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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

[mukto-mona] Marching Forward : Pervez Hoodbhoy,

Marching Forward
 
Nuclear physicist, Pervez Hoodbhoy, talks about the urgent new needs confronting the Pakistan of today.
 
"Faith, Unity, Discipline." Mohammad Ali Jinnah's oft quoted phrase is known to every Pakistani. It has been used to serve different ends. Successive military rulers have claimed this is a call for all to march in step towards a goal that they have determined. Others have disputed this self-serving interpretation. But whatever Jinnah may have actually had in mind, nearly 60 years down the road, there is a new Pakistan with new realities - and pressing new needs.
          For starters, Pakistan needs the participation of its people. There is open cynicism about Pakistan's political parties and its self-seeking, kleptomanic leaders. The military rules an apathetic nation. Young people have tuned in to mindless FM entertainment and tuned out of participation in social causes. University campuses are deviod of discussion and debate, and movements against manifest social and political injustice bring forth only handfuls of committed individuals. Millions demonstrated on the streets of London, Rome, Washington and New York against the criminal American invasion of Iraq. But in Pakistan - where the anger ran deeper - the response was invisible.
           This apathy has an explanation. Most young people think that the world is naturally cruel and will remain so. They think vague hopes for a better world are like wanting a piece of the moon or eternal youth, and hence a waste of time. But this damning state of mind is recent - it was brought about by the deliberate policy of leaders to cripple our will so that we stop fighting them. A generation of left-wing activists has gone missing from the heady optimism of the 1960s - when revolution seemed around the corner - to the despair of the present.
          But empowerment and people's participation can come once again to Pakistan if we are so determined. Labour must organise again, the ban on student unions must go, and the political parties must join hands on real issues and be allowed to freely campaign without fear of arrest and persecution. We need to dream our dreams, once again, because Pakistan's survival is at stake.
            Pakistan needs, and deserves, a citizenry with alert minds and at least some understanding of how the world works. People must know what makes the stars and sun shine, what causes earthquakes and tsunamis, and why diseases of the body and mind are no more than various malfunctions of cellular machines. Unless such causal connections are accepted and contextualised within the larger scientific paradigm, we, like other pre-modern peoples, will continue to believe in evil spirits, in "jinn-bhoot-pareet," or in divine anger, as the cause of drought and flood, disease and dementia, poverty and misery.
          Ignorance makes people fearful, drives them to passivity and acceptance of fate, and ensures that while others progress and prosper, we are left way behind. The history of humankind is replete with examples where diseases, plagues, and epidemics were attributed to sinful behavior. AIDS is a modern example. The devout everywhere, including Pakistan, saw this as "azab-i-ilahi" and a punishment for promiscuity. But microbiologists in the west looked at it as a challenge to first identify - and then contain - a mutant virus that attacks the human immune system. So, even as priests and mullahs bonded together to declare AIDS unstoppable, scientists and public health specialists quietly went about their work. Today, with no change in personal behaviours, the tide has been reversed and fewer people die every year from this dreaded disease in the west.
            Pakistan needs freedom for its women. In much of rural Pakistan, a woman is likely to be spat upon, beaten, or killed for talking to a man or even showing him her face. Newspaper readers expect - and get - a steady daily diet of stories about women raped, mutilated, or strangled to death by their fathers, husbands, and brothers. With energetic proselytisers like Farhat Hashmi making deep inroads even into the urban middle and upper classes, the culture of suppressing women is spreading. Our cities are becoming culturally backward villages. As the pious multiply, the horrific daily crimes against women become increasingly less worthy of comment or discussion.
            Pakistani notions of morality, and of right and wrong, have come to centre around women-related issues. There is nothing new in this. Historically women have been held responsible for depravity and promiscuity, their evil deeds bringing down divine wrath. From St. Augustine to Luther, Christian theologians agreed on the principle "thou shall not suffer a witch to live." So, when hail or storm ruined a crop, the search for witches would intensify and soon the air would be filled with the stench of burning flesh. When Egypt was faced by hunger because of the drying up of the Nile, the orthodox Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim, ordered women to be shut in their homes and forbade the manufacture of shoes for them. He thought mixing of the sexes was the cause. Today we know better. Or do we?
            Pakistan needs economic justice and the working machinery of a welfare state. Economic justice is not about flinging coins at beggars. It requires organisational infrastructure that, at the very least, provides employment, but also rewards according to ability and hard work. Incomes should be neither exorbitantly high nor miserably low. To be sure, "high" and "low" are not easily quantifiable, but an inner moral sense tells us that something is desperately wrong when rich Pakistanis fly off to vacation in Dubai on a whim while a mother commits suicide because she cannot feed her children.
            A welfare state in Pakistan is a receding ideal. India abolished feudalism upon attaining independence. But the enormous pre-Partition land holdings of Pakistan's feudal lords remained safe and sound, protected by the authority of the state. The land reforms announced by Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were plain eyewash. In later years, with the consolidation of military rule in national politics, the army turned itself into a landlord and capitalist elite. Today, officers not only own vast amounts of farm lands and valuable urban real estate, but also massive commercial assets in manufacturing, transportation, banking, insurance, and advertising. Take anything from cement to sugar, or corn flakes to commercial bottled water, and you will find that the military owns the means of their production. No other army in the world does that. Most countries have armies, but, as some have acerbically remarked, only in Pakistan does an army have a country.
            Pakistan needs the rule of law. Nearly three centuries earlier, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed that each citizen of a state voluntarily places his person under the supreme direction of the "general will." An unwritten social contract between the individual and society requires that a citizen accept the rule of law and admit to certain basic responsibilities. In return the citizen receives certain rights from the larger entity. Without this voluntary submission by individuals, said Rousseau, humans would be no better than beasts.
            How well is the social contract holding up in Pakistan, and to what extent do citizens exhibit responsible social behavior? How many of us pay our fair share of income tax, respect basic environmental rules, heed traffic laws, and dispose off garbage as we should? Pitifully few. An avalanche of law-breaking occurs because ordinary people see the nation's leaders and the powerful openly flouting the very rules they claim to protect, and because they can see that enforcement of the law is no more than a perfunctory gesture. The problem is compounded by Pakistan's fundamental confusion: is the citizen obligated to obey secular (or common) law or one of the many interpretations of Islamic law, or even the tribal law of jirgas? Surely a modern state has to set uniform rules for its citizens or else risk losing its legitimacy.
            Pakistan needs hope. As the population explodes, oceans of poverty and misery deepen. Limbless beggars in the streets multiply. Water and clean air become scarce resources, education remains stalemated, democracy remains as distant as ever, and the distance from a rapidly developing world increases. There is a strong temptation for one to step aside, give up, admit helplessness. But then surely what we fear will actually come to pass. I go along with Antonio Gramsci, the great Italian philosopher, who spoke of "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." With the pessimism of the intellect we must calmly contemplate the yawning abyss up ahead. But then, after a period of reflection, we should move to prevent falling into it.
            Howard Zinn - who I first heard speak at an anti-Vietnam war rally in Boston in 1970 - has a powerful message of hope for those who want to change their societies: To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness… If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to act. If we remember those times and places - and there are many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory.
            There is much reason for despair, but even more for hope. One hundred and sixty million people cannot disappear from the face of the earth, or allow themselves to be imprisoned indefinitely in a living hell. Human ingenuity and the good sense of survival shall inevitably assert themselves. It is for us all, as agents of change, to move in a way so that the inevitable arrives sooner rather than later. In Faiz's immortal words:
            Hum dekhain ge, lazim hai ke hum bhi dekhain ge ; woh din ke jis ka wahda hai, jo loh-e-azal main likha hai.
Visit :
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ZNet Commentaries by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Professor of Nuclear Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has been a faculty member at the Quaid-e-Azam University since 1973. In 1984 he received the Abdus Salam Prize for mathematics and is the author of 65 scientific research papers. He is chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization which publishes books in Urdu on women's rights, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought.

Dr. Hoodbhoy has written and spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to education issues in Pakistan and nuclear disarmament. He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and two series aimed at popularizing science. He is author of 'Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality', now in 5 languages.

Particle Politics column by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Articles by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pakistan's Universities - Problems and Solutions

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 27, 2008 interacts: 195
300% jump in research publications, nine new engineering universities with European faculty, 3000 Pakistani students sent overseas for higher-degrees...self-serving lies, half-truths and deceit.

The Power of Ideas and the Modern University

Pervez Hoodbhoy Sep 11, 2007 interacts: 60
Ideas rule the world, drive our actions, inform our beliefs, and unleash mighty revolutions. How must Pakistan's higher education system change for it to succeed?

Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight

Pervez Hoodbhoy Aug 13, 2007 interacts: 362
What did Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, want for the country he was destined to create in 1947?

Science and the Islamic world --- The quest for rapprochement

Pervez Hoodbhoy Aug 2, 2007 interacts: 624
With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge?

Preventing More Lal Masjids

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jul 10, 2007 interacts: 961
What should the government do after the guns stop firing and the hostages are out, whether dead or alive?

Pakistan – The Threat From Within

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 31, 2007 interacts: 393
It is an open question as to exactly how much further Pakistan will move towards religious radicalism in the years to come.

What Next After Karachi's Carnage?

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 16, 2007 interacts: 1024
Although Musharraf denies that he wants a postponement, a lengthy martial law may now be his only chance for a continuation of his dictatorial rule into its eighth year – and perhaps beyond.

Teaching Science Badly – and Well

Pervez Hoodbhoy Mar 1, 2007 interacts: 244
Dogmatism kills science. Students should therefore experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. Never should the teacher say X or Y is true just because that's what the textbook says.

Education Reform: Signs of Hope

Pervez Hoodbhoy Feb 12, 2007 interacts: 167
There is good news: the "White Paper" to "debate and finalize national education policy", distributed in December 2006 by the Ministry of Education, though incomplete and flawed, is an enormous step forward.

Re-Imagining Pakistan

Pervez Hoodbhoy Dec 13, 2006 interacts: 495
Commencement lecture by Pervez Hoodbhoy at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, 9 December 2006.

Musharraf's Coup - Seven Years Later

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 12, 2006 interacts: 285
Some had feared – while others had hoped – that General Pervez Musharraf's coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a Pakistan firmly in the iron grip of mullahs.

Waiting for Enlightenment

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jul 23, 2006 interacts: 71
After almost five years of 'enlightened moderation,' it seems there is more continuity than change. And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming P

What Pakistan's Bomb Could Not Buy

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 29, 2006 interacts: 141
Nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear "expert" will point to the other side's latest acquisition an

South Asia Needs a Bomb-less Deal

Pervez Hoodbhoy Apr 20, 2006 interacts: 146
One certain consequence will be more bombs on both sides of the border. The deal is widely seen in Pakistan as signaling America's support or acquiescence, or perhaps even surrender, to India's nuclear ambitions

Assessing Pakistani Science

Pervez Hoodbhoy Feb 21, 2006 interacts: 388
Websites of most Pakistani science and technology institutions are national embarrassments; the Centre for Applied and Molecular Biology has pictures of political personalities, starting with Gen. Musharraf, but links to its activities lead nowhere

No Burial for Balakot

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 13, 2005 interacts: 125
Four days later, they are still not even trying to extricate the dead in the town of Balakot, flattened on the morning of October 8.

Bin Laden And Hiroshima

Pervez Hoodbhoy Aug 6, 2005 interacts: 137
Even as the United States dusted off its hands and moved on, elsewhere the radioactive rubble of the dead cities spawned not only a sense of dread, but also an obsessive desire for nuclear weapons.

Reforms! What Reforms?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jul 18, 2005 interacts: 126
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading thinker and educationist in Pakistan is the latest target for the mindless policy makers running Pakistan. It shouldn't come as a surprise, the same people, after all, have tried to stifle the voices of many others –

India Through Pakistani Eyes

Pervez Hoodbhoy Feb 16, 2005 interacts: 625
Is India now set to become a science juggernaut, a leader of the coming 'Asian Century'? A nascent superpower of the East?

Reforming Pakistan's Universities -- II

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 4, 2005 interacts: 50
Three years ago the first serious effort to deal with Pakistan's chronically ill universities was finally initiated. Unfortunately, this effort by the Higher Education Commission has now become mired in an intense, growing controversy.

Reforming Pakistan's Universties -- I

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 4, 2005 interacts: 13
In this article I will look at the problems in our higher education system and why the HEC reforms are set to make a bad situation worse rather than better.

Can Pakistan Work?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 19, 2004 interacts: 141
According to a popular but rather humor?less Pakistani joke, "all countries have armies, but here, an army has a country."

Pakistan: Inside The Nuclear Closet

Pervez Hoodbhoy Mar 7, 2004 interacts: 90
Many in the Pakistani press had warned that any attempt to punish Qadeer, advertised for near two decades as the architect of Pakistan's and the Islamic world's nuclear bomb, would provoke rampaging mobs to demand an end to Musharraf's p

The Nuclear Noose Around Pakistan's Neck

Pervez Hoodbhoy Feb 2, 2004 interacts: 349
Thirty years ago, fearful of India's newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state...Few could have imagined then that the move from buyer to seller of the world's deadliest technology w

Rethinking Plebiscite In Kashmir

Pervez Hoodbhoy Dec 25, 2003 interacts: 162
By declaring that 'we have left aside' the United Nation Security Council resolutions for a solution to Kashmir, General Pervez Musharraf shattered a long-held taboo.

Pervez Hoodbhoy-Paul Kurtz correspondence

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 13, 2003 interacts: 62
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Edward Said was slandered by Ibn Warraq, a man with pretensions to being a secular humanist and the author of several books.

Terror in Okara

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 23, 2003 interacts: 53
Pakistan cannot bear the shock of nearly a million of its own people being dispossessed

Is It A War On Islam?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 16, 2003 interacts: 171
What, then, should be the strategy for all those who believe in a just world and are appalled by America's war on the weak?

What I Saw In Okara

Pervez Hoodbhoy Sep 15, 2002 interacts: 68
An investigation into the Okara land dispute

Were We Too Hijacked by 9/11?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Sep 9, 2002 interacts: 126
Al-Qaida had to be bombed, to let the Taliban be was not an option.

How Not to Reform Universities

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jul 9, 2002 interacts: 196
By a stroke of some bureaucrat's pen, the 'University of Malakand' has now been deemed to exist

Lighting The Nuclear Fire

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 25, 2002 interacts: 509
nuclear affairs are now being guided by wishful, delusional, thinking

The Wages of Obedience

Pervez Hoodbhoy Feb 12, 2002 interacts: 138
The systemic failure of a whole class of people to think honestly and seriously, in short a failure to do their job as political analysts

Muslims and The West After 11th September

Pervez Hoodbhoy Dec 7, 2001 interacts: 569
America has exacted blood revenge for the Twin Towers

Black Tuesday: The View From Islamabad

Pervez Hoodbhoy Sep 15, 2001 interacts: 570
CNN and the US media have so far made little attempt to understand this affliction

Refusing the Sitara-I-Imtiaz

Pervez Hoodbhoy Apr 25, 2001 interacts: 132
...look at our generals – they get a shovel-full of impressive medals each year that they proudly wear on their chests. But tell me how many wars have they won?

Refusing The Sitara-I-Imtiaz

Pervez Hoodbhoy Apr 23, 2001 interacts: 263
our national awards have come to be associated with political maneuverings and manipulations

Our Blind Nuclear Prophets

Pervez Hoodbhoy Mar 3, 2001 interacts: 230
why did Indian and Pakistani defence budgets go up, rather than down, after the May 1998 tests?

IT Is Not A Magic Wand

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 30, 2001 interacts: 151
Pakistan yearns for a magic lamp

Defending the Indefensible

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 7, 2001 interacts: 12
a lazy and heartless educational bureaucracy

Education Reforms: Yet Another Sham

Pervez Hoodbhoy Nov 10, 2000 interacts: 228
In the hands of a semi-literate bureaucracy, which couldn't care less about education

The Menace of Education

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jul 9, 2000 interacts: 103
We cannot entrust the future of our country to those who cannot write a single straight sentence

Eqbal Ahmad: Post - Pokhran Days

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 12, 2000 interacts: 81
The mountain had turned white. I wondered how much pain had been felt by nature ...

What are they Teaching in Pakistani Schools Today?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Apr 15, 2000 interacts: 161
How Pakistan has been educating its young?

Pakistan in the Year 3000

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 12, 2000 interacts: 309
Apes and Dumbos dont have much of a future on planet Earth

Men of the Millenium

Pervez Hoodbhoy Dec 28, 1999 interacts: 89
Five personalities who shaped the last 1000 years

Dear Chowk Readers

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 31, 1999 interacts: 37
A call for action from Pervez Hoodbhoy to the Chowk community for Science education in Pakistan

Why An Interim Civilian Government will Fail

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 14, 1999 interacts: 38
Putting up a front government will achieve simply nothing

A Recipe For Unbridled Pak-India Competition

Pervez Hoodbhoy Oct 11, 1999 interacts: 6
Independent thinking on foreign and defence policies has virtually ceased to exist

Pokhran-Chaghi audit: Winners and losers

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jun 4, 1999 interacts: 15
India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests one year ago.

Eqbal Ahmed - As I Knew Him

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 27, 1999 interacts: 10
I had not heard of Eqbal Ahmad until I heard him speak in 1971 at an anti-war demonstration at MIT

Bombs, Missiles and Pakistani Science

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 4, 1999 interacts: 46
The Chaghi tests, and more recent Ghauri-II and Shaheen-I missile launches, have been deemed heroic symbols of high scientific achievement... Are they?

Why The War On Ghosts Was Lost

Pervez Hoodbhoy Mar 8, 1999 interacts: 20
The scourge will be eradicated from its roots, thundered Mr. Shahbaz Sharif

Is Accidental Nuclear War Impossible?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Dec 8, 1998 interacts: 8
...the truth is that accidents, sabotage, and tragedy have frequently haunted our two countries.

Living with the Bomb

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jun 3, 1998 interacts: 3
A 2-5 minute flight time, almost zero chances of interception, and the impossibility of recall

Say No to Indian and Pakistani Bombs

Pervez Hoodbhoy May 18, 1998 interacts: 10
...against the ideologies of hate created and promoted by our governments

The Rape of Khairpur University

Pervez Hoodbhoy Apr 13, 1998 interacts: 11
Why have we collectively lost the will to protest crimes against people and institutions?

Salam, Science and Secularism

Pervez Hoodbhoy Jan 11, 1998 interacts: 16
...I have chosen to talk not about Salam's brilliant successes but, instead, his most spectacular failure ...

Why didn't the Scientific Revolution happen in Islam? ?

Pervez Hoodbhoy Dec 23, 1997 interacts: 12
Every great civilization writes its own history, selectively extracts data from the past, and then proves to its satisfaction that its greatness has no peer or rival.

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Articles on Chowk: 59
First article: Dec 23, 1997
Latest article: Jan 27, 2008
Times read on Chowk: 1163691

 

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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

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               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190



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