[Reader-list] statement read out at Chomsky meeting in D.U

[bonojit hussain]

There was a very well attended open air public lecture
by Prof. Chomsky on November 5 at the Delhi School of
Economics for which students from different colleges
had worked extremely hard putting up banners, making
poster exhibitions and learning songs and singing.
During the meeting the following statement on behalf
of a number of students  was also read out.



I feel incredibly, though nervously happy, Prof.
Chomsky, Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and Arundhati Roy, to
be standing here addressing such a huge gathering of
alerts minds. I feel in fact overawed. But I will
still try to say my little bit because I feel it MUST
be said. I would like to make it clear that I speak on
 behalf of many students from different colleges and
across departments of this university.
There is no time to recite before you the full-length
of that beautifully crafted, heart-rending cry from
the soul of Faiz Ahmad Faiz in  'subah-e-aazaadi' or
the 'Dawn of Freedom'(August, 1947). But a few lines
simply have to be...... 
Ye dagh dagh ujala, ye shab-gazida sahar,
Vo intizar tha jis-ka, ye vo sahar to nahin,
Ye vo sahar to nahin jis-ki arzu lekar
chale the yar ke mil-ja egi kahin na kahin
Falak ke dasht men taron ki akhiri manzil,
kahin to hoga shab-e sust mauj ka sahil,
Kahin to jake rukega safina-e-gham-e-dil......

.......Kahan se ai nigar-e-saba, kidhar ko gai?
Abhi charagh-e-sar-e-rah ko kuchh khabar hi nahin;
Abhi girani-e-shab men kami nahin ai,
Najat-e-dida-o-dil ki ghari nahin ai,
Chale-chalo ke vo manzil abhi nahin ai.

The stain-covered daybreak, this night-bitten dawn,
This is not that dawn of which there was expectation;
This is not that dawn with longing for which
The friends set out, (convinced) that somewhere there
would be met with,
In the desert of the shy, the final destination of the
stars,
 Somewhere there would be the shore of the sluggish
wave of night,
Somewhere would go and halt the boat of the grief of
pain......

 ......Whence came that darling of a morning breeze,
whither has it gone?
The lamp beside the road has still no knowledge of it;
In the heaviness of night there has still come no
lessening,
The hour of the deliverence of eye and heart has not
arrived.
Come, come on, for that goal has still not arrived.

These lines were recited before you not only because,
subtly, overpoweringly they take us down with them
into an abyss and invest us with the strength to
survive, come out, and carry on searching for the
light that is yet to be; but also because this poem
reminds us of Eqbal Ahmad, who died suddenly at
Islamabad in the summer of 1999.
Eqbal Ahmad loved Faiz Ahmad Fiaz amongst all Urdu
poets and 'Subah-e-aazaadi' happened to be one of his
favourite poems. I would like to, with your
permission, remember Eqbal today in your midst. Of
course, because, in Prof. Chomsky's words Eqbal Ahmad
was his " old, close and treasured friend, trusted
comrade in many struggles over the years, counselor
and teacher", but mainly because some of us  barely
out of school were fortunate  enough to meet with him
in Feb' 99  at Ramjas college where he was invited by
the History Society to speak on the ' Crisis of Sate
and Society in Pakistan'. It was a brief meeting, but
for those of us who met him, the beginning of a
journey that still carries on.
When Eqbal Saheb died in May 1999, just three months
after we had met him, we knew we HAD to go to
Pakistan. In January 2000, when relations between the
Governments of India and Pakistan had touched their
lowest point in many years and showed no signs of
improving, some of us from Ramjas History  journeyed
into Pakistan. We  went to Lahore, Islamabad, Taxila
and Peshawar. We travelled by train, hopped in and out
of buses, slept cheaply, ate as best as we could with
the little money in our pockets, bummed around in
bazaars, hung out in monuments and met a variety of
people. By mid-January at the end of nine days in
Pakistan we were back  in Delhi.
There was of course a lot that we had not seen, and
not all that we had experienced had been  rosy; but
most importantly for us, we knew within ourselves that
we had begun to question stereotypes of the EVIL
Pakistan and the GOOD India; that something that had
seemed so difficult to do, a border that had seemed
virtually impossible to cross, had in fact been so
easily crossable. It was as if a slice of the world
that had been closed to us had suddenly opened up,
enriching us no end and filling us up with hope.
Now it was not just Pakistan that we wanted to go to,
but a new dream was born. Borders began to dissolve
within our imaginations, the pull of the Khyber and
the world beyond that pass, the call of place names -
Samarkand, Bokhara, Tashkent and the Farghana valley 
- began to sound and feel irresistible. We still have
not made it to Central Asia, but the dream remains.
But for Eqbal Saheb and the manner in which he urged
us to travel into Pakistan lots of us most probably
would have sat in our homes and classrooms,
experientially poorer, twiddling our thumbs, maligning
Muslims, and after Sept. 11th of this year, rubbing
our hands in perverse glee at the prospect of not just
Afghanistan, but an entire undifferentiated mass of
the so-called barbaric Muslim world, being bombed out
of  existence, in the unabashedly unjustifiable,
vicious, cruel and illegal war against the Afghan 
people in the name of fighting international
terrorism. 
Eqbal Saheb would never have defended the carnage of
Sept. 11, but lots of you may have wept if, soon after
the WTC tragedy, you were to have read what he had to
say back in 1998. He was appealing, almost pleading
with the American state, to take stock, look inwards
and stop committing atrocities against people in large
parts of the world, especially in West Asia. It was
almost as if he could see Sept. 11 coming and the
world being driven to the brink of a disaster from
which there may be no return. 
Eqbal would most certainly have said NO to all kinds
of terror and an even more resounding  NO to the
present war with all its dreadful implications for
international communalism, the attack on civil
liberties and democratic rights and the prospect of
nuclear apocalypse. He would also most certainly have
urged us to do whatever we can in our own little and
big ways, including continuing our travels to and from
Pakistan, in search of "that promised dawn". These are
the reasons why we remember him in your midst today.
Remembering Eqbal, and in appreciation of the work
that you have been doing, Prof. Chomsky, I wish to
present you with a synopsis of presentations written
by history students at Ramjas College, University of
Delhi, for a meeting called "Terror, Counter-terror,
War, and our Lives" held at Ramjas College on
September 25, 2001. Other meetings have been held at
various colleges during the last few days. We will
forward you synopses of student presentations made at
these meetings as soon as they are compiled. 
                                                      
                                                      
             
                                                      
                                                      
                        Thank You,
                                                      
                       Banajit Hussain.
                    (3rd year, history hons.)
                          Ramjas College           
November 5, 2001      University of Delhi.
                                                      
                                      

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