Reading Time: 6 minutes
A mob in Lahore almost lynched a woman to death due to a misunderstanding. Kaka Johnson, a woman police officer, shopkeepers, and an Imam intervened to save. Azam scrutinises Pakistan’s education system, exclusively for Different Truths.
She crouched under a table, trembling.
The timeless aroma of spices was retreating into the fetid stench of fear. Kaka Johnson’s eyes narrowed to slits. His brain overcame instinct, and with great presence of mind, he pulled down the grilled steel shutters of his fast-food joint.
The street crowd… cried out for a ritual sacrifice to a rap beat.
The street crowd, high on self-righteousness and seeking relief from its suffering, cried out for a ritual sacrifice to a rap beat. The death chant rose in slow intensity. drowning Kaka Johnson’s desperate pleas and leaving his mouth open in a silent, Munchean scream.
The first spark of decency.
Two neighbouring shopkeepers begged for sanity; their pleas were swallowed up by the death chant.
They were the second spark of self-respect.
Although the Imam from a nearby mosque made the mistake of not reading the calligraphy on the robe, he courageously arrived to face the crowd and argued unheard against insanity.
He was the third spark of courage.
Then tyres skidded on gravel, tight-faced police officers spilled out of their jeeps, index fingers on trigger guards, throats dry, and eyes darting to approaches, exits, and hostiles.
A slim young girl in police uniform lightly hopped out of the lead jeep and fearlessly cut a path through the ululating self-righteousness…
A slim young girl in police uniform lightly hopped out of the lead jeep and fearlessly cut a path through the ululating self-righteousness, as though on her morning constitutional on the scented canal bank, lined with bottlebrush and gulmohar trees. Then she dove under the shutters to enter Kaka Johnson’s fast-food restaurant.
With the support of her armed team, the Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Sherbano Naqvi, was a beacon of decency, self-respect, courage, and duty in this heinous incident.
That Sunday lunchtime on February 25, the twin demons of illiteracy and bigotry had, once again, stabbed the cultural heart of Pakistan.
Lahore is the home turf of Sufi saints like Data Ganj Bashk (shrine bombed in 2010: 50 killed, 200 injured), Madho Lal Hussain, Bibi Pak Daaman, twenty public libraries, countless institutional libraries, thirty-eight universities, and a film industry.
Yet, the inability and unwillingness of a crowd to read Perso-Arabic calligraphy stamped on a woman’s dress nearly got her lynched. The word was halwa, but they convinced themselves that the script must be verses from the Holy Quran, and thus, on female attire, doubly blasphemous.
Incidentally, Urdu, Pakistan’s officially adopted ‘mother tongue’, also shares the Perso-Arabic script. So, the calligraphy of the halwa on the robe should have been decipherable for Pakistan’s 55% literate, who, along with the illiterate, love their sooji da halwa, gajjar da halwa, sohan halwa, and habshi halwa.
Despite attacks on places of worship, pogroms, social exclusion, and callous and institutional religious discrimination, Lahoris continue to gloat by self-identifying as cheerful, exuberant, lively, and passionate—zinda dil. ‘Zinda’ is living, and ‘dil’ is heart.
The recurring ‘killed hearts,’ then, must be a foreign conspiracy.
The more foreign-hand padding on a conspiracy accusation, the more credibility it acquires.
Perhaps it is the simmering passion in the ingredients of this self-identifying recipe that makes it so readily flammable. As though cinders are begging for oxygen.
It happened on a large scale in 1947, 1953, 1969, and 1974, when there was no Zia ul Haq to hang it on. Then, of course, came the pogroms of Shantinagar, Gojra, Joseph Colony, Jaranwala, and smaller-scale abominations. Putrid bubbles crop up with alarming regularity to challenge the semantics of purity.
The almost-lynching occurred in Lahore’s Ichhra district…
The almost-lynching occurred in Lahore’s Ichhra district, which some historians believe to be the original Lahore and which Lord Rama’s son Lav is believed to have founded.
A young, good-looking couple had gone to Ichhra for low-cost shopping and a savoury lunch at Kaka Johnson’s renowned joint.
What could be more loving?
She wore the unusual dress her husband liked—just a shapeless kaftan-type robe decorated with harmless calligraphy—that upheld the Republic’s staid dress code. Just as he cherished her sooji da halwa, a ghee-fried semolina dessert appreciated by the clergy of all religions in Pakistan.
There is nothing religious or defamatory about halwa stamped in exquisite calligraphy across a robe.
There is nothing religious or defamatory about halwa stamped in exquisite calligraphy across a robe. Readable, it should kick-start gastric juices and not release lethal religious sentiments.
That is, if somebody bothered to read it.
At the risk of being lynched, ASP Sherbano Naqvi addressed the crowd, wrapped the victim in a burka, the long, loose over-garment shielding a female body from male lechery to encourage pure thoughts, and hugged her through the crowd, her constables stoutly linking arms at either side to clear a path.
The victim apologised to the crowd.
The crowd revelled in its self-righteous power…
The crowd revelled in its self-righteous power and blithely absolved itself of an apology.
The victim was taken into protective custody, and her name has not been released to the press.
All this over a beautiful, shapeless kaftan-type dress, a loving husband, a spot of shopping, and lunch at Kaka Johnson’s.
Dress regulations are not and should not be the prerogative of the state, which is a dangerous precedent. States have already appropriated undress in their portfolio by banning public nudity and have also inverted their prerogative to enforce overdress, as in Afghanistan. However, letting mobs get away with enforcing dress regulations constitutes a dangerous deference of state power to mob rule.
At the heart of the Ichhra incident are the twin demons of illiteracy and rote learning under rigid curricula. The sin of omission is the suppression of critical thinking, the child of rote learning.
Pakistan spends 1.7% of its GDP on education: India 3.1%, the USA 6%, Djibouti 8.4%, Somaliland 9.6%, and the Marshall Islands and Kiribati over 15%!
Pakistan spends 1.7% of its GDP on education: India 3.1%, the USA 6%, Djibouti 8.4%, Somaliland 9.6%, and the Marshall Islands and Kiribati over 15%! Pakistan needs to reset its budget priorities and take into account the relationship between an educated workforce, foreign direct investment (FDI), economic growth, and the well-being of its citizens. The last should be the strategic goal of every policy decision.
The ability to decipher graphic images representing speech (the alphabet) is basic.
The willingness to do so before concluding is a legitimate offspring of critical thinking, sadly missing in Pakistan’s educational system of two extremes.
One for the rich.
The other is for the poor.
Yet, both joined at the hip by result-seeking through rote-learning of Darsi Model Test Papers.
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Islamabad University and a columnist for Dawn, has gone hoarse begging for educational reforms…
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Islamabad University and a columnist for Dawn, has gone hoarse begging for educational reforms that, among other urgent needs, would ban rote learning and spin as substitutes for knowledge and the vitally important goal of thinking critically.
Not a single person in the crowd thought of either reading the calligraphy or discreetly taking a picture and checking it out.
Besides, firstly, no Muslim would go around in clothes stamped with Quranic verses.
And no non-Muslim—all of whom have been in one way or another at the receiving end of pogroms or their reverberations—would ever have the nerve to indulge in such a hazardous prank in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
The new Chief Minister of Punjab is the great-granddaughter of Rustam-e-Hind/Zaman Gama Pehelwan on her mother’s side, and it shows in her nerve, bearing, and speech. She has announced that she will perform a Modi act for Pakistan. She surely meant the Punjab since she is not yet the Prime Minister—a Freudian slip betraying ambition? As to how that is the devil’s residential address, were she wishful to go beyond inspiring applause through semantics, she would have to factor in two contributors to Incredible India as a model for Incredible Pakistan.
India’s human and material investment in education and the ability of its armed forces to do what they know best, not exceed their remit, and let those qualified in governance get on with it. Even as Prime Minister, it is doubtful that the new Chief Minister would be able to exercise the required authority to control these two parameters.
But she can, as a provincial chief minister, get Hoodbhoy (shades of ‘Get Carter’!), let him loose, and see if anything heroic comes up in Punjab.
The Ichhra incident has already given birth to four heroes.
Kaka Johnson: with a name like Johnson and no guns to back him up, he stepped right in.
Kaka Johnson: with a name like Johnson and no guns to back him up, he stepped right in. He deserves a medal.
The neighbouring shopkeepers should receive commendations.
The Imam’s mosque should be refurbished and granted a conference hall where he can give lectures and hold group discussions on critical thinking and tolerance.
Backed by loaded guns, ASP Sherbano Naqvi, Lahore’s Gal Gadot, has already visited the COAS at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, where the Chief of Army Staff is shown patting her head while her beret remains demurely fixed atop her head.
The media has speculated that she might receive the Quaid-e-Azam gallantry award for “selfless devotion to duty.”
Footnote.
It is rather puzzling that an ASP, employed by the Interior Ministry, “called on the COAS” — Ministry of Defence — after executing her sworn duty. Surely, Dawn’s impeccable English would not have stumbled over a prepositional verb? Or is this a sophisticated message for complicit initiates?
References
Aljazeera, “Arabic calligraphy on dress design causes chaos in Pakistan.” https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/2/26/arabic-calligraphy-on-dress-design-causes-chaos-in-pakistan
BBC Urdu. “ASP Sheharbano Naqvi on how she saved a woman’s life from a charged mob in Lahore.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01pGQ5mXDo4
Capital TV. “Inside Story of Lahore Incident.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOB2FqIHwBQ
“In a statement released today, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that ASP Shehrbano had called on the COAS at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.”
Dawn, February 28, 2024. “‘Selfless devotion to duty’: COAS lauds Lahore cop for saving a woman in Arabic print shirt from a mob.”
First Post TV news. “Pak Woman Mobbed for Wearing Arabic Print.”
The Independent, Feb 26, 2024. “Woman save from Mob in Pakistan in Mixup over Arabic Text on her Dress” February 25, 2024, at around 13:10
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/pakistan-blasphemy-woman-dress-arabic-b2502958.html
Morocco World News Feb 26, 2024. “Pakistan Woman in Arabic Script Dress Attacked by Mob, Accused of Blasphemy”
Times of India. Feb 27, 2024. “Woman in Arabic-script dress saved from mob in Pakistan.”
Picture design by Anumita Roy
Gill Jee,
Please note that the Arabic calligraphy word stamped on that woman’s dress was not ‘halwa’, it was ‘hilwa’ that means beautiful or pretty girl.
Thank you, Cheema jee,
I read hay, la’alm, waow and alif, but missed the zaer / zabar and you of course know about takht and takhta!
And yet, Helwa is an Arabic, Turkish, bulgarian, Greek etc word!