parveentalpur

Around the time when I was regularly visiting Bhanbhore to enhance history with tradition Sir V.S. Naipaul was visiting Pakistan.  “History, in the Pakistani school books I looked at, begins with Arabia and Islam.” He had observed.

His visit had also coincided with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when Pakistan was helping United States with a generous supply of Mujahideens to combat the communists.  Mujahideens, the freedom fighters, were funded by Saudi Arabia, the staunch ally of United States.  As a long term project, special madrasas, or religious schools were established to indoctrinate the next generation of fighters in a militant philosophy based on distorted Islamic teachings. In the given circumstances it is very likely that some school, some where, inspired by the madrassas or under the spell of Jihad, went an extra mile and tailored a syllabus with the Arab Muslim conquest as the first chapter of country’s history.  That chapter, however, begins with Bhanbhore.

Many archaeologists and historians believe that the site of Bhanbhore was in fact the city of Debal mentioned in the Chachnama, an Arab chronicle.  According to the Chachnama, Debal was the first city of the Indian sub-continent that was conquered in 711 CE by Mohammad bin Qasim, the well-known young Arab general.  It was described as a large city on the Arabian seacoast in the country of Sindh and the ruins of Bhanbhore are large enough to be identified with Debal.  Bhanbhore is thus labeled as the Gateway of Islam.

Excavations have revealed more than a mere Arab conquest. Bhanbhore’s origins can be traced to first century BCE.  It had been a home to the Scythians, Parthians, Sassanians, Hindus and Buddhists before the Arab Muslims occupied it.  There is however, no reference of Debal in any local source, or even in the folklore.  The Sindhis have always known the site as Bhanbhore or Sassui jo Takar, the Hillock of Sassui, and that is how it has come to the posterity through the poetry of Latif, through the love story of Sassui Punhoon.

I was therefore visiting Bhanbhore to feel the mystique of the folk story from its very source and also to rummage through its streets for the mundane -the citadel and the moat, the remains of the residential and the industrial areas, slingstones and the arrowheads that targeted the inhabitants and the evidence of Manjanik, the weapon, that destroyed the city.

The coincidence that Sassui Punhoon longed for each other at a time when Islam was just gaining foothold in Sindh and that I was attempting to set their story in an archaeological and historical context at a time when Islamization of Pakistan was in full swing intrigued me.  While fighting the ghosts of a pre-Islamic era, Pakistan’s Islamization process was emphasizing on the Islamic component of history and undermining the rest, whereas I was keen to include the ancient traditions and folklore as a record of the past. I do remember that on revealing my views few government officials had looked at me with a sneer as though I was committing blasphemy.

I was also aware of the fact that Islamization process was undermining the position of women and Sassui stood no chances of official recognition.  It was the period of General Zia-ul-Haq when the newscasters on television screens were required to cover their heads with the veils.  It was also the season of Islamic punishments; flogging had become a public spectacle and stoning to death was being considered for those who committed adultery.  The most absurd quirk of the times was the definition of a new status of women in the Law of Evidence where two women witnesses were considered equal to one male witness.  Worst still was their predicament in the rape cases where the victim had to prove the rape by producing four witnesses, otherwise it was likely to be considered adultery.  However, when it came to erase the past, it was not easy. Two folk heroines Sohini and Heer had already committed adultery but nothing could be done about them. Likewise, Indus Valley Civilization and the pre-Islamic era that followed could not be erased from all the textbooks.

If Moen jo Daro, the most elaborote site representing the mature urban phase of Indus Valley Civilization, is a window to the pre-historic past; Bhanbhore, the Gateway of Islam, is one of the richest sites that offers a glance in the pre-Islamic period of Pakistan’s history.  In between these two sites are many other pre-Islamic landmarks that have survived in various forms-archaeological sites, manuscripts, oral traditions, dialects, rituals and even customs-mutilated remains of all these are calling for research and preservation. Islamization process had failed to erase these.  Naipaul, failed to view the state of history and education in totality. Ten years later in the sequel to his book, once again he committed a similar blunder and overlooked the other face of Islam prevalent in India and to a much larger extent in Pakistan.  William Darlymple pointed out that in 2004.

“In Beyond Belief (1998) Naipaul writes of Indian Muslims as slaves to an imported religion, looking abroad to Arabia for the focus of their devotions, which they are forced to practise in a foreign language – Arabic – they rarely understand. He seems to be unaware of the existence of such hugely popular Indian pilgrimage shrines such as Nizamuddin or Ajmer Sharif, the centrality of such shrines to the faith of Indian Muslims or the vast body of vernacular devotional literature in Indian Islam, much of it dedicated to the mystical cults of indigenous saints.” Darlymple 2004 Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/mar/20/india.fiction

According to a report by the National Commission on Status of Women (NCSW) “an estimated 80% of women” in jail in 2003 were there as because “they had failed to prove rape charges and were consequently convicted of adultery” from wikipedia