Harassment and Adnan Sami Khan’s Harangue!
by, Mohammad Shehzad
What kind of people are harassed? You can be harassed if you are an upright civil society activist (a journalist, politician, lawyer, rights/religious figure, or even an ordinary citizen) working zealously for a cause against the status quo.
Harassed…how?
‘Warning is the first stage of harassment. ‘Brothers’ can leave a couple of bullets outside your gate in a gift-paper.
Or they might invite you to their safe-house in their own chauffer driven car (this happened to me in 2004) and ‘request’ you not to carry on what you are doing.
If you don’t take them seriously, you will be provided official security – motorcyclists will chase you on a 24/7 basis. This is the second stage – surveillance (faced it the same year).
And if you still want to act like a ‘hero’, a truck might hit your vehicle; or some punks will set it on fire; or somebody will hit you physically for not using indicators while taking a u-turn.
Of course you will report such incidents to the concerned authorities and the media would love to raise them for it flourishes on such stories.
This is the third stage which still does not make you eligible for political asylum at developed destinations – the US, Canada, Australia or Europe.
You must experience the fourth stage, i.e., forced disappearance. If not, brothers will barge into your house, whisk you away, torture, insult and abuse you physically and abandon you on any desolate road – refer to Umar Cheema case.
The fifth stage can be fatal.
You can be gunned down like Hamid Mir or Malala. Chances of survival are dim in this stage. If you live, you make a strong case for asylum. Salman Peerzada, Waqas Goraya, Malala and Ahmad Noorani were not airheads like Hamid Mir, Asad Ali Toor, Umar Cheema and many others who opted to stare into death’s eyes instead of becoming an asylum-seeker on the land of strangers.
You might ask here how an ordinary citizen who is not into any kind of activism be harassed. Your mind is right.
You can be a victim of injustice. You will raise your voice for justice. Your voice will threaten the supreme national interests. Got it?
Take Dr Shazia Khalid’s case. She was gang-raped by a serving army captain and others – persistently harassed and threated with life for seeking justice. She had to leave the country and at that point General Musharraf said that she had faked the gang rape to get the Canadian passport.
What do you do after you are harassed? You talk about injustice. Media becomes your voice and spreads the news about your harassment. If the harassment becomes unbearable and a threat to your life, you seek political asylum in any other country where you feel safe and leave your motherland. Consider the examples of Asia Bibi, Dr Yunas Shaikh, or Dr Shazia Khalid.
How about if you lived your life as a prince.
Every state organ was at your disposal. You never experienced any of the stages explained above and yet you run away all of a sudden and years later state that you left the country for you were harassed and in the same breath say that when the right time will come you will talk about the harassment?
You will be taken as a clown. And that’s exactly the tale of my old friend Adnan Sami Khan. That’s what he has been telling the media of late.
What? The harassment which condemned him to leave Pakistan and become an Indian citizen!
So when will he talk about it? When the right time will come!
Adnan got an Indian passport in 2016. When will the right time come? Seven years have already passed!
Being a son of a bureaucrat in Pakistan and with friends at court everywhere, Adnan lived like a monarch. Pakistan Television was ordered to promote him as a practitioner of classical music on piano that has no recognition in shastriya sangeet.
He had money, so he could have bought the services of Ustad Zakir Hussain to accompany him on tabla in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad only to be completely overshadowed by a god of percussion. Then he bought a lesser tabla player – Shafaat Ahmad Khan. But he too whitewashed Adnan.
Money could not buy Khan Sahebs (professional musicians of top standing) of Pakistan. None took Adnan seriously. So, he tried singing but failed. No composer was impressed to offer him work. But he had money. So he became a hero in his own movie – a great flop.
Which field was left? Joker? Ya ya. So, he became a clown and paired himself with Amitabh Bachchan in a song which attracted millions – of course because of the Big B (Amitabh Bachchan, not General Bajwa). But nobody offered him even a cameo joker role in a movie or a drama.
The guy is suffering from an identity crisis. He was a crow, but not willing to accept the reality. He tried his best to walk like a peacock. Now crows don’t welcome him.
But our fawning Adnan is clever. He can dance to any out of the beat/notes tune. Thus, he can cozen a devil.
With a candy deal of sycophancy, he made Modi throw two jewels in his begging bowl: Indian passport and Padma Shri.
But the irony is tragic. The rich land of musicians, India, does not take him as a Pandit, or a flopped playback singer/actor/comedian. How to be on screen 24/7? Politics!
So, Adnan wants a seat in the Rajya Sabha, which Modi can grant if the right price is paid. The right price was always the same in his case, i.e., Pakistan bashing.
He is doing great by spitting venom against Pakistan. The venom is bound to increase when the so-called right time comes.
