Harking Back: Basant and the unending failure of Punjab Police

Last Monday the once ‘legendary’ Punjab police issued a press release that after five years of constant “below par” performance they were going to hit back. The victims are to be the innocent kite flyers of Lahore, who are threatened with a five-year imprisonment.

As Basant – that ancient festival of colour, scholarship and happiness – approaches on the 16thof February, the pious police chief (everyone swears by their piety) has put forward a set of legal remedies against kite manufacturers and kite flyers. He has requested out “highly-educated” legislators, who bank on the good offices of the chief secretary, to get these suggestions to be passed into law. After all who else but the CS would know that Basant is an ‘evil pastime’. Both secretly know that the real culprits are the underage, helmetless fast-track motorcyclists.

Let us take a brief look at both sides of the picture. About the police we all know that they serve the ‘rulers’ only. All over the world as police recruitment demands better educated persons, in the Punjab police it seems this trend is frowned upon. A dear friend who is still serving tells me that the more educated you are the more you are looked down upon. So let us analyse enforcement of the law, and by law one means ‘common sense laws’, and to understand the underlying reasons for ‘kite string deaths’.

Let us turn to statistics, and official police statistics at that. We know that as Lahore does not have the over 10,000 buses needed like the old LOS did when servicing the city, people have found a solution by turning to motorcyclists. It is a rapid service and very affordable. Today, the official record says that Lahore has the world’s largest motorcycle population. In per family terms the city has two motorcycles per family of seven, which is now considered the norm.

The problem arises when young under-18 years of age boys, naturally without a licence, go around speeding, virtually flying, without wearing a helmet. These are in 99.5 per cent cases the victim if a rare string crosses their ‘blinding speed’ path. Experiments carried out show that at such speeds if a loose stone flying from under a speeding car tyre hits them, it will be almost like a bullet. So who would the pious police blame – the illegal speeding helmetless under-age boy or a stray kite string, or the flying stone. The police clearly think it is the kite string. My reading is that they are absolutely wrong.

In my urge to understand their mindset, I contacted a very senior police official. He put it very simply: “Sir, get this straight. The Punjab police cannot control underage kids even though they are violating the law, legal and moral, in every respect. So we have to find an excuse. Otherwise our political masters will get us transferred”. Ah, blame the politicians.

My response was: “Why not restrict kite flying to the old walled city only and ban motorcyclists just for one day”. He thought and said: “Sir, who will listen to us. At least with kite flyers we can arrest someone and our political masters can be satisfied”. So in the end it is a matter of the police being unable, or should one say unwilling, to enforce simple traffic laws as against banning probably the oldest Spring Festival in the world, and now a great tourist attracting occasion.

But then what is Basant all about? The very word ‘patang’ has the same common root in Sanskrit as the word ‘patan’ meaning the early morning coming of the sun rays. Research on the Harappa stones does provide the very first glimpses of this sport. But then this was the pre-Hindu era. In the Vedic period once the Hindu religion was created in what is today Pakistan, we have the deity Saraswati, as mentioned in the Rig Veda, an ancient name for the River Ravi as also the goddess of happiness, scholarship and colour, the three most essential traits of a civilisation.

But the Punjab police today, very sadly, do not stand for these three traits, if not the opposite. As the Punjab was always an agricultural heartland of the entire subcontinent the annual festival of Vasant Panchami (Basant) was celebrated in Lahore and its surroundings with excellent food, colourful clothes, fairs, music, dancing and kite flying. It soon became the envy of the world, and in a way still remains so.

But while in its birthplace Lahore we see kite flying banned, it flourishes in faraway places like Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and even in Kabul, what to speak of Gujranwala and Multan and other smaller towns. But then wherever a Lahori goes so goes kite flying. In an earlier column I had mentioned this person now living in Orange County, Virginia, USA, who has purchased a few hundred acres and on the second Saturday of February, 2021, will be hosting the ‘Lahore Basant Festival’.

It should not come as a surprise that till the writing of this report over 35,000 people have booked a space to pitch their tents and enjoy this ancient Lahore Festival of colour and happiness. Across the border in Amritsar as the protesting farmers return from Delhi they will throw themselves into celebrating the secular festival of the Punjabi month of Maagh. In our villages people follow that ancient calendar because it represents the seasonal cycles of nature.

But what colours emerge on Basant? It is the strong bright yellow of the mustard fields, and it is this colour that our womenfolk and girls wear as they enjoy themselves unhindered. ‘Makkai de roti tay sarsoon da saag’, that is what is served as a primary dish. That we have forgotten the cycles of nature is a sad indictment of what we in Lahore are being pushed towards.

In my earlier piece I had mentioned how this festival of ‘Maagh’ is celebrated in Japan, in Canada, in Spain, in faraway Chile and also in cold Poland. With time it has fitted into different belief systems as festivals are crafted to suit local needs.

This clearly shows Basant as a festival of happiness, where the first plucking of the crops are distributed among the poor. In Punjab the Jains and Buddhists, both of whom ruled over Lahore in past centuries, crafted the happiness of the people to suit their religious beliefs. The Hindu religion also did the same. Islam also excellently rationalised happiness in its tolerance of all happiness occasions. We can see this in the examples set by Amir Khusrau and Nizamuddin Aulia, as also later Muslim rulers as also the Mughals.

The Sikhs carried it forward for 11 days. Classical ‘ragas’ were composed around Basant with ‘Raag Basanti’ being a foremost example. In more recent times we have Sufi poets like Shah Hussain and Bulleh Shah celebrating this in their works. But now the Punjab police wish that all such ideas be cut out of our lives.

We now know that the bizarre ‘chemical string theory’ is a complete myth. Yes, the ‘dor’ has ‘manja’on it which has traces of ground glass, which has always been the norm. Experiments verified by scientists proved that it was not the ‘manja’ that cut, but the speed of the underage children. Even by using silk string the result would be the same.

So what is the solution? One way out would be to ban motorcycles in a given area for 24 hours. That would be the ideal solution. Another would be to allocate five large grounds around Lahore with a ban on motorcycles around it. If this is done on a Sunday it would not hinder any business activity.

Additionally just for one day Lahore should be a 20-mph limit area. But the best would be for police to now arrest underage helmetless motorcyclists and fine their parents. That would be a good beginning.