Genesis of Extremism in South Punjab

By : Zeeshan Hussain

Published On: 2014-03-16

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37:18

This documentary was made to investigate the genesis of extremism in South Punjab when it was transpired to the world that south Punjab is a nursery of Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan. While making this documentary I was lifted by the cohorts of Maulana Masood Azhar in Bahawalpur. They beat us and snatched our camera. After a strenuous effort we were able to take refuge in the home of our staff reporter, Mr Abbasi, a resident of Bahawalpur. The video of the brawl with the companions of Maulana was discarded by an intelligence agency of the country. After a tedious wait extended over 6 long hours we were taken to a government office where we were detained for 4 more hours. A lecture was delivered to us on the "Strategic Assets" of the country owned by the agency which we had never been interested in but unwittingly we had to listen to it otherwise we could have been beaten to the blue though. Dr Ayesha Siddiqa knows the whole story because we met her a day earlier at her place, near Bahawalpur. We met a mother whose song was persuaded into the jihadi activities against the "infidels" and he got martyrdom in the course of having a glory. The mother doesnt know who convinced and persuaded him and she even doesnt know who announced the street named after him. The slogans inscribed on the mud wall are evident of the fact that the emotions of the poor and illiterate young ones are set ablaze and these young chaps are used to further the state interests by playing in the hands of the state agencies. We were thunder struck after finding the people of the area so much frightened that they never spoke a word before camera confirming that the store houses of the madrassas were actually used for storing the pernicious weapons, South Punjab is poverty ridden, flood stricken, feudalism based society where state finds poor people to be used as canon fodder for the extremism, sectarianism and fundamentalism. This documentary shows the original and lighter side of the culture stemming out of the soil of the South Punjab. It is a land of sufis, poets, saints and hermits. It has inspired hundreds of generations and the sweetness of its language is famous all over the sub continent. The crossing of Sangum in D G Khan is the only place where four roads lead to four different provinces of the country. After the documentary was aired the cries for military operations and search operations were stopped in South Punjab, altogether because the society on the whole was not ridden with extremism but there did exist handpicked seminaries where the syllabus and methodology were leading towards extremism and it was to be checked by the government so an all out operation displacing the millions of people was pointless. Already the example of Swat was there where displacement uprooted millions of people in the name of military operation.

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