Hook, Line & Sinker

AUGUST 2000 - Much water has flowed under the bridge, most of it murky since the ‘Jinnah’ saga first reared its head. To this day, no one knows precisely how many ‘Jinnah’ films have been made, or how many scripts were actually written and who wrote them. Mr. Ahmed who has carried the Jinnah film on his shoulders like some kind of a holy mantle is now defrocked as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to UK. No thanks to the khakis who should have had better sense than to appoint a man whose middle name was controversy. The film released here, is a certified lemon. Nadeem Mandviwalla who “believed” in the film on emotive grounds has taken a hit. For months, speculation ran high when Jinnah would be released, if ever. “Select” screenings continued with Mr. Ahmed in the spotlight. When it was finally released, it already carried with it, the ugly smell of petty money-squabbling, intrigue and back-stabbing, to pull down further this ill-conceived project.

Those of us who were critical of this project from the first day for many reasons, that need not be reviewed again since they are fairly well known to anyone so foolish as to read newspapers, were branded anti-patriotic, jealous of Mr. Ahmed’s brilliance and his intellectual greatness, part of a campaign to discredit a noble venture to lift Mr.Jinnah to the same lofty heights where Mr.Gandhi sat thanks to Richard Attenborough, and so on and so on. The message was clear. If you were not an Ahmed groupie, you were a scum bag. The good guys were those who dined and wined the great filmmaker, wrote glowing accounts of the man and his mission, and more importantly, coughed up large sums of money to make his dreams of being the greatest Pakistani ever, come true.

That Mr.Ahmed chose to find fame and (as now seems to be the case) fortune, through a hotch potch representation of the only decent Pakistani we ever had, is our tragedy. What sins did Mr. Jinnah commit that his biographer should be a self-serving civil servant with a towering ambition like Mr. Ahmed, is a question for which we have no answer. Mr. Jinnah’s worn out cinema slide always evokes a spirited applause from cinema audiences – this has been so for years, yet Mr. Ahmed has successfully planted the kiss of death on Mr. Jinnah. The film is patchy, slipshod and utterly without emotion. It evokes nothing. It’s a bureaucrat’s version of a great man and it falls flat.

When it was being made, the rulers of the day keeled over backwards to please the great writer, intellectual and moviemaker. Facilities were opened up, government machinery creaked into action and a stunned nation silenced into accepting the film’s weird premise where Mr.Jinnah is put in the dock to answer charges, leveled by the last century’s fattest angel, taken through the wringer before his soul is allowed to escape from purgatory where the film finds him. He is forgiven, having been found not guilty of genocide, wife-neglect, blind ambition, sister-exploitation, child-negligence, cold-heartedness, snobbery, etc, etc. Dear gods. What an uplifting menu !

In the course of this ill-intentioned journey, history is conveniently distorted by the good Dr. Ahmed. Miss Jinnah is turned into a cardboard lady and the most significant and glorious moments of those tumultuous years, reduced to a two dimensional, flat, confusing and insipid viewpoint whose significance and import were only known to Mr.Ahmed. In spite of a hostile press at home and the film constantly running into financial problems, it was eventually finished and Christopher Lee left for home much to the relief of little children. From then till now, we saw ‘launches’ of the movie so many times that most of us lost count. Many claimed to have seen one film, others altogether a different one. I saw at least two versions before fidgeting through the third and final one. Like the script, the film was constantly chopped and re-chopped. There were stories that Mr. Ahmed was cutting different versions for different markets based on business considerations. There was a tamer and non-spicy version aimed at Pakistan with “objectionable” scenes replaced. Whatever, now the film is consigned to oblivion.

Mr. Ahmed obsession with fame is obscene. He has a limitless appetite for crass publicity, and never misses an opportunity to get his name into print and have praise heaped over him. He neutralizes those who oppose him, cajoles, pressurizes and maneuvers critics into becoming his mouthpieces. It was his handiwork to tell this country that so honoured was he as an author that a prestigious book catalogue had placed him at the very top of its list. Quite conveniently, he did not mention that the catalogue was alphabetical.

Even before he had presented his papers at Buckingham Palace, he had a large news item inserted in the newspapers here, which proclaimed with great joy that the Queen had invited him to the palace for tea. What was conveniently omitted was that so was half of England. The news item generated by Mr. Ahmed undoubtedly was meant to inform the world that so significant was this man that the Queen had sought an audience with him even before he had formally presented his credentials ! This is vintage Akbar S. Ahmed. When Jamil Dehalvi went to court and The Guardian flashed a lurid story about financial bungling in the Jinnah film, the Pakistan government slept through it all. Large sums of money disappeared into off shore accounts. Mr. Ahmed said it was perfectly legit for civil servants of Pakistan to operate such accounts in New Jersey. Mr. Ahmed claimed all credit for the film (no surprises there) and deprived Mr. Dehalvi of his money. Through all this he clung to his office while a case against him for financial wrangling was in the courts in England. At one level, it was hard to believe, but this is Pakistan and anything goes.

Now the man who held a grain of sand in Sibi and watched in wonder as it spoke to him about Islamic anthropology, has chosen to settle in his beloved England and walk among the woods contemplating existence. He has pronounced three divorces on the country that bought his credentials hook, line and sinker. A teacher at Burn Hall said to Akbar S. Ahmed over fifty years ago, ‘Akbar you are as straight as a Jalaibee.’ I rest my case.