But not many were old enough or eye witnesses to the Rabwah Railway Station Incident and, I feared, the 7-years-old will certainly keep humming away ‘he started it, he started it.’
Source/Credit: Imran Jattala / Ahmadiyya Times
By Imran Jattala | December 5, 2013
The following article was purposely written with long sentences, to confuse the 7 years olds
Recently an article written by a Pakistani columnist, Nadeem F. Paracha, and published in an English newspaper, Daily Dawn, has created quite a stir in the social media for some of his Ahmadi readers.
Paracha, who makes no bones about his or his family’s diehard leftist stance, enjoys a large liberal and progressive following - a lot that most Ahmadis feel they are a part of - and he is often appreciated for his routine blunt rebuking of the Islamist extremists.
This time, however, Paracha has embarked on castigating his fellow leftists for not standing up to salvage the legacy of late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a leftist, socialist prime minister of Pakistan in the 1970s, about whom many of the liberals have come to believe that he squandered away the perfect opportunity of seeding secularism when he had resorted instead to placate Pakistani religious factions in efforts to save his own political bacon.
Paracha’s frustration appears to stem from an erroneous perception wherein he may have made himself believe – as he says many other leftists had - that Bhutto was “the sharpest and most dazzling politicians ever to grace the country’s political landscape”.
But, contrary to the most Bhuttoists’ persistent delusions, the real Mr Bhutto had actually turned out to be neither ‘the sharpest’ nor the ‘most dazzling politicians.’ In fact, Mr. Bhutto was handsomely outsmarted - twice over - by the mullah class. The first time was when mullahs refused to grant Bhutto any concessions in return for his framing a complete scheme to resolve the “Qadiani Issue” , and, the second time again when they had turned on him and handed his fate over to a Military dictator who deposed him in a coup.
It needs to be clearly understood that what Paracha called in his piece the start of a political awakening in the Pakistani masses was, in fact, terminally stained by the pure criminal thuggery introduced by Bhutto into the wannabe political class in his own political party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). When this condition eventually matured, it poisoned the very “political awakening” Paracha extols, with the results being evident ever since in places like Karachi.
Bhutto, no doubt, came on the scene with a bang but it all ended as a bust when the politics of consensus started to disappear and Bhutto openly started to play the all-mighty master of everything PPP. Many loyalists couldn't go along with his deviation from the core of the party principals and just halfway through his first term his once sincere confidants started to fall by the wayside. Many staunch Bhutto supporters -- who once wouldn't shut-up touting him as the ‘father of Pakistan’s democracy’ -- were quickly growing disillusioned as to what was becoming of the Bhutto persona. And, more the people reminded him of the original party credo, the more Bhutto thumped his chair’s armrest blustering that it was his seat that was all-powerful. Yet, with his many confidants and loyalists leaving and his fame and popularity taking a dive, Bhutto believed he had one last card saved up his sleeve -- his trump card – and that was the always reliable religious sympathies card. Or, so he thought.
For the ordinary liberals – as many have expressed - Bhutto had resorted to invoking religiosity to gain political favors with clerics who were pressuring through external forces (including the Saudis) and Bhutto fervently hoped such religio-political overtures would stabilize his dying popularity. Although now they blame it on conditions under the subsequent iron-fist dictatorship of General Zia, but in all reality, there was no substantial outcry heard from the disappointed ordinary liberal supporters when Mr. Bhutto was later tried, convicted, humiliated and hanged for having ordered a hit on one of his political adversary during his premiership.
As it has been said before by this writer, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is perhaps the only such unlucky politician who, from an ‘all-things possible’ place like Pakistan, failed to get away with a murder. So much for "the sharpest" accolade; in actuality, he never really earned it.
Paracha’s primary point of writing the article, it seems, is predicated upon the simple premises that Bhutto ought to be cut some slack from the blame of appeasing the mullahs and arranging the passage of anti-Ahamdi constitutional amendment because, after all, he was pushed into a precarious position.
Somewhat late but not ashamed at all, and very anxious to salvage Bhutto’s stained legacy, Bhuttoists would have us believe – and Paracha pushes it hard - that Bhutto, poor Bhutto, was a victim himself – a victim of circumstance. He was cornered and he, despite all his best intentions, just could not have helped avert the political onslaught resulting from a very ordinary incident in deep Punjab -- a fist-fight, a brawl, between two parties of several dozen students -- the news of which caused nationwide anti-Ahamdi roits. The fight later came to be dubbed as "The Rabwah Railway Station Incident."
In his account, it seems, Paracha wants to cast the fist-fight incident as some major bloody clash and he insinuates it was all Ahmadis’ fault. His position is not too far off from those mysterious sources who were feeding the same talking points to the press back in May of 1974.
The Rabwah railway station brawl that Paracha holds as the holy loophole which might be sufficient to save Bhutto’s legacy from the stigma of letting the entire liberal and progressive agenda go down the drain was, in all possibility, an orchestrated event where someone desperately needed an Ahmadi related trouble incident.
And, according to the eyewitnesses, here is how it had actually happened. A group of students traveling from Central Punjab stepped off their train at Rabwah railway station, which is an Ahmadiyya-populated town. These students then proceeded to shout insults at Ahmadi women at the station, while egging on Ahmadi youth to be ready for more of the same when the students would be returning a week later. The matter was reported to the then Ahmadiyya leader, Hazrat Mirza Nasir Ahmad who forbade everyone from going to the train station and getting on the train on the day of the anticipated trouble. However, few youth did return to the train station, disobeying the clear directive, and fell for the setup, details of which are given in an eyewitness account below.
Nadeem Paracha, who was perhaps 7 years old at the time of the Rabwah Railway Station Incident, it seems, wants to re-plead the case using a usual 7-years-old’s argument, ‘he started it’. For Paracha the history of seeking a resolution of the ‘Qadiani Question’ must have started on that very day, Wednesday, May 29th, 1974.
The ardently awaited Samdani report – which was expected to (unsurprisingly) conclude that Ahmadi youths started the attack and committed unspeakable atrocities against the innocent students passing through their town -- was, for some unknown reasons, immediately sealed by the Bhutto government upon its release. The report never saw the light of day and despite the piecemeal refutation by Justice Samdani earlier during the investigation, the unsubstantiated rumors continued to persist.
When Paracha’s recent article appeared in the newspaper, a debate ensued in the social media and many started pointing out the inaccuracies in his article. But not many were old enough or eye witnesses to the Rabwah Railway Station Incident and, I feared, the 7-years-old will certainly keep humming away ‘he started it, he started it.’ And, then -- miracle of miracles -- an actual eyewitness stepped forward into the Ether of the Internet to proclaim: “Many don't know what happened and all the LYING elements are still lying.”
That was Imam Afzal Mirzā of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a student in Rabwah at the time of the Rabwah Railway Station Incident and an eye witness to the fight, who now resides and serves in Canada.
An eye witness account:
The following is adopted from the Twitter timeline of Imam Afzal Mirzā. [Text in square brackets is included to add clarity]
'I am one of the eyewitnesses of the Rabwah incident which took place at the railway station [in 1974].
'Many don't know what happened and all the LYING elements are still lying. 'NFP [Nadeem F. Paracha] also is unaware of the truth.
'… The student [of Nishter Medical College, Multan] on their first time going thru Rabwah on May 22, 1974 had made some nasty remarks and said they’ll be back on the 29th to do some more of the same.
'On the 29th, when train stopped, no Ahmadi [was] supposed to get on. The train started moving and suddenly inside the compartment of these students a fight broke out.
'Suddenly train stopped and we heard they were beating some ahmadi inside their compartment. We got involved to save that Ahmadi and this caused a fist fight and two of the students got minor bruises and were treated by the station master.
'It was after the train left, [that] all hell broke loose.
'It seems like we were tricked into it, because nothing had happened while train was stopped but the minute it started moving, inside their compartment something happened, and we didn't read that.
'I remember doing that Istighfar[*], because I was at the station even though [I] didn't take part in.'
Four decades later
Now, 40 years later, Bhutoists, too, might think they have saved up a trump card - The Rabwah Railway Station Incident card because the Samdani report seems to have been lost in the vast abysses of Bhutto's past. But videos of Bhutto’s stump speeches from the dying days of his premiership, wherein he shamelessly took credit throughout the country for the resolution of the ‘100-years old Qadiani Question,' and all things Islamic he is seen claiming he had achieved for the people of Pakistan - are also seem lost on the likes of Paracha.
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*When the matter of railway station brawl was reported to the Ahmadiyya leaders that some youth did go to the railway station despite directions otherwise, he pronounced a penalty of 10,000 times reading of Istagf’ar, an Islamic chant of repentance and seeking God's forgiveness, for any Ahmadi who had participated in the railway station incident that resulted in adding to the distress for the community.
-- Answering Nadeem F. Paracha II: Rabwah Railway Station Incident And An Eye Witness Account
-- By Imran Jattala. Follow on Twitter: @Ijattala
This content-post is archived for backup and to keep archived records of any news Islam Ahmadiyya. The views expressed by the author and source of this news archive do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Ahmadiyya Times.
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