Hamidsummer Night's Mir

Lifetime achievement awards are usually meant to acknowledge a lifetime of achievements. It usually means either the achievements are coming to an end or the person being honoured is about to kick the bucket. Sometimes it can be a not so subtle hint that says, here, take your award and die.

The good people of SAARC who last week gave Hamid Mir a lifetime achievement award probably didn't mean any of the above. In fact nobody knows what the hell they meant. Ms Ajit Kaur who announced the award on behalf of the delightfully titled Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSAWL) said:

“Mir...spoke against the genocide of Bangladeshis by the Pakistan Army in 1971. She said only two people were happy with the creation of Bangladesh - General JS Arora in India and Hamid Mir in Pakistan.”

The Daily Times’ Iftikhar Gillani, who reported the story, goes on to point out:

“Kaur failed to realise that Mir was only a six-year-old when East Pakistan separated, so how could a minor boy be happy over his country’s disintegration.”

Well Mr. Gillani obviously doesn't know Hamid Mir well. I am sure even at the age of six he could have declared the creation of Bangladesh a vindication of the Two Nation Theory and yet another humiliation for the Hindu army.

A more likely explanation, however, is that Ms. Kaur probably mistook him for his dad, the late Waris Mir, who we hear was a decent journalist in the '70s (though he spent most of his life as a Jamaati before becoming a ‘progressive’).

The citation also goes on to say that Hamid Mir is the only journalist who has covered wars in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Bosnia and Chechnya. It doesn't mention Hamid Mir's role as a one-man peacekeeping force in Lal Masjid and later in Swat. And of course we don't expect FOSAWL to know what Mr Mir was doing in Jamia Naeemia only a few days ago.

But the even more curious thing is that in his column in today's Jang (must confess, it's our Monday morning fix), Hamid Mir mentions his trip to India for the FOSAWL event (the column basically says India sucks more than Pakistan sucks) but there is no mention of the award or any attempt to clarify the contents of the citation. Geo has also reported the story but obviously it hasn't brought up the angle that Hamid Mir as a six-year-old was Pakistan's answer to India’s General Arora.

Here's a part of Mr Mir's speech:

Either it's Amn Ki Asha gone senile or perhaps the US$5000 cheque that Mir received with his award has turned him into a softie.