Journalists condole the death of a senior editor

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Community of journalists in City felt immensely shocked at the death of a senior editor, Irshad Ahmad Haqqani, who passed away in Lahore on Sunday morning. He had been a heart patient for a long time. The Khyber Union of Journalists, members of Peshawar Press Club and the working as well as non-working journalists associated with various newspapers coming out of the Frontier metropolis offered fateha for the departed soul and paid glowing tributes to the services rendered by him to the cause of journalism especially the struggle for the freedom of expression.

Haqqani belonged to an old Punjab town located along the Indo-Pak border called Qasur, which is basically known for having in it the shrine of great mystic poet Baba Bulleh Shah and which also produced singer Noor Jehan, who later won the title of being the countrys melody queen.

Initially a member of the Jamaat-i-Islami, he started his career as a teacher. Due to hard work and devotion to his profession teaching, that is he ultimately rose to become the principal of Islamia College, Qasur. In the early 1950s, he worked as editor of the daily Tasneem of Jamaat-i-Islami. In the Machi Goth convention of the party, he got associated with the Amin Ahsan Islahi group.

In 1981, when the daily Jang launched one of its editions from Lahore, he offered his services to the paper as a columnist. In 1993, when an interim government was formed in the country he was picked for a brief period of three months as the federal minister for information and broadcasting.

More often than not, his column Harf-i-Tamanna used to be a well-written and refreshing piece of prose that added flavour to your morning tea. He wielded a facile pen along with a style that was more persuasive than bellicose. Even in the hardest of times, he maintained his poise and equilibrium. At the time of his death, he was the patron of Khalil-ur-Rahman Society and the senior editor of Jang newspaper.

Somehow or the other, when he noticed that people who had worked as college teacher (like Atta-ul-Haq Qasmi) or as journalists (like Maleeha Lodhi and Wajid Shams-ul-Hassan) got appointed as ambassadors respectively to Norway, the United States of America and Britain, he also had a lurking desire that Benazir Bhutto in her second government should appoint him as ambassador to China. When BB showed her inability to oblige him, he wrote some of the nastiest newspaper columns against her.

Readers may recall that during BB’s second term, Peshawar Television Centre once aired a talk show on the role of media hosted by journalist Shiraz Paracha of daily Pakistan. The guests included Irshad Ahmad Haqqani, Khushnood Ali Khan and Qaiser Mahmood Butt. You diarist happened to be on the panel of newsmen that were supposed to pose questions to the guests.

On Haqqani’s personal request, PTV edited my comment before putting the show on air but I remember that producer (rtd) Masood Ahmad Shah recorded each and every word of it: Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is being given a tough time in newspaper columns because she failed to oblige Sahiwal’s television host who stood deprived of the watching eyes and listening ears. The PM is being criticised because she did not appoint as MD of PTV a columnist living in Lahores Riwaz Garden. She is being flayed because she did not send a college teacher from Qasur to Beijing as the country’s ambassador.

After the recording, Qaiser Butt told me how Haqqani felt embarrassed at the comment. However, I honestly feel that the comment was meant to reform and not hurt the man. Now that he is not amongst us, we whole-heartedly pray that God Almighty may bless the departed soul and grant fortitude to his two sons and an equal number of daughters to bear the loss. Urdu journalism in Pakistan will no longer be the same without him.

The people of tehsil Bara in Khyber Agency have been facing hardships due to the uncertain conditions prevailing in the area. On Sunday, some anti-social elements triggered off a remote-controlled bomb explosion killing at least one security man and injuring another. The bomb explosion occurred when a convoy of security personnel was on its way from Bara tehsil to Khajoori Nullah area.

The shopkeepers in the vicinity said that all commercial activities stood suspended due to the ongoing cleanup operation. Local markets continued to stay closed and it was difficult for the residents to make both ends meet. Even the drivers and conductors working on the rickety Bara-Peshawar buses have been rendered jobless and most of them are now operating taxi-cabs to eke out a living for their families. The people of Bara tehsil have appealed to the government to restore normalcy in their area so that they could reopen the shops and resume their business.

The common man may not feel interested in the latest economic move but the government announced on Sunday that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had issued a new currency note of Rs500 denomination. People in the low-income group may not feel amused but the SBP announcement said that in designing the new note, the government had tried to meet all aesthetic standards and it carried fool-proof security checks so that innovative anti-social elements should find it hard to produce fake currency notes of that denomination.

Meanwhile, the old notes will continue to remain in circulation until they are gradually withdrawn by the banks. Recent credit crunch and economic tsunami have so badly shattered the working class that the whole aesthetic orientation got messed up. It is very rare that a 500-rupee note finds its way into the pocket of a daily wage-earner.

The first and the foremost problem is the common man’s accessibility to the new note. The issue of enjoying the design or relishing the aesthetics behind the printing of currency notes is of secondary importance. The notes of higher denominations are actually meant for the affluent class that hates to carry a load of notes of smaller denominations.