Thoughts on Defence Day of homeland

By Afzal Hussain Bokhar

Written by Jameeluddin Aali and sung with her typically captivating abandon by the Melody Queen late Madam Noor Jehan, the poet says in the famous musical number that his songs are wholly and solely meant for army jawans - the defenders of the geographical borders of the beloved homeland - who look graceful in their military uniforms.

Poets wrote some of the most patriotic lines, music directors composed some of the all-time best national songs while artists, both male and female, rendered some of the most melodious songs during the 17-day war that broke out on September 6, 1965.

Since Lahore Radio was located in close proximity to the Indo-Pak border, the most befitting war rhetoric travelled on airwaves from that station, which incidentally was heard over much of central and north India including Delhi. Poet Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum wrote beautiful national songs, short story writer Ashfaq Ahmad gave a dreadfully unnerving five-minute talk under the pseudonym of Dadu Lohar while Tajammul Hussain and late newsman Zahoor Alam Shaheed gave analytical updates on war developments.

National news bulletins in those days were read by the inimitable Shakeel Ahmad, Anwar Behzad (poet Behzad Lakhnavi's son) and Shamim Ejaz who later went to Australia. These three formed the inevitable triangle of best Urdu news readers. When news was put on air, people thronged the radio and transistor sets in homes, shops and hotels.

When television channels on Sunday morning showed the change of guards on the mausoleum of the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, it brought back memories of the martial days. While the smartly-uniformed jawans from all the three armed forces - Army, Air Force and Navy - clicked their heels and adjusted their guns in routine drill order, one was reminded of the recent book on Jinnah and partition by former foreign minister of India Jaswant Singh which shook the very foundations of the Bhartiya Janata Party and the author was promptly expelled from BJP.

Serious observers like the editor of the Congress Party's paper Pioneer, editor-in-chief of Hindu, N Ram, the former editor of Organiser Sehshadri Chari and former minister Mani Shankar Iyer popped out of television channels and showed their surprise at the expulsion of Jaswant Singh.

The commentators said that nobody in BJP had read Jaswant's book. BJP chief Rajnath Singh had ordered the expulsion of the author merely after reading a brief story on the book by news agency Press Trust of India which copied a sentence from the book in praise of Jinnah.   

On September 6, 2009, people recalled the passionate manner in which President General Mohammad Ayub Khan through his historical radio address on the same date in 1965 called upon the nation to get united and silence the enemy's guns by chanting out the 'Kalima-i-Tayyaba'. "India probably does not know the people it has challenged", said the tall Pathan from village Haryana in Haripur district.

After the 17-day war, President Ayub Khan and Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went to Tashkent to talk peace. As the hard luck would have it, both the leaders signed the Tashkent Peace Accord but a massive cardiac arrest took the life of PM Shastri. Recently there was an exclusive story by BBC's Delhi-based senior correspondent Rehan Fazal, who said that heart attack might not have been the actual reason of LB Shastri's death. Rehan spoke to Shastri's wife and one of the sons who said they did not believe in the cardiac arrest story and there might well have been some foul play or neglect on the part of the physician in attendance.

There were fierce battles fought out between the armies of Pakistan and India along the entire border right from Tharparker and Monabhai to Chowinda near Sialkot where in order to stop the advance of Indian tanks towards Wazirabad on GT Road, some brave sons of the soil tied explosives to their bodies and threw themselves in front of the Indian tanks.

Soon after return from Tashkent, Ayub Khan's fiery foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto fell out with his mentor and threatened to disclose the 'real' story of the peace deal. In India too, there were voices against what Shastri had done. The seeds of animosity sown in 1965 continue to yield crops of renewed hostilities even after 44 years.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, for example, said on Sunday that normalisation of relations with India could not make progress or any headway unless New Delhi fulfilled the conditions put forward by the eloquent Seraiki-speaking Qureshi. Though in a different context, the foreign minister also issued a 'friendly' warning to Saudi Arabia and said that the Kingdom should communicate any complaint or protest to Islamabad through its foreign ministry.

As the coincidence would have it, the European countries are reviving these days how the Second World War started from their continent. We on the subcontinent, on the other hand, are refreshing the memories of the Indo-Pak war of September 6, 1965. Whether we like it or not, the wars bring devastation and creating war hysteria is not in the interest of poor nations.

One feels like winding up this piece by reproducing a couple of lines from a long poem titled 'Ey sharif insano!' The poem was written during the 1965 war and read out on radio, television and in mushaira sessions by Professor Jagan Nath Azad, who remained associated with the Urdu Department of Jammu University in the occupied Kashmir. Jagan Nath was the son of Pakistan-born poet Talok Chand Mehroom, whose poems were included in the school textbooks for almost three decades after the partition of the subcontinent.

Among other very appealing things, Jagan Nath Azad said in his poem: "Bum gharon per girain ya khaiton per, kokh dharti ki banjh hoti hai … iss leaye ey sharif insano, jang talti rahey to acha hai!" (The bombs my hit homes or farms; they damage the earth's uterus which ultimately becomes infertile and unproductive. Therefore, O gentle folks, we had better put off war to some other time!).