Remembering Salmaan Taseer

Salmaan Taseer died doing what he wanted to do, to the best of his considerable abilities. In that sense he died with his boots on. There was no other way that he would have wanted to go. And he would have wanted to be mourned, as much as he will be in the days to come, not only by his friends but the people – that mythical horde which some of us, the privileged, profess to serve but which so few of us get a chance to serve; or rather, make that chance happen, Salmaan Taseer did.
Salmaan Taseer was the epitome of a good politician. His sense of timing was exquisite. He knew when to fight, what to fight about and when to get others to fight, as he stepped back and enjoyed their discomfiture. It was all part of politics; no hard feelings were involved. He loved turning the tables on his opponents. The recent caper of his disappearance to Dubai and sudden appearance after his opponents had swallowed the bait and yelled foul was right up his street. It was a made-by-Salmaan sting operation.
Salmaan wanted to be in the thick of things. He loved the cut and thrust of debate. The roar of the crowd gave him a rush, the likes of which, he once told me, was a high like no other. But it wasn’t just that which he craved. He wanted to make a difference, and he was convinced that he could. And by the time he was killed, he had finally succeeded in carving out for himself a position of relevance to the life of a people, of a province and a country, which he loved.
Not for Salmaan the proverbial villa in Tuscany and a life of the indolent rich, which he could well afford. He actually seemed to prefer the company of the unwashed; the cries of the hawkers and their coarse language excited him, it made him feel at home. His oneness with them never embarrassed Salmaan, the tycoon. And he appeared almost grateful when they treated him as one of their own. If he was ever scared, it was that the poor may set him apart merely because of his wealth. His thoughts were focused on their welfare. And yet he was no bleeding-heart liberal who shed tears at what fate had visited on some. You make your own fate. Get up, dust yourself off and fight, was the message he had for those who came to him for sympathy, I made it, and so can you.
What drew us, his friends, to Salmaan, and what we considered his greatest virtue, was, to his adversaries, his greatest fault, and that was his fearlessness, his irreverence for authority, his “in your face” approach, to say things as he saw them, bluntly and incisively, and never to beat about the bush. This often got him in trouble and finally cost him his life. But it would have been intolerable for Salmaan to live otherwise or, frankly, care. “You live once and you are dead forever” might have been his favourite saying. And that is how he lived. Such was his lust for life that he regarded sleep as an enemy because it robbed him of the opportunity to do more. He was indefatigable.
I first met Salmaan in England in 1962. I was at university and he was doing his articles to become a chartered accountant. He had to make do and live within a paltry stipend. I was better off because my father was posted in London, and hence Salmaan and others were frequently fed at our home. We met frequently, and later also in Lahore where we both found ourselves.
I recall being invited by him to spend a week end at his mother’s small flat on Golding Road in Lahore. There was one bed and, as I was his guest, he offered it to me while he slept on the floor. It was a cold winter night and the floor could not have been comfortable, but not for a moment did Salmaan lose his bonhomie. In fact, as I climbed into bed, I asked jokingly what he was “climbing” into. “A much bigger bed than yours,” was the prompt reply, “I have the whole floor.”
Salmaan’s toughness, his ability to withstand physical discomfort was pushed to the limits when he was imprisoned by Nawaz Sharif in the Lahore Fort in the late eighties. His cell consisted of a hole punched into the concrete. He asked his warder for one book – the Holy Quran, in English translation. He studied the Quran for the entire three weeks that he was held in solitary confinement, while stretched out on the floor. He read every word and page over and over again. And one can be sure that by the time he emerged he knew more about the Quran and Islam than his murderer. It is there that he decided that, while he would take his coat from the tailor, he would not take his religion from the mullah. His own take on the Quran and Sunnah, which he had studied and absorbed, sufficed for him. He was confident that he had got the meaning right, and we know now that he did.
Of all the benefits that virtue confers on us, said Montaigne, the contempt of death is one of the greatest. Almost every action of Salmaan manifested that contempt. He actually flaunted his ability to go where he would unarmed, unguarded and unprotected. And actually he was right again, because in the final analysis he was killed by the most unlikely assassin, his own bodyguard, against whom no amount of security could work.
Salmaan Taseer would admit in his candid moments that Pakistan was in trouble. Hypocrisy, greed and deceit fuelled by incompetence had brought it to its current sorry pass. It worried him that in some of our cities there were many mosques but very few schools, factories and workshops. Surely, God is to be found in your heart, he once said, and not only in the mosque. But the answer, he used to say, is not to opt out but opt in. Not to flee but to stay. Nor, in his view, was something so wrong with Pakistan that only a miracle could fix it.
Well, he tried. Did he succeed? We don’t know, but what we do know is that Salmaan Taseer gave his life in attempting to, and no one can ask for more.