Famous playwright and professor Asghar Nadeem Syed’s retirement note reads:
“I am a university professor. I have retired after completing my term of employment. I was pleased to be freed from the obligation of teaching what I did not want to teach. The average professors who were eager to flatter me looked at me with suspicion. Envious and resentful professors conspired against me, using incompetent students as their tools. I remained silent while observing all this. I continued to ignore invitations to conferences from universities and countries outside. Martial law governments continued to distribute pamphlets against professors like me. Those who continued to win awards for progress by means of flattery kept working on personal projects for Vice Chancellors instead of teaching. They continued to publish paper after paper filled with trash under the guise of research. They continued to provide moral justification for non-democratic governments with great success. They continued to lick the shoes of those who shouted slogans of truth in front of the tyrant Sultan. I continued to observe all this and was forced to read their arranged books. I saw bias, narrow-mindedness, and conspiracy taking the place of knowledge and transparency in the culture of universities. We continued to consider ourselves successful in creating kings among the blind. I could not teach what I wanted to and was forced to teach what I did not. “
Today I want to confess that the students I produced became doctors, engineers, bankers, and teachers, but there was a small deficiency in them. I constantly estimated its extent. When I was in the hospital for six days for the treatment of my wounds, I was taken aback by a bill of six lakhs. One of my students said to me, “Sir, you have to give us what you taught us; this is all possible in it.”
Then when I entered the engineering field, my student who was a doctor said to me, “Sir, if you want to get government treatment, you will have to come in two years, and if you get treated from your pocket, your turn will come in ten minutes.” I looked at him and he said, “What you taught us is only possible in that.”
One day I went to the secretariat for some work. I sent a message to the secretary, but he didn’t call me. I sat there stubbornly. When I went to attend a meeting, I came face to face with him. I told him about the work, and he said, “Sir, this work is impossible. It took us a long time to forget what you taught us. With great difficulty, I have managed to reach this point. I can’t do anything.”
One day, when the electricity in my house was out for many hours, I went to the SDO, and he said to me, “Sir, the electricity you are receiving is all because of what you taught us. You shouldn’t even be getting this.”
Today, I feel that I have contributed to the creation of narrow-minded and depressed generations. How prejudice and bigotry paved their way into literacy and education, and how extremism gained acceptance in our society. How prominent journalists, political leaders, intellectuals, and bureaus provided legitimacy to extremists and terrorists. When a suicidal attacker binds a bandage on his heart, brain, and eyes, I consider myself partly responsible. After graduating from universities, when innocent minorities and Muslims are targeted with explosives in places of worship, I am also partly responsible for that.
Today, I confess that I did not know what to study. I had a great desire to read about Allah’s love for beauty. What is aesthetics? What is its philosophy? There were many books available on the philosophy of aesthetics, but we did not refer to them. Without understanding aesthetics, we cannot say SubhanAllah (Glory to Allah). No one taught me how to appreciate beauty. All the fine arts discussions come up in this regard. I wanted to study geography because understanding Allah is like studying geography. Its lands, its seasons, its forests, its rivers, its oceans, and then the life in the oceans, the life in the forests, the birds and their species, and studying their habits, I wanted to eliminate negative perceptions related to animals. We did not do this work; others did. There is no better university than the National Geographic Channel.
I wanted to study when our history began. I wanted to study human history. I was forced to read Pakistani history that had been hijacked. Historians who read the odes of oppressive rulers have placed a crooked brick on which even the building that was built has been put into the slavery of Circumambulations by Zia-ul-Haq. In the chaos of the hanging of Pepu’s killers, those who sold stones and marbles began to earn silver and the process of making people insensitive began. I wanted to expose those who distort history.
And then a long-term marketing strategy was implemented. It is still ongoing. I wanted to tell the students who these people are, where they came from like worms and bugs from dangerous corners. Moreover, I wanted to introduce the students to the swindlers and fraudsters who deceived the Quaid-e-Azam and the people with their false promises and exaggerated height. I was stopped. I wanted to teach the students how Ayub Khan became a Field Marshal and how his advisers arranged for the purchase of literary figures and poets with bribes. How he martyred Hassan Naseer in the Royal Fort. How scholars, politicians, and conscientious people were used to stay up all night. How their nails were pulled out with pliers. How their screams were silenced. How Zia-ul-Haq poured boiling water with insects on the naked bodies of writers, poets, lawyers (lawyers of that time), peasants, and journalists. How these people went insane and their families refused to accept them. How Zia-ul-Haq confessed and pardoned the hanged criminals in Shabnam case overnight. Who went to Shabnam’s house and brought back a pardon letter from her. I wanted to tell all this to the students.
I wanted to teach students about how Saadat Hasan Manto was treated when he came to Pakistan. In small courts, he was humiliated. All doors of employment were closed for him. He was paid ten rupees to write a short story through creative labor. He was forced to die in poverty. When he was seen at the Pak Tea House, Qayyum Nazar Awar and Shairat Bukhari would hide in fear. According to Manto, he never sought recognition from them. I wanted to teach Manto’s stories such as “Khol Do,” “Thanda Gosht,” “Mozail,” “Babu Gopi Nath,” “Toba Tek Singh,” “Shaheed Saz,” and “Nangi Aawazain.” However, those who organized the course stopped me, and the scholars who stopped me are now professors at big universities, including Professor Emeritus.
“I wanted to teach my students Faiz’s poem ‘On Returning from Dhaka’ and explain the meaning of this verse: ‘The stains of blood will be washed away, after how many years of rain.’ I wanted to teach my students Naseer Kazmi’s poem ‘Those who used to sail boats’ which was written after 1971. I just wanted to tell them how the singers from Bhawalpur moved away from our emotional style and the Eastern Pakistani cinema which was going to change our cinema, but the journey stopped. I wanted to tell them why Qurratulain Hyder, the great Ghulam Ali Khan, and Sajjad Zaheer left Pakistan and why Mashriqi Pakistan’s satanic films were going to transform our Indian cinema. I wanted to teach them Intizar Hussain’s ‘City of Sorrows,’ ‘The Colony,’ and ‘A Letter from India,’ but I wasn’t allowed to. I wanted to teach them the stories of Amr Jalil and the poetry of Sheikh Ayaz, and I wanted to teach them all the world literature and literature in their own languages that we had hidden from our students, but I too fell short, and so did my students.”
Ionesco had written a drama called “The Chairs”. In it, a retired officer invites all the high-ranking officials of the city for dinner. As they each arrive one by one, instead of their presence being on stage, only their chairs are placed. The host converses with these chairs and tells them that the guests are actually just chairs. You have lost your identity in this system. I also want to confess at a dinner party of all the bigwigs that I wanted to read, but couldn’t. But my confession will only be to empty chairs, as none of those officials have their actual presence.
