“I am
earning bread with honor” many people may laugh when hear such words from a prostitute
quoted by a veteran Pakistani Urdu literati. “A woman with a bad character is
going to perform Hajj”, a friend passed as funny remarks. Perhaps majority of
us would have burst into laughed by hearing about a plea by transgender
community seeking removal of ban on their participation in the pilgrimage (Hajj
and Umra) at Macca.
We will not highlight the fact that it is the esteemed
landed and social gentry whose participation enliven the late night gatherings
at the abodes of the dancers and prostitutes, which the noted writer Saadat
Hassan Manto puts as, “no one can better know the noble of my city than the prostitutes
of my city. But the way we doubt and laugh at their actions pertaining to the
religious obligations and social services is never justified.
One should
not wonder to hear about the participation of dancers and prostitutes in
religious rituals and social services. A veteran Pakistani bureaucrats Qudrarullah
Shahab in his memoir writes, “A prostitute Bashiri, once visited my office when
I was Deputy Commissioner, she complained that he was going to perform pilgrimage,
but there were some influential people who would occupy her home in her absence”.
“ I have been selected and called from
the holy place” he writes saying the woman, “ If I don’t go, adverse
consequences will follow”, she continued, “ I have rendered many services to
the nations and humanity” she showed a number of receipts of her contribution
to Kashmir fund, Quadi Azam Relief fund, charity services to orphans and
widows. (Mulaqati, P 356, 57).
Aamtal is in
the legendary urdu novel, Raja Gidh is a prostitute who get deceived by a noble
and educated person. She gave all she
possessed and felt a spark insider her, but the reward given to her was indeed
of a strange nature, when she woke up she found neither her money nor the man
she loved and trusted more.
What makes
them different from rest of the so called pious and noble creatures is
not their mean profession as it is commonly believed, rather their commitment to
life. they would perhaps be heard more when they visit the holy places because
they feel and show what they are, rather than those who conceal what they are,
and try to show what they are not. People who confess what they are ,and shun
hypocrisy are rare yet not totally non-existent. Mumtaz Mufti is perhaps one of
those who never tried to veil his real self with a cloak of decency and become
a claimant to an undeserved elevated status. He in his travelogue Labaik,
writes that during the Haj while praying at the holy mosque he felt an odor,
which perhaps was the odor of hypocrisy
living deep in the hearts of all the participants, which they never noticed.
We would
rarely hear a dancer or prostitute committed murder, harmed someone, hurt someone
religious feelings. They don’t habour hatred against their fellow beings, don’t
claim an elevated status in religious, and social discourses, don’t seek means
and ways to make other lighted and humiliated. Whereas such things are the
practices common all those who reckon them as mean and inferior creatures.
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