Cultural and Intellectual Trends in Pakistan

Author(s): Aziz Ahmad

Source: Middle East Journal , Winter, 1965, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1965), pp. 35-44
Published by: Middle East Institute

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4323813

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 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL
TRENDS IN PAKISTAN*
Aziz Ahmad

W X T HEN Pakistan came into existence in 1947, it had achieved only

a political nationhood. Culturally it was not yet a nation. It had
inherited the components of a common culture in regional formula-
tions, but these had yet to be welded together. Apart from the problems of
interfusion into a "unity-in-diversity" there was the cultural counterpart of the
political problem of cutting adrift from the Hindu cultural residue of India
in order to isolate and establish the new nation's cultural identity.

The Problems of Cultural Heritage

There was also the complex question of claiming succession to the heritage
of Islamic culture in India. The official orientation on this point was inhibited
and cautiously modified by two considerations. Obliged to accept the geo-
graphical Pakistan as a political entity, it tended to emphasize its almost self-
sufficient cultural unity, and in doing so it had to overlook the heritage of
the Indo-Muslim culture spatially situated outside the frontiers of Pakistan.
Conversely it had to emphasize the archaeological and other heritage, Muslim
or non-Muslim, situated geographically in Pakistan as well as literatures
written throughout the centuries in languages of the regions that now con-
stituted the new country. Great Urdu poets of Delhi like Mir or Ghalib had
to be neglected, while the regional poets 'Alaol or Warith Shah or Shah 'Abd
al-Latif had to be emphasized. Taj Mahall went unnoticed and poorer speci-
mens of Muslim architecture like Jahangir's tomb had to be given more
publicity.
Most baffling was the problem of balanced emphasis and "cultural parity"
between East and West Pakistan. The almost equal distribution of cultural
emphasis was partly a sop to the sensitiveness of the East Pakistani intellec-
tual, and partly a genuine effort at cultural interpenetration. Yet, in terms of
objective value-creation or determination of standards this resulted in curious

* This paper was prepared for and read at the Conference on Pakistan Since 1958, held at
the Institute of Islamic Studies of McGill University, Montreal, on June 17-19, 1964.

9 Aziz AHMAD was Director of Films and Publications for the Government of Pakistan and is
now Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto. Among his works
is the recent Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Clarendon Press, Oxford).

35

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 36 THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

situations. Nazrul lslg.m, the great rev

ill and resident by choice in Indian West Bengal had to be equated institu-
tionally with the much greater poet philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal, the
theoretician of Pakistan's creation. Zainul 'Abidin, a promising Bengali repre-
sentational painter received parity of official attention and patronage with the
incomparable 'Abd al-Rahman Chaghta'i.
This steady balance between the two regions of Pakistan and their cultural
show-pieces was partly transcended by a sense of fulfillment in the messianic
glorification of Iqbal by non-official as well as official agencies. Iqbal Acade-
mies were established with Government aid at Lahore and Karachi. Pakistan's
embassies abroad introduced his thought to the intellectuals of other lands
and cultures. By far the most tangible contribution of the official preoccupa-
tion with Iqbal was the encouragement, and in some cases financial aid,
provided for the translations of his works in Western as well as Islamic
languages by scholars of outstanding calibre.'
Classical scholarship in the universities and creative impulses in belles
lettres sometimes cut across the official slants, motivated purely by scholarly
objectivity or creative nostalgia. There were also dissident intellectual attitudes
crystallized in the writings of certain refugee writers like Qur'at al-Ain Haidar
whose romantic imagination is heavily tinged with the imagery and ritual
of Hindu culture and religion. Among dissidents one might count the more
parochial of regional writers in Bengali, Punjabi, Pasht6 and Sindhi; and at
the other extreme Marxists and their sympathizers like Ahmad Rahi or Ahmad
Nadim Qasimi, vacillating between party line and uncompromising humanism.

Media of Intellectual Expression

The norms of historiographical orientation were established by Shaikh

Muhammad Ikram,2 Ishtiyaq Ilusain Qureshi3 and by Mahmiid Husain and
his school of the historians of the "Freedom Movement." 4 They presented,
with variations of emphasis and varied treatment of detail, Muslim India as
a separate historical entity, and as the field for a new historiographical ap-

1. Translations of Iqbal, inspired or partly subsidized by the official agencies of Pakistan

include A. Bausani, II Poema Celeste, Rome, 1952; idem, Poesie, Rome, 1956; A. J. Arberry, The
Mysteries of Selflessness, London, 1953; Eva Meyerovitch, Reconstruire la pensee religieuse de
l'Islam, Paris, 1955; idem, La livre d'eternite', Paris, 1960; idem et M. Achena, Message de l'Orient,
Paris, 1956; Ali Nihad Tarlan, Esrar ve Rumuz, Istanbul, 1958; 'Abbas Ma1hmud, Tajdid al-tafkir
al-din fi'l Isldm, Cairo, 1955, etc.
2. S. M. Ikram, Ab-i Kawthar, Karachi, etc. 1958; idem, Rfld-i Kawthar, Lahore, 1958; idem,
Mawj-i Kawthar, Lahore, 1958; idem and P. Spear (eds.), Cultural Heritage of Pakistan, Karachi,
1955.
3. I. H. Qureshi, The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (610-1947),
's Gravenhage, 1962.
4. Mahmud Husain (ed.), A History of the Freedom Movement, Karachi, 1957.

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 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRENDS IN PAKISTAN 37

proach involving the creation of a new historical discipline. Broad lines of

the new historical reconstruction emerge in Ikrim's "Kawthar" trilogy, with its
shift of emphasis to the religious and cultural history of the Muslims in India,
its revolt against the British historians' exclusive preoccupation with the purely
political structure of Indo-Muslim history, and its prima facie acceptance of
hagiological source material as invariably authentic. This trend was earlier
developed into a categorical theory rejecting the established reliability of
Muslim chronicles in the apologetics of the East Pakistani historian Habibullah
in favor of hagiological and literary source material; ' it was evolved into a
fascinating discipline of modernist hagiographical research by the Indian
historian Khaliq Ahmad Nizdmi.6 Ikram's own historical deductions often
suffer due to his emotional commitments to an establishmentarian interpreta-
tion of history, to the grafting of what-should-have-been into what-has-been,
in short a "Whig" concept of history. But in marshalling historical material
from hitherto neglected sources, in polemical analysis, and in the general
organization of his material he occupies a unique position.
The more disciplined Westernized historiography of Ishtiyaq HIusain
Qureshi and Mahmud Husain, though equally partisan, avoids some of Ikram's
methodological errors.
The historical view which emerges in these writings is the quest for the
ideological source of Pakistan, i.e. Muslim separatism in the Indian sub-
continent; and Indian Islam's efforts throughout the centuries of its co-existence
with Hinduism to preserve its own identity, to resist the assimilative and
annihilating pull of Hinduism.7 This involved a historiographical treatment
and a distribution of emphasis divergent from that of the British historians,
tracing the history of the self-preservation of Indian Islam through Shaikh
Ahmad Sirhindi, Aurangzeb, Shah Wali-Allh, the Mujahidin (the so-called
'Wahhdbis'), Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the 'Aligarh Movement, Iqbal and
finally Jinnah and the Muslim League. Details of this picture are filled in
with consummate scholarship by such scholars as Ghulam Rasiil Mihr, author
of a monumental history of the MujThidin; and by a large group of well-
trained academic historians like Rahim, Chaghtal and Wasti using the Western
methodology of documentation.
This view of Indo-Muslim history endorses from the opposite angle
Majumdar's fierce thesis of absolute cultural and political duality and antipathy

5. A B. M. Habib-Ullah, "Re-evaluation of the Literary Sources of pre-Mughal History."

Islamic Culture, XV (1941), pp. 206-16.
6. Khaliq Ahmad Nizimi, Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in India during the
Thirteenth Century, Aligarh, 1961; idem, Studies in Medieval Indian History, Aligarh, 1956
idem, "Cishtiyya" in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd. ed., Vol. II, pp. 50-56; idem, Hayat-i Shaikh
'Abdul Haqq Muhaddith Dihlawi, Delhi, 1953; idem, Tdrikh-i Mashd'ikh-i Chisht, Delhi, 1953
and several other works in Urdu and English.
7. A. L. Basham, The Indian Sub-Continent in Historical Perspective, London, 1958, passim.

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 38 THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

between Muslim and Hindu cultures.8 It

thesis of Tara Chand 9 or 'Abid Husain "0 who see Indian culture as a com-
posite growth and as an "experience inter-religional."
In historiography there has been therefore a development and a growth,
however controversial it might appear from other points of view. In literature
there has been, on the other hand, a frustration and a trend towards dis-
integration. In 1947 the "Progressive Movement" was by far the most dynamic
and the most influential in Urdu literature." The movement had at the center
a hard core of communist intellectuals and around them a large group of
young writers interested generally and rather emotionally in social justice and
in depicting the contrasts between the extremes of affluence and poverty. The
content and technique of their work varied according to their individual talents
from incisive realism to affected sentimentality. During the alliance of the
Communist Party of India with the British Indian Government between 1942
and 1946, the "Progressive" writers had gained considerable prestige and
respectability; and as during these very years the Communist Party had made
sustained though unilateral efforts to come to terms with the Muslim League,
to infiltrate into Muslim politics and to give a Marxist-oriented support to the
movement for Pakistan,'2 the Progressive Movement had succeeded in enlist
ing a number of Muslim writers. The first major crisis came when, on the
eve of Partition, the Communist Party of India swung over to a strong anti-
Pakistan stand. The major rift in the ranks of the Muslim numbers of the
Progressive Movement occurred in the literary reflections of the communal
riots that followed the Partition of the sub-continent. Some of them decided
to depict them realistically, concentrating subjectively on their impact upon
uprooted Muslim masses and on the torture and suffering they had gone
through. Others, like Sa'adat Hasan Manto, one of the most distinguished
short story writers in Urdu, and most of the writers who chose to stay in
India adhered to a generalized theoretical treatment of the riots, carefully
maintaining the balance of blame on Hindus and Muslims in the same pro-
portion, or doing what was the easiest way out, throwing the blame on the
departing British imperialists. In the movement an ideological rift had also
developed on the question of political and cultural loyalties. Hard core Pro-
gressives of Pakistan rallied around what was in the late 1940's the Saweri 13

8. R. C. Majumdar (ed.), The History and Culture of the Indian People: V, The Struggle
for Empire, Bombay, 1957; VI, The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay, 1960, passim; idem, "Hindu reaction
to Muslim Invasions," Potdar Commemoration Volume, Poona, 1950.
9. Tara Chand, Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, Allahabad, 1936.
10. 'Abid Husain, Indian Culture, Bombay, 1963.
11. For its history see, Aziz Ahmad, Taraqqi Pasand Adab, Delhi, 1945; 'Ali Sardar Ja'fari,
Taraqql Pasand Adab, Aligarh, 1957.
12. Apart from the files of People's War/People's Age, Bombay, 1942-1946 see P. S. Joshi,
They Must Meet Again, Bombay, 1945; for the volte face in the Communist Party's attitude, R.
Palme Dutt, "Pakistan Movement and the Communist Party of India," in Labour Monthly, London,
April 1946.
13. A "Progressive" literary periodical published from Lahore.

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 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRENDS IN PAKISTAN 39

group in Lahore; but their ranks continued to diminish. Som

absorbed into Government service and were thus "neutralized." In 1951 the
Progressive Writers' Association was declared a political party by the Ministry
of Interior. The more intransigent among the Progressives suffered imprison-
ment on political charges, and were to some extent moderated on their release.
The most outstanding case was that of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the most eminent of
the Progressive poets, who was involved in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case
of 1950 and suffered a long imprisonment, during which he developed a unique
technique of double entendre in his fascinating verses which telescoped love
and politics in a distinguishable duality-in-unity, eluding all censorship. In
1962 he was awarded the Lenin Prize. It might be mentioned that, on the
question of Kashmir, most Pakistani Progressives consistently supported the
thesis of the principle of self-determination of the people of Kashmir, a view
contrary to the official Communist Party line and the declared policies of the
Soviet Union on the subject.
The dissidents from the Progressive Movement were led in 1947 by
Muhammad Hasan 'Askari, who in his disillusionment with the official cultural
policies turned to art for art's sake. He won over Manto to his views to some
extent, and exercised considerable influence over a group of younger writers
who called themselves "Na'i Nasl" (New Generation) and wrote verses of
subdued sensitivity or fiction about Indian Muslim life before the Partition
with colloquial nostalgia, or some aggressive literary criticism.
Some individualists in Lahore, Karachi, and Dacca refused to be associated
with any movement, and had frequent get-togethers under the auspices of the
Ijalqa-i Arbab-i Zawq. There were also distinguished writers of the cul-de-sac
like Ahmad 'All, brilliant intellectuals who had made dramatic debuts a long
time ago as enfants terribles of literature, but had since succumbed to successful
careers and in some cases turned from purposeful creative urge to virtuosity,
turning in their anguish for expression from Urdu to English and vice versa.14
The political poem in Urdu, which had a powerful tradition from Hali to
Iqbal, retained some of its greatness in the verses of Josh and Faiz, but in
general it was polarized into either the flat and unconvincing patriotic epic
of Hafiz Jallundari and poets of the official periodical MAlh-i Naw, or the
biting political satire of Majid Lahorl and Sayyid Muhammad Ja'farl directed
respectively against self-seeking politicians or at the psychological smugness
of the Pakistani elite in control of the country's political and economic destiny.
A rather low-brow vogue for Islamic belles lettres set in immediately after
the Partition in the historical novels of Ra'is Ahmad Ja'farl and Nasim Hijdzi,
which though best-sellers could hardly qualify as literature. Religious convic-
tion or commitment to religious values in Pakistan seems to have failed in the
direction of producing creative literature.

14. Ahmad S. Bokhari, "The Urdu Writer of Our Times" in Crescent and Green, London,
1955, pp. 113-19.

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 40 THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Movements in Muslim Bengali literature since 1947 were broadly analo-

gous to those in Urdu except that, unlike the urban Urdu, Bengali literature has
remained close to the soil. Its Progressive group conserved the revolutionary
heritage of Nazrul Islam among some of its short story writers and left its
mark on the inspired rural verses of Jasimuddin. A group of urban intellectuals
represented by Shahidullah, 'Ali Ahsan and 'All Ashraf is comparatively close
to the West. Pro-establishment Bengali writers like the poet Ghulam Mustafa
and MizTn al-Rahman ran into unpopularity and were branded by the provinci-
alists as government stooges, a charge which is as much a stigma in East as
in West Pakistan.
Trends in other regional literatures, Pasht5, Sindhi and PunjTbi remain
to some extent ambivalent between the twin objectives of preserving their
individual literary and linguistic identity, and its interfusion into the emerging
pattern of a composite West Pakistani culture with Urdu as its principal
medium of expression. Government-aided Academies for the study and ad-
vancement of regional literatures have been set up for Pashto and Sindhi;
and this imaginative step has made the task of accepting Urdu as the common
literary denominator of cultural inter-communication in West Pakistan much
easier. A Bengali Academy has also been set up in East Pakistan, where
Bengali is studied and promoted quite independently of any association with
Urdu, as one of the two national languages of Pakistan.
Efforts have been made to re-emphasize the literary heritage of Persian
in the languages of Pakistan.'5 Individuals like S. M. Ikr6m,'6 and institutions
like the Oriental College at Lahore have conducted this effort at a scholarly
level. And yet it has not been possible for the academicians of Pakistan to
catch up with the high academic discipline of Persian studies in India or to
produce a learned journal of the stature of Indo-Iranica.
Pattern for a determinant approach to the archaeological heritage of the
geographical Pakistan was set by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the later 1940's when
he was Archaeological Adviser to the Government of Pakistan.'7 In accepting
Pakistan's pre-Islamic monuments as national heritage there is a significant
emphasis on their non-Hindu character. Mohenjo Daro, for instance, is ac-
cepted as a pre-Vedic, non-Aryan and therefore an essentially non-Hindu
heritage destroyed by Aryan hordes.'8 Trends of cultural orientation could
perhaps be illustrated by the following quotation:

West Pakistan . . . corresponds in extent, more or less, to the region where

the prehistoric civilization of Mohenjo Daro thrived. . . . In historical times the

15. Pakistan ki 'Illqd zabanon par Farsi ka athar, Karachi, 1953.

16. S. M. Ikram, Armaghain-i Pak, Lahore, 1950.
17. R. E. M. Wheeler, Five Thousand Years of Pakistan, London, 1950.
18. Ibid. pp. 31-32 et seq; cf. S. Pigott, Prehistoric India, Harmondsworth, 1950, passim for
the opposite viewpoint.

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 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRENDS IN PAKISTAN 41

empire of the Achaemenids stretched well into this region

wake the Hellenizing influence of Alexander's conquest. Here t
synthesized in a rare combination the serenity of the Buddhist faith with the
representational beauty of Greek sculpture. Only once in history was the region
which is to-day West Pakistan a part of a Hindu Empire-that of the Mauryas
which, however, in the third generation turned Buddhist under the zealous leader-
ship of the great Asoka.....
With the advent of Islam, South-west Pakistan soon became a Province of a
Muslim Empire that stretched from the Indus to the middle reaches of the Rhone.
This was followed a couple of centuries later by the conquest of North-west Pakistan
by Muslim Turks who built new empires across Northem India and conquered
the Eastern marches which today constitute East Bengal.
East Bengal . . . throughout history, resisted the hegemony of Hindu India. It
became first a stronghold of Buddhism, then of Islam.19

There is generally a frustrated silence, a suppressed nostalgia for the great

monuments of Muslim architecture on the soil of the Republic of India.
Whatever remains of this great architectural heritage are situated on the right
side of the frontier, are repeatedly emphasized to associate the price of the
"lost" heritage with the pragmatic glorification of the available and the
accessible.
A living tradition of architecture has yet to develop in Pakistan, mainly
because of the paucity of public funds. Not a single architecturally outstand-
ing landmark, a mosque or a mausoleum or a public building has been built
in Karachi or elsewhere. Whatever public construction there has been, is
simple and utilitarian. Something like a new school of Pakistani architecture
might yet emerge during the construction of the new capital, Islamabad, which
is planned as a crucible of international styles.
The traditional inhibitions of Muslim orthodoxy in relation to the art
of painting has been long superseded in the sub-continent by the rich heritage
of Mughal art, and in more recent times by the Westernized lelite's admiration
for European painting. Sculpture has had no such tradition of liberal accept-
ance. In so far as painting is concerned there is generally no resentment against
it, except possibly a not too local one among the fundamentalists or the tradi-
tionalists, who however draw a line strongly to exclude and denounce the nude
as obscene.
In 1947 Pakistan inherited at least one remarkably talented artist, 'Abd
al-Rahman Chaghtd'i, who softened and stylized the Safavid-Mughal heritage
into a lyrical delicacy of line and sensitiveness of color. More than that,
however anemic in expression, his style offered at this juncture the chance of

19. Crescent and Green, A Miscellany of Writing on Pakistan, London, 1955, Foreword, v-vi.

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 42 THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

an aesthetic and an historical continuity

offer and this chance was unequivocall
of Pakistani artists as revivalistic and anachronistic, who turned to the vast
range of modern Western styles for inspiration. One has to admit that most
of Pakistani painting is rather a mixed and a mediocre medley, suffering from
a poverty alike of tradition and spontaneous local inspiration. Unlike modern
Indian painting it has no ancient mythopoetic or iconographic anchorsheet. In
modern Pakistani painting occidental-primitivist inspirations remain un-
harmonized with general patterns of historical heritage which still permeate
the country's social life. Some East Pakistani artists, especially Zain al-'Abidin,
certainly show signs of distinction, mainly due to their passionate closeness to
the soil. The Westernized 6lite of Pakistan, however, takes its modern art
seriously. A very active Art Council has been functioning for some years
with its branches in several cities. It brings out a quarterly journal,
Contemporary Arts in Pakistan.
The problem of the theater in Pakistan is essentially the problem of the
lack of intellectual communication between its Westernized creative elite and
its semi-literate or illiterate masses, divided by a wide and unbridgeable
economic, social and cultural gulf. Respectable women can hardly appear on
the public stage and face the lewd jeers, even the risk of being lynched or
assaulted by a sex-starved urban mob used to strict segregation of the sexes.
The actual frequency of homosexuality in a segregated society makes it difficult
for boys to play women's roles, as they did in Shakespearean England or even
under the rigidly enforced Pax Britannica in India during the first decades of
this century. Since there is no public stage and there is no prospect of its
emergence in the foreseeable future, there is hardly any drama worth the
name in the Pakistani languages. And yet theater is one of the preoccupations
of the Art Council of Pakistan. It is developing very slowly as a private art
form, in which the elite performs in front of audiences of cosmopolitan elite,
in English more often than in Urdu or Bengali.
Two-way immigrations that followed the Partition of the sub-continent, hit
hard the Muslim element of India's flourishing film industry. Some talented
Muslim personnel, directors, actors and scenario-writers migrated to Lahore
from Bombay in quest of opportunities; but the film industry in Pakistan
remained qualitatively at a mediocre level due to a multiplicity of causes.
Unlike Bombay, where the film industry was financed by the stock exchange
speculator or the black-market racketeer, there were no corresponding financial
resources available for large investments. Until the middle of the 1950's there
was also a general lack of technical facilities due to obstructions resulting
from the Government's import and censorship policies. By far the most crip-
pling factor for the Pakistani film as a popular art has been the general
atmosphere of cultural inhibition, a lack of tolerance for social criticism, a

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 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRENDS IN PAKISTAN 43

rejection of stark realism and of other elements of frankne

which contribute to make a film great or powerful.

Trends Since 1958

It is difficult to pin down any specific trends in the intellectual life of

Pakistan as particular to the period which begins with the military revolution
of 1958. Cultural and artistic movements can hardly be measured in terms of
quinquennia. Two distinct developments can, however, be classified as land-
marks of this period. The first of these was the organization and systemization
of official patronage. The Dominion and the "First Republic" of Pakistan
(1947-1958) had employed writers to purchase their talent or to control
their pen or to silence them without acknowledging their national status, with-
out regard for free intellectual creation as a matter of national pride in its own
right. The military regime confirmed the position of the intellectual as a
national asset in his own right. It conferred titles upon distinguished writers,
guarded great scholars like Mawlawl 'Abd al-Haqq against irritating intrigues,
and encouraged the nouveau riche millionaires to institute prizes for literary
or scholarly performances.
The second development was the formation of the Pakistan Writer's Guild,
a trade union of authors providing them and their dependents with some social
security which the poorer among them had hitherto lacked. In general the
military r6egime, though strict with the press, was benevolent to the creative
writer.

Conclusion

The creative writer has, however, forgotten the art of writing with agres-
sive independence. The present situation of uncreative drift in the literature
and art of Pakistan is largely a reflection of the general inertia. This situation
and this drift can be traced to a number of causes.
To begin with, Pakistani literature, like the Indian since 1947, shows the
familiar signs of a disintegration of momentum which follows a successful
revolution. Then there have been other and external factors. Security meas-
ures, necessary for a state and a nation still involved in the throes of becoming,
inhibited the growth of sociological and economic analysis in fiction. Govern-
ment's sensitiveness to adverse criticism stilled or drove underground such
healthy satire as that of Sayyid Muhammad Ja'fari. Ranks of the writers
themselves have been torn by internecine personal and clique rivalries, sup-
pressing objective standards of criticism. Academic disciplines have made some
valuable contributions in research, but in literary criticism they have hardly
risen above the standards set by popular literary journalese. Pressures of reli-

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44 THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

gious opinion are more conservative and more intolerant in Pakistan than in
most Muslim countries. Fundamentalists of Mawdiidi's JamWat-i Islami have
infiltrated in the Government's censorship machinery at lower levels with
disastrous consequences. Editors of well-known and oft-published 18th cen-
tury romances like Tilism-i Hzishruha have been threatened with persecution
on charges of obscenity. Among the banned books are such classics of Western
orientalism as Bernard Lewis' Arabs in History, and irony of ironies, A. J.
Arberry's The Koran Interpreted which is perhaps the most beautiful and
convincing translation of the Muslim scripture made so far in any language.
All this is hardly conducive to independent or fearless religious and historical
thinking by Pakistani scholars in Pakistan. The military regime, and the
"Second Republic" have restored to the Pakistan intellectual his self-respect;
let us hope they would restore him his fearless freedom of expression.

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