very many people.

    Several Muslims were angry, and for many Parsis it was “Black Friday” leading to a Parsi version of a fatwa against the couple.

    She was cut off from her family for a long time.

    Even decades later, in 1946, some Muslims hadn’t forgiven Jinnah; Majlis-e-Ahrar’s Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar accused Jinnah of being an infidel:

    “ik KAfirA ke wAste Islam ko chhorA
    yeh Quaid-e-Azam hai keh hai KAfir-i-Azam”

    For an infidel (wife) he left Islam
    Is he the Great Leader or the great infidel

    Ruttie and Jinnah were very happy. Ruttie bought decorative things for their house. She also changed the look of Jinnah’s moldy Law Court rooms by getting them brightly painted and fitting them with classy furniture and flowers. Jinnah resigned from the Orient Club, where he used to play billiard and chess to spend time with Ruttie. This was the happiest time for both of them. Ruttie’s extravagant financial expenses were met by Jinnah. She bought her clothes from the exclusive Emile Windgrove tailor’s shop.

    Finally, he had:

    • a wonderful companion to discuss politics and the British Raj,
    • to accompany him to theaters,
    • to join him at horse-riding on Chaupaty Beach, and
    • to be his partner at parties and dinners.

    But when Jinnah’s old pals would drop by to discuss politics it didn’t please Ruttie at all. She wanted to be alone with Jinnah.

    Willingdon affair

    Jinnah was a renowned politician, a respectable lawyer, an important member of both the Congress Party and Muslim League, and a member of the Imperial Legislative Council. He and Ruttie were invited for dinner by Lady and Lord Willingdon (1866 – 1941), the Crown Governor of Bombay. Ruttie was wearing a low-cut dress. Lady Willingdon didn’t like this; she asked her servant to bring a wrap because Mrs. Jinnah “must be feeling cold.” Jinnah didn’t like it at all and retorted:

    “When Mrs Jinnah feels cold, she will say so, and ask for a wrap herself.

    In Wolpert, p. 56.

    He stood up and left with Ruttie.

    Jinnah did the same when Begum of Bhopal reminded Ruttie that she should dress as a Muslim. Jinnah was extremely displeased; he walked out with Ruttie.

    One more incident about Ruttie’s dressing. In 1924 when Jinnah was the Muslim League President and Mahomedali Currim Chagla (1900 – 1981) was the secretary, a meeting was convened in Bombay’s Globe Cinema. Chagla was arranging things when Ruttie, dressed in her usual style, walked in and took her seat by the platform. The bearded ones were mad. Chagla described in his book how he handled the situation.

    “The hall was full of bearded Moulvies and Maulanas and they came to me in great indignation, and asked me who that woman was. They demanded that she should be asked to leave, as the clothes she flaunted constituted an offence to Islamic eyes. I told them that they should shut their eyes as the lady in question was the President’s wife, and I could not possibly ask her to leave the hall.”

    In M.C. Chagla, Roses in December: An Autobiography (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975, p.121), via Internet Archive.

    Coming back to Willingdon, sometime before the dinner incident, five days after their marriage, a manifesto in Bombay Chronicle had Jinnah’s and others’ names in it. The manifesto demanded a “responsible government” for India before it commits itself to World War I efforts. Jinnah’s words:

    “Let England pledge herself definitely to redeem the promise by accepting here, as in Ireland, that which our leaders have asked for in the Congress and League Pact, and we will work heart and soul to save Britain, India and the Empire….

    “But let us fight under the banner of liberty, for nothing less than that will nerve our men to fight and our women to sacrifice.”

    In Bolitho, p. 76.

    This was not a challenge of some revolutionary who was questioning British presence in India, but was a request from a moderate constitutionalist. Willingdon couldn’t digest even such meek demand by Jinnah and others. The rift between the two widened.

    (Willingdon, like his successor, George Lloyd, next Governor of Bombay, wanted Jinnah, Gandhi, and others to be deported to Burma, now Myanmar.)

    Clash with Willingdon

    When the Willingdons were leaving India, a farewell party was set up for December 10, 1918. Ruttie, Jinnah, and his supporters weren’t in favor of such a party. So they decided to protest. On the night of 9th, three hundred followers of Jinnah camped out near Bombay’s Town Hall. In the morning when Ruttie and Jinnah came, there were seats kept for them. Ruttie encouraged many to follow Jinnah in the Town Hall, while she succeeded in climbing up on a side-box of the balcony to address the audience. She shouted:

    “We are not slaves.”

    In Reddy, p. 165.

    People listened to her speech. The police commissioner Mr. Vincent asked Ruttie “to stop addressing the crowd for they were making a lot of noise.”

    Ruttie countered:

    “Mr. Vincent, first of all you have no right to stop me from lecturing because I have a right to speak as a citizen of Bombay. Secondly, whatever you may do I am not going to move from here.”

    Ibid. p. 166.

    Ruttie, Jinnah, and the people gathered were targeted with water hoses. Undeterred, she kept on addressing. The party was called off. Jinnah and many others were roughed up by police. This was the first and only time Jinnah encountered such a situation. Ruttie must have experienced pride her love made Jinnah fight on the streets, outside legislative councils. Ruttie was on his side when Jinnah addressed the crowd:

    “Gentlemen, you are the citizens of Bombay. You have today scored a great victory for democracy. Your triumph has made it clear that even the combined forces of bureaucracy and autocracy could not overawe you. December the 11th is a Red-letter Day in the history of Bombay. Gentlemen, go and rejoice over the day that has secured us the triumph of democracy.”

    (Tens of thousands of rupees were provided by his supporters to build The People’s Jinnah Hall to mark that action. See Heritage Times.)

    Ruttie’s bold nationalism

    Ruttie didn’t mask her feelings and views; she expressed them frankly. In 1918, Lord Chelmsford (1868 – 1933), Viceroy of India, threw a dinner party at Viceregal Lodge in Simla. Ruttie and Jinnah were invited. When Ruttie was introduced to Lord Chelmsford, she shook hands, then, instead of curtsy, folded her hands as if saying “namaste.”

    The Viceroy’s ego was hurt. He started a conversation with Ruttie when he found an opportunity to be alone with her.

    “Your husband, Mrs. Jinnah, has a great future awaiting him, and you should not mar his chances. You did not greet us in the manner customary at the Viceregal Lodge. In Rome you must do as the Romans do.”

    In G. Allana, Quaid-E-Azam Jinnah: The Story of a Nation (Karachi: Ferozsons Ltd., 1967, p. 170.)

    Ruttie bluntly replied:

    “Your Excellency, that is exactly what I did. You are in India and I greeted you the way Indian women do.”

    Ibid.

    Ruttie and Chelmsford never came face to face again.

    With another Viceroy Lord Reading (1860 – 1935) she didn’t mince words, either. Lord Reading was Viceroy and Governor-General of India. At a luncheon in New Delhi in 1921, Ruttie was sitting next to him. Reading expressed sadness as he felt nostalgic about Germany where he had spent sometime. He expressed his helplessness to her:

    “Mrs. Jinnah, how I wish I could go to Germany. I very much want to go there. But I can’t go there.”

    In Dwarkadas, p. 17.

    Ruttie asked:

    “Your Excellency, why can’t you go there?”

    Ibid.

    Reading replied:

    “The Germans do not like us, the British, so I can’t go.”

    Ibid.

    Ruttie availed every chance she came across to remind the British they were unwanted in India. In one sentence, she summed up the feelings of most Indians. Ruttie questioned him gustily:

    “How then did you come to India?”

    Ibid.

    The Viceroy wisely changed the subject.

    Ruttie and Jinnah attended a party at the Viceregal Lodge in 1925. Reading told Jinnah that the British Government wanted to honor his “excellent services” with knighthood but he declined the offer because he preferred to be “plain Mr. Jinnah.” So Reading tried to gauge Ruttie’s temptation for high honors: “Mrs. Jinnah, would you like to be addressed as Lady Jinnah?” Ruttie’s fearless nature shot back:

    “If my husband accepts knighthood, I will take a separation from him.”

    (Years later in 1942 Jinnah refused an honorary doctorate from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). AMU was also a beneficiary of Jinnah’s 1939 Will, which remained unaltered till Jinnah’s death. For Jinnah’s Will in its entirety, see Khwaja Razi Haider, Ruttie Jinnah: The Story Told and Untold (Karachi: University of Karachi, Appendix IV, p. 155-7.))

    On her visit to Kashmir in 1926, when the authorities asked the reason for her visit, Ruttie, without a second thought, replied: “The purpose of visit is to spread sedition.”

    Ironically, Kashmir is now under torturous boots of Hindu communalist Narendra Modi’s military.

    Nagpur Session

    There were times when Ruttie had to restrain her boldness. One such incident happened when she and Jinnah were traveling in a train after attending the Nagpur session of Congress in December 1920.

    The Nagpur session witnessed Jinnah being humiliated and hooted for not adding prefixes “Mahatma” (Great Soul) and “Maulana” (Muslim scholar) to the names of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 – 1948) and Mohammad Ali Jauhar (1878 – 1931), respectively; instead he addressed them as “Mr. Gandhi” and “Mr. Mohammad Ali.” Jinnah was “howled down with cries of ‘shame, shame’ and political imposter.’” (Wolpert, p. 71.)

    Gandhi’s hold over Congress was absolute; he could have prevented the rowdy elements from disrespecting Jinnah and could have asked them to listen what Jinnah had to say; but he didn’t. Jinnah left the Congress Party.

    (Gandhi, a strong believer of Hinduism, had joined hands with strong believers of Islam, the Ali brothers, to save Ottoman Caliphate in Turkey. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888 – 1958) and the Ali Brothers, Maulana Shoukat Ali Jauhar (1873 – 1938) and Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar who wanted to save the institution of Muslim caliph from being ended by the British had, as Aijaz Ahmad points out, misread the internal dynamics of Turkey and the evolution of its political system during the nineteenth century. Turkey had gradually reduced the dependence on the Muslim sharia law and had come to depend more and more on the civil and criminal courts. When the Turks themselves ended the caliphate, the major leaders of the Khilafat Movement such as Ali Brothers and Azad were “utterly dumbfounded” and the movement “petered out in confusion. [Aijaz Ahmad, Lineages of the Present: Ideology and Politics in Comtemporary South Asia (London & New York: Verso, 2000, p. 85-9.)]

    Ruttie wrote a letter to The Times of India, under the letter “R” to prevent Jinnah from knowing the real author:

    “At Akola [train station], Mr. [Maulana] Shoukat Ali delivered a short lecture to those who had assembled on the platform; and at the end of the lecture, he incited them to hoot Mr. Jinnah, who was seated in the first class compartment, with cries of ‘Shame’. Sir, this sort of thing is the negation of non-cooperation of which non-violence is the essence.”

    In Pirzada, p. 49-50.

    At the Calcutta Congress in September, Shoukat Ali was restrained by his friends from attacking Jinnah.

    K.M. Munshi reminds us in his book “Pilgrimage to Freedom” that

    “Jinnah, however, warned Gandhiji not to encourage fanaticism of Muslim religious leaders and their followers.”

    In H.M. Seervai, Partition of India: Legend and Reality (Bombay: Emmenem Publications, 1989, 13)

    Gandhi later admitted this to Richard Casey, the Governor of Bengal:

    “Jinnah had told him that he (Gandhiji) had ruined politics in India by dragging up a lot of unwholesome elements in Indian life and giving them political prominence, that it was a crime to mix up politics and religion the way he had done.”

    Ibid.

    Dina

    Some Indian leaders, including Jinnah, were required to appear before the Joint Select Committee of House of Commons and House of Lords (British Parliament) to give evidence on Montagu Bill, named after Edwin Samuel Montagu (1879-1924), the then Secretary of State for India. Jinnah and Ruttie, who was pregnant with Dina at the time, reached London in May 1919 to attend this and rented a flat near Regent’s Park.

    While Ruttie and Jinnah were in a theater, she went into labor and was taken to a clinic, where after midnight of August 15, she gave birth to their only child, Dina.

    Kanji noted:

    “This is a strange coincidence, as 14th and 15th August are respectively Pakistan’s and India’s Independence Days.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 18.

    Jinnah’s biographer Stanley Wolpert put it thus:

    “Their only child, a daughter named Dina, was born in London shortly past midnight on August 14-15, 1919, oddly enough precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah’s other offspring, Pakistan.”

    Wolpert, p. 63.

    As was the custom among the rich, Dina was given a governess and other helpers to take care of her. Ruttie was raised in a similar manner, too.

    Ruttie couldn’t handle her own life so it was out of question that she would take care of Dina. (Years later, Dina spent time with the Petit family.)

    For whatever reason, Dina was ignored. Was Dina an unplanned baby? We don’t know. One thing is sure: Ruttie was not ready for motherhood yet. In July 1921, Mrs. Naidu visited South Court to see Dina who had come back with servants from a vacation in Ooty. Ruttie and Jinnah were not there as they had left for Europe.

    “I went to see the Jinnah baby this morning.” “It returned from Ooty in its pathetic servant fostered loneliness. It looked so sweet, fresh from its bath. I stayed and played a little with it, poor little pet.”

    Reddy, p. 248.

    In Oxford Jinnah gave a talk and then he and Ruttie left for London. Ruttie invited Leilamani who was studying at Oxford to join them. They stayed at Ritz for two months. Jinnah was busy with his political work while the girls were enjoying their life. Leilamani also accompanied them to Paris. The Jinnahs went back to India after five months. The day they came back, Ruttie rushed to Taj Mahal to see Mrs. Naidu.

    Fatima Jinnah

    Fatima Jinnah (1893 – 1967) was Jinnah’s youngest sister. After his father’s death in 1902, Jinnah brought her to live with him, and had her admitted to St. Joseph Convent school at Bandra. It was inconceivable then for a Muslim girl to join a convent school; their relatives and many other Muslims tried to deter Fatima who became the target of their gossip and criticism. Jinnah’s support made her stick to the decision.

    On Sundays, Fatima would join her brother at his place. Ruttie didn’t like this because that was the day Jinnah would be off from work, and Ruttie wanted to spend time with Jinnah alone. Besides, Fatima was a serious person, or as Ruttie would say, “deadly serious” and no fun to be around. Fatima had turned religious and carried a copy of the Qur’an with her.

    One could imagine a typical Sunday in the Jinnah household: Jinnah would be into his newspapers and books while Fatima, with a copy of Qur’an in hand sitting quietly watching her brother. For Ruttie it must have felt like a prison, where she was sentenced to a day of silence, no doubt a very tough situation for a bubbly person like her.

    On one such day, Ruttie teased or rather tormented Fatima in front of her brother about her spinster status at the age of twenty six. Ruttie later communicated the tense atmosphere in her letter to Padmaja:

    “By the bye, I told Fatima that I went to Hyderabad to look up some eligible man for her and I showed her Taufiq’s photo as being one of them..”

    Reddy, p. 207.

    Despite very little talk between the sister and brother, they were close to each other. Of all his siblings, Fatima was the closest to Jinnah. They didn’t like the teasing at all; Jinnah’s displeasure discouraged Ruttie from continuing further.

    Even in general conversation, Ruttie felt Jinnah inclined towards Fatima which hurt her. In yet another letter to Padmaja, on 3 March 1920:

    “Fatima’s deadly reason quite upset the last Sunday. She was reading the Quran, so I told her that it was ‘meant to be talked about and not to be read.’ So in all seriousness she asked me ‘how one could talk about a book one hadn’t read.’”

    Reddy, p. 214.

    It seems Ruttie was employing the Socratic method to get Fatima into debate to show her that religious rituals and scriptures are simply a waste of time.

    Fatima didn’t like Ruttie, and vice versa. Jinnah had to find some solution. He urged Fatima to join Dr. Ahmad Dental College at the University of Calcutta. She complied. In 1923, after finishing her studies, Fatima Jinnah became the first woman dentist in British India; she then started her own dental clinic in Bombay, another unusual step for a Muslim woman. In the evening, she used to volunteer at Dhobi Talau Municipal Clinic in Bombay.

    Trade unions

    In May 1919, under president Lala Lajpatrai, the First All-India Trade Union Congress was held at the Empire Theatre, Present on stage were B. P. Wadia, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964), S. A. Brelvi, N. M. Joshi, Kanji Dwarkadas, and Dewan Chaman Lal (1892 – 1973). Ruttie, who was sitting in the side box, came on stage, moved a resolution protesting deportation of Benjamin Guy Horniman10 (1873–1948), the editor of Bombay Chronicle, and spoke for five minutes.

    Ruttie was interested in trade unions and Dewan Chaman Lal had offered her a position of a vice president but she didn’t accept it.

    Women sex workers

    In later years, she started taking a more active role on social problems. Ruttie and Jinnah were aware of Kanji’s work on these issues. In August 1927, Ruttie who was interested in the welfare and well being of women working in brothels visited many of them with Kanji and Miss Davis and saw first hand the condition of women. Kanji did great work getting a law passed which prohibited children under 16 working in such places.

    Animal welfare

    With Kanji, Ruttie was also involved in the welfare of animals and would visit pinjrapoles or animal shelters in Bhuleshwar (South Bombay), Chembur (a Bombay suburb), and Kalyan and made many recommendations to better condition of animals and of shelters. They wrote a letter to Indian newspapers in September 1927 complaining that the drinking water had the same foulness observed on previous visits; only 5 dogs out of 26 were infection-free; etc. Another letter, that included Mrs. Naidu’s letter with her report on the condition of animals, was published in The Indian Daily Mail. The authorities subsequently looked into the matter and improved the conditions in those animal shelters. Ruttie herself had many pets.

    Fissures in marriage

    Time seems to be an eternal enemy of purpose-oriented people. Most juggle with time to fulfill and achieve their aim while maintaining balanced and harmonious relations with people who need them most. Jinnah was too constrained for time; he couldn’t keep himself in the newly married mode for too long.

    It was as if Jinnah was following the philosophy of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s yet unwritten couplet11:

    aur bhi dukh hai zamAne meiN, muhabbat ke sivA / rAhateiN aur bhi hai, vasl ki rAhat ke sivA

    there are other sorrows, besides those of love / there are other comforts, beyond the comfort of union

    Whereas, it seems, Ruttie was moaning the words Sahir Ludhianvi wrote decades later12:

    tum mujhe bhool bhi jAo to ye haq hai tum ko / meri bAt aur hai meiN ne to muhabbat ki hai

    even if you don’t remember me, which you have a right to / in my case, it’s different, because I have loved you

    Also, there were some serious differences between them.

    • Jinnah strictly followed punctuality and worked and lived in a very well organized manner. Ruttie, on the other hand, was a carefree person.
    • Ruttie liked spicy food whereas Jinnah’s preference was bland food.
    • Ruttie preferred people but Jinnah was used to being alone — except where politics was concerned then he wouldn’t mind a gathering. Even at home, Jinnah would be into newspapers from all over India and Ruttie would be left to herself.
    • Kanji was their mutual friend who would join them. Ruttie met Kanji quite regularly in the evenings. Sometime Kanji’s elder brother Jamnadas (Jinnah’s lieutenant) would join them too. Another mutual friend Sarojini would visit them or only Ruttie, and Sarojini’s children Leilamani, Ranadheere, and Padmaja (1900 – 1975) would sometime visit her too. Motilal Nehru, when in Bombay, would join them or just Ruttie for food and drink. Another frequent visitor was Raja of Mehmoodabad (1878 – 1931).
    • People would gather at Jinnahs’ place when some political issue needed to be discussed or handled.
    • Ruttie liked dancing and parties whereas Jinnah preferred billiard.

    In 1920, Ruttie and Jinnah were invited to a “grand dinner” at Mirza Abol Hassan Ispahani’s uncle’s place in Putney Hill. Ispahani (1902 – 1981) was heir to the financial and commercial empire in Calcutta. Ruttie’s brother Jamshed Petit who was Ispahani’s Cambridge classmate and friend was also there. Jinnah and Ispahani went to a billiard room to play whereas the rest went for a dance. Ruttie and her brother did the Charleston, a jazz dance, originally a black folk dance from the US South. (Wolpert p.145.) Instead of playing billiard, Jinnah could have stayed with Ruttie and others and if not joining them (it’s a fast dance, here and here and requires great stamina), then at least make a few dance moves then just sit and watch Ruttie, Jamshed, and others dance; it would have made Ruttie happy.

    Jinnah’s first biographer Hector Bolitho is not off the mark when he writes:

    “For Jinnah, married life was a solemn duty: for his young wife, it was also an opportunity for pleasure.”

    In Bolitho, p. 86.

    Times were changing fast with new technological and scientific discoveries and inventions. People born or grown up amidst these times of feature films (1906), Ford Model T cars (first affordable car, 1908) and so on, had different expectations and attitudes towards life. Ruttie was born in these times whereas Jinnah’s time was older and a different outlook. Ruttie was born in money whereas Jinnah was looking for a job in his twenties. Jinnah became a very successful lawyer so Ruttie’s financial needs were never unmet. Once when they visited Kashmir, Ruttie spent Rs. 50,000 to decorate a boat they were going to stay on – a very huge amount then. The problem was Jinnah’s inflexibility in other matters. (In our times, look at Gen Z, the Zoomers, who grew up in the internet era are different from millennials.)

    In the evenings, Ruttie used to stay home looking forward to be with Jinnah, but then in 1924 this changed. She started going out alone to hotels for dance which Jinnah didn’t approve.

    Another difference: Ruttie didn’t care about her status. One example:

    In August 1927, Ruttie and Jinnah came to Simla for Jinnah’s Legislative Council Session. Every evening, Ruttie would go out with her dog in a rickshaw to the Mall and from Hussain Baksh General Merchants she would buy chocolate for her dog. Then from the Lower Bazaar – a totally different world from the Mall – she would eat chAt, a spicy South Asian snack. It was served on a large leaf. Once, one of Ruttie’s friends objected to her eating from a street vendor in the Lower Bazaar. Ruttie said, “I do it to tease people like you.” Jinnah would never eat chAt on a leaf from a street vendor!

    But it must be said of Jinnah, when craving for chAt Ruttie would sometimes make him get out of the car to get a plate of chAt for her, he would oblige.

    The deteriorating relations between Ruttie and Jinnah reached an impasse where no room for reconciliation was left due to a wall of silence between them. The love was there but they sorely lacked communication. Ruttie wanted time, attention, and affection which Jinnah could not provide. There were incidents over a period of time which were performed with good intentions but they backfired. A couple of such incidents.

    Ruttie, wanting to spend time with Jinnah, would bring lunch for him. One day she came to the Town Hall with a tiffin and asked Jinnah to guess the contents; he expressed ignorance so Ruttie told him: “I have brought you some lovely ham sandwiches.”

    Jinnah was mad:

    “My God! What have you done? Do you want me lose my election? Do you realise I am standing from a Muslim separate electorate seat, and if my voters were to learn that I am going to eat ham sandwiches for lunch, do you think I have a ghost of a chance of being elected?”

    Ruttie felt disheartened and left. What was more sad was that Jinnah, with M. C. Chagla, went to a restaurant and ate ham.13

    Since December 1920 when Jinnah was shouted down by supporters of Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Gandhi, bitterness between Jinnah and the younger Ali brother had spilled over in public on the pages of Bombay Chronicle. Jinnah’s refusal to counter Ali’s personal attacks led Ruttie to request Ali through the editor of the newspaper to stop writing “as this would create bitterness.” When Jinnah learned through editor as to what had happened, he was incensed, “Ruttie had no business to intervene.” (Reddy, p. 281.) Ruttie was not wrong in intervening because the war of words, oral and on pages of the Chronicle, was not solving anything. On the other hand, Jinnah, a self-made man, was a very independent person who wanted to fight out his battle himself.

    When things were sorted out and Fatima moved out, the Jinnahs went to Ooty, a hill station in Tamil Nadu, for a month and a half vacation. However, Jinnah could neither savor Ooty’s beauty nor could concentrate on cementing his relations with Ruttie because Gandhi was always looming in the background. He had sidelined Jinnah from the national platform and had now joined hands with the Ali brothers whose Khilafat Movement was successful in rousing a significant number of Muslims and Hindus. Jinnah was worried about his Muslim base.

    The love between Ruttie and Jinnah, however, was not lost; they always had those feelings in their hearts till the end. But somehow things were not working out.

    Jinnah’s endurance 

    Jinnah was a serious uncomplaining person who rarely exhibited anger, in itself not a bad trait – but it could become heavy liability because the other party, noticing no reaction, could fail to curb her/his actions beyond a certain limit; this could exert a great toll on the relationship. Jinnah paid all Ruttie’s bills, rarely voicing opposition – the rare occasions when he complained about the money were Ruttie’s trip to Hyderabad visit and her nine month sojourn in Paris. Ruttie had problems handling and converting currencies. British India had several currencies, including, Hyderabadi rupee. (Hyderabad State was under the rule of Nizam but indirectly under British rule.)

    In 1923, there was a conference in Jinnah’s chamber attended by M. C. Chagla, among others. In the middle of a conference, Ruttie entered the room and sat herself comfortably on the table-top near her husband. She seemed anxious for the conference to end and kept swinging her feet. Jinnah exhibited no anger, and continued his meeting as if Ruttie wasn’t there. Once the conference was over, they walked out together.

    Chagla sympathized with Jinnah:

    “But I must say in fairness to Jinnah that no husband could have treated his wife more generously than he did, although she supplied him the greatest provocation throughout their married life.”

    In Chagla, p. 120.

    In Simla, Jinnah and Ruttie were invited for a dinner with the governor. On their way, Bolitho writes,

    “She stopped the carriage and bought a roasted corn-cob from a man beside the road. She began to eat it as they came near Government House.”

    Quoted in Reddy, p. 281. The above passage was deleted from Bolitho’s biography of Jinnah because it was an official biography.

    Bolitho wrote that Jinnah “accepted the foolish hurt in silence.” Jinnah suffered quietly without a word. Jinnah’s political life saw times when he was at the peak, as during the Lucknow Pact, and at other times without many supporters, but he survived through determination and a certain image he had created of himself. That image wasn’t enhanced by Ruttie’s corn-cob eating. This was an open warfare on Ruttie’s part.

    Kanji Dwarkadas

    There were two people who later became close to Ruttie. Both of them were close to Jinnah, too. They were Kanji Dwarkadas (1892 -1968) and Sarojini Naidu. Kanji first saw Ruttie in 1914, when she was fourteen, at the Oval:

    “I could not take my eyes off this girl and watched the carriage and its occupant till it disappeared from sight. I could not forget her face. Three months later, I found from a photograph in a newspaper that this girl was Ruttie, daughter of the … Sir Dinshaw Petit, Bart.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 9.

    Kanji was associated with Jinnah in his political work which brought him to Jinnah’s house where he came to know Ruttie well. They became very good friends. Ruttie cared for Kanji and vice versa.

    Ruttie was an ocean of energy whose waves knew no halting; always on the move to explore, learn, experience, at the same time, trying to understand and control her inner turmoil. She was also inclined towards literature and art and was a great romantic. She needed a partner in a way that Jinnah was not free to provide. Although initially, he devoted a lot of time to his marriage, later on he was unavailable due to his heavy law and political work. Ruttie was disillusioned. The distance between Jinnah and her increased. Ruttie’s immense energy and inquisitiveness had either to be suppressed or used. She had to find some solace. She sought it in mysticism, spirituality, telepathy, and such. Ruttie’s friend Kanji accompanied her in these activities as he was into it too so it became easier for Ruttie to pursue these. Kanji was a very good friend, and Ruttie felt safe with him. Kanji:

    “Ruttie was intensely interested in contacting the non-physical world and she made difficult and dangerous experiments to verify her beliefs and convictions. She wanted first-hand knowledge. She thought she could get it through Seances with the help of mediums or table-tapping.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 27.

    This 21 November 1924 letter to Kanji shows Ruttie’s quest:

    “… Lately I have been very much drawn towards the subject of Spirit Communication and I am most anxious to know more and to get at the Truth. It is such an elusive Subject and the more I hear of it the more puzzled do I become, though still more passionately interested. I have some sort of an idea that you must be cognisant of spiritual circles in our City, whose Seance one may join. I don’t profess any creed nor do I subscribe to a belief, but of late willy-nilly I have been propelled towards the study of so called spiritual phenomenon and I am too deeply immersed in the matter now to give it up without some personal satisfaction for I cannot content myself with other peoples’ experiences, though I fully realise that in a matter of this nature one doesn’t always get the evidence one seeks.

    “Anyway I wonder whether you can assist me in this matter by recommending me as a ‘medium’ or ‘Clairvoyant’ professional or otherwise. I would prefer my identity, however, to remain unknown while you make enquiries. And I sincerely hope that you will be able to assist me. With my kind regards to your wife and yourself.”

    “P.S. Mrs [Annie] Besant might know of some reliable ‘Medium’.”

    Ibid, p. 28.

    Besant had told Kanji seances were not safe. He didn’t want to let Ruttie down but wanted to help her and so requested Mrs. Margaret Cousins to see Ruttie in December 1924, during the Theosophical Convention in Bombay. Mrs. Besant, J. Krishnamurti, and Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa were also in attendance. She saw Mrs. Margaret Cousins and was “most inspired” with the address by Jinarajadasa.

    Letter to Kanji April 1925:

    My Dear Kanji,

    Yes, I know of the dream travels of which you speak. But I do all my dreaming in my waking hours. I am not being waggish. There is nothing I would welcome with greater rejoicing than an experience of the sort to which you refer in your letter, but in my heavy druglike sleep there is no redeeming feature …

    My soul is too clogged! … I am feeling peculiarly restless and wish one with psychic powers could come to my assistance.

    My proud soul humbles before the magnitude of this subject and in my estimation those of us with Second Sight and other such psychic powers should rank with the world’s poets and songsters for their gift if more intelligible is also more divine. The seers and the saints should stand among the world’s prophets. After all we are at present too blind and unseeing to comprehend what the psychics would reveal to our half demented senses. But what the mind often revolts at, and refuses to accept, the intrinsic self within us admits with certain ease which makes the more thoughtful ponder; as though it had some ancient and original knowledge of its own.

    Yours Sincerely, Ruttie.

    Dwarkadas, p. 31-32.

    In July 1925, Ruttie was to accompany Kanji, his wife and their four year old son on a visit to Adyar (Madras) but couldn’t so she joined them later. Ruttie wanted to join the Theosophical Society but the morning meeting with Universal Prayers and recitation from scriptures of different religions put her off. She told Mrs. Besant that she was perturbed by this religious slant. Mrs. Besant understood Ruttie’s point and told her that a sincere person like her doesn’t need to formally join the Society.

    After meeting Ruttie, Mrs. Besant told Kanji: “Look after your great friend, she is unhappy.” he was taken aback, so she further clarified: “Don’t you see unhappiness in her eyes? Look at her.” (Dwarkadas, p. 41.)

    In 1926, Ruttie was accompanying Jinnah on a four-month study-tour of Europe, the United States, and Canada, and to attend meetings of the Sandhurst (Army) Committee in England.

    Ruttie asked Kanji:

    “Kanji, I am going away to Europe and U.S.A. for a few months. You will not be with me to protect me and help me. Do please, therefore, magnetise something for me to keep me in touch with you.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 43.

    Kanji hesitatingly magnetized a precious jade with “thoughts of love and protection with particular reference to protecting her from any adverse effects of seances” for her.

    When Ruttie and Jinnah were back, she met Kanji and asked him: “Good God! What kind of thoughts you put in that jade?” as she had made three appointments with seances but none happened because at first she missed the train, second time the medium didn’t show up, last time she didn’t remember that she had to see the medium.

    Jinnah didn’t believe in these spiritual and medium nonsense; he would just laugh it off. He was thankful to Kanji for helping Ruttie to get out of the harmful futile chase.

    Kanji seemed truly gentle natured and Ruttie appreciated him:

    “You are a dear!–and the more I think on it, I feel you had no business to be born into the world with ‘Dhoti [men’s sarong like lower garment].’ The correct setting for a nature of such fine sensibilities is a Sari–or a Skirt as the case may geographically require.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 46.

    Kanji on Ruttie:

    “She was a source of inspiration in my work and next to Mrs. Besant she was a most helpful and healthy influence on me and my work.”

    Ibid, p. 53.

    When Ruttie was away, she would ask Kanji to see if Jinnah was doing alright. A 25th September 1922 letter:

    “… And just one thing more–go and see Jinnah and tell me how he is–he has a habit of habitually over-working himself, and now that I am not there to bother and tease him he will be worse than ever.”

    Kanji, p. 26.

    Sarojni Naidu

    Sarojini Naidu (1879 – 1949) was the other person with whom Ruttie had very warm relations. Mrs. Naidu was a progressive poet/politician who hailed from Hyderabad but her political work necessitated her prolonged stays in Bombay. This provided Ruttie with a person in whom she could confide some of her inner thoughts. Two of her five children, daughters Padmaja (born the same year as Ruttie) and Leilamani, younger than Padmaja, were close to Ruttie too.

    Ruttie would vent her anger, frustration, helplessness, and sarcasm in person or letters to Mrs. Naidu, Padmaja, and Leilamani. Mrs. Naidu sometimes lent support to Ruttie, at other times she complained to her daughters about Ruttie taking up her time. Mrs. Naidu pitied Ruttie and extended her sympathy. Ruttie never asked for Mrs. Naidu ’s help to reconcile her and Jinnah’s differences.

    Once when Ruttie was in Hyderabad, she bought a horse but Jinnah disapproved it because it was not vetted in the manner it should have been. The letter of 25 February 1920 to Padmaja, Ruttie’s wit and anger against Jinnah was obvious:

    “It is rather a shame about the horse.” “I wish the owner had succeeded in his ruse of bribing the vets. At any rate I do hope J won’t be idiotically sensible about it. After all, I never had him vetted before I married him! But horses I suppose are far more valuable!”

    Reddy, p. 209.

    It seems Ruttie had flown into the marriage cage too early; this can be detected from Mrs. Naidu ’s letter of 20 January 1928 to Padmaja:

    “Don’t force me back into slavery. Let me be free. Let me be free … Poor child … restless and longing to be free of all her shackles. She says her youth is going and she must live …”

    Reddy, p. 405.

    Ruttie’s health

    Ruttie liked spicy food very much. She just couldn’t resist it although it didn’t suit her stomach, and would make her sick for days. She herself cooked food when a friend would visit her. She couldn’t offer that food to Jinnah, as he preferred non-spicy food. During childhood, once in a while, Ruttie would get nauseated and had stomach cramps, but the nannies and nurses were always there at Petit Hall to take care of her. Also, her mother kept an eye on her to see that she didn’t overindulged in fried and spicy food, and sweets.

    But at South Court, there was no one to stop her from fulfilling her craving for foods she wanted to eat. That had been going on for almost the last four years.

    At the end of December 1921, Jinnah had arranged a conference of nationalists from all over India at his house. Prior to the conference, Kanji came for two nights and all three of them had dinner and talked late into the night. On the third day, Ruttie was bedridden because of the stomach ailment. All during the set up of and the conference itself, the overwhelmingly tired and sick Ruttie stayed in bed. Doctors were unable to figure out what was wrong with her and advised her to get out of India’s “unhealthy tropical clime.” The next time the three of them got together and Ruttie fell ill again, she took much longer to recover. Her illness was recurring.

    5 June 1925 letter to Kanji:

    “I have been ill again, so almost any evening will find me at home.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 38.

    Insomnia was another issue that bothered Ruttie a lot. She used to take Veronol, a barbiturate, which gradually turned into an addiction. Without any restrain, the doctors were prescribing Veronol for any kind of sleeplessness. (Reddy, p. 289-290.)

    Sandhurst

    On 10 April, 1926, Ruttie and Jinnah, a member of the Sandhurst Committee, sailed to England for a study tour in order to set up a military training school in India.

    The April 8 and 10 (1926) letters from Mrs. Naidu to Padmaja and Leilamani described Ruttie “is the wreck of herself in body and mind!” “She is looking just the very shadow of herself–a wreck of what was once a beautiful and brilliant vision.” Mrs. Naidu believed:

    “I don’t think she will be more than a very few days in England but spend her time in Paris and go to Canada and America with Jinnah, when the Skeen Committee goes there.”

    Mrs. Naidu was right. Once Jinnah’s work of interviewing military experts for the Skeen Committee was over, the Jinnahs were to go to Paris. But Ruttie dashed off to Paris ahead of Jinnah. What was her urgency to rush to Paris?

    ENDNOTES:

    The post The Tragic Tale of a Flower that Wilted too Soon first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The Gujaratis attach suffixes such as “bhai” (brother) and “bai” (lady) or “ben” (sister) to their names. Among Pakistani Gujaratis, this practice has disappeared. In India, it’s declining gradually.
    2    Parsees had escaped Muslim conquest of Iran and had settled in the Indian subcontinent between 800 and 1000 CE. There are only 25,000 Zoroastrians left in Iran and live under a great many restrictions. See Zoroastrians: Iran’s Forgotten Minority and Persecution of Zoroastrians.
    3    Her great grandfather Manockjee Petit is credited with founding India’s first successful cotton mill. Her grandfather, her father’s namesake, persuaded the British to legally recognize the Parsi Succession and Marriage Acts. After his death, Ruttie’s father took over the religious and business duties.
    4    innah’s views on issues:

    on women, at the Islamia College for women:

    “ I have always maintained that no nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with the men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.“

    to reporters in Srinagar on admitting Ahmadiyya Muslims into Muslim League:

    “Any Muslim could do so, irrespective of his creed or sect.”

    on racist comment made by Lord Salisbury (who served thrice as Britain’s prime minister) against the Grand Old Man of India, Dadabhai Naoroji when he announced his plan to run as a liberal candidate from Central Finsbury, Salisbury said:

    “I doubt if we have yet got to the point of view where a British constituency would elect a black man.”

    a href=”https://archive.org/details/jinnah-creator-of-pakistan-by-hector-bolitho_202307/page/11/mode/2up” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener” data-saferedirecturl=”https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.org/details/jinnah-creator-of-pakistan-by-hector-bolitho_202307/page/11/mode/2up&source=gmail&ust=1739976302112000&usg=AOvVaw2R91pcHndk7DTc6NKLiJU9″>Bolitho, p. 10.

    Jinnah, who at that time was in England as a student, experienced the election fervor. Later he told Fatima:

    “…If Dadabhai was black, I was darker.” “And if this was the mentality of the British politicians, then we would never get a fair deal from them. From that day I have been an uncompromising enemy of all forms of colour bar and racial prejudice.”

    Wolpert, p. 11.

    in support of Bhupendranath Basu’s Special Marriage Bill in the Imperial Legislative Council:

    “No doubt, Sir, as far as I see, the Hindu law or the Mohammedan law, whichever you take… , does create a difficulty in the way of a Hindu marrying a non-Hindu or a Mohammedan marrying anyone who is not ‘Kitabia’; … Therefore, if there is a fairly large class of enlightened, educated, advance, Indians, be they Hindus, Mohammedans or Parsis, and if they wish to adopt a system of marriage which is more in accord with modern civilization and ideas of modern times, more in accord with the modern sentiment, why should that class be denied justice unless it is going to do a serious harm to the Hindus or Mussalmans in one way or the other.”

    when revolutionary Bhagat Singh and other prisoners had gone on hunger strike demanding that Indian prisoners should be accorded the same treatment which European prisoners are provided with, Jinnah defended Singh and others in the Central Assembly:

    “Mind you, sir, I do not approve the action of Bhagat Singh, and I say this on the floor of this House. I regret that, rightly or wrongly, youth today in India is stirred up, and you cannot, when you have three hundred and odd millions of people, prevent such crimes being committed, however much you deplore them and however much you may say that they are misguided. It is the system, this damnable system of government, which is resented by the people.”

    5    Nizari Isma’ilis are currently headed by Prince Rahim Aga Khan V who succeeded his father Prince Karim Aga Khan IV on February 4, 2025. (There are several branches of Isma’ilism, including Musta’ali Isma’ilis).
    6    Jinnah’s sisters, Rahmatbai and Maryambai, were married to Sunni Khojas because after a certain age it was difficult to find a groom.
    7    Aga Khan later wrote about Jinnah’s opposition:

    “… there is a much more freakishly ironic flavor about the name and personality of the chief Muslim opponent of the stand which we took.”

    “Who then was our doughtiest opponent in 1906? A distinguished Muslim barrister in Bombay, with a large and prosperous practice, Mr. Mohammed All [sic] Jinnah.… he came out in bitter hostility toward all that I and my friends had done and were trying to do. He was the only well-known Muslim to take this attitude, but his opposition had nothing mealy-mouthed about it; he said that our principle of separate electorates was dividing the nation against itself, and for nearly a quarter of a century he remained our most inflexible critic and opponent….”

    — Aga Khan, The Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time

    The founders of the Muslim League were Muslim nobles and wealthy landowners whose aim was to prepare Muslims to be loyal subjects of the British.
    8    See A. G. Noorani’s review, “Non-Fiction: Of Human Tragedy and Consequences” in Dawn (August 13, 2017) where he critiques certain points in the book. “To fill the gaps in the narrative, she [Sheela Reddy] speculates and makes trite and absurd comments. On the political aspect, she has not been wise in her choice of sources.”
    9    In her book, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit wrote about Ruttie as “spoiled” and “used to having her way” and that the Parsis were “a very conservative group” which allowed Ruttie to “shock the community.”

    Whether Ruttie’s marriage to Jinnah worked out or not is a different matter but, at least, Ruttie had the guts to marry the person she liked and loved. Syud Hossain, a Muslim journalist, was associated with Pherozeshah Mehta’s newspaper Bombay Chronicle who in 1919 joined Motilal’s newspaper The Independent and fell in love with his daughter Swarup (also known as Nan), later Vijaya. When her family arranged her marriage somewhere else, she rushed to Hossain and they got married in the presence of a Muslim cleric. Nehru family sought Gandhi’s help to separate them and both Vijaya and Hossain were sent to Gandhi’s Sabarmati Asharam in Ahmerdabad. Hossain was pressured to annul the marriage by giving in writing to Gandhi. Then he was sent to England and subsequently to US to present India’s case–a long forced exile. Gandhi’s lecture to Vijaya is quiet enlightening about the “Mahatma” or “Great Soul.”

    “How could you regard Syud in any other light but that of a brother – what right had you to allow yourself, even for a minute, to look with love at a Mussalman. Out of nearly twenty crores of Hindus couldn’t you find a single one who came up to your ideals – but you must pass then all over and throw yourself into the arms of a Mohammedan!!!”

    “Sarup (Nan’s given name before her marriage), had I been in your place I would never have allowed myself to have any feelings but those of friendliness towards Syud Hossain. Then supposing Syud had ever attempted to show admiration for me or had professed love for me, I would have told him gently but very firmly – Syud, what you are saying is not right. You are a Mussalman and I am a Hindu. It is not right that there should be anything between us. You shall be my brother but as a husband I cannot ever look at you.”

    In Minhaz Merchant, “Mrs Jinnah’s love jihad in Mahatma Gandhi’s time

    Years later, both Vijaya and Hossain would meet whenever they were in the same cities abroad.

    Vijaya didn’t say, as Ruttie used to say: “Wake it up” either to Gandhi or to her father or brother Jawaharlal (first Prime Minister of independent India) — both considered progressives.
    10    Benjamin Guy Horniman was a courageous British journalist who supported India’s nationalism. He brought the Jallianwala Bagh massacre tragedy (Amritsar, Punjab on 13 April 1919) to the people of Britain and the world by smuggling photos of the tragedy out of India. There was a feeling of repulsion among the British. Just thirty seconds after entering Jallianwala Bagh, Brigadier-General R. E. H. Dyer ordered firing on an unarmed peaceful gathering without warning. The official figure listed 379 dead and more than 1,000 injured.

    Dyer was in a killing mood as the following sentence makes it crystal clear:

    “I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed.”

    Sadly, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s last foreign secretary Y. D. Gundevia has in his book In the Districts of the Raj defended Dyer, the “Butcher of Amritsar,” as “inherently decent Englishman” who had “panicked momentarily” because he was “called upon to act in an emergency.”

    Horniman was arrested and deported to London. He was able to come back to India in January 1926.

    Dyer died in 1927. The Tories, who were in power then, accorded him a hero’s funeral.
    11    Faiz’s famous poem mujh se pehli si muhabbat mere mehboob na mANg (My beloved, don’t ask me for the love I once had for you) was part of the book of poems published in 1943. The other sorrows he’s talking about is misery, violence, oppression etc., whereas Jinnah’s woes were of a political nature.

    Listen to expressive reading by actress Zohra Sehgal. Jyoti Mamgain recites few lines of Faiz and then questions him with her poem as to what happened that made him turn away from love. It is powerfully written and passionately rendered.
    12    The song is a duet sung by Sudha Malhotra and Mukesh. The male lead replies thus in Mukesh’s voice:

    zindagi sirf muhabbat nahi kuchh aur bhi hai / zulf o rukhsAr ki jannat nahi kuchh aur bhi hai / bhookh aur pyAs ki mAri hui is duniyA mein / ishq hi ek haqeeqat nahi kuchh aur bhi hai / tum agar Ankh churAo to ye haq hai tumko / maine tumse hi nahi sabse muhabbat ki hai

    life is not just love, its more than that / it’s not a paradise of tresses and cheeks, its more than that / in this world full of hunger and thirst / affection is not the only truth, its more than that / you have a right to ignore me, if you want to / not only you but I also love all others

    (Listen the entire song here.)
    13    Jinnah’s daughter Dina was threatened by General Zia-ul-Haq’s government.:

    Jinnah’s daughter Dina, living in New York, was secretly asked to deny that Jinnah ever drank alcohol or ate ham, but she refused to oblige, after which she was threatened with “disclosures” about her private life if she ever made it public that she had been approached. She was never officially invited to visit Pakistan.…

    In Khaled Ahmed, “The Genius of Stanley Wolpert

    Zia came to power after overthrowing, and later hanging, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Among the four military dictators of Pakistan, Zia was the only one who was possessed with Islam. The US governments supported him with money and weapons to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In the process, Pakistan got over three million refugees, plenty of weapons and drugs. Prior to Zia, Pakistan was almost free of drugs.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The September 2024 extra-legal murder of Dr. Shahnawaz Kumbhar exposed the lethal combination of blasphemy charges with improper policing practises in Pakistan. The incident reveals both human rights challenges that blasphemy accusation victims face and questions the proper role of law enforcement agencies regarding justice and human rights protection.

    Background of Dr. Shahnawaz Kumbhar

    The district of Umerkot in Sindh now associates its entire symbol with Dr. Shahnawaz Kambhar who suffered brutal murder despite being a resident. Religious fanatics murdered a doctor who remained innocent to his killers. Dr. Shahnawaz Kambhar distinguished himself as a community healthcare worker who received credit for his social activities and charitable activities in the field. His mission included organising free medical programs throughout Umerkot alongside neighbouring rural communities that offered free medical care to all patients. Through his lifetime he devoted himself to enhancing his impoverished residential belt despite the fact that he could have amassed considerable wealth in Karachi like numerous medical professionals do. Through his ongoing healthcare mission he placed greater emphasis on achieving better public health results in his local area.

    The Blasphemy Allegation and Subsequent Dismissal

    Dr. Kumbhar encountered the ordeal after a local mosque cleric claimed to discover blasphemous content on his social media account. His swift removal from medical service at the civil hospital in Umerkot happened after the accusation was made. When a person in Pakistan faces blasphemy accusations their situation turns into a dangerous sequence that causes harsh legal consequences while society reacts with violent crowds and possible unlawful acts against the accused. The announcement of such allegations against someone becomes an immediate vehicle for both reputation destruction and personal security risks.

    Extrajudicial Killing and Fabricated Encounter

    Dr. Kumbhar received arrest after the complaint against him. Officials showed him a fair trial but ultimately murdered him during a fake police confrontation. The first police statements stated Dr. Kumbhar died during a gunbattle but investigations showed he stayed under police detention throughout and officials deliberately created the encounter to legitimise his killing. The discovery shows an alarming trend where security forces perform unauthorised killings in highly sensitive cases regarding blasphemy incidents.

    Investigations and Legal Proceedings

    A complete investigation by the Sindh Human Rights Commission (SHRC) exposed both legal violations and administrative failures following the incident. An extensive investigation started by the Chief Minister of Sindh caused him to suspend multiple high-ranked police officers involved in the case. The legal authorities filed 45 individuals to court with murder and terrorism charges and violations of the Torture and Custodial Death Prevention Act 2022 against Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Javed Jiskani and Superintendent of Police (SSP) Asad Chaudhry. The non-bailable arrest warrants did not prevent multiple accused officers from evading arrest which demonstrated existing legal system failures to enforce responsibility upon influential officials.

    Exhumation and Forensic Findings

    The authorities obtained Dr. Kumbhar’s body for thorough autopsy procedures after exhuming him to find out what had happened. The forensic examination proved beyond doubt that Dr. Kumbhar had suffered from torture which the first autopsy report had completely failed to detect. The contradictory findings of the autopsy led authorities to arrest Dr. Muntazar Leghari who conducted the first autopsy thus leading to his charges for doctoring medical evidence to hide misconduct. This case element shows how medical and legal systems allow collusive actions between professionals that cause justice to be delayed while maintaining conditions of absolute freedom from prosecution.

    Role of Social Media and Mob Violence

    Per the SHRC report social media played an important part in worsening the situation. Social media users spread inflammatory content along with false information which triggered widespread public anger leading to violent mob activities. The death of Dr. Kumbhar triggered an enraged mob to seize his body afterwards leading them to use fire to defile it and they tried to bury it without proper funeral rituals as police made insufficient attempts at intervention. The instant consequences of improper social media usage emerged in public perception while demonstrating how dangerous such behaviour can be in delicate situations.

    Wider Implications and Call for Reform

    The medical professional’s case corresponds to a fundamental issue in the way Pakistan manages blasphemy charges. Multiple incidents registered by the Centre for Justice indicate how accusations of blasphemy have resulted in mistrials of justice that often end with extralegal killings. The established patterns demonstrate that it is essential to create thorough legal reforms that defend the basic rights of citizens and stop blasphemy law misuse.

    Conclusion

    The unlawful death of Dr. Shahnawaz Kumbhar provides evidence about the dangers facing people accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. Both current legal codes and law enforcement practices need to be evaluated immediately in order to make significant adjustments that will protect individual rights and uphold the rule of law.The absence of reform measures will allow violent and unjust practises to continue which will simultaneously endanger the rule of law and damage state institution credibility.

    The post The Tragic Killing of Dr. Shahnawaz Kumbhar first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Amid its beautiful and quite vales of Parachinar lying between the two neighbouring countries, Pakistan, the echoing of muffled screams can be heard far too often as families lose their dear ones to sectarian terrorism. Once surrounded by the natural beauty and orderly with friendly neighbours and kin folk, this town can now boast about appearing to be hell on earth—the manifestation of an entrenched conflict that has taken so many lives. It is not a story of just a small town named Parachinar but also a testimony of hatred between two sects of a religion that has not come to its lowest even today in Pakistan and so in the world.

    Hence, Parachinar is perhaps the habitual site of this systematic genocide of the Shia community, which is not just shocking but has become normal in the region. The last act of violence happened on November 21, 2024, when armed men targeted and attacked two convoys of Shia pilgrims in Kurram district; at least 42 people were killed, including women and children. Such attacks, which occurred while under police escort, are proof that insecurity remains a major problem in the region. The violence is however new in the region since July this year, and most recurrent conflicts are due to land issues between the Shia and Sunni militias. The retaliatory violence that followed led to over 80 fatalities within days. That is Shane’s argument, and he blamed most of the carnage on the Sunni insurgents: all but 28 of the dead were Shia. This cycle of violence, fanned by ethnic and tribal animosities as well as historical enmities, highlights longstanding social tension in Kurram that makes the region rather sensitive because of the mixed population.

    This incidence of violence is not an isolated event but is part and parcel of a sectarian problem in Pakistan. That such violence cannot be controlled by the Pakistani government shows that the problem is a failure of governance. Conflict and fighting between different Shia and Sunni groups in Kurram has become almost an annual event over the years; in the period between 2007 and 2011, more than 2,000 people died in Kurram. At a governmental and societal level, the recent increase in deaths and tears of families is a clear indication that intervention is required.

    The tragedy in Parachinar occurred in November 2024, in particular on November 21, a brutal attack on Shia pilgrims. Gunmen pumped bullets on two convoys accompanied by the police, in which 42 persons lost their lives, including women and children. What happened is not unique, but it fits into a dark trend—a growing cycle of violence that has only amplified since the summer. This conflict arose basically from land disagreement between the Shia and Sunni; this led to acts of revenge killing over eighty persons, of which sixty-six were from Shia. These occurrences cannot be just viewed as skirmishes but point to the incessant bitter ethnic enmity and past resentments that still exist in Kurram.

    The government response has been quite poor. Although Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also expressed his anger against the violence in the country, this was done very late and with insufficient actions and words of the victims’ families mourning in Pakistan. Demonstrations across Pakistan have protested about inaction against what is regarded as the genocide of Shia Muslims. However, unsurprisingly, the government is yet to suggest clear courses of action. This passivity is symptomatic of a larger social and governmental negligence in shielding its people from sectarian militant aggression.

    This violence in Kurram has deeper seeds, compounded by regional and political factors and perhaps bad governance. More than 2,000 people have died due to sectarian clashes in this region between the periods of 2007 and 2011. The recent steps were provoked by local concerns and the Shia-Sunni strife that emerged during the Syrian civil war, which was used by radicals. This unfortunate phenomenon of sectarian violence in Pakistan, especially against Shai Muslims, has led to several critical questions concerning security and relationships within and between groups in a country that has well-rooted sectarian tension.

    Inability to address these problems continues to perpetrate violence in Pakistan and brings discredit to the government at the international level. It is symptomatic of a broader problem of governance in which policing or security does not suffice. There is another important factor of the situation: violence against women, which during the conflict intensified due to the constant impunity of the actions of those who use violence and general disregard for the rights of minorities.

    Opposition parties in Pakistan have joined people in the streets to make their condemnation of the attack in Parachinar very loud and clear. The protesters have demanded that the government provide security for its people against cultists’ aggression. Such attacks need to be condemned by the government, and such condemnation, as laudable as it is, falls short of what is required. Increased security measures, identification, arrest, and prosecution of those persons responsible for such attacks, and sustainable solutions to looking into the grievances of these sects are called for.

    While the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has rightly condemned the violence, it is extremely necessary to move towards practical politics and take strong actions against the culprits. The establishment should define the type of security it has in store for everyone, including non-Muslims. Thus, international pressure is important in compelling the government to implement mechanisms that would ensure such incidences are not repeated. It is high time global society stood up and demanded that Pakistan should do something to address the unenviable situation of vulnerable groups in the country.

    For this reason, it is now the responsibility of the international community to bring the plight of Parachinar to the limelight so as to apply pressure to Pakistan to perform its primary function of protecting its citizens. Various stakeholders should continue putting pressure on governments to enhance law enforcement, implement security measures, and promote entities that vigorously respect religious and ethnic diversity. Fatima and other victims’ voices must be escalated to create empathy towards the terrible acts witnessed happening in Parachinar and areas like this.

    It is important to support organisations that are actively combating extremism and building healing and unity as a result. These organisations are at the centre of the problem, helping the victims, fighting for their rights, and seeking reconciliation. In this respect, NGOs are of immense help to women because, through providing assistance of various kinds, increasing the public’s visibility towards such issues, as well as initiating and supporting changes in the law, they help to halt the violence. It is not only for the reason to save lives of Shia Muslims under attack in Parachinar but to enhance the status of any minority across Pakistan and other countries as well.

    This pain of Parachinar needs to go to remind the world how much it requires the values of empathy and togetherness. This is evidenced by the constant fear experienced or persecution, suffering that pervades the lives of its people, therefore the need to pay attention and act. Let us not forget the lives lost, and let us try to make the valleys of Parachinar do not ring with pains instead with the animation of tomorrow’s smile. Parachinar catastrophe is a test for humanity; it is the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil—violation of human rights. It becomes possible only when we recognise these conflicts and work to eradicate them in order to have a society where sectarian violence has no room.

    The post Parachinar: A Forgotten Tragedy in the Shadow of Sectarian Violence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New York, January 28, 2025—Pakistan’s Senate on Tuesday passed controversial amendments to the country’s cybercrime laws, which would criminalize the “intentional” spread of “false news” with prison terms of up to three years, a fine of up to 2 million rupees (USD$7,100), or both. 

    The amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) were previously approved by the National Assembly and now await the president’s signature to become law. 

    “The Pakistan Senate’s passage of amendments to the country’s cybercrime laws is deeply concerning. While on its face, the law seeks to tamp down the spread of false news, if signed into law, it will disproportionately curtail freedom of speech in Pakistan,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “President Asif Ali Zardari must veto the bill, which threatens the fundamental rights of Pakistani citizens and journalists while granting the government and security agencies sweeping powers to impose complete control over internet freedom in the country.”

    The proposed amendments to PECA include the establishment of four new government bodies to help regulate online content and broadening the definitions of online harms. CPJ’s texts to Pakistan’s Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar did not receive a response.

    The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists announced nationwide protests against the amendments, calling them unconstitutional and an infringement on citizens’ rights.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Longer range/endurance UAVs make a different to the tyranny of distance when it comes down to ISR. For full situational awareness, governments and their armed forces are electing to perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions across international waters and borders with uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV), and this is most evident in the Asia Pacific […]

    The post Uncrewed Eyes Look East appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • On Sunday, December 22, the Progressive Students Federation (PrSF) in Pakistan organized a Student Action Conference in Islamabad. The Conference brought together hundreds of students from the capital city and nearby areas for a series of panel discussions, political theater presentations, and revolutionary music.

    Several student leaders from provinces such as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan addressed the gathering of the students talking about the exploitation and oppression their regions are facing under the present government led by Shahwaz Sharif.

    The post Students Say IMF Is Responsible For Privatization Of Education appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  •  

    Guardian: Pakistan army and police accused of firing on Imran Khan supporters

    Reporting on political killings in Pakistan, the Guardian (11/27/24) makes clear who is accused of violence and who the victims are said to be.

    Islamabad was roiled by a days-long protest in the last week of November. Supporters of political prisoner and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, and of his Pakistan Movement for Justice party, marched into the city, demanding Khan’s release and the resignation of the military-backed Sharif government of Shehbaz Sharif.

    Pakistan’s political crisis has Washington’s fingerprints all over it. However, readers of the New York Times and the Washington Post would be forgiven if they thought the protests were a purely domestic issue. Missing from the protest coverage in leading US papers was the ongoing support the Pakistani government has received from the Biden administration, continuing a pattern of obscuring US actions and interests in Pakistani political affairs.

    Khan is a former celebrity cricketer who turned to politics in the 1990s. The PTI (as the party is known by its Urdu acronym) grew in power, culminating in Khan’s 2018 election as prime minister on a platform of change and anti-corruption (BBC, 7/26/18). Since August 2023, he has been continuously locked up on over 180 charges levied by the current Pakistani government (Al Jazeera, 10/24/24), accused of crimes ranging from unlawful marriage to treason (New York Times, 7/13/24).

    As protesters descended upon Islamabad’s Democracy Chowk, a public square often used for political rallies, Pakistani security forces unleashed brutal repression on the movement (BBC, 11/26/24). Some protesters were shot with live ammunition, with one doctor telling BBC Urdu (11/29/24) “he had never done so many surgeries for gunshot wounds in a single night.” A man’s prayers were interrupted when paramilitary forces pushed him off a three-story stack of shipping containers (BBC, 11/27/24).

    The Guardian (11/27/24) witnessed “at least five patients with bullet wounds in one hospital,” and reported that, per anonymous officials, army and paramilitary forces shot and killed 17 protesters. Independent Urdu (11/30/24) spoke to doctors and officials at two Islamabad hospitals, where over 100 protesters with gunshot wounds were admitted. Geo Fact Check (11/30/24) and Al Jazeera (12/4/24) have independently confirmed some of the deaths.

    A source within the Pakistan Army later exposed to Drop Site (12/10/24) that the crackdown was premeditated by the government, and included orders to fire at a deliberately disoriented crowd.

    Running cover

    NYT: Pakistan Deploys Army in Its Capital as Protesters and Police Clash

    The New York Times (11/26/24) framed violence as a “clash” between protesters and police, and depicted the shooting of demonstrators as an effort “to defend government buildings with gunfire if needed.”

    To the New York Times, the journalistic responsibility to investigate the repression of protesters by a US-supported regime went only as far as reprinting government denials. The first story (11/26/24), published 13 hours after the government crackdown, initially made no mention of murdered protesters, before later being stealth-edited to reflect that “hospital officials told local news media that at least four civilians had died from bullet wounds.” (The original version is archived here.) The possibility of government violence was framed as a defensive necessity: “Soldiers were ordered to defend government buildings with gunfire if needed,” the subhead read.

    The next story (11/27/24) used similarly passive, obfuscatory language, writing that local media reported “four civilians were killed by gunfire in the unrest.” Further down, the Times reported that PTI “accused security forces of killing dozens of protesters, a claim that could not be independently verified and was repeatedly denied by officials.”

    In neither story did the Times attribute the bullets to any actor; meanwhile, it did reprint comment from Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar and Islamabad top cop Ali Nasir Rizvi, in addition to twice citing unnamed “officials,” all of whom claimed that security forces did not shoot protesters.

    A third Times report (11/27/24) on the protests said that PTI “claimed that several of its workers were killed or injured during the protest…by the authorities,” without mentioning that protesters had in fact died; it quickly followed up that the Information Minister Tarar denied officers shot at protesters. Besides that brief mention, the story bizarrely focused on the inconvenience that protests have created for residents of Islamabad.

    The headline of Washington Post’s only story (11/27/24) on the affair mentions “violent clashes,” but the outlet failed to report that anyone had died, much less been killed by security forces. Whenever “alleged” abuses were mentioned in the story, they were followed with government denials.

    In all, the Times and the Post responded to brutal government repression of a mass protest by relaying government denials and reporting on bullet wounds with no apparent source.

    What’s perhaps more troubling is the failure of either outlet to report that the government carrying out this repression is one well-supported by the Biden administration, even over the objection of his own party’s congresspeople. The omission of Biden’s support for the ruling government, led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) is glaring, but not new.

    ‘All will be forgiven’

    Intercept: Secret Pakistan Cable Documents U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan

    The document that has the Biden State Department telling Pakistan that “all will be forgiven in Washington” if it removed its prime minister (Intercept, 8/9/23) was not quoted by the New York Times or Washington Post.

    Corporate media also did their best to obscure the circumstances of Khan’s fall from power and PTI’s recent election loss. Imran Khan lost power in 2022 in the form of a no-confidence vote orchestrated by the military establishment (Foreign Affairs, 6/16/23; Dawn, 2/15/24). That move came after a March 2022 meeting between US State Department officials and the Pakistani ambassador to the United States.

    Under Khan, Pakistan had increasingly charted a foreign policy course independent from US interests (Nation, 7/5/21; BBC, 6/21/21). The Biden administration’s appetite for Khan’s leadership had begun to wane, especially with regards to Afghanistan and Russia.

    According to a leaked Pakistani diplomatic cable (Intercept, 8/9/23), President Joe Biden’s Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu informed the ambassador that “if the no-confidence vote against the prime minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington”—a reference to Pakistan’s posture on the Russia/Ukraine war, which Lu reportedly termed “aggressively neutral.” If not, Khan and his government would be further isolated. One month later, Khan was removed in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence.

    Despite maintaining that the cable does not entail US meddling in Pakistan’s domestic affairs, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has confirmed its authenticity (Intercept, 8/16/23). US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller stated the cable’s description of the meeting with Lu were “close-ish” in accuracy (News International, 8/10/23).

    Only after Khan’s removal of power did the United States intervene to help Pakistan secure a much-needed loan from the International Monetary Fund (Intercept, 9/17/23). The conditions of the loan included forcing austerity measures on the Pakistani population and, notably, a weapons sale to Ukraine (via Global Ordnance, a controversial arms dealer).

    While the Times and the Post did report on Khan’s allegation of US interference in his ouster, even reporting Khan’s claim of a secret diplomatic communique (e.g., New York Times, 4/2/22, 4/9/22; Washington Post, 4/10/22, 4/13/22), they were silent when the Intercept published the cable itself in August 2023.

    Slow-walking a rigged election

    NYT: Senior Pakistani Official Admits to Helping Rig the Vote

    A confession to vote fraud was treated by the New York Times (2/18/24) as “appear[ing] to lend weight to accusations” of vote fraud.

    The next popular election took place in February 2024. (The elections were scheduled for 2023, but the military managed to delay them for another year.) It was clear that the PMLN-led government and the military were conspiring to undermine PTI at every turn, including by jailing Khan and tampering with the military-controlled national election software (Intercept, 2/7/24).

    PTI candidates who were winning their elections during live vote-counting were shocked when the official results showed their constituencies had been lost by tens of thousands of votes. Far from Trumpesque fraud claims that attempt to stop vote counting while a candidate holds a tenuous lead, PTI candidates saw tens of thousands of votes erased from their vote totals between live counting and official results (Intercept, 2/9/24). The election was clearly rigged, foreign media observers concurred (Le Monde, 3/1/24; Economist, 3/14/24).

    For two outlets that are ostensibly so anxious about the state of democracy in the United States, the New York Times and Washington Post were more staid in their concerns for Pakistani democracy. The Times (2/18/24), reporting on a confession by a senior Pakistani official of rigging votes, only went as far as to say that the admission “appeared to lend weight to accusations” by PTI of election-rigging.

    The Post, while initially entertaining the possibility of a rigged election (e.g., 2/11/24), fell short of actually reporting that PMLN and the military stole the election. The Post didn’t report on the Pakistani official’s confession of election-rigging.

    The tone struck was highly conservative compared to, say, the Times and Post coverage of the 2018 elections in Bolivia (FAIR.org, 3/5/20, 7/8/20). In that instance, US media didn’t hesitate to pounce on allegations of electoral fraud against left-wing president Evo Morales, even though the election was later found to be fair (only after a right-wing interim government was able to take power). Could it be that US media treats electoral fraud claims more seriously when they’re against official enemies?

    Congressional dissent

    Drop Site: White House Faces Backlash in Congress for Propping Up Pakistan's Military

    “A growing chorus of voices in the US government is demanding accountability for Pakistan’s military junta over its attacks on political dissent, imprisonment of opponents, and the rigging of an election earlier this year,” Drop Site (10/23/24) reported—but readers of the leading US papers aren’t hearing about it.

    Once it was clear that PTI didn’t have enough seats to form a governing bloc (despite the surprising popular surge behind the party and against the political-military establishment), 31 US lawmakers led by Rep. Greg Casar (D.–Texas) demanded the Biden administration withhold recognition of the Pakistani ruling government until a “thorough, transparent and credible” investigation of the election could be carried out (Intercept, 2/28/24). This letter is part of a pattern of objections by congressmembers to Biden’s acceptance of an authoritarian Pakistani government—so long as they align with US foreign policy interests (Intercept, 11/17/23).

    A State Department press release (2/9/24) immediately after the election condemned abrogations of the rights of Pakistani citizens, and further said “claims of interference or fraud should be fully investigated.” The same statement, however, assured that “the United States is prepared to work with the next Pakistani government, regardless of political party.”

    Less than two months later, Biden sent a letter (Times of India, 3/30/24) to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of the PMLN, “assuring him that his administration will fully back his government in addressing critical global and regional challenges.”

    As recently as the past few months, two more letters have been submitted by US lawmakers urging the Biden administration to reevaluate its relationship with Pakistan’s government, which lawmakers say has been violating the human rights of the Pakistani people (Drop Site, 10/23/24; Dawn, 10/24/24; Times of India, 11/17/24).

    Coverage of congressional dissent from Biden’s Pakistan policy has been absent from both the Times and the Post. Absent from the pages of leading papers were any stories about lawmaker concerns over human rights, free elections and authoritarian governance.

    Continuing omissions

    NYT: Pakistan’s Capital Is Turned Upside Down by Unending Protests

    This New York Times article (11/27/24) presented protests against political repression in Pakistan as a big nuisance.

    These trends continued in recent reporting. Two of the New York Times stories (11/25/24, 11/26/24) on the protests mentioned the rigged election only as an allegation by Khan and his supporters, countered with government denials and offering readers no sense of which side might be telling the truth. The other three stories (11/26/24, 11/27/24, 11/27/24) don’t discuss election-rigging at all. None of the stories touched on the US involvement in Khan’s fall from power, nor the Biden administration’s continued support of an authoritarian ruling government.

    The Washington Post’s single story (11/27/24) also limited itself to critiquing the ruling government, without mentioning the rigged election, US intervention in Khan’s expulsion, or continuing US support for a government that is killing its own citizens.

    Reporting on protests in Pakistan without mentioning US involvement in domestic politics creates a perception that Pakistani chaos is a concern mostly for Pakistani people, and readers in the United States need not examine the role of their own government in a national political crisis.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • In 2026 The Pakistan Navy will receive the first Embraer Lineage 1000 aircraft modified by Leonardo and Paramount Aerospace Systems for the maritime patrol role. In mid-2021, Pakistan contracted Leonardo to convert three Embraer Lineage 1000 aircraft into long-range maritime patrol aircraft for the Pakistan Navy as part of long-term plans to replace its ageing […]

    The post Embraer MPAs for Pakistan Navy appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    The global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has revealed an “alarming intensification of attacks on journalists” in its 2024 annual roundup — especially in conflict zones such as Gaza.

    Gaza stands out as the “most dangerous” region in the world, with the highest number of journalists murdered in connection with their work in the past five years.

    Since October 2023, the Israeli military have killed more than 145 journalists, including at least 35 whose deaths were linked to their journalism, reports RSF.

    Also 550 journalists are currently imprisoned worldwide, a 7 percent increase from last year.

    “This violence — often perpetrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — needs an immediate response,” says the report.

    “RSF calls for urgent action to protect journalists and journalism.”

    Asia second most dangerous
    Asia is the second most dangerous region for journalists due to the large number of journalists killed in Pakistan (seven) and the protests that rocked Bangladesh (five), says the report.

    “Journalists do not die, they are killed; they are not in prison, regimes lock them up; they do not disappear, they are kidnapped,” said RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin.

    “These crimes — often orchestrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — violate international law and too often go unpunished.

    “We need to get things moving, to remind ourselves as citizens that journalists are dying for us, to keep us informed. We must continue to count, name, condemn, investigate, and ensure that justice is served.

    “Fatalism should never win. Protecting those who inform us is protecting the truth.

    A third of the journalists killed in 2024 were slain by the Israeli armed forces.

    A record 54 journalists were killed, including 31 in conflict zones.

    In 2024, the Gaza Strip accounted for nearly 30 percent of journalists killed on the job, according to RSF’s latest information. They were killed by the Israeli army.

    More than 145 journalists have been killed in Palestine since October 2023, including at least 35 targeted in the line of duty.

    RSF continues to investigate these deaths to identify and condemn the deliberate targeting of media workers, and has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes committed against journalists.

    RSF condemns Israeli media ‘stranglehold’
    Last month, in a separate report while Israel’s war against Gaza, Lebanon and Syria rages on, RSF said Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi was trying to “reshape” Israel’s media landscape.

    Between a law banning foreign media outlets that were “deemed dangerous”, a bill that would give the government a stranglehold on public television budgets, and the addition of a private pro-Netanyahu channel on terrestrial television exempt from licensing fees, the ultra-conservative minister is augmenting pro-government coverage of the news.

    RSF said it was “alarmed by these unprecedented attacks” against media independence and pluralism — two pillars of democracy — and called on the government to abandon these “reforms”.

    On November 24, two new proposals for measures targeting media critical of the authorities and the war in Gaza and Lebanon were approved by Netanyahu’s government.

    The Ministerial Committee for Legislation validated a proposed law providing for the privatisation of the public broadcaster Kan.

    On the same day, the Council of Ministers unanimously accepted a draft resolution by Communications Minister Shlomo Kahri from November 2023 seeking to cut public aid and revenue from the Government Advertising Agency to the independent and critical liberal newspaper Haaretz.

    ‘Al Jazeera’ ban tightened
    The so-called “Al-Jazeera law”, as it has been dubbed by the Israeli press, has been tightened.

    This exceptional measure was adopted in April 2024 for a four-month period and renewed in July.

    On November 20, Israeli MPs voted to extend the law’s duration to six months, and increased the law’s main provision — a broadcasting ban on any foreign media outlet deemed detrimental to national security by the security services — from 45 days to 60.

    “The free press in a country that describes itself as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ will be undermined,” said RSF’s editorial director Anne Bocandé.

    RSF called on Israel’s political authorities, starting with Minister Shlomo Karhi and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, to “act responsibly” and abandon these proposed reforms.

    Inside Israel, journalists critical of the government and the war have been facing pressure and intimidation for more than a year.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.


  • This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Pakistan, severely chronically ill disability advocate and survivor of domestic violence Nevra Liz Ahmed urgently needs surgery for a debilitating health condition. This is because it’s worsening her severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) by the day. Specifically, among a huge list of the devastating chronic illnesses Nevra lives with, she has undiagnosed probable endometriosis – which is causing her relentless and excruciating pain.

    Now, Nevra has a chance to get the first stage of surgery for this – and soon. Crucially, this could set her on the road to recovery for her endometriosis, and potentially even make it possible for her to travel abroad for further surgeries. However, there’s a significant catch. This is that the surgery, hospital stay, and cost of a medical advocate to be there with her will add up to around £10,000. So Nevra and her friends are appealing for financial support.

    There are multiple ways for people to pitch in – read on to find out how you can help.

    It’s vital Nevra gets this surgery, as the pain is becoming unbearable. And without it, her severe ME, and other debilitating conditions will only continue to get worse.

    Severe ME/CFS and endometriosis – a disastrous combination

    Nevra is a 29-year-old severe ME/CFS patient in Karachi, Pakistan. She is mostly bed-bound, non-verbal, and fully dependent on others for her care. The Canary previously wrote about Nevra’s complicated situation – which you can read about here.

    And right now, Nevra’s likely undiagnosed endometriosis is making her severe ME/CFS, as well as a multitude of other conditions, inordinately worse.

    Most significantly, the persistent pain has exarcerbated her post-exertional malaise (PEM). This is the hallmark feature of ME. It entails a a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities. Nevra told the Canary that:

    I’m on pain meds every two hours and only getting one to four hours of sleep, as the pain meds wear off and I’m awoken by pelvic cramps, vaginal spasms, and vomiting.

    It’s why she has urgently sought out medical treatment for this from a hospital in Karachi.

    However, to get the treatment, she will have to fork out around £10,000. Notably, this is for the diagnostic laparoscopy, a hysteroscopy, as well as to cover the costs of her hospital stay. Nevra has been trying to get this since 2017, but has had to postpone. This has been due to lack of funds for it, as well as living in an unstable, and unsafe abusive environment. In fact, Nevra came close to getting the laparoscopy in March. However, she had to use her raised funds to escape domestic abuse, and the mold-infested household her family moved her into which was further harming her health.

    Surgeries could be a step in the right direction

    But she can’t wait any longer for these surgeries. Her health is rapidly deteriorating, and she’s now experiencing near constant agony she has described as “level nine pain”, alongside persistent bleeding outside her menstrual cycle.

    A doctor has provisionally agreed to carry out the laparoscopy this December, or  in January. However, if she’s unable to pay for it, they will drop Nevra as a patient altogether.

    The other problem is, as the Canary previously highlighted, it’s not possible for Nevra to get all the surgeries she needs in Pakistan. For instance, this includes a hysterectomy for her Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). Therefore, to get these, she will have to travel abroad.

    As things stand now though, Nevra is too sick to make the journey. But, she hopes that the diagnostic laparoscopy could be the first step towards being well enough to do so.

    As well as this, in the event the surgeon identifies anything to be life-threatening, the doctor will have to act. Nevra also therefore feels the laparoscopy is crucial to rule out anything that’s putting her life at risk.

    How to help Nevra afford her surgery

    With the clock ticking on obtaining the necessary funds, Nevra needs people to step up if they can. Here are a number of ways people can help her to afford this vitally necessary diagnostic surgery:

    If financially in the position to do so, donate directly. The best way to do this is via PayPal to Nevra’s fundraising appeal. Nevra does also have an ongoing fundraiser, however the fundraising platform takes substantial chunks out of donations. For that reason, she’s asking that wherever people are comfortable, they send financial support to the above PayPal method instead. However, all support is welcome.

    For those that aren’t in a position to donate at such short notice, she’s also requesting interest-free loans. Since the surgery is imminent, she needs the finances upfront, and fast. So this is one way people can support her if they have the finances now to lend funds, but can’t commit to a donation. The basic principle would be to indicate how much, and how long the loan could be for, with agreed upon dates for Nevra to pay these back to people in full (without interest). If you can do this, please contact me at h.a.sharland@protonmail.com

    So far, multiple people have committed significant loans between £500 – £1,500 for Nevra’s surgery. She has agreed to pay these back at periods between one and three years, according to agreements with each person who has come forward.

    A few of Nevra’s international friends and advocates – who also live with ME/CFS – have created a winter holiday fundraising raffle, with handmade prizes. They’re aiming to raise at least £1,000, but the more the better. This is specifically for UK and EU-based entrants. However, all are welcome to donate and nominate a UK or EU-based friend to receive the prizes. Chronically ill and disabled creators have made these in solidarity with Nevra.

    Aside from these, Nevra also needs people to spread the word on this urgent fundraising request. Thanks to people’s generosity, she has already raised £5,700 in loans and donations. Nevra therefore needs to raise the remaining £4,300, so any help

    Unconscionable cost of care putting a price-tag on Nevra’s life

    Of course, severely chronically ill and disabled people shouldn’t have to fundraise for the vital medical treatment they need. However, the reality is, for many people living with severe ME, the medical support just isn’t there. Likewise, with endometriosis, healthcare systems across the world leave women fighting for treatment that should be a given.

    Nevra’s experience of trying to get the necessary medical care for severe ME/CFS and her endometriosis has been characteristic of the medical misogyny that still pervades diagnosis and treatment for both conditions.

    All the while, the debilitating pain and near constant bleeding for the last four months is putting her health at immense risk.

    However, treatment – at least for her endometriosis – is possible. The issue is that there’s a £10,000 financial barrier in the way of her accessing it. It’s abhorrent that the value of a young woman’s life comes down to the price-tag for this treatment. But this is where we’re at. So, mutual aid from allies could now make all the difference – please support Nevra if you can.

    Feature images supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Bangkok, Thailand (29 November 2024)–The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) is deeply concerned over the excessive force used against protesters demanding the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan from prison.

    “The suppression of dissent–as evidenced by the intimidations and arrests made against protesters –undermines democratic principles and threatens people’s fundamental rights and freedoms. The use of excessive force against protesters is never acceptable,” said Mary Aileen Diez-Bacalso, Executive Director of FORUM-ASIA.

     

    What happened

    On 24 November 2024, Khan’s supporters–led by his wife Bushra Bibi–began their exodus towards the capital Islamabad to demand the former Prime Minister’s release. Ahead of the march, thousands were already reportedly arrested.

    By 25 November, thousands had reached Islamabad, determined to march towards “Democracy Square.” Authorities responded by banning public gatherings; deploying police, army, and paramilitary soldiers; implementing a nationwide security lockdown and internet blackouts; and barricading major roads with ship containers.

    As the crowd broke into barricades–protecting an area housing the parliament and other key government offices–security forces dispersed protesters by firing tear gas. Live and rubber bullets were reportedly used, however, these are yet to be verified. As of 27 November, the police said they have arrested nearly 1,000 protesters.

    Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, then announced the “temporary suspension” of the protests. The clash between protesters and security forces left six people dead, two of whom are protesters and four are paramilitary troops, according to the media. Meanwhile, at least 50 injuries were reported. Exact figures, however, are yet to be released.

    Following the clashes, The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called for a “purposeful political dialogue” among involved parties.

    Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023 over a corruption case. In 2022, he was ousted through a no-confidence vote in parliament. This comes after the Supreme Court ruled that Khan acted “unconstitutionally.” Khan and his supporters claim that he was arrested over politically-motivated charges.

     

    Reasons behind the protests

    Apart from their calls for Khan’s freedom, protesters were also demanding the release of political prisoners.

    In addition, protesters want to repeal a constitutional amendment regarding the selection of Supreme Court justices.

    Lastly, Khan’s supporters are demanding for free and fair elections, labelling the February 2024 elections as a “stolen mandate.”

     

    Excessive force is unacceptable

    “Freedom of peaceful assembly and association makes for a crucial bedrock of democracy and is enshrined in international human rights standards, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), to which Pakistan is a state party. Any use of force by authorities must adhere to the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality,” Bacalso explained.

    The deployment of excessive security measures, suspension of mobile and internet services, and banning of public gatherings raise serious concerns about Pakistan’s shrinking civic space.

    FORUM-ASIA urges the Government of Pakistan to:

    1. Immediately cease all forms of excessive force against protesters and ensure that security forces act in compliance with international human rights laws and standards.
    2. Release individuals who were arbitrarily detained during the protests.
    3. Initiate an independent investigation into the reported incidents of violence and hold those responsible accountable.

    The Government of Pakistan must ensure an enabling environment where all citizens can peacefully and freely express their views without fear of reprisals.  FORUM-ASIA will continue  to monitor and support efforts to protect people’s freedom of peaceful assembly in Pakistan.

    For the PDF copy of the statement, click here.

    This post was originally published on FORUM-ASIA.

  • Pakistan authorities must immediately and unconditionally release senior journalist Matiullah Jan and stop harassing him for his journalistic work, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Thursday.

     “CPJ is dismayed by the arrest of Pakistani journalist Matiullah Jan following his coverage of protests in Islamabad,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “The Pakistani authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Jan and ensure that journalists are not subjected to retaliation for their reporting.”

    On November 28, an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, ordered Jan, an anchor with NEO TV Network, to remain in detention for two days after his arrest at a security checkpoint following an alleged altercation with police, according to news reports and Jan’s lawyer, Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, who spoke to CPJ. Mazari-Hazir disputed the police account of the arrest, and Jan’s son, Abdul Razzaq, said in a social media post that his father and another journalist had been abducted by men in an unmarked vehicle from the parking lot of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences the previous night.

    The Islamabad police’s First Information Report (FIR) opening an investigation into Jan accuses the journalist of terrorism under Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 and the Pakistan Penal Code and with possessing narcotics the Control of Narcotic Substances Act (CNSA) 1997. The FIR, reviewed by CPJ, alleges that Jan was found in possession of 246 grams of methamphetamine when his vehicle was stopped.

    Before his arrest, Jan had been reporting on this week’s protests by supporters of Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister, Imran Khan. News anchor Munizae Jahangir posted on social media platform X that Jan had been reporting from hospitals on those injured or killed by gunfire, and it “seems that’s why he has been arrested for his journalistic work.”

    Jan has previously faced legal action in what he says was retaliation for critical commentary on Pakistani authorities and his press freedom activism. On July 21, 2020, he was abducted by a dozen men in Islamabad in a still-unresolved incident.

    CPJ contacted via messaging app Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, on Jan’s detention but did not receive a response.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • India is poised to further expand its defense budget over the next decade to sustain readiness for a potential two-front conflict with regional adversaries China and Pakistan, while enhancing its regional and global stature. Total defense spending, inclusive of pensions, is projected to reach $415.9 billion from 2025 to 2029, marking a compound annual growth […]

    The post India to spend $415.9 billion on defense between 2025 and 2029, forecasts GlobalData appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • A young woman, Nevra, who lives with severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) is issuing an urgent call out for an in-person medically knowledgeable ME ally and advocate. She lives in Pakistan, where hospitals are unable to treat her for her various complex comorbidities.

    However, she’s still seeking medical support from clinicians in Karachi where she can for these. Yet currently, she has no-one in the country she can depend on to take her to vital hospital appointments and advocate for the necessary medical care.

    Until recently, she was also trapped in an abusive household with a family that has actively denied her chronic illnesses and prevented her from getting the help she needs.

    Severe ME/CFS and a constellation of comorbidities in Pakistan

    Nevra Liz Ahmed is a 29-year-old woman from Karachi, Pakistan. She has lived with ME/CFS since the age of six, after an unidentified virus caused her to come down with a high fever. Over the years, it has progressively worsened.

    ME is a chronic systemic neuroimmune disease which affects nearly every system in the body. It causes a range of symptoms that impact patients’ daily lives. These include influenza-like symptoms, cognitive impairment, multiple forms of pain, and heart, lung, blood pressure, and digestive dysfunctions, among other significantly debilitating symptoms.

    Significantly, post-exertional-malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME, which entails a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities.

    At least 25% of people with the ME/CFS live at the severe end of the scale.

    In these cases, people living severe ME are mostly, if not entirely permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. On top of this, they are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information and are fully dependent on others for their care.

    This is what Nevra lives with. However, she also has multiple other devastating conditions impacting her daily. These include:

    • Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)
    • Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder with Marfanoid features
    • Craniocervical instability (CCI)
    • Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)
    • Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD)
    • Gastroparesis
    • Vulvadynia and polycystic ovaries
    • Temporomandibular disorder (TMJ) with an underdeveloped lower jaw
    • Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
    • Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD)
    • Hypertonic pelvic floor
    • Scoliosis
    • Asthma
    • Dyslexia
    • Dysgraphia
    • Intracranial hypertension

    Severe ME/CFS: a life-threatening chronic illness

    Severe ME/CFS can be fatal – and many patients with it also live with a number of these comorbidities which seems to increase this risk. Crucially, medical ignorance, gaps in official clinical guidance, psychologising stigma, and a culture of medical professional arrogance has endangered severe ME patients’ lives, as is currently the case with 24-year-old Carla Naoum in West Middlesex Hospital near London.

    Nevra too has come up against these walls in the medical system in Pakistan. And like Carla, it threatens her life, since she’s unable to even get tests and treatment that could stabilise, let alone improve her conditions.

    She told the Canary that the disease and her comorbid conditions are particularly “poorly understood and treated” in South Asia. There’s been little research into ME in South Asia, but a 2013 study suggested it is hugely underdiagnosed. Obviously, this is over a decade old, but the lack of more recent research implies it’s likely little changed since.

    Deteriorating fast

    On top of this, she has a number of other suspected conditions she has been unable to get diagnosed to date. Endometriosis is one of these, and it has been causing Nevra intense and agonising pain on a daily basis.

    Another suspected condition – Myasthenia Gravis (MG) – a neuromuscular disease that causes muscle weakness is causing intermittent paralysis for hours at a time and is making speech difficult for Nevra. She is experiencing significant breathing difficulties, choking, and problems swallowing, likely due to weakening muscles in her diaphragm.

    The severity of her MG symptoms means that she could require hospitalisation to stabilise her breathing.

    What’s more, Nevra emphasised that her PMDD is severely impacting her. It causes mood changes, severe anxiety, and other cognitive problems. Of course, the PMDD also exacerbates all her other comorbidities as well. Treatments have so far failed to alleviate it. So now, doctors have advised surgical intervention – including a hysterectomy and removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes.

    Disbelief, denial, and domestic violence

    Despite her worsening condition, Nevra can’t rely on her family to get her to the hospital or support her with her health. In fact, it has been quite the opposite. This is because her family actively denies and dismisses her chronic illnesses.

    Nevra previously told the World ME Alliance that:

    My family doesn’t believe me. My Mum says if I end things, God will punish me more by sending me to hell over and over again. And that is why I’m sick, because God gets angry when I want to give up and makes me worse. My folks won’t help me fundraise either. They claim Allah will send money down from the sky in suitcases and that if I was a true believer I would be patient. I’m terrified that they’re not understanding how fast my ME and PMDD are progressing.

    She showed the Canary some of her exchanges with family members. They had trivialised her chronic health conditions and had been overtly gaslighting her. One told her not to mention Covid and said to her:

    Liz why are all your major signs never showing in tests and always hiding behind symptoms?

    In another, the same family member seemed to imply Nevra was faking her illnesses, stating:

    You don’t need to be seriously sick for people to care for you

    To make matters worse, another family member has been physically and emotionally abusive since Nevra was young. She detailed how his abuse and manipulative behaviour regularly ramps up after hospital stays. Obviously, this has hindered her recovery after surgeries and worsened her severe ME/CFS.

    Her family home was also an unsuitable environment for Nevra due to mould, loud traffic noise and fumes. These caused Nevra to relapse in March after a chest infection.

    She is now living in a hotel away from home to escape the domestic violence.

    Longer-term goals

    As a longer-term goal, Nevra hopes to travel abroad for surgeries she’s unable to get in Pakistan for her various conditions. For instance, she urgently needs surgery for her endometriosis, which has been causing her daily agonising pain and bleeding. However, due to her health worsening – and in particular, intracranial pressure – it’s unsafe for her to travel overseas in anything other than an air ambulance.

    Right now then, her most urgent priority is to get well enough to travel. And currently, she needs the local hospital to run a series of particular tests and offer potential treatment. However, due to her severe ME/CFS and comorbidities, Nevra can’t get to, or enter hospital alone.

    Moreover, as the Canary has consistently documented, hospital settings are dangerous for people living with severe ME. This is due to the noise, light, and other stimuli that trigger PEM and routinely cause severe ME patients to deteriorate. What’s more, it’s also down to the dismissive, and oftentimes abusive attitudes of medical staff that regularly mistreat and psychologise patients living with the condition.

    It’s why she’s issuing an urgent appeal for a medically and ME knowledgeable ally to fly out to Pakistan and support her for a short period.

    Calling for an ME knowledgeable advocate

    Specifically, Nevra is asking for someone who can stay in Pakistan with her for a minimum of two weeks to progress the tests and treatments she needs next.

    She explained that the person would need to:

    be my voice, help me pace, and be with me in hospital, especially as I’m going nonverbal. Keep in touch with ally drs internationally and locally and with you guys. Uber me to tests together and hospital. Help me arrange medical files. Make sure the tests that we need on the list are carried out and my comorbid conditions are always highlighted.

    Additionally, they would also need to:

    read up on my health history, keep all my meds on hand (med list will be provided), check for interactions on my app, and keep referring back to comorbid conditions and make sure the hospital doesn’t do anything without my consent such as psych ward.

    Nevra has been tirelessly fundraising for her various medical needs, and her escape from domestic violence. Thanks to the generous mutual aid of allies all over the world, she told the Canary that she could cover flight expenses, and provide a daily stipend for patient advocacy services. Nevra said she would also fund grocery costs for shared meals, transport, and household supplies, as well as provide accommodation, WiFi, and other basic amenities.

    Since Nevra is mostly non-verbal right now due to the severity of her interacting conditions, an international team of ME/CFS advocates has rallied round her. Largely, the team comprises caring allies – many chronically ill themselves with ME – who’ve stepped up to support Nevra voluntarily.

    Members of the team have said they can provide the advocate with all the information they would need.

    Nevra’s advocacy for the ME/CFS community

    Nevra herself has been an unwavering advocate for members of the ME/CFS community. While living with her worsening conditions, she has given huge amounts of her time and wellness to fellow patients.

    In a letter she penned to an EDS specialist doctor who has championed Nevra’s medical needs, she wrote to him that:

    I really do want to live because a lot of patients and friends are counting on me. They are my chosen family. There is a huge lack of help for SEPTAD patients, both financially and because of a knowledge gap. I am advocating for these patients to get help and I do not want to leave it halfway.

    SEPTAD refers to ME patients who live with a constellation of particular comorbidities, which include EDS, dysautonomia or POTS, MCAS, gastroparesis, neurosurgical conditions like CCI, among others.

    What’s more, Nevra self-taught fluency in multiple languages including English, Turkish, Azeri, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Irish Gaelic, and Greek. She has already used her incredible talent for languages to aid people in the ME community:

    She previously translated award-winning documentary Unrest into several languages to help spread awareness of ME. She wants to continue to use her skills like this, and to support other survivors of domestic abuse living with under-researched and abysmally supported chronic health conditions.

    Nevra emphasised this in her letter as well:

    I have lots of potential as a multilingual translator and patient advocate. I feel like I will have a lot to offer to disabled patients who are also experiencing DV in our community.

    Could you or someone you know help Nevra?

    She told the Canary that her article on the World ME Alliance website barely scratches the surface. She wants to tell her full story – but is currently too sick to do so. So for now, her priority is to get the help she can to treat some of her debilitating conditions.

    She’s afraid that if she doesn’t get this help soon, she could die. Therefore, it’s paramount she finds an advocate who can support her in Pakistan with her next steps as soon as possible.

    If you or someone you know might be able to take on this role for Nevra, please contact her via X, or email me at h.a.sharland@protonmail.com. Or if you can donate to support Nevra’s ongoing medical care and safe accommodation, please find her GoFundMe here.

    Nevra needs this help – and urgently – so she can not only tell her story, but continue to live it, and flourish.

    Featured image supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Front Line Defenders call for the Pakistani authorities to be held accountable for their mistreatment and abuse of prominent Baloch woman human rights defender Dr. Mahrang Baloch and other human rights defenders accompanying her in Karachi, on 8 October 2024. The woman human rights defender was attacked by Sindh police while she was returning from the Karachi’s Jinnah international airport after immigration authorities denied her permission to leave the country.

    Dr. Mahrang Baloch is a woman human rights defender and a staunch advocate for the rights of the ethnic Baloch community in Pakistan. She has campaigned peacefully against systemic violations including extra judicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and custodial torture in Balochistan. Human rights defenders speaking out against state violence, especially seeking to hold the military and intelligence agencies accountable, undertake significant risks – against themselves and their families.

    On 7 October 2024, Pakistani authorities prevented Dr. Mahrang Baloch from leaving the country. The woman human rights defender was to attend an event in New York organized by TIME which had named her in the TIME100 Next 2024 List recognizing her human rights work. Unfortunately immigration officers at the Karachi airport withheld her passport for several hours and denied her permission to board her flight without any legal basis or reasoning. Dr. Mahrang Baloch finally left the airport at around midnight after she recovered her passport. Shortly after, her vehicle was intercepted by a group of officers from the Sindh police on the old airport road in close proximity to the airport. Police brutally beat and abused Dr. Mahrang Baloch and several other human rights defenders including Sammi Deen Baloch. Police illegally seized Dr. Mahrang’s passport and mobile phone. They also took the vehicle keys, leaving the human rights defenders stranded on a deserted road at late hours in the night.

    Reprisals including restrictions on travel are common in Pakistan, especially for those who speak out against state repression. In August 2024, Sammi Deen Baloch, the Front Line Defenders award winner for 2024 was prevented from traveling to Geneva for an advocacy mission to highlight human rights issues in Balochistan. The attack on Dr. Mahrang Baloch is not an isolated incident. It spotlights what many human rights defenders in Pakistan face as punishment for their work. Human rights defenders from oppressed communities such as the Baloch are especially targeted. State response to peaceful campaigns by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (Baloch Solidarity Committee) has been to suppress protests and campaigns with brute force and repressive measures including criminalization.

    https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/pakistan-woman-human-rights-defender-dr-mahrang-baloch-prevented-leaving-pakistan

    https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistan-baloch-baluch-rights-travel-ban/33151431.html

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • China’s defence exports have been growing, but quality and political goals conflict potential customers. China’s defence industry has seen significant growth and development over the past few decades. It has rapidly transformed from being heavily reliant on foreign technology and imports to becoming a major player in the global arms market and a central pillar […]

    The post Chinese Political Ambition Restrains Defence Exports appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Salah El Din – Salah El Din El Ayoubi – Saladin and Richard the Lionheart

    Jerusalem’s hard-fought liberation, now in process, is a recapitulation of the Christian Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries, this time, not by the knight on a white horse of legend, but through the long march of guerilla warfare by the much maligned Shia. This follows on the liberation of Iran from its Judeo-Christian yoke in 1979 and Iraq 25 years later, ironically by the US, forming the second Shia majority state. But it is the Shia minority of Lebanon that holds the keys to Jerusalem. Their 40% of the Lebanese population punches well above their weight in a fractious country split among Christians, and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

    Hezbollah was forged in the heat of Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s. The then-rag-tag militia killed over 600 Israeli soldiers, forcing Israel to retreat in humiliation, its first such defeat ever, and by a nonstate actor, a very bad omen, which Israel’s almost daily murder of Palestinians every since cannot erase, and which culminated in 10/7, Israel’s own private 9/11, bringing us to Israel’s carpeting bombing of Lebanon.

    It is the Shia of Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen we have to thank for preventing Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians from proceeding smoothly. Sunnis will have to wake up if they don’t want to be left behind by their Shia brothers, their self-satisfied Sunni hegemony cracked open, exposed as the ‘sick man’ of the Middle East, i.e., undermined by imperialism, the same compromised role that destroyed the Ottomans, created post-Ottoman puppet Sunni states, and planted in Palestine a cursed tree, the Quran’s poisonous zaqqum, rooted in the center of Hell, aka the Jewish state.

    The Saudis long ago were compromised through a voluntary pact with first British then US imperialism but, until the rise of Muhammed Bin Salman (MBS), were at least keeping up the trappings of Islamic ritual, jealously guarding the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The quietist Saudis effectively blackmailed the Palestinians into accepting an interminable Israeli murderous occupation and creeping (now galloping) theft of their lands, financing Palestinian refugees, but with no promise of liberation, effectively working with not against the enemy.

    Now MBS has let the westernizers loose in his kingdom, discarding the hijab, promoting concerts of trashy western rock music, buying British football teams (Newcastle United in 2021). Trump’s Abraham Accords were supposed to lead to a new Middle East with Israel and Saudi Arabia as the kingpins. With October 7 (10/7), the bottom fell out of MBS’s fantasy of a Saudi-Isreali hegemony over the Middle East, leaving the Palestinians in permanent limbo or exile. It didn’t seem to matter to the Saudis and Gulf sheikhs, who long ago lost interest in Palestine. In thie face of this complete betrayal of the Palestinians, of Islam itself, the Shia are the only Muslims to resist the sacrilege of permanent Jewish rule over Palestine and the destruction Islam’s holy sites to build a Third Temple.

    Orthodox Sunni Muslims have always feared the moral purity which Shiism was founded on, in opposition to the more worldly, pragmatic Sunni majority. This very productive, though at times deadly, stand-off between the two strands of Islam began with Muhammad’s young cousin Ali being the first convert to Islam after the Prophet’s wife Hadija, Ali’s heroic military career defending the religion during the early, perilous battles immortalized in the Quran, through to the murder of him and his family by power-hungry rivals. The draw of idealism and justice has kept Shiism alive, and from what we see today, it is the saving grace of Islam, pushing back today against deadly secularism. Ultimately, the Sunni will have to admit that the Shia are not just an inconvenient footnote (like MBS et al would have liked to make of the Palestinians).

    20th century ummah challenges

    All Muslims will agree that the unity of the ummah is the first, most urgent, priority. The Shia, though outliers, strive for this even more, as they face hardline Sunnis who consider them apostates and would be happy to cut them loose or wipe them out. The official Sunni position has wavered over the centuries, but generally grudgingly accepts them. The imperialists of course were happy to use ‘divide and rule’, and they quickly turned a peaceful ummah into quarreling sectarians in India, Pakistan, Iraq, wherever they had the chance.1 This only really worked for post-Ottoman Iraq and Lebanon, both with large Shia communities mixed (peacefully) with Sunni. But the 20th century was one of increasing division, chaos, everywhere in the ummah. It is still on life support, held together now by the Shia thread, the ‘Shia crescent’, the only link the ummah has to Jerusalem and the Palestinians as they face annihilation, their Sunni brothers helpless or unwilling to save them.

    The British official who fashioned the new Iraq in the 1920s, Gertrude Bell, had no time for Shia, who were the majority then as now, but Gertrude had no time for democracy for the dark-skinned. I don’t for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil. She knew how the ulama in Iran had defeated the Shah on his westernizing mission, the famous tobacco fatwa of 1890 that forced the shah to cancel the British concession, and supported the constitution movement for democracy in 1905. The British had no interest in creating a radical Shia majority state and put in place a Sunni puppet king.

    Iraq’s long and violent history since then finally undid Gertrude’s machiavellian scheming in 2003, bringing to an end a truly disgusting Sunni dictatorship, and the advent of the first Shia-majority state, the positive effects of which are still being discovered. We can thank the US imperialists (even a broken clock is right twice a day) for stumbling on a winning formula for Islam (and for themselves, for the world). By genuinely promoting electoral democracy (along with opening Iraq to foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil), it started the ball rolling on Sunni-Shia relations everywhere, including US client number one, the Saudi dictator-king, with his truly downtrodden Shia, who sit on Saudi oil and get only repression, disenfranchisement and lots of beheadings as thanks.

    The 20th century path that brought us to our present apocalyptic scenario was long and tragic. The Ottoman ‘sick man of Europe’ collapse at the end of WWI, invaded by the British and French (their Russian allies had already collapsed leaving more spoils for the victors). The end of the caliphate? For atheist Turkish dictator Mustafa Kemal that would have been fine. The Muslim ummah, both Sunni and Shia, anticipated this and had already rallied in its defense with the Khilafa Movement in 1919-1920, supported by other anti-imperialists, including Gandhi and India’s Hindus, who saw the British divide-and-rule as the poison that kept Indians subjugated.

    Kemal got his way in 1924, accusing Indian Muslim leaders, who came all the way to Ankara to beg the Turkish strongman to maintain the caliphate, of foreign election interference. As if the caliphate was a Turkish plaything The shock wave reverberated around the world culminating in the World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931 at the behest of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, bringing together Muslim leaders from around the world. A truly historic moment in the history of the ummah. But the caliphate was already a pipe dream, with growing Jewish immigration to British Palestine, the intent being to create a Jewish state, an imperial outpost to control the Middle East.

    Everywhere, the Muslim world was occupied now by nominally Christian world empires, British, American, French, Dutch, the House of War (vs the ummah, the House of Peace), the the financial strings predominantly in Jewish hands, accounting for the plum Palestine being selected as a future Jewish state, purchased by the elite Jews who financed the British empire. Except for Shia Iran, which was never fully occupied and given an imperial make-over. But Iran also had its atheist modernizer, Reza Shah, who, having tricked the ulama into giving him their blessing initially, left them alone though marginalized. Though he weakened the religious establishment, outlawed the veil, and built industry and infrastructure, he was not so fanatically anti-Muslim He was anti-imperialist, and when WWII broke out, he was deposed by the British to prevent the shah from sending oil to the Germans. That occupation wrankled, and all the foreign devils, British, Russia, American were given the boot when the war ended.

    It was the Shia ulama of Iran who were the only ulama to resist imperialism,2 supporting the first genuinely independent prime minister, Mossadeq, in 1951 in his effort to kick the British out and take control of the economy. The normally quietist, conservative religious elite had been radicalized despite themselves. When the US moved in to foment a coup in 1953, the invaders were able to get a few religious leaders to bless their scheming, but this blatant imperialist act galvanized all Iranians, and eventually led to the overthrow of the second and last Pahlavi shah in 1979. Newly religious Iran was joined by newly religious Turkey with the coming to power of Recep Erdogan in 2000, who refers to his followers as ‘grandchildren of the Ottomans’. Traditional Sunni-Shia rivals, Turkey and Iran are far from bosom buddies, but the current crisis of the ummah means that differences are put aside.

    The second stumbling block for Muslims was the secular reaction to imperialism, Arab nationalism, now competing with Turkish and Persian nationalisms, fashioned as secular identities, undermining a united Islamic identity, central to the ummah. Egypt’s Nasser and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein are the two most notorious nationalist leaders, who led their countries in a death spiral of violent repression of Islam, corruption and failed military ventures.

    Nationalism was foreign to Muslims, never the defining ideology, and these nationalist movements failed, with chauvinistic Sunni radicals morphing into violent pseudo-Islamic movements – al-Qaeda, ISIS and Islamic State–Khorasan Province.

    With the current US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians, the ummah is coming together again, realizing this is the make-or-break moment for Islam, and that these nationalisms are evaporating in the heat of crisis. Even the perfidious MBS casually announced that there would be no Israeli-Saudi new order until the Palestinians have a real state. The ice is cracking, moving, as Palestine’s spring takes shape out of the Israelis’ ashes and rubble.

    Turkey and Iran had secular capitalism imposed from the top to keep the imperialists at bay. Egypt had a brutal British occupation until the 1950s, creating the same secular capitalism as Turkey and Iran, but then came socialistic dictator Nasser in 1951, injecting a new political element. Sadly, he too refused to acknowledge Islam as the bedrock of society, a more genuinely socialistic way of life, his secular vision collapsing with Israeli invasion, leaving Egypt, the largest Middle East country, far weaker now than either of its two Middle East rivals. The Arab states have all remained puppets of imperialism and remain cool to, even resentful of the new Shia vitality and presence. But the Arab masses support the Shia defiance of US-Israel, despising their Quisling leaders.

    Puppets and fledging actors

    Iran’s revolution in 1979 was bad news for the Saudis, leading to even greater repression of its Shia. Saudi suspicions and fear of Shia have been a terrible ordeal for the 10% of Saudis who are Shia, and a powerful Shia state would naturally push for justice. So instead of making peace with their Shia (and thus, with the new Iran), in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia (and Kuwait) spent $25b (i.e., gave US weapons producers $25b) in support of the brutal, mad thug, Saddam Hussein in the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). When Saddam invaded Kuwait, cashing his US-Saudi IOU for sacrificing half million Iraqi Sunnis-Shia to kill a half million Shia Iranians, Saudi Arabia was unhappy. Not only had Saddam failed to crush Shia Iran, his defeat would mean an angry Shia state next door, which could easily invade and overthrow him.

    So King Fahd invited the US forces into the kingdom to invade Iraq and keep the Saudi kingdom as head honcho of the Muslim world. I repeat: King Fahd allowed American and coalition troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian forces were involved both in bombing raids on Iraq and in the land invasion that helped to ‘liberate’ Kuwait, the so-called Gulf War (1990-1991). The ummah, the House of Peace, invaded and occupied by the House of War. MBS’s current free and easy secularism makes sense after all, but not for the ummah.

    Why would the US have gone to all the trouble to invade Iraq as part of ‘liberating’ Kuwait, and then leave the (truly odious) dictator Saddam in power? Ask weakling King Fahd, whose fear of a Shia-majority Iraq next door was even greater than his fear of a cowed, murderous Saddam. Pan-Arab nationalism – RIP.

    This enduring Sunni-Shia stand-off is the imperialists’ trump card. All the Arab countries are in varying degrees still US puppets, and persecute their Shia because they, the so-called rulers, are weak and fear the implicit critique of their weakness that the morally uncompromised Shia represent. Nigeria, Bahrain, Indonesia, Malaysia have all driven wedges between Sunnis and Shias when it was politically useful. The Sunni masses, looking for a way out of the imperialist straitjacket but educated to despise Shia, looked not to solidarity with all Muslims to fight the looming imperial enemy, but inward to past Sunni experience, the early four Rightly Guided Caliphs, for their inspiration. They downplay the fact that the finally one was Ali, the inspiration of the Shia as sole legitimate caliph of the whole lot. In the 1980s-1990s, frustrated Sunnis coalesced around radical Saudi Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda, various ISIS caliphate dreamers in central Asia, the Caucasus, Africa, internationally, with an unIslamic jihad condoning mass civilian deaths as a key tactic.

    This element continues to plague the Sunni world, the whole world. It has undermined the efforts to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The Ba’thists were outlawed, leaving the minority Sunni with nothing, so they preferred chaos and road bombs, but Shia long-suffering patience grudgingly brought together ‘good’ Sunni and all the Shia to fight the latest (Sunni) terrorists, ISIS et al.

    10/7 was an earthquake, not just for Israel but for Islam, the Sunni-Shia tremors finally syncing on that explosive day, pushing the Sunni establishment into Shia arms. All people of goodwill now rout for the Shia Hezbollah in their battle with Israel to protect the heart and soul of Islam. Paradoxically, this challenge was anticipated by the renewal of relations between the Saudis and Iran in March 2023, anticipating 10/7, an admission that Shia power could not be ignored in the new world order taking shape under China and Russia, quite apart from the central role Iran was now playing in protecting the Palestinians from total annihilation, with the Saudis watching with alarm from the sidelines as their position at the head of the Muslim world was being usurped by events on the ground, including from its own despised 10% Shia, now demanding the same rights as citizens that the Sunnis have.

    Democracy really is the answer

    It’s finally clear: Arab nationalism has been a flop, as has been Pakistan nationalism, where the 20% Shia must constantly fight Sunni chauvinists. Indian nationalism is worse, following the path of Israel, a racist Zionized Hindutva ideology that exclused all Muslims, Sunni or Shia. Sunni chauvinism under imperialism, taking refuge in nationalism, always undermines the ummah, unless the Shia are a sizable minority or majority, and the government is sufficiently representative. I.e., democratic.

    In hindsight, I would argue the road to the liberation of Jerusalem began with Iran’s revoluton in 1979, which put Palestine liberation at the top of its international agenda. The war launched by Iraq was supposed to steamroll through a weakened Iran, as ordered by Saddam’s backers Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, the US and Europe. (What a cynical, bizarre coalition!) Ayatollah Khomeini was brilliant and charismatic, but a poor politician, refusing to end the war when Saddam offered, hoping to liberate Iraq, leading to 100,000s more deaths and seriously weakening and tarnishing the revolution. His hubris was immortalized in telling anecdotes. My favorite: Pakistani dictator Zia had urged the shah in 1977 to crack down even harder on the rebels. When Zia met Khomeini as the shah’s successor a few years later, Khomeini merely asked politely for Zulfikar Bhutto’s life (Zia was Bhutto’s successor) to be spared. No dice. On the contrary, Zia advised Khomeini not to tangle with a superpower. Khomeini retorted he would never do such a thing and in fact always relied in the superpower. Ouch! That only made Zia persecute his Shia even more.

    Arab secular states can’t unite when they are headed by dictators like Assad, Nasser, the Jordanian and Saudi king-dictators. Corrupt dictatorships don’t make good allies. The need for democracy is obvious. Iraq hopefully can be the model for Sunni and Shia learning to work together again under a robust electoral democracy. Sunni and Shia lived more or less till Saddam and sons really began their madness.3

    The end of Saddam moved the Shia-Sunni ‘battle lines’ 200 miles west, now running through Baghdad, which was precisely what Gertrude Bell, Saddam and the imperialists had all tried to prevent. History takes its revenge. The chauvinistic Sunni hegemony of the Muslim world is finished. The Sunni hegemons tried to overthrow Khomeini and failed. The same battle took place 12 years later in Iraq and failed again due to Shia patience in the face of Sunni-inspired terror. Thousands of Saudi and Jordanian youth went to Iraq after 2003 to fight the occupation (and looming Shia hegemony) and die, just like they did in their misguided jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their violent self-sacrifice only digging the Sunni world deeper into a state of humiliation. 85% of ISIS in Syria working alongside the US imperialists are Saudi. They are there solely to fight the ‘sons of al-Alqami’, referring to the Shia vizier when the Mongols razed Baghdad in 1258.

    Now the Sunni are exposed as helpless in the face of Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, are actually helping ‘protect’ US-Israel from Iranian bombs intended for Israel. The Sunni world is humiliated, betraying Islam, kowtowing to not just the US but US-Israel. To defeat (Sunni-inspired) ISIS, the ‘good’ Iraqi Sunnis even had to welcome help from not just Iraq Shias (the army) but also Iran. It is high time to bury the hatchet of envy and suspicion, and join the Shia, if only because they hold the fate of the ummah in their hands.

    The ‘bad’ Sunnis (regime elites) are still supporting the US-led war on terror. Their goal is still to wreck the new, Shia-led Iraqi state and keeping the lid on their own pressure-cookers, looking over their shoulders at the (failed) Arab Spring of 2011. The Sunni elites do US-Israel’s work for it. At the same time, they are angry with the US for complicity in Shia revival, undermining House of Saud, contributing to the decline in its religious legitimacy. MBS’s secular turn is more a parody of soft power, which only undermines (Sunni) Islam. The Saudi treatment of its own Shia mirrors Israeli treatment of Palestinians.4 Sadly, it is only because Palestinians have some shred of legal independence as part of the post-WWII internationally agreed policy of decolonization that this instance of apartheid is being fought openly. Anti-Muslim apartheid is actually alive and well but hidden behind national borders (China, Myanmar).

    What remains of the insurgency in Iraq today is an alliance of Jordanians, Saudis and Iraqi Ba’thists. Syria and Saudi are both ripe for change, with Iraq and Iran as their models, but especially Iraq, with its more open, competitive elections and its large Shia population. The main legacy of the Iraq invasion was to make the Shia case, which means fighting Sunni extremism and terrorism, exposing the US Global War on Terror (GWOT) as a fraud (produced more (Sunni) terror), cementing Shiism as the adult in the room, holding the Islamic faith secure by a string, open to democracy.

    21st century the Shia century?

    This is already happening. Islamic Iran from the start allied with all anti-imperialist countries. Its revolution echoes the idealism of the Russia revolution of 1917, both of which were met by invasions by western powers and/or proxies, and both succeeding against all odds, based very much on ideological zeal for the good of mankind. Both also became authoritarian states, with elections but with limited choice. Iran’s elections are much more credible, and the election of reformers like Khatami and now Pezeshkian show there is room for real public debate. As with all countries victim to US ire, survival trumps all finer nuances, which are put on hold. Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. Iran’s allies are the anti-imperialist good guys.

    In contrast to the Arab states, with their muddled Islamo-nationalisms, which have failed to fashion a Sunni identity independent of imperialism, and which still exclude Shia. A shame that Shia find better allies on the secular left, with largely common political, economic and cultural goals, above all peace. Like the Jews at the heart of Bolshevism, Iraq’s Communist Party was full of Shia intellectuals (e.g., poet Muzaffar al-Nawwab). The Iraqi town Shatra in the Shia south was nicknamed Little Moscow. The Shia have a natural affinity for the secular left, supporting the underdog. The Iraqi Communist Party was reorganized after the Iraq war and its leader Hamid Majid Musa was part of the governing body the US set up. The communists wanted peace as do all communists, Islamic Iran and Iraq want peace (salam) more than anything. Neither the communists nor the ummah were/are aggressive, expansionist. Both offer(ed) a way of life that doesn’t have war built in as its engine. The communist alternative was social/state ownership and planning. The Islamic alternative is a mix of state direction/ownership and limited capitalism. There are no billionaires who aren’t emigres already. That kind of money lust is alien to a devout society or a communist one.

    Iran and Hezbollah are suffering Israel’s truly Satanic war crimes alongside their Palestinian brothers. Meanwhile the Gulf and Saudi sheikh-dictators, the Egyptian no-pretense-dictator, the Jordanian British-installed-king sit on the sidelines cursing the Palestinians for disturbing their sleep. They actually come to Israel’s aid – Egypt and Jordan are official allies of Israel – when Iran tries to hurt poor little Israel, as they already did in April 2024. The US is well aware that the Jordanian and Egyptian masses are very unhappy, but it relies on its local puppet dictators to keep the lid on the pressure-cooker, and is very cautious about exporting one-man-one-vote after its painful and expensive experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the former once again Taliban, the latter in league with Iran against the Great Satan, which just happens to include itself, US-Israel. So don’t hold your breath for US pressure to make its dictators relinquish power. 2011 was a close call, not to be repeated.

    As for the Palestinians, they were completely left out of the negotiations about their future following the 1973 Egypt-Israel war. Sold out by (atheist, Sunni) Sadat with an empty promise. The past half century has been unremitting hell for the Palestinians, who were kicked out of Jordan in the 1970s, many ending up in southern Lebanon, living with the Shia there. This is the origins of Musa al-Sadr’s Amal and after his assassination, Hezbollah. This happened during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, forging of a new force to confront Israel, which was given a huge boost with the Islamic revolution in Iran. Suddenly there was a ‘Shia crescent’, a genuine quasi-state opposition to Israel that functioned outside the imperial constraints.

    Musa al-Sadr represented the best of the Shia tradition, an activist cleric engaged in the life of his community, unafraid to speak truth to power. He earned a law degree from (shah-era) Tehran university. His Amal militia ran social services and acted as a political organization, a challenge to the fiction of pan-Arab unity and the unyielding reality of Sunni hegemony. Iran’s IRGC was organized by veterans of Amal training camps. Amal represented a political threat to the Arab and Palestinian establishment, and his assassination by Gaddafi was clearly a Sunni move to quash a Shia upstart.5 But he (and Israel’s brutal occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s) inspired the formation Hezbollah, which killed 654 Israeli soldiers in a few years and pushed a humiliated Israel out of Lebanon in 1985.

    ‘Good’ Sunnism is reviving but more in the emigre communities, largely in the US/Canada, Europe, Australia/ New Zealand, where there are now communities of mainstream Sunni and Shia as well as sects (Ismaili, Yazidi, Ahmadiya, Bahai’s). This young, well educated, assertive diaspora radically challenges the Sunnia world, as a new generation of Muslims takes electoral democracy for granted, and were able to gain equal rights as citizens in the ‘House of War’, which meant fight for Palestine against Israel. Effectively the need for young, educated workers to fuel its capitalist machine ended up importing the ‘enemy’ to the heart of imperialism. As these mostly Sunni Muslims spread their message of ‘goodwill to all men’, colonized, persecuted Palestine has gradually gained the edge over colonizer, persecutor Israel. They are joined by a growing community of converts, as people find out about Islam from friendly, law-abiding neighbors. Islam is the fastest growing religion everywhere.

    The Shia are Islam’s ‘wandering Jews’ but without the usury, so they have a presence on all continents, mostly persecuted (or just ignored) by Sunni majorities (but not everywhere). The Sunni too are like the Jews with their world network, a persecuted minority (but not everywhere). In fact, Sunni emigres are free to criticize Israel and their own native Muslim-majority countries in the West, where, say, in Egypt or Pakistan that could land them in jail or worse. As with the Jews, the spread of both Sunni and Shia presence virtually everywhere creates a powerful network for mutual support, to ensure both Shia and Sunni, emigre and domestic, are vital parts of the ummah, all devoted to defending Palestine and liberating Jerusalem. A kind of benign Judaism.6 Democracy brings power to Shia majorities and give voice to minorities, resisting Sunni terrorists. The goal remains the liberation of Jerusalem, but the center of gravity has shifted from Saudi Arabia, Egypt to Iran and Iraq, now stretching from Lebanon and Syria along the Shia axis of resistance.

    The US allies with the pragmatic Sunni dictators, hates, targets Shia, but they are the best defense against real terrorists (Saudi/ Jordanian ‘jihadists’, ISIS, US-Israel). Standing up to tyranny is never popular with tyrants. By overthrowing Saddam, the US unwittingly paved the way for the Shia revival. Ayatollah Sistani brilliantly used the opening to guarantee democratic Shia hegemony in Iraq as a model for a renewed Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, in short, the Muslim ummah. The Iraqi Shia proved that it is possible to work with the US and not compromise. Sistani refused to meet with US officials: Mr Bremer, you are American I am Iranian. Leave it up to the Iraqis to devise their constitution. He challenged US plans to hand power to Allawi, Chalabi. Insisted on one-person, one-vote. When the US refused, he called for large demos over five consecutive days until the US relented.7

    Iraqi Shia abandoned the Iraqi nationalism of Saddam. The renewed nationalism is firmly nonsectarian, uniting the ummah. This is a powerful message to the other Arab states. It is fitting that Palestine has brought the Sunni to the Shia-led defense of Jerusalem. Israel can be defeated only by a united ummah which acts wisely, with restraint, indefatigable. It is also a message to Israel and the Palestinians about inventing a new nationalism based on peace and reconciliation.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Inconvenient Truths: The Shia Salah al-Din and 10/7 first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    To give the US occupiers of Afghanistan 2001–2022, they made sure Afghan Shia, the Hazars, were given full rights in the new constitution, where the state was carefully dubbed Islamic, reflecting the new identity-politics imperialism.
    2    Sunni Sufis resisted imperialism (Algeria, Caucasus) but never the Sunni establishment. Grand Mufti of Egypt Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was a westernizing reformer. His legendary friend (Shia) Jamal al-Afghani was anti-imperialist but didn’t manage to do much.
    3    Democracies are not immune from this as Biden’s pathetic defense of his son shows how family concerns can seriously undermine any legacy of good the leader accomplishes.
    4    They have no public voice, all 300 Shia girls’ schools have Sunni headmistresses, they sit on the oil wealth and get only low paid jobs, scholars get their heads chopped off, etc.
    5    Probably out of jealousy, as he saw himself as the savior of Palestine. See Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival, 2006, p 113.
    6    This could be why Israel so detests Iran. Initially, Israel was admired by Iranian intellectuals. Jalāl Āl-e-Ahmad visited Israel in 1962 and recorded his experiences in The Israeli republic (1962). But when he observed the treatment of Palestinians, he soured and Iranians broadly criticized ‘westoxification’, anticipating the revolution’s clear anti-imperialism. Only Iran really ‘gets’ imperialism.
    7    Vali Nasr, op.cit., p175.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New York, September 13, 2024—Pakistani authorities must immediately investigate the killings of Awaz TV reporter Muhammad Bachal Ghunio and International News Agency reporter Nisar Lehri and ensure an end to the intensifying wave of violence against journalists in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

    “Pakistani authorities must immediately bring the perpetrators of the killings of journalists Nisar Lehri and Muhammad Bachal Ghunio to justice and show urgent political will to end the horrifying cycle of violence against journalists that has continued this year across Pakistan,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The press in Pakistan cannot carry out their journalism unless the government and security agencies put an end to the impunity against journalists in the country.”

    On August 27, Ghunio was killed by unidentified armed men while in a field near his home in the Raunti area of Ghotki District in the southeastern Sindh province, according to the Pakistan Press Foundation, a local press freedom group. Ghunio’s brother and the investigating officer believe that he was killed for his reporting and journalism. Police have since arrested a suspect and recovered a weapon they believe was used in the killing.

    On September 4, Lehri, who is also secretary of the Mastung Press Club, was attacked by three unknown assailants near his home in the Gulkand area of Mastung District in Baluchistan province, according to CPJ’s review of a copy of the first information report (FIR), a document that opens an investigation. According to the FIR, Lehri was killed because of his reporting against local criminal elements, but the police’s initial investigation suggests that he was killed due to a land dispute, according to the Pakistan Press Foundation.

    Information Minister Attaullah Tarar did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment, sent via text message.

    Seven other journalists have been killed across Pakistan in 2024, and dozens have been attacked or forced into hiding due to their reporting across the country.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Seg2 tariqandasiaeurope

    We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law. Ali also shares his analysis of South Asian politics — in Pakistan, where former Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused the United States of engineering his ouster, and in Bangladesh, where a student-led uprising recently toppled the authoritarian regime of its former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Finally, we cover developments in Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has appointed conservative leader Michel Barnier as prime minister, despite the electoral gains of the country’s left-wing coalition. This comes as far-right and anti-migrant sentiment spreads throughout the Global North.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • With more than 70 people reportedly killed by rebels this week, Dr Mahrang Baloch’s effective and non-violent protests against Pakistan’s government are rapidly gaining support

    On the morning of 26 August, about three dozen armed men intercepted traffic at Musakhel in Pakistan, a district on the border between Balochistan and Punjab. Identifying and off-loading 23 men from the Punjab province from different vehicles, they shot them dead. They also set 35 vehicles ablaze.

    The Balochistan Liberation Army, the most active militant group in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the second of its kind this year. In April, nine passengers were forced out of a bus near Noshki, a city in Balochistan, and shot dead after the assailants checked their ID cards.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Democracy can be considered a commodity with multitude of varieties. Each elite ruling class claims theirs is the best suitable for its people, and thus imposes it on them. Mind you, not pure democracy — government of the people, by the people, for the people” — because that would amount to nothing less than socialism. The “democracy” that countries profess to practice is nothing but an interpretation of the ruling class in those countries with the aim to control its general populace.

    India has Modi-cracy where one man, Narendra Modi, is running the show. A year ago, he boasted: “India is the mother of democracy.” If India is the mother of democracy, then Modi must be the illegitimate father of democracy who was till last month busy Hindu-izing the country. (He did not get a simple majority in the June 2024 elections, so his Hindu-ization project has slowed down, but it remains doubtful he’ll give up so easily. He could instigate a war with Pakistan, declare an emergency, and assume extraordinaire power. Never underestimate the power of elected fascists.)

    England has monacracy and the taxpayers bear the burden of monarchy which can’t be called a true democracy.

    The United States has oligacracy where a small group of extremely wealthy people decide the fate of more than 335 million common people in the name of democracy. Biden could fight the proxy war against Russia or support the genocide of Palestinians and nothing changes; but he loses a debate against Trump and the wealthy halt $90 million in donations.

    Military Power

    Then there is Pakistan’s militocracy. The military has ruled that country, directly or indirectly, for most of that nation’s existence. When the military favors a politician, that person becomes the prime minister but has to be subservient because the rein (important portfolios such as foreign policy, defense, etc.) is always determined by the military. When the premier tries to control the entire government machinery, that person is deposed and could be sent to prison. Politicians are at the army’s mercy.

    The Pakistan military and governments constantly plead and beg the IMF, Saudi rulers, and UAE rulers for a billion dollars or more.

    The military torpedoed Nawaz Sharis’s past efforts to improve relations with India. But it now wants better relations. The increase in trade with India can help Pakistan to overcome its dire economic and financial condition.

    The 2018 election saw cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party become the Prime Minister, with the military’s blessing . But when Khan tried to do things his own way, a vote of no-confidence was engineered and Khan was ousted in 2022. At present, he’s in jail with over 100 cases registered against him. Even when a case is dismissed, police or some agency person issues another arrest warrant and he gets re-arrested. Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and some PTI members are entangled in this vicious cycle.

    After more than a year in various prisons all over Pakistan, Sanam Javed of PTI was released on July 10, 2024 by the Lahore High Court (in Punjab province) but soon after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested her and took her to Islamabad. On July 14, she was let go but was re-arrested by the police of Balochistan. She was freed on July 15 by the Islamabad High Court which restrained police from arresting her till July 18. The IHC justice asked her to “avoid unnecessary rhetoric” or else the court would reverse its order. In other words, keep your mouth shut. Her lawyer guaranteed that she would refrain from such language. On June 18, the IHC considered her arrest to be illegal and she was set free. Immediately, the Punjab government challenged IHC verdict.

    While in power, Khan had visited Russia the day it had launched the special military operation into Ukraine. Khan was also critical of the US. The US is never too busy not to interfere in other countries’ affairs. David Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, asked Pakistan’s then ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, to get rid of Khan.

    The army’s open hostility and its tactics to break up Khan’s party PTI by levying various charges and arresting and re-arresting PTI members, including Khan, saw Khan’s supporters out on the streets on May 9, 2023; they did some damage to military installations. The army in response, came up with an event called Youm-e-Takreem Shuhada-e-Pakistan or Martyrs’ Reverence Day to be celebrated on May 25 every year to remember the soldiers who lose their lives while serving.

    Seven and a half months after Khan was ousted, in November 2022, the retiring army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa conceded the army’s meddling in politics.

    “… our army which day and night remains busy in serving the nation, is often made the subject of criticism.” “A major reason for this is the army’s interference in politics for the last 70 years which is unconstitutional.

    “This is why in February last year [2021] the army, after great deliberation, decided that it would never interfere in any political matter. I assure you we are strictly adamant on this and will remain so.”

    One wonders why leaders accept their lies and mistakes, or talk peace and the danger of military-industrial complex, etc only when they’re leaving or have left. Bajwa was lying.

    Today, the army is still omnipresent. The current army Chief Asim Munir meets with the business community, invites winning athletes, issues regular statements, and so on. The current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took over power after military approval. His older brother and former three-incomplete-term prime minister Nawaz Sharif came back from exile with military’s approval.

    Disappearing Critics

    The intelligence agencies in Pakistan such as MI (Military Intelligence), IB (Intelligence Bureau), ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), etc. take care of the critics — journalists and common people — who write, speak, or protest against the military interference in government affairs.

    Sometimes they are abducted, tortured, and then released. Other times they are killed with no clues left.

    In 2011, the Islamabad Bureau Chief of Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad was tortured and murdered. News anchor and journalist Arshad Sharif, a critic of military, was shot dead in 2022, by police in Nairobi, Kenya. In May 2024, four journalists were murdered. Since 1992, more than 60 journalists have lost their lives. Then there are those who have disappeared and never reappeared. In many instances, the victims are harassed and blackmailed, their phones are tapped, and they are detained illegally. The agencies never issue any kind of statement because that would be tantamount to accepting guilt.

    Thousands of people are missing in Pakistan, without any clue as to where they are. The number of enforced disappearances in 2023 was 51.

    Then there is the Pakistani province of Balochistan — a vast land mass with the smallest population that is underdeveloped and ignored by governments. This has caused resentment among the Balochis that has resulted in insurgency. The first six months of 2024 saw 197 persons missing — most of them Balochis. On July 28, three persons died and eight were injured during a clash between Balochistan Yakjehti Committee (BYC) and security forces. People from the province overcame roadblocks set up by the authorities and met at Gwader’s Marine Drive for the Baloch Rajee Muchi (Baloch National Gathering). BYC leader Dr Mahrang Baloch asked security officials to free the apprehended protestors. She proclaimed:

    “Until the release of our people, the sit-in will continue at Marine Drive.”

    More than 5,000 Balochis are missing. Families of missing and/or killed Balochis demonstrate holding photos of victims every now and then but to no avail. In protests, Baloch women are in the forefront. They live in a tortured state of mind not knowing whether their sons, husbands, fathers are alive or not. In January 2024, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, got mad at Baloch protestors and called supporters and “relatives of those fighting against the state” as “advocates of terrorists in Balochistan.” Kakar himself hails from Balochistan.

    On the night of May 14, 2024, the Kashmiri poet, journalist Ahmed Farhad Shah was kidnapped by four men outside his home while returning from a dinner. A petition from his family was filed with Islamabad High Court (IHC) saying that Shah was abducted for his criticism of ISI. According to his wife, Syeda Urooj Zainab, the agencies felt that Shah was a PTI and Imran Khan supporter, so they were after him. Zainab refutes that impression and says he has also supported PML-N when it was under pressure by the Pakistan’s military. One of the judges at IHC, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, initiated an enquiry and ordered that Shah be found and produced before the court. Two weeks later, it was reported that he was in police custody. But then the federal government asked the IHC on June 1 to close the case. On June 4, his bail was rejected by an anti-terrorism court in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Critics are treated as terrorists! Since then, there has been no news on Shah, it is doubtful if they’ve found him.

    The Advocate Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, a Baloch, who is Shah’s counsel, has herself been harassed, threatened, arrested, re-arrested, for calling the Pakistan army “terrorists” and for supporting the protesting Baloch students.

    Ahmed Farhad Shah is a poet whose poems are critical of the army. Here is the translation of one of his poems originally written in Hindi/Urdu.

    he thinks of his own freewill

    he thinks of his own freewill, pick him up
    he’s somewhat different than our henchmen, pick him up
    the arrogant ones we abducted before him, pick him up
    he’s is enquiring about them, pick him up
    he was clearly ordered what to speak and what not to, but he speaks his own mind, pick him up
    the minions whom we honored with positions and rewards, he’s laughing at those clever souls, pick him up
    he questions why there’s peace and security problem, he is the peace and security problem, pick him up*
    he was told to see only what we show him, but he uses his own discretion, pick him up
    this lunatic is questioning extent of our power, he has crossed the line, pick him up

    * Farhad reminds his audience that just for raising the question of peace and security, fifty people were imprisoned.

    The post Military Rule and the Disappearing Critics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.