Harassment And Adnan Sami Khan’s Harangue!

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 driver 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 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 you did not use indicator while taking a u-turn. Of course you will report
such incidents to the concerned authorities and 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 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 the 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 he will talk about it? When the right time will come!

Adnan got Indian passport in 2016. When the right time will 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 shashtriya 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 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 Shree. 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
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 will come.