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HUSSAIN SHAHEED SUHRAWARDY
The charming democrat with wit and wisdom
K. Z. Islam
The death anniversary of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was on December 5 and I propose to throw some light on his biography by recalling the lighter side of his character. Unfortunately no one has recorded the countless witticism and examples of his humour or his repartees. However, I have managed to assemble a few which are fairly well known. The following anecdotes some of which I have picked up from Suhrawardy's biography by Begum Ikramullah will give us some idea of his wit.
Sense of Humour: When Suhrawardy went to the UK as Pakistan's Prime Minister he was asked by the press, "And what do you think about Pakistan leaving the Commonwealth?" "Oh no! We are not thinking of leaving the Commonwealth when such a young and beautiful Queen is at the head of it," said he with a twinkle in his eye and won the heart of the press.
The official visits to the U.S. is usually made very gruelling to completely exhaust the visitor. Suhrawardy was probably the only visitor to the States who tired out the State Department rather than the State Department programme tiring him out. He would turn around at well past midnight after a gruelling day of appointments, lunches, and dinners and ask his escort, "Now what else?" and when told that there was nothing else he would decide to go on to a restaurant or night club. "Are you going with your Prime Minister?" Someone asked Syed Ahmed the Press Attache in Washington. "No, no I am not as young as my Prime Minister" he replied smiling. He was less than half of Suhrawardy's age and was considered very energetic in his own right, but even he could not keep pace with Suhrawardy's tireless energy.
During the same trip to the States Suhrawardy went to see Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady. After the show he went backstage to meet the actors. "Where did you learn to speak such good English, Mr. Suhrawardy?" asked Julie Andrews. "Oh, out there from your Professor Higgins!" was the pat reply. "I felt such a fool," says Julie Andrews in her Year Book, "when I learned that he was an Oxford man."
And of course there is his famous saying. "The English language, the PIA and I are the only links between East and West Pakistan." Alas, it proved to be tragically true.
His performance in the law courts was equally brilliant Dr. Kamal Hossain records "the gift of advocacy, which had led a courtroom adversary to say that when Suhrawardy addressed arguments it seemed as if everything in the room, even inanimate objects like chairs and tables were arguing against you, had enabled him to be powerfully persuasive from the public platform." This was especially so when he was defending himself against the charges under EBDO (Elective Bodies Disqualification Ordinance). The prosecution counsel, Chowdhury Nazir Ahmed was unessecarily offensive in his cross examination. For most parts Suhrawardy ignored his deliberate rudeness. Once however, he made a very apt reply by quoting a line of Mirza Ghalib:
Har ek baat peh kehte ho tum keh to kia hai?
Tum hi kaho keh yeh andazey guftagu kia hai?
Only those who know the Urdu language can appreciate the nuance and the aptness of it. It is a line from Ghalib, protesting against the irony of fate that subjected a genius like him to being humiliated by idiots.
Zero Plus Zero: Given below is the very famous Suhrawardy's remark after the British briefly occupied the Suez Canal which got him into serious trouble with the Arab nations. While addressing the S.M. Hall students of the University of Dhaka he reflected about the results of creating a Muslim Bloc and said "However many zeros we may add to each other the answer will still be zero. Therefore, nothing positive will ever be produced by blindly adding a series of zeros together. However if we added a zero to one the total would be determined by how many zeros we added to that one. Whether zeros were added to the right or the left of the one the result would always be bigger than a zero"
By this equation Suhrawardy was referring to the military strength of the emerging Muslim nations, not their international reputations. He included Pakistan in the zero group, but his severe public assessment angered the Arab World, especially Egypt. During the Suez crisis Egypt rebuffed Pakistan's offer of an army contingent as a contribution to the United Nations Peace-Keeping force, organised to maintain peace following the withdrawal of the Franco-British and Israeli troops. Egypt also refused to receive Suhrawardy when he offered to visit their country to explain Pakistan's policies in relation to Arabs. But the biggest shock was Egypt's vote against Pakistan, when the Kashmir issue was debated at the United Nations.
A Social Person: In addition to Suhrawardy's infectious sense of humour he was a fun loving person. It is generally not appreciated that his life was essentially a sad and a lonely one. As he had practically no home life he tried to make up for it by being extra social and humorous. He loved dancing and he was a good dancer and unless urgent work prevented him from doing so there was hardly an evening that he did not go to a party or a night club. Many misunderstood and misinterpreted his zest for life.
He rarely behaved in a conventional manner. He hummed tunes in the Government House and whistled in the sacred precincts of its corridors. I have a feeling he was a good singer. At one time he carried about a decrepit looking panda in his pocket, and took it out and squeaked it to relieve the boredom of cabinet meetings much to the shock of the ministers. He went everywhere, met everyone and accepted anyone's invitation if he thought it would be amusing.
He was an avid movie-goer. His constant companion in Dhaka Mominul Huq (Khoka), Bangabandhu's first cousin recalls that he frequently accompanied Suhrawardy to the Naz Cinema Hall where he saw English movies. He also saw Bangla films. Khoka recalls that he had to see the Bangla movie once before he took Suhrawardy to see the film as Suhrawardy would constantly keep asking him questions about the movie. After the movie Suhrawardy would sing the Bangla songs of the film loudly in the car.
Suhrawardy's sense of humour did not desert him till his last days. His son Rashid, with whom Suhrawardy spent the last six months of his life in his student's lodgings in London records. After experiencing a heart attack during a bridge game with Rashid and his fellow students whilst being carried to bed in severe pain he said in barely audible tones, through clenched teeth, "Damn, and I had a strong one-no-trump opening bid". On other occasions, while Suhrawardy was convalescing in bed or working on his memoirs, he would answer the phone at his bed-side and, if the calls were for Rashid or his friends, would introduce himself as their secretary and take the message, writing it down in his immaculate hand-writing, making sure that the name of the caller was spelt correctly and the message crystal clear. If the voice at the other end was female, Suhrawardy would stay on the line for twenty minutes to half an hour, charming the caller, without giving away who he was and most of them were lucky not to lose their girl friends, before they had even met Suhrawardy.
Letter to Salma: In a touching letter he wrote to his niece Salma from the Karachi Central Jail in May 1962: "In fact, I think you should not think of social service now - time is when you are a matron, and your sympathies need bestowal on a wider circle and here comes the crux (don't pronounce it as crooks) of life. I think firstly it is absence of hate: and secondly, the positive feeling of love. I do not know why I have never been able to hate - I almost think it is a weakness. Or it is perhaps a streak of one of always trying to see the other man's point of view and find justification for him. I think I was born with it, and it has developed with legal training and a judicial sense. Even in my childhood days I always fought for anybody absent who was attacked. I find that there are a few, very few - I cannot think of but one or two who are intrinsically spiteful and vindictive but they can't help it, if God endowed them with a fiend's nature. Others - and this is true of nearly all people - seek to justify their actions by arguments. Or by principles, which however warped they may be, satisfy their conscience. Hence, even when I was in power, and I have been so for years together, with power to harm my enemies, I have never victimised them. I indeed, my party men, who understand more the ruthlessness of politics, have always blamed me for what they call, my softness. Have I made friends by my leniency and consideration! I have yet to see. Unhappily, it is those persons on whom you confer benefits who are apt to stab you in the back. Still not to hate, is morally satisfying, and then to love. I think I do, and would like to love everyone."
In this rare self assessment Suhrawardy reveals the Sufi in him. After all the Suhrawardian Order was among the four Principal Orders of saints preaching Islam in the subcontinent; the other orders were Quaderia, Chistia, Nakhsbandia - Mojaddedia.
The Diligent Worker: He could not bear pomposity or pretension nor stand on false dignity, but despite all the bonhomie of his behaviour nobody dared take advantage of him. He never bothered to argue or refute a point but his, "Do you really think so?" Or "I see" or "Is that so?" said with a cold precision, somehow carried such icy scorn, that the unfortunate person to whom it was addressed literally squirmed.
His intellectual calibre was extremely high and capacity for work prodigious. The speed with which he got through his work was phenomenal.
The Artist: One aspect of his character is little known is his love of poetry, music and painting. Throughout his political life the yearning for things spiritual remained for he had after all, been brought up in a home and by parents whose values were essentially spiritual. He could remember and recite poems by Jalaluddin Rumi, Urfi and Rushdi and passages from Shakespeare, Milton and Marlowe with equal ease.
As we have seen in Suhrawardy's self analysis there was no vindictiveness in his character. This is revealed by the fact that during his tenure as Chief Minister of Bengal and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, not a single arrest was made for political reasons.
The Secularist: M.H.R. Talukder has given many quotations from eminent persons in his biography of Suhrawardy. Suhrawardy's political mentor, without doubt, was C.R. Das, a great son of Bengal. He tutored Suhrawardy and profoundly influenced him. "The magnitude and greatness of their life-mission," says Abul Mansur Ahmad, "was on the same level. Chittaranjan's mission aimed to establish unity between the
Hindus and the Muslims of India. If his mission had succeeded, India would not have been partitioned. Shaheed's mission was the unity of the two wings of Pakistan. The future will judge if the tragedy that had befallen India after Das's untimely and accidental death would, likewise, befall Pakistan." As with C.R. Das, Shaheed Suhrawardy also earned fabulous fees as a lawyer and similarly distributed most of what he earned on charity or donated it to his party. A few months before his death, Suhrawardy once told to A.K. Brohi, privately, "Mr. Brohi, I would like to close this chapter of my political struggle and die in peace, but I cannot let down the people of Pakistan who have reposed so much confidence upon me. Besides, I have to think about my only son. I have nothing to leave to my son - not even enough to enable him prosecute his studies further." "Truly," says Abul Hashim, "he died a magnificent pauper, receiving the burial of an emperor".
The Benefactor: "Generally", says Tofazzal Hossain, "rich people forget and avoid their poor relatives. But it was different with Shaheed Suhrawardy. He searched them out, visited their cottages, never hesitated to have meals with them and helped them generously." He could mix with the common people - slum dwellers, workers, labourers and peasants to create confidence in them as easily as he trod among the statesmen of the world to explain Pakistan's bona fides."
"While in Calcutta," writes Bangabandhu, "I accidentally saw a black exercise book. It contained, among others, a list of pensioners. Suhrawardy paid them a total monthly pension of Rs. 3000. Among the pensioners, irrespective of religion, were old servants, barbers, labourers, some of the old writers and political workers." He also maintained a separate establishment at his house for poor but meritorious students. He arranged jobs for them when they had completed their studies. This was in keeping with his family tradition.
Multi-Dimensional Character: The facets of Shaheed Suhrawardy's character were multi-dimensional. As Ataur Rahman Khan describes, "It was both mild and firm, cold and grim, simple and complex. The outside was firm and reserved, but the inside was tender-hearted and sweet. Whoever met him for the first time could feel surprised, or could even mistake him". Possessed of a towering personality, well beyond the reach of the common man, he never, however, kept him at a distance. He also possessed an inexhaustible fund of energy and worked, when in office, from eighteen to twenty hours a day. He never believed in political vindictiveness or attacked his political opponents. In politics he introduced the principles of tolerance and reason, often treating his enemies with a magnanimity sadly lacking in many of his contemporaries.
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