Following in the footsteps of Begum Kulsoom Saifullah and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Chairman Imran Khan, who recently compiled their memoirs, PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and the most controversial interior minister of Pakistani history, Rehman Malik, are penning their autobiographies.
Reacting to venomous tirade of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif against President Asif Ali Zardari, Rehman Malik claimed that he had a lot of “stuff” against the Sharifs that could be made public at the appropriate time. “I am also authoring a book (autobiography) in which many secrets will be revealed,” announced Malik, who was also recently awarded with an honorary doctorate degree by the Karachi University.
Meanwhile, a central leader of PML-Q told Pakistan Today that Shujaat Hussain had also hired the services of same Urdu writer who penned Begum Kulsoom Saifullah’s autobiography “Meri Tenha Parwaz”.
As Shujaat is one of the most seasoned living politicians of the country, he definitely has treasure trove to share with the people of the country provided he opts to put minimum filter on his mental recollections, otherwise they say “half truth is full lie”.
To author autobiographies has been a favourite leisure time pastime of our rulers as Ayub Khan authored (Friends Not Masters), Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (If I Am Assassinated), Benazir Bhutto (Daughter Of The East), Yousaf Raza Gilani (Chah-e-Yousaf Se Sada), Pervez Musharraf (In The Line Of Fire), Sheikh Rashid Ahmed (Farzand-e-Pakistan), Makhdoom Javed Hashmi (Haan Mein Baghi Hoon), Asghar Khan (My Political Struggle) and many more politicians at one stage of their political career preserved their personal experiences and political ideologies in the form of a book.
Without saying a word on autobiographies of our politicians, I quote famous English biographer and writer Humphrey Carpenter who once said: “Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.”
Sources close to Shujaat say that in his autobiography, the veteran politician would unveil the real face of many politicians with whom he has been working like the Sharifs, apart from telling the whole truth about Musharraf’s eight-year rule. If the Chaudhry from Gujrat really tells the whole truth about his political journey and past and present partners, the book will not only sell like hotcakes but will also ignite new controversies and spate of heated arguments in political arena of the country. Let’s see when PML-N President Nawaz Sharif and PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari make up their minds to transfer the history of their pains and pleasures on paper sheets.
Imran’s recently launched book “Pakistan: A Personal History”, succeeded in wining laurels across the globe due to Khan’s iconic stature as sportsman, and the book is cleverly crafted mixture of Pakistan’s history and his own autobiography reflecting the challenges that Khan faced in cricket and later on in his humanitarian work and politics. He proposes not just political overhaul but religious reappraisal, calling for an “enlightened Islam” that is not too afraid to take as its guide the best of Western democratic values as well as Quranic scripture.
Another, recently published book of Begum Kalsoom Saifullah, “Meri Tanha Parvaz” (My Solo Flight) also gained some attention due to book’s controversial material. However, some of the disclosures in the book caused fissures and differences in the PML-Likeminded which forced the author to clarify her position on revelations made about General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, the father of PML-likeminded secretary general Humayun Akhtar.
The quote which caused trouble for his son Senator Salim Saifullah, the PML-Likeminded President, is: “Gen Akhtar Abdur Rehman told me that he could not even afford to buy a cycle. However, these people went on accumulating wealth and property in a manner which is incomprehensible.” Once world’s number one tennis player, Boris Becker said many years ago: “An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.”
In the book, Begum Kulsoom Safiullah narrates the events of her 50 years of political experience and throws light on various eras starting from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif’s tenure. On the Ojhri Camp tragedy, the author writes: “I can confidently say that some Stinger missiles were taken out of the Ojhri Camp on orders from General Zia so that they could be provided to Iran, and Gen Zia ordered that Ojhri Camp be blown up before the arrival of the US inspection team.”
Humayun Akhtar Khan also held launching ceremony of his ‘so-called’ book “Road Map to Pakistan’s Recovery”, last week, which in fact proved just the manifesto of Pakistan Muslim League-Likeminded and had no meat for the curious readers therefore it was dubbed as a “wish list” of a political party lacking concrete strategies to steer the country out of existing crises.
“It would have been far better for Akhtar to author his autobiography than to compile a boring manifesto-type-piece for his party,” said a PML-Likeminded leader seeking not to be attributed.
Lt Gen (r) Talat Masood, who was guest at the book-launching ceremony, told Pakistan Today that the book was nothing more than a wish list of a political party. “In Humayun’s book, only problems and challenges have been identified which people have been identifying for decades … The question is how to bring about change, how to integrate policies with each other … the book is silent on the question about resource generation,” he said.