Daily Times

Salmaan Taseer was amongst those few Pakistani political leaders who remained steadfast in their progressive commitment till the end. His enlightened and hardworking parents inculcated in him the virtues and values of two great religions, Islam and Christianity, instead of hate and bigotry. He cherished those values and was least hesitant to lay down his life in the fight against intolerance. A couple of days before he fell to an assassin’s bullets he was reported to have recited for an interviewer a line from Faiz:

“Phir hum hi qatl ho aayein yaaro chalo” (Then let us go to be executed).

Very early in his life, he had lost his father and experienced the caring of a very hardworking mother. These were also the times when his aunt was facing hard times as her husband Faiz Ahmed Faiz was imprisoned.

Maternal care and an educated environment enabled him to pursue his studies in Lahore’s leading educational institutions and subsequently in England from where he returned as a Chartered Accountant and on return partnered a leading firm doing business both in Pakistan and abroad.

Salmaan Taseer remained politically active since his student days. He was amongst those who campaigned for the release of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during Ayub Khan’s authoritarian regime. He continued to take interest in politics while he was engaged in establishing himself in his profession. He also did some spadework for katchi abadi (slum) dwellers with Dr Mubashir Hasan in the 70s.

Salmaan did not abandon the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) when its government was overthrown and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested, charged with murder and executed. The party leadership and rank and file was put under great pressure during the rule of the country’s worst military dictator, General Ziaul Haq. Salmaan was amongst those imprisoned and tortured besides being confined to the worst torture cells at the Lahore Fort. He was reported to have politely rejected the overtures made by the establishment.

Salmaan Taseer’s progressive, secular and liberal beliefs were put to great strain and test when he continued in the office of Governor Punjab after the general elections of 2008. After the exit of the military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, the obscurantists directed their onslaught against those who were seeking amendments to the insertions made in the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) during Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship. The Federal Shariat Court, a parallel judicial organ created under Zia’s martial law, had ruled that death alone was to be the punishment under Section 295-C of the PPC. Since then scores of common citizens, including both Muslims and non-Muslims, were booked under the said section for allegedly committing blasphemy. Despite the fact that it was proved before the higher courts that the accused had not committed the act deserving a death sentence, in the lower courts mullahs used to pressurise the judicial officer to award the sentence. In prisons also some of the accused were murdered. Even a judge of the lower court was murdered in the court and a High Court judge who had acquitted an accused was slain. Amongst 50 plus majority Muslim countries there were only a couple where blasphemy entailed the death penalty. Therefore, there was a demand from both the targeted minorities, civil society and enlightened Muslim clerics to amend the said law so that the fair name of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) should be saved from being exploited by fanatics claiming to be puritan Islamists.

Salmaan Taseer had been a votary of amending 295-C of the PPC and protecting those who have been mischievously charged under the said provisions over petty quarrels. It was in the matter of such a person, a young lady who belonged to the Christian faith, that he, as the representative of the federal government travelled to Sheikhupura Jail to assure her that she will be defended by the state and no harm would come to her and her family.

Unfortunately, the obscurantists have found a niche in the print and electronic media run by arch conservatives, besides the uneducated prayer leaders entrenched in sectarian mosques. There was a persistent campaign from these places against proposed improvements in the law and the rules. Salmaan Taseer, who took up the cudgels against fanatics and voiced his views publicly, was given death threats publicly by certain clerics and at least one of them even announced a bounty on his head. It worked in subverting quite a few, turning them into intolerant bigots. And it was one such person, assigned the duty of providing protection to Governor Salmaan Taseer, who pumped dozens of bullets into his body with his official weapon.

Salmaan Taseer is now living as a legend for those who believe in tolerance and freedom of expression and despise fanaticism and bigotry.

The writer is a veteran journalist and human rights activist