Better not to be a hypocrite

“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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