Pakistan politicians engulfed by tax evasion storm
Majority of ministers have not paid into national coffers beyond contribution taken from state salaries, alleges tax report
The report, by the Centre for Investigative Reporting and the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives, comes at time of deepening economic crisis in a country that collects just 9% of its national wealth in tax – almost matching Afghanistan as one of the lowest rates in the world.
Tax dodging is rife among Pakistan’s 180 million population; just 2% are registered within the tax system but fewer actually pay it. Critics say the rich and powerful are some of the worst offenders and are effectively subsidised by the poor.
“Those who make revenue policies, run the government and collect taxes have not been able to set good examples for others,” says the Representation Without Taxation report. It found 69% of national assembly members and 63% of senate members did not file tax returns in 2011. Although they are automatically taxed on their basic state salary, by failing to declare any additional wealth they would have been able to evade paying tax.
According to a 2009 study, the average wealth of a member of the national assembly was well over £500,000. Under Pakistani law, tax must be paid on income in excess of £3,200. With little revenue to support the national budget, the government has been forced to borrow huge amounts from its banks. Many analysts fear Pakistan’s threadbare public finances are unsustainable and yet another bailout by foreign donors could be imminent.
The latest research, led by journalist Umar Cheema, is based on the personal tax numbers politicians must include on their nomination papers when standing for election. The figures were used to track down tax filings, most of which were unofficially divulged by staff within the federal board of revenue. Just two politicians voluntarily replied to researchers asking for their tax details, the report says.
According to the report, 73 members of the national assembly did not even have a personal tax number at the time of the last election in 2008.
In the current cabinet of 55 ministers, only 21 filed tax returns, the report alleged, and those who were taxed paid very little, with only 9% of national assembly members paying more than $6,400 (£4,000). Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a member of the senate, paid just 82 rupees – about 50p.
In an email to Reuters, Sayed disputed the report, saying he had paid $6. “I was not a senator then; my source of support was from my family’s agricultural income and lecture honoraria,” he said.
Zardari did not file a tax return in 2011, according to the database of Pakistan’s tax collectors, although the report said his spokesman insisted he had.
Many parliamentarians are feudal landlords who own vast estates giving them huge incomes and armies of workers who vote for them. However, income from agricultural production is tax exempt.
The government plans to launch an amnesty allowing tax evaders to register their untaxed wealth by paying a flat penalty of up to £380. Although it will cost the state millions of pounds in lost revenue, officials think it will reel more people into the tax net.
Pakistan has long struggled with tax evasion by the rich and powerful. In a 1986 speech, Zia-ul-Haq, the former military dictator, said if Islamic law called for the amputation of the hands of thieves, tax evaders should have their entire arm cut off. But, as the report notes, Zia failed to file a tax return between 1960 and 1988.
Research on Hur Movement – MANZOOR H. KURESHI, Karachi, Sindh
….The Hur movement (1930-43) is one of the most important chapters that has played most vital role in the history of Sindh. Therefore in order to asses its impact on the pre and post independence period of modern Sindh, not only the Hur movement but the reign of two alien powers (Talpurs and British) who governed it through 19th and almost half of 20th Century also required exhaustive analysis with an eye of impartiality.
The Talpurs were a Baloach tribe from Baluchistan , soldiering in the native Kalhoras armed forces. After overthrowing their masters (1783), Talpurs turned Sindh as their personal fief which they divided into various branches of their families. Their triarchy ruled in a fashion of laissez-faire medieval monarchs, more engrossed in hunting than providing rule of law to the populace. Almost all fertile lands were either converted into royal hunting meadows or doled out to loyal clans serving in the state army. During their rule the condition of masses in general was extremely miserable to say the least.
When British conquered Sindh (1843), they brought with them various new concepts and enlightened ideas of welfare state already applied in Europe since 18th Century. They introduced modern education, latest system of administration and justice; revenue and communication; concept of planned cities on the basis of which they built Karachi post city. They not only developed roads and extensive railway infrastructure in shortest possible time, linking remotest places with main cities but also built Lloyd Barrage (1932), World’s greatest irrigation system. The lands of Sindh which were mostly dependent on seasonal rainfall, overflow of non-perennial Indus or few small size canals, now provided with network of Canals irrigating about 5 millions of acres hitherto virgin lands. Even credit of developing alphabets of modern Sindhi language goes to Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, then Commissioner of Sindh (1857). The institutions and infrastructure built by the British in 19th and beginning of 20th Century; were so sturdy and effective that despite total apathy shown to them subsequently are still catering to the needs of people.
The Hur revolt started during the middle of colonial period. Although this period was more benevolent, especially after East India Company was replaced by Crown (1858), which not only transformed the disposition of Sindh from medieval to modern but at the same time witnessed hectic developmental activities, carried out by the administration for the general welfare of public. This aspect needs to be analyzed.
Whereas upshot of Hur Movement was martial law imposed on lower Sindh and shifting of thousands non local ex-servicemen and Mari and Bugti tribal families who were given incentives by allotting to them thousands of acres fertile lands in Nara valley and reclaimed forest lands of ‘Mukhi forest’ hotbed of stiff resistance, as a permanent settlement. This policy changed the socio-political milieu as well as demography of Sindh forever… The colossal damage; socio-economically as well as politically, caused to the people of Sindh in the long run an outcome of confrontation with a far superior adversary; the British Empire also need to be examined by the scholars, when Hur Movement is made subject to in-depth research.
Courtesy: The Letters to the Editor, Daily Dawn Karachi
Maj Gen (Retd) Syed Ali Hamid was posted to 26 Cavalry on his commissioning in 1968. He served with the regiment during the Chhamb Operations and was the first original officer who commanded the regiment from 1982-84. The officer is a graduate of Staff College Camberley, and served as an instructor at Staff College Quetta and National Defence College. As a General Officer, he commanded a Mechanized Division and established the Defence Export Promotion Organization.
On the eve of the 1965 War, the Pakistan Army was an overly confident force. In part that confidence was a result of the large military aid package from the US; in part it was the slogans with which the army had been indoctrinated like ‘One Pakistani soldier is equal to ten Indian soldiers’; and in part it was a consequence of the drubbing that the Indians’ had received at the hands of the Chinese and the Pakistan Army thought that given a chance it could do as well. The icing on the cake was the skirmish in the Rann of Kutch in April 1965 when the Pakistan Army ‘won’ a victory and concluded that the Indians’ ‘didn’t have the stomach for a fight’. The Pakistan Army was also enamored by the Revolutionary Wars that had been fought and won in East Asia in the middle of the 20th Century and thought this could be replicated in Indian Held Kashmir. It was a combination of more of one and a little less of the other that made us slide into the 1965 War.
A month after the skirmish in the Rann of Kutch, at a dinner in the Signal Officer’s Mess Bhutto broached the subject of war with my father. “General Shahid. Sir” (Till he was in Ayub Khan’s cabinet he was always very respectful to my father). “Don’t you think it is time we attacked India?” My father, who had served in Burma during the Second World War and had been injured, firmly replied, “Zulfi. Have you ever heard a shot fired in anger? In war there is no victor and no vanquished. Everyone suffers. Why should we go to war? The country and the economy are doing so well. I think it’s a very bad idea.”
“But your Generals think so,” retorted Bhutto to which my father now visibly annoyed replied “Well they are talking out of their hat”.
Ardeshir Cowasjee the famous journalist (and may his soul rest in peace) once wrote that Bhutto never did or said something without a reason behind it. Bhutto knew that my father was a close friend of the Field Marshall and if he had supported the idea then Bhutto would have asked him to ‘put in a word’. There is sufficient evidence to substantiate the fact that the FM was reluctant to go to war. After the conflict he told my father, “Shahid. These people pushed me into the War”. Who were these people that the FM was alluding to?
A month after the skirmish in the Rann of Kutch, at a dinner in the Signal Officer’s Mess Bhutto broached the subject of war with my father. “General Shahid. Sir” (Till he was in Ayub Khan’s cabinet he was always very respectful to my father). “Don’t you think it is time we attacked India?” My father, who had served in Burma during the Second World War and had been injured, firmly replied, “Zulfi. Have you ever heard a shot fired in anger? In war there is no victor and no vanquished. Everyone suffers. Why should we go to war? The country and the economy are doing so well. I think it’s a very bad idea.”
“But your Generals think so,” retorted Bhutto to which my father now visibly annoyed replied “Well they are talking out of their hat”.
Ardeshir Cowasjee the famous journalist (and may his soul rest in peace) once wrote that Bhutto never did or said something without a reason behind it.
A month after the skirmish in the Rann of Kutch, at a dinner in the Signal Officer’s Mess Bhutto broached the subject of war with my father. “General Shahid. Sir” (Till he was in Ayub Khan’s cabinet he was always very respectful to my father). “Don’t you think it is time we attacked India?” My father, who had served in Burma during the Second World War and had been injured, firmly replied, “Zulfi. Have you ever heard a shot fired in anger? In war there is no victor and no vanquished. Everyone suffers. Why should we go to war? The country and the economy are doing so well. I think it’s a very bad idea.”
“But your Generals think so,” retorted Bhutto to which my father now visibly annoyed replied “Well they are talking out of their hat”.
Ardeshir Cowasjee the famous journalist (and may his soul rest in peace) once wrote that Bhutto never did or said something without a reason behind it. Bhutto knew that my father was a close friend of the Field Marshall and if he had supported the idea then Bhutto would have asked him to ‘put in a word’. There is sufficient evidence to substantiate the fact that the FM was reluctant to go to war. After the conflict he told my father, “Shahid. These people pushed me into the War”. Who were these people that the FM was alluding to?
Z.A. Bhutto standing behind the President during a press conference at Ankara
On the Mall Road of Rawalpindi, next to the church stood a house rented by Burmah Shell where ‘Ikki’ Shaban lived and entertained well. Ikki was a Sindhi from Karachi, a friend of Bhutto and some years later during Bhutto’s rule acted as his agent in brokering a deal for the purchase of Mirage Fighter Aircrafts. Benazir Bhutto appointed his brother as a minister years later. Ikki’s sister was the wife of Nazir Ahmed, the Defence Secretary during 1965. Nazir Ahmed was appointed as one of the members of the Kashmir Cell set up in the Foreign Office “to de-freeze the Kashmir situation”. While Islamabad was under construction, Government officials, ministers and secretaries as well as senior army officers at GHQ were living practically next door to each other in the small garrison town of Rawalpindi. Bhutto lived round the corner to Ikki next to the Civil Lines and Ikki’s house was a convenient meeting place for all. To muster support for the Kashmir venture, Bhutto also visited senior army officers at their residences and General Musa complained to the Field Marshal that “Bhutto was brainwashing his officers.”
This thread loosely connects some of those who could have formed part of the clique that pushed the Field Marshal in to the War. However, I could not connect a key figure, Maj Gen Akhtar Hussain Malik, GOC 12 Division and the architect of Operation Gibraltar. That was till I came across an interview given by Col S.G. Mehdi who was commanding the SSG in 1965. He narrates: “………a number of bureaucrats from Rawalpindi used to go to Murree for the weekend, where they would relax, play cards and chill out. Gen Akhtar, as GOC 12 Division, would at times attend these sessions. Once he was dared by the bureaucrats that Pakistan Army had done nothing for Pakistan’s creation or the liberation of Kashmir. At this Gen Akhtar spoke up that he had a plan and disclosed the rationale for Operation Gibraltar. The bureaucrats were reportedly quite taken in and the Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmad went and reported it to the Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto”.
Aziz Ahmed is sitting on the left of the Field Marshal. The young Foreign Minister is sitting opposite.
Aziz Ahmed was a very powerful civil servant. He was the first Chief Secretary of East Pakistan when Ayub Khan was there as the GOC and the two developed a close friendship. When Ayub Khan declared martial law in 1958, Aziz Ahmed was appointed as Secretary General Cabinet Division and Deputy Martial Law Administrator. Subsequently he was Pakistan’s Ambassador in the USA during both Eisenhower and Kennedy’s term. Like Bhutto he fell out with the Field Marshal after the Tashkent Declaration. I don’t know who were the other bureaucrats taken in by Gen Akhtar’s plan but the composition of the Kashmir Cell could provide some indication. Apart from Aziz Ahmed and Nazir Ahmed the other members were A.B. Awan and N.A. Farooqi Principal Secretary to President. So was Altaf Gahur, the Information Secretary but he never attended a meeting. While it is said that the performance of the Cell was disappointing its members had the power to influence the military leadership. It seems that our plunge into the 1965 was driven as much if not more by the bureaucracy than by the military.
In late July 1965, at the age of fifteen I accompanied my parents for our yearly fishing excursion to the Kaghan Valley. We arrived in Mehndri in the gathering dusk and to our surprise saw a hoard of soldiers dressed in green shalwar kameez with brown canvas shoes and carrying .303 rifles and Bren guns. They were sheltering against the cold night under makeshift shelters. The Rest House was occupied by a small group of officers similarly dressed and they hurriedly vacated a couple of rooms for us. The next day this column of soldiers followed by a mule train trudged past us through Naran. I had never seen soldiers on the move like this in battle array and was quite enamored.
A mule train of the Pakistan Army going through the Kaghan Valley on the eve of the 1965 War to support Operation Gibraltar
Some years later when I was more aware of our military history, I learnt from my father that these troops were a Mujahid (Irregular) Battalion, part of the force for Operation Gibraltar to be infiltrated into Kashmir. That night in Mehndri, my father was told by the battalion officers of their mission and being a retired but seasoned soldier he asked some penetrating questions. On our return he expressed his serious concern to President Ayub Khan about the level of training and equipment of this force that was being launched to liberate Kashmir. However the Field Marshal was already committed and whatever last minute doubts he must have had about this momentous decision may have been overridden by the smear campaign that had been launched probably by the strong proponents of Operation Gibraltar.
The Field Marshal was a Tareen, a tribe that has its origins in Kandahar. During the reign of Ahmed Shah Abdali, some elements of this tribe conquered and settled in the region of Hazara NWFP. The smear which my mother confided in me with a wistful smile one evening was: ‘Sala Hazarewal buzdil hai. Yeh kabhi larai nahin kare ga’. (The darned man from Hazara is a coward. He will never go to war). For the Field Marshal it must have been too much to stomach. Nothing energises a man more than a slur on his manhood and self-esteem.
o فَلاَ مَرَدَّ لَهُ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِ مِن وَالٍ
Translation :
Verily ! Allah will never change the condition of the people until they change it themselves (with state of Goodness). But when Allah wills a punishment for them, there can be no turning back of it, and they will not find a protector besides Him.
Allah will not Change the Condition of a People until They Change Themselves
Quite often the servant of Allah is granted abundant blessings but he becomes bored and longs to change it for another which he claims is better. In fact, Allah, the Merciful does not deprive him of this blessing, and He excuses him for his ignorance and bad choice until the servant is unable to bear the blessing, feels discontent, and complains about it. Then Allah will take it away from him. When he gets what he wished for and sees the great difference between what he had before and what he has now, he is filled with worry and regret and he wishes to have what he had before. If Allah wishes good for His servant, He would make him see that whatever blessings he now has is from Allah and He will show him that Allah is pleased with him, and the servant would praise Him. If he is deceived by his soul to change this blessing, he would ask Allah for guidance.There is nothing more harmful to the servant than becoming bored from the blessings of Allah; as he neither sees them as a blessing, praises Allah for them, nor is happy with them but he becomes bored, complains, and considers them as a means of distress. He does not think that these things are from the greatest blessings of Allah. The majority of people are opposed to the blessings of Allah. They do not feel the blessings of Allah, and moreover, they exert their effort to drive them away because of their ignorance and injustice. How often is a blessing bestowed on a person while he is exerting his effort to drive it away and how often does he actually receive it while he is pushing it away, simply because of his ignorance and injustice. Allah says, “That is so because Allah will never change agrace which He has bestowed on a people until they change what is in their ownselves.” (Al-Antal, 8:53) And He, the Almighty says,”Allah will not change the good condition of a people as long as they do not change their state of goodness themselves (by committing sins and by being ungrateful and disobedient to Allah).” (Ar-Ra’d, 13:11) What can be worse than the enmity of a servant toward the blessings he has received? In so doing, he supports his enemy against himself. His enemy arouses fire in his blessings and he increases the fire unawares. He enables his enemy to light the fire and then he helps his own enemy to blow on it until it becomes strong. Finally, he seeks help against the fire and blames fate.
We are the best of Creation but are we living up to our Creator’s expectations
Lack of critical thinking skills in Pakistan has kept the whole nation backward in all aspects of life. Pakistan’s social, political, economic, health, and religious problems can be traced back to a lack of critical thinking. Pakistanis tend to accept every trauma as part of fate, without thinking that Almighty Allah has endowed man with free will and intellect, by which man can become “Master of his own Fate, and Captain of his own Ship.” Man is a Creation of the the Ultimate and Everlasting Intellect, Allah Almighty. Are we defying Almighty Allah or disappointing Him by not utilizing our capabilities to the maximum. As his Creation, do we not trust our individual God given capabilities, embedded in the ‘hard drive’ in our head? The human brain has been chiseled by none other than the Master Creator of the Universe. It can perform quadrillion upon quadrillion functions in a life time, including controlling the performance of all human faculties. But, Man cynically depreciates his own abilities through negative and cynical thinking. Thereby, denigrating the Masterwork of his Creator, The Al-Musawir.
Pakistanis stoically accept political malfeasance and incompetent governance as a fact of life
Pakistanis as a nation,meekly accept corrupt mediocrities to rule us and guide us throughout our national life? Our fear of sticking our necks out or standing for Truth and Justice has made us into a retrogressive society. This is no different from sheep or goats who can be led by a goading with a stick by the herder or shepherd. Pakistanis can only change Pakistan, if we can master nuclear and missile technology, then changing the fate of the nation is a piece of cake. Wake up, my Pakistani sisters and brother! Throw down the yoke and breathe the freedom of a technologically,politically, economically, and socially advanced nation. We are 180 million strong, WE CAN DO IT! Change Pakistan. Change your world. otherwise, no one will come around and change it for you. Get rid of “luteraas,” like Swiss Bank Account Thief, Zardari, Raja Rental, drunkard Bilawal, Mehran Bank Robber Nawaz Shariff, and paindoo crooks like Malik Riaz, and the rest of the feudal shahi. Let us not be empty “gharas,” which make much noise, but are hollow from inside. If we do not reform ourselves, no one will reform us. Allah will abandon us to our fate, because, we are not using our brains to make critical national decisions. The followers of the Greatest Man, who ever lived have become an ignorant and corrupt Nation of Sheep. Whenwe can’t BEAT the Corrupt, we throw our hands in despair or become part of them. What have we become? What malaise is eating our souls? Are we a nation of “Phaydoos,” or a nation of sheep?
The brutal “control freaks,” in our primary and secondary in rural and inner city education systems
Pakistani educational system is for the most part based on rote learning and bowing to whims of dictatorial and control freak “masterji” and “ustaniji.” Most of our primary and secondary school educators are charlatans or “drop-outs,”from other more lucrative or challenging professions. They put young minds in their vise grip in which individualism and creativity is stifled. Challenging the accepted rules and concepts are a taboo in our mostly rural society. On the other hand growth of urban centers have resulted in blind acceptance of Western ideas and concepts, without whetting them through a filter of critical thinking.
The Forgotten Islamic concept of Critical Thinking
Therefore, we present the kernel of concepts which form the basis of critical thinking and which have lead to the advancement of Western societies in science, technology, and social values. Islam taught Muslims to debate and discuss all ideas, but, after the fall of Spain, Muslims became insular and isolationists. Debate and discussion became dormant. New ideas became a rarity. Demagoguery became the source of all knowledge. This lead to development of learning institutions, who were mostly centered around faith and dogma, and the concepts of taqiq fell by the wayside, leading to the the dark age of Muslim society, which has yet to merge into the bright sunshine or Renaissance of Critical Thinking during the glory days of Islam, when streets of Europe were in darkness or ignorance, the lamps of Baghdad were lit with the beacons of knowledge. Critical thinking were intrinsic part of Muslim culture. This was the period of enlightenment from streets of Cordoba to souks of Baghdad. Critical Thinking is the Engine of Economic Prosperity and Social Advancement. It starts in early education and continues throughout life.the West learned it from Muslims, now the Muslims have to revive it in their own societies.
Critical thinking I
Strategies for critical thinking in learning and project management
Critical thinking studies a topic or problem with open-mindedness. This exercise outlines the first stage of applying a critical thinking approach to developing and understanding a topic. You will:
Develop a statement of the topic
List what you understand, what you’ve been told and what opinions you hold about it
Identify resources available for research
Define timelines and due dates and how they affect the development of your study
Print the list as your reference
Here is more on the first stage:
Define your destination, what you want to learn Clarify or verify with your teacher or an “expert” on your subject
Topics can be simple phrases: “The role of gender in video game playing” “Causes of the war before 1939” “Mahogany trees in Central America” “Plumbing regulations in the suburbs” “Regions of the human brain”
Develop your frame of reference, your starting point, by listing what you already know about the subject
What opinions and prejudices do you already have about this? What have you been told, or read about, this topic?
What resources are available to you for research When gathering information, keep an open mind Look for chance resources that pop up! Play the “reporter” and follow leads If you don’t seem to find what you need, ask librarians or your teacher.
How does your timeline and due dates affect your research? Keep in mind that you need to follow a schedule. Work back from the due date and define stages of development, not just with this first phase, but in completing the whole project.
Summary of critical thinking:
Determine the facts of a new situation or subject without prejudice
Place these facts and information in a pattern so that you can understand them
Accept or reject the source values and conclusions based upon your experience, judgment, and beliefs
Critical thinking II
Second stage exercise in critical thinking:
Critical thinking studies a topic or problem with open-mindedness. This exercise outlines the second stage of applying a critical thinking approach to developing and understanding a topic.
With the second stage:
Refine/revise the topic either narrowing or broadening it according to outcomes of research
Rank or indicate the importance of three sources of research
Clarify any opinion, prejudice, or bias their authors have While an opinion is a belief or attitude toward someone or some thing, a prejudice is preconceived opinion without basis of fact while bias is an opinion based on fact or research.
Identify key words and concepts that seem to repeat Is there vocabulary you need to define? Are there concepts you need to understand better?
In reviewing your research, are there Sequences or patterns that emerge? Oposing points of view, contradictions, or facts that don’t “fit?” Summarize two points of view that you need to address
List what you understand, what you’ve been told and what opinions you hold about it
Identify resources available for research
Define timelines and due dates and how they affect the development of your study
Print the list as your reference
With this second exercise, think in terms of how you would demonstrate your learning for your topic How would you create a test on what you have learned? How would you best explain or demonstrate your findings? From simple to more complex (1-6) learning operations:
List, label, identify: demonstrate knowledge
Define, explain, summarize in your own words:Comprehend/understand
Solve, apply to a new situation: Apply what you have learned
Compare and contrast, differentiate between items: analyze
Create, combine, invent: Synthesize
Assess, recommend, value: Evaluate and explain why
Summary of critical thinking:
Determine the facts of a new situation or subject without prejudice
Place these facts and information in a pattern so that you can understand and explain them
Accept or reject your resource values and conclusions based upon your experience, judgment, and beliefs
After what seemed like an endless run of geopolitical roadblocks, “The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” has finally come, six months late, from Pakistan to Asia Society. Is the show worth all the diplomatic headaches it caused? With its images of bruiser bodhisattvas, polycultural goddesses and occasional flights into stratosphere splendor, it is.
Peter Oszvald/Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn
A figure of the Buddhist deity Hariti, an infant-gobbling demon, is on display in “The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” at Asia Society. More Photos »
That all but a handful of the 75 sculptures are from museums in Lahore and Karachi is in itself remarkable. Any effort to borrow ancient art from South Asia is fraught, even in the best of times. For an entire show of loans to make the trip, and in a period when Pakistan and the United States are barely on speaking terms, is miraculous. (Without the persistent effort of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, the exhibition would almost certainly never have happened.) So the show has a cliffhanger back storyas an attraction, and some monumental work, like the fantastic relief called “Vision of a Buddha’s Paradise.” (Dated to the fourth century A.D., it’s a kind of flash-mob version of heaven.)
But most of what’s here is neither dramatic nor grand: a chunk of a column; a head knocked from a statue; a panel sliced from some long-since-crumbled wall. Like most museum shows aiming for a big-picture view of a vanished world, it’s a scattering of small effects: precious scraps and remnants. For every stand-back-and-stare item, there are a dozen others that require close-up scrutiny and informed historical imagining to make their point.
The multilayered and time-obscured history of ancient Gandhara is particularly difficult to grasp. The area, which encompassed what is now northwestern Pakistan and a sliver of Afghanistan, was a crossroads for international traffic. If you had business that took you to or from the Indian subcontinent, you passed through Gandhara. If you were in the business of empire building, you made every effort to control it.
Persia, under Darius I, colonized the area in the sixth century B.C. Two centuries later Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek and a conquest addict, charged in and charged out, leaving behind a Hellenistic occupation, which held firm even as Gandhara was absorbed into the Mauryan empire of India, South Asia’s first great Buddhist power.
Over time Greco-Bactrians, Scythians and Parthians dominated the terrain. Then, around the first century A.D., the Kushans, originally nomads from the steppe-lands north of China, settled in, extending their reach down into the Indian subcontinent.
They were genuine cosmopolitans, linked to the Mediterranean, Persia and China, and tolerant of religions. It was under their aegis that Gandharan Buddhist art, compounded of foreign and local ingredients, flourished.
The exhibition, organized by Adriana Proser, a curator at Asia Society, begins by showing elements interacting. The first thing you see is a substantial female figure carved from the dark schist that was the common stone of the region. She has a funny look, familiar but not. She’s dressed in a sort of cocktail-dress version of a Roman stola; her hairdo is pure 1970s Charlie’s Angels, long but with back-flipped bangs.
Because she wears a helmet, she’s been called Athena in the past, though she probably represents some regional genius loci modeled, at a remove of thousands of miles, on Greco-Roman prototypes. Another female figure with comparable features has more certain identity. Much as she resembles a Roman goddess of good fortune, the three clinging children she juggles mark her as the Buddhist deity Hariti, an infant-gobbling demon, who, after a little enlightenment, changed her ways.
The culture mix thickens further. On a fragmentary stone panel we find in relief a Persian-style column with an Indian nature goddess posed in front of it. A squat stone figure in baggy Kushan pants turns out to be Skanda, the Hindu god of war. And a stele devoted mainly to sober scenes from Buddha’s life doubles as a playground for dozens of cupids.
The point is, Gandharan art was all over the map. Yet confusion sparked innovation. The first known figurative images of the Buddha are thought to have emerged from this region. So did, despite all the crazy components, an instantly recognizable sculptural style, on persuasive display in the second of the show’s three sections.
Here we find the classic Gandharan Buddha. Dating from the second to fifth century A.D., he is a standing figure in an ankle-length tunic and a togalike cloak that falls in rhythmical folds, with hints at the shape of the body beneath. The facial features are symmetrical and crisply cut, and idealized, though on ethnic and aesthetic terms different from those of a Greek Apollo.
On the whole the image is naturalistic in a way that the purely Indian equivalents being carved from sandstone farther south were not. And the naturalism is especially pronounced in Gandharan images of bodhisattvas, those evolved beings who postpone nirvana to aid struggling creatures on earth.
One example from the Lahore Museum suggests a leader-of-the-pack biker: slightly paunchy, with a handle-bar mustache, a cascade of curls and a challenging stare. Technically, he’s Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, though judging by his ornamental hardware — bicep bracelets, neck chains — he still has something to learn about the spiritual path of less-is-more.
The show’s highlight, “Vision of a Buddha’s Paradise,” is in this section too, and culturally everything comes together here. The big Buddha seated at its center wears an off-the-shoulder robe, South Indian tropical attire, while a couple dozen of mini-bodhisattvas around him mix and match international fashions, with no two outfits, or gestures, or poses, quite the same. Two figures gaze raptly up at the Buddha; another, chin propped on hand, looks daydreamingly away; far below, two tiny observers feed lotuses to fish in a stream.
Was this really designed as a vision of Paradise? We don’t know, though we might if we had some clue as to the piece’s original setting, probably as one of several related panels in an architectural context. But, as is true of most Gandharan art collected before very recent times, such information went unrecorded, and an accurate sense of what this art meant to its makers and early viewers is lost.
Ms. Proser addresses the issue of context in the exhibition’s last section, which is in its own gallery, by going with what we know: that much Buddhist art from Gandhara took the form of carved narrative panels depicting episodes from the life of the Buddha; that these panels once appeared on the walls of sanctuaries or cylindrical stupa mounds; and that many of the artists were entertaining storytellers.
Their skills are evident in the sequence of a dozen or so panels arranged around a stupalike structure in the gallery. In one, the Buddha’s mother, Maya, anticipates his birth in a dream, and the artist has made her look like a Roman matron en déshabillé and asleep on her couch. But in a second panel, carved by a different artist and showing the infant Buddha being examined by a sage, we’ve switched countries and cultures: now we’re in a land of turbans, boots and layered outwear.
A third episode takes place after the Buddha’s enlightenment, as the lords of the four directions, essentially Vedic or Hindu beings, decorously offer him bowls of food. And a panel set next to that is packed with the figures of demons who had tried hard to prevent that enlightenment. The scene looks like a Wookiee convention. It’s very funny, but also rich with information about armor and weaponry in use centuries ago.
For historians the value of an exhibition is in just such details, while for nonspecialists the main attraction is likely to be visual impact. Ordinarily, I’d rather look at Kushan-era Buddhist art carved farther south from rosy Indian sandstone than at sculpture made in cold, dark stone in Gandhara. (Asia Society had a show of both in 1986.) But that’s just personal taste, and, besides, the show has changed my mind about this: it pulses with human warmth. That’s one of the things we go to great art for, though in this case, and against very long odds, some of that great art has come to us.
Timeline
Circa 9th century BCE
First reference to Gandhara in the tenth book of the Rigveda
522–486 BCE
Reign of Darius I, king of Persia
518 BCE
Gandhara becomes a Persian province
5th century BCE
Life of Siddhartha Gautama, the historic Buddha
327–326 BCE
Invasion of Alexander the Great, Greek-Macedonian king, into Gandhara and northwest India
321–circa 297 BCE
Reign of Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan Empire
312–281 BCE
Reign of Seleucus I Nicator, founder of the Seleucid Empire
312 BCE
Gandhara is part of the Seleucid Empire
305 BCE
In exchange for 500 war elephants, Gandhara and Arachosia become part of the Mauryan Empire
268–240 BCE
Reign of Ashoka, ruler of the Mauryan Empire, supporter of Buddhism
Circa 250 BCE
Foundation of the Greco-Bactrian Empire
247 BCE
Foundation of the Parthian Empire
Circa 180 BCE
Conquest of Gandhara and northwest India by the Greco-Bactrians
Circa 140 BCE
Invasions of the Scythians from Central Asia (Sakas, Yuezhi, and others)
1st century BCE
Foundation of the Indo-Scythian dynasty
Early 1st century CE
Kingdom of Odi in the Swat valley
Mid-1st century
Foundation of the Kushan Empire in Gandhara by a Yuezhi tribe
127-150
Reign of Kanishka I, Kushana ruler; first heyday of Buddhist art in Gandhara
232
Foundation of the Iranian Sasanian dynasty in Afghanistan; the so-called Kushanshahs become viceroys
Circa 320
Foundation of the Gupta Empire in North India
400
Chinese pilgrim monk Faxian in Gandhara
630
Chinese pilgrim monk Xuanzang in Bamiyan, makes a record of the giant buddhas
861–900
Islamic Saffarid dynasty in Afghanistan
1008
Gandhara comes under the reign of the Muslim Ghaznavids
The Buddhist heritage of Pakistan
The beauty of ancient globalisation
Oct 20th 2011, 17:22 by A.Y. | NEW YORK
More than 1,500 years ago the Gandhara region, which surrounded present-day Peshawar, was an important point along the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean. Propelled by Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire, settlers from the West brought classical Greco-Roman influences, while traders from the East brought Buddhism. This unique cross-pollination permeates art from the Gandhara region, which encompassed swaths of north-west Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan between the first century BC and the fifth century AD. These works are an extraordinary example of ancient globalisation.
“The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara”, the first exhibition of Gandharan art from Pakistan in America since 1960, is on view at the Asia Society in New York through October. Pakistan’s problems with violent extremism have eclipsed the region’s historical role as a place with an ancient tradition of tolerance and pluralism. Amid deteriorating relations with America, getting the artwork to New York was an epic undertaking involving diplomats, government officials, museum staff and art patrons on both sides. The display of Gandharan sculpture, architectural relief, and bronze and gold pieces, nearly all borrowed from the Central Museum in Lahore and the National Museum in Karachi, represents “a once in a lifetime chance” to view these works in America said Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society Museum.
The unusual East-West syncretism in historic Gandhara results in some surprising images. One sculpture from the second to third century AD depicts the torso of Atlas carved into schist, a type of stone; figures resembling the Greek deity were common in Gandharan art. A stone palette from the first century BC shows Apollo pursuing Daphne.
Some of the first human images of Buddha first appeared in Pakistan, with pictures in Gandharan art dating from the third century BC. A few on view here break from more conventional portrayals of the Buddha, such as a dramatic sculpture titled “Emaciated Siddhartha”, which depicts Buddha as a skeletal ascetic, with hollow eyes and jutting rib cage. There are some striking examples of Eastern influences on classical forms, such as a Roman Corinthian column that features a seated Buddha instead of a traditional flower. Similarly, a winged Aphrodite stone sculpture has come from Taxila, a Hellenistic settlement 30 kilometres from present-day Islamabad.
The untimely death last December of Richard Holbrooke, America’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, dealt a severe blow to staging this exhibition. A former chairman of the Asia Society, Holbrooke had been a champion of the show, which was two years in the making. Without him, momentum stalled. The exhibition was originally scheduled to open in February, but its prospects seemed doomed in light of Pakistan’s political turmoil and the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA operative early in the year. The assassination of Osama bin Laden in May seemed to make the show impossible.
To salvage the exhibition, Ms Chiu reckons she made 1,000 phone calls to Pakistan earlier this year and travelled there four times. Others were instrumental in finally getting the exhibition to New York, including Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon. When a series of brutal murders terrified locals in Karachi in the spring, museum staff had to be escorted by security personnel to crate artworks to be shipped to New York.
“This was the most difficult show we’ve ever organised,” said Ms Chiu, who admitted that many presumed the show would not open at all. But the effort had a simple but important objective. “It’s an opportunity to see a different view of Pakistan. It truly is another perspective.”
“The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” was shown this year till Oct. 30
at Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street; (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org.
Allah will not Change the Condition of a People until They Change Themselves
Slide Show
The unusual East-West syncretism in historic Gandhara results in some surprising images. One sculpture from the second to third century AD depicts the torso of Atlas carved into schist, a type of stone; figures resembling the Greek deity were common in Gandharan art. A stone palette from the first century BC shows Apollo pursuing Daphne.
