Sane creative response

Pakistan: A Personal History by Imran Khan; Bantam Press; Price:  Rs.599; 389 pp

Armed with nuclear weapons and dominated by Allah, Army and America, our neighbour nation state of Pakistan (pop. 187 million) is increasingly being described as a failed state facing some of the toughest political and economic challenges anywhere. Consumed by political chaos, terrorism, economic stagnation and social regression, this nation carved out of India in 1947 as a homeland for God-fearing Muslims, has steadily descended into a spiraling vortex of religious fundamentalism, feudalism and sectarian strife, with hardly a day passing without news reports of suicide bombings, drone attacks, atrocities against women and brazen corruption within the ruling political class and the establishment.

With India and Pakistan having waged two full-scale wars over the status of Kashmir — and still conducting a low-intensity war — the prediction of British author Rick Tobin (Gordion’s Knot) that the world’s first full-scale nuclear war is most likely to breakout in the subcontinent, has not received the attention it should have. Given the reality that the ruling establishments of both nations are corrupt to the core, there’s no shortage of Judases on either side of the border ready, willing and able to steal and sell stockpiled nuclear weapons to Islamic fundamentalists and/or Hindu revivalists, with the first possibility the more clear and present danger.

Almost a century ago, in his seminal eight-volume A Study of History, British scholar-historian Dr. Arnold Toynbee demonstrated with numerous examples how the darkest periods of strife and chaos of civilisations stimulate creative responses and often produce messianic leaders, who lead their people out of the wilderness. Pakistan’s chronic instability and disarray has aroused a creative response from the Oxford-educated former Pakistan cricket test captain Imran Khan whose Tehreek-e-Insaf (Social Justice) party is rapidly emerging as the front-runner of the general election scheduled to be held inshallah in October. In Pakistan: A Personal History, Imran introduces himself, diagnoses the deep-rooted social and political maladies afflicting his troubled nation, and discloses his prescription to transform it from a feudal kleptocracy into a genuine democracy, in which well-being of the common man is paramount.

In 1983 at the peak of his test cricket career, Imran suffered a severe shin bone injury which together with the awareness that his mother was suffering from terminal cancer, prompted him to put his cricket career on hold as he tried to heal himself and ease his mother’s pain. During this period, he experienced a spiritual epiphany which inspired him to construct the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital, Lahore — the country’s first cancer treatment hospital which treats two-thirds of its patients free of charge. Raising the huge sum of Rs.700 crore for the hospital was a monumental effort, and exposed this would-be politician to the well-entrenched power structures and corruption that drive the Pakistani establishment.

Meanwhile even as Imran was busy raising funds mainly by way of small retail donations from millions of ordinary citizens and after he announced his “first retirement” from test cricket, in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded neighbouring Afghanistan, and Pakistan transformed into a frontline state in America’s not-so-clandestine war in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation. American arms and ammunition poured into the country for the mujahideen or freedom fighters of the Pak-Afghan border.

Since then, it’s been downhill all the way for Pakistan as it got sucked into first the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, and after 9/11 into America’s ‘war against terror’ centred in Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistan border. Meanwhile after coming out of retirement to lead the Pakistan cricket team to a famous World Cup victory in 1992, Imran became involved with the country’s politics which took a heavy toll on his marriage with British heiress Jemima Goldsmith and ultimately broke it. But having discovered a cause, the suave and well-educated Imran is today the lone sane voice in Pakistan’s dangerous politics, dominated by the Bhutto dynasty represented by the notoriously corrupt President Zardari, the Army, Allah (i.e the clergy) and America.

In the latter chapters of this personal-cum-national history of Pakistan, Imran presents a clear-headed and cogent analysis of where this country — conceived out of the pure motive of practicing enlightened moderate Islam — went wrong. And for his country’s nightmarish travails of religious fundamentalism, sectarian strife, volatile law and order and endemic corruption, he squarely blames the alienated westernised elite which has no knowledge of the liberal spiritualism of Islam, and the complicit clergy given to making self-serving interpretations of the Quran and hadith (injunctions) of Prophet Mohammed. In an impressive last chapter, Imran makes an impassioned case for Pakistan to rediscover the vision and message of philosopher- poet Allama Iqbal (1877-1938), who originated the idea of a separate nation for the Indian subcontinent’s Muslims and whose “philosophy, articulated through both poetry and prose” has been “virtually eliminated from the (academic) curriculum”.

Liberally quoting chapter and verse, Imran demonstrates that Iqbal was “against all forms of totalitarianism — religious, political, cultural and intellectual, economic or any other”. But his message of “middle way” Islam has been deliberately suppressed by the “power-wielders in Pakistan who wanted to keep the people subservient”, namely the feudal elite and powerful clergy.

In this enlightening autobiography written with vigour and passionate intensity, Imran reminds the subcontinent’s Muslims that Iqbal was forthright in his condemnation of “myth-making mullahs” and was all for reviving the Islamic tradition of itijihad (ecclesiastical debate), to ensure the holy Quran and Islamic law “remained relevant in a fast-changing world”.

Pakistan: A Personal History winds down on a positive note. In the epilogue Imran confidently puts Tehreek-e-Insaf on the country’s agenda as “the only party that can get Pakistan out of its current desperate crisis,” citing several opinion polls which indicate the party is the first choice of 70 percent of Pakistanis under age 30. “For the first time, I feel Tehreek-e-Insaf is the idea whose time has come,” reads the last sentence of the book.

For peace and stability in Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent, and indeed the Middle East, all right-thinking people should hope he is right.

Dilip Thakore

Body language manual

How to Read a Person Like a Book by Gerard I. Nierenberg, Henry H. Calero & Gabriel Grayson; Rupa Publications; Price: Rs.150; 118 pp

It’s a commonplace experience for most people. You walk down a street and brush past a complete stranger. Instinctively, the stranger impacts you as a kind or friendly individual from the way he moves his hands or head, or the posture he adopts while bending to pick up something. He may not utter a word, yet you can’t help intuitively feeling positive about him. On the other hand, a stranger in a train sends out negative signals without saying a word and makes you become wary of him.

Welcome to the relatively new science of body language, study of which enables you to read the non-verbal messages that people subconsciously transmit to the public or specific individuals. As this fascinating book explains, the ability to read non-verbal cues gives students of body language  an additional advantage when transacting business or interacting with people who may not be aware of the signals they are sending.

Body language or kinesics was acknowledged as a science in ancient India. The various mudras and body postures depicted in classical dance forms or statues of deities and adopted for meditation and ritual purposes, signified differing moods and states of mind. The authors describe the many ways in which human beings communicate not only through spoken and written language, but also by the way they move and position parts of their bodies. This way, body cues supplement or reinforce the messages we convey to others (and even to ourselves).

How to Read a Person Like a Book (HRPLB) is structured as an easy-to-follow manual, with helpful illustrations to facilitate comprehension. Almost every part of the human body, say the authors, can be used to ‘speak’. For instance, movements of head and hands could indicate boredom or disinterest while listening to a speaker. However, a slight twist of the head and limbs could imply deep interest or commitment. Likewise a specific curl of the lips could manifest contempt, while a minor twist in the other direction could communicate longing and passion. Offering a handshake while keeping the palm upwards suggests a submissive personality while a compulsive tendency to thump one’s thigh with a clenched fist denotes aggression. HRPLB provides scores of such instances to illustrate how human beings unconsciously use almost every part of their bodies to express their moods and articulate their personalities.

This insightful introduction to kinesics co-authored by a lawyer who pioneered “win-win” philosophy and is author of 20 bestsellers including The New Art of Negotiating (Nierenberg); a communications consultant with 30 years of experience and author of The Power of Non-Verbal Communication (Calero); and chairperson of the sign language department of New School University, New York (Grayson) offers a wealth of information on how to interpret non-verbal communication cues.

For business managers, bankers, judges and policemen, the ability to read non-verbal cues emanating from people can prove very useful. Silver-tongued liars often give themselves away by unconscious gestures and body postures. Nevertheless the authors stress that body movements alone are not certainties; they have to be read in conjunction with verbal cues to arrive at meaningful conclusions. Naïve reliance on non-verbal cues is inadvisable. At best, they provide supplementary evidence; at worst grounds for caution and suspicion.

Just as it’s helpful to understand what others willy-nilly tell us through body language, it is also useful to be conscious of the messages that we unconsciously send out to others through our own body language. The authors suggest it’s advantageous to emit positive and winning non-verbal cues and messages. This is perhaps why the classical dance forms and speech habits of ancient India accorded great importance to learning the mudras of various parts of the body, and most Indian languages are embellished with supportive body language. Learning kinesics could prove useful for ambitious executives and entrepreneurs to advance their careers and close business deals.

HRPLB is highly recommended to all people interested in the complex ways human beings express themselves and communicate with each other. Written in an easy, absorbable style with numerous illustrations, it’s well worth reading, and will interest career professionals as well as socialites.

Yoginder Sikand