Why some businessmen are reluctant to pay tax

A few years back I was explaining the benefits of paying income tax to some Memon businessmen. Of course, I've been paying income tax since 1967 (58 years ago), but when I found that getting a visa for the UK and other countries, it is necessary to be registered with the FBR and file income tax returns (even if you don't earn anything), I got my wife registered and we immediately got visas for the UK, Singapore, etc. Despite this, the Memons were not convinced. One of them said, "Once you start paying income tax, they will harass you no end, they will come to your office and try to find some mistake in your accounts so they can extract bribes from you".

He was, of course, telling the truth. I remember once getting a notice for a huge amount from a lady income tax officer (she is a non-Muslim). Without giving any reason, she got my company's bank accounts frozen, and the income tax consultant took quite a lot of money to operate our accounts again.

This is why the system is so rotten. The income tax officer can do anything and will never have to face accountability for any illegal activity. So, when People's Party representatives in parliament objected to giving sweeping powers to FBR officials to arrest people, I understood their concerns (even though our politicians are highly corrupt). Until and unless FBR officials are told that they cannot act without proof and they will be tried for using their powers to harass innocent people without proof, businessmen will be reluctant to pay tax.

 

Boys are rare

Published in Dawn Magazine on November 1996

In his article, Vulver: Memon style (Dawn Magazine, October 18, 1996), the writer did not state that this system is prevalent throughout India and Pakistan (except, as he said, among scattered communities, notably among Pathans and the Baloch, where it’s the other way around). The fact is that wherever the population of unmarried females is greater than that of males, the system will be difficult to dislodge. (Just as, among the Pathan and the Baloch, the “vulver” system is in vogue, owing to the greater population of males among them).

The writer is wrong when he says that this system was not prevalent in pre-partition India. Among Memons from Bantva, it has been the custom for well over a century to “buy” suitable bridegrooms. Now, since the female population is growing almost exponentially, other Memons (besides of course most Pakistanis) have adopted the practice. Unless some legal method of reducing the spiralling female population is found, the pugree or jahez system will always be there. In India, it is not uncommon for women to take ultra-sound tests during pregnancy (to determine the sex of the unborn child), and to abort the fetus if it is a female.

What is more disturbing (particularly among Memons) is the extravagance and indiscipline displayed during weddings. At least three dinners are common (even at the time of engagement) and sometimes up to 500 people are present at valimas. The hungry guests are kept waiting until the bridegroom swaggers in, as if he’s doing the whole world a big favour (invariably half an hour before midnight), and then there is a mad rush for the food. There have been instances of dacoits barging in and depriving women of their jewellery. By the time the guests return home, the new day is already an hour old.

Things have got so bad that last week I saw a lavishly embellished card (it must’ve cost at least Rs. 100 to print), inviting the recipient to to a “pre-engagement dinner in honour of our future son-in-law”. I do not know what the host wanted to prove, apart of course from the fact that he has enough money to burn and doesn’t know the difference between “pre” and “post”. At another wedding dinner last month, at least 3500 guests had been invited. It required all the seven wedding lawns located on Shara-e-Faisal to seat and feed them.

Even though both the familes were supposedly deeply religious (photography and video-graphy of the event was not allowed), the dinner was as usual served very late. Last year, I was in the U.K. when Imran’s wedding dinner was held at a hotel. The papers described it as “GRAND: A HUNDRED GUESTS!” I told my hosts that in Pakistan I had attended my cousin’s wedding the week before, where 3000 people had been invited. They were incredulous. “You call Pakistan a poor country?” was the reaction of a factory-owner. We Memons weren’t like this 20 years ago. There were no lavish dinners and at the most, only 100 guests were sufficient to prove that the family was not bankrupt. All the Memon Jamaats were headed by practical men who believed that extravagance and waste was a sin. In fact, as recently as the 80s, grand valima dinners were the exception rather than the rule, unlike the present. It is now more than ever necessary for the government to force all marriage gardens and lawns to close at 10 at night. Besides saving precious electricity, at least we shall be able to get home before the dacoits do.

Millionaire beggars

I saw a video clip today which showed an attractive Pakistani woman who became wealthy by begging. She's earned enough to buy two apartments and a restaurant in Malaysia. She's given up begging now, but she did say that most beggars don't need to beg, they have enough to live on for the rest of their lives.

This reminded me of a millionaire beggar about whom I wrote in DAWN in 1998. He appeared to be blind, deaf and lame, and when I discovered that he was a Memon like me, I collected some cash and went to his house, where I found that he was actually a fake beggar, and a millionaire to boot. In another article for Tribune, I had estimated that there must be more than two million beggars in Karachi, particularly in the month of fasting. 

In Karachi itself, practically every locality has a social organization providing free food to the poor. Yet whenever I've told beggars to go there, they turn away. Apparently they don't want the food, they want the money. One day in Clifton, I was about to give money

to a child beggar when he told me to buy him a burger instead. It turned out that there was a goon watching him and if I gave the kid any money, he would come over and take it from him. Apparently the goon had many such children begging and making him rich.

 

Why I don't attend Memon wedding dinners

A couple of days back I wrote about even Memons not printing their women's names on wedding cards. I received such a card from a distant relative, a Memon who has never done a day's work in his entire life (because his illiterate father left him a huge fortune). This man has his own views on what real Islam is. A few months back, he started his tirade against what is wrong with our society, and how to improve it by observing the true religion (namely, having long beards and wearing ankle-length trousers, among other things). Since I'm allergic to such people, I did not go to his son's wedding dinner.

The other reason, of course, is that people like him think having dinner before midnight is a heinous sin. I did not want to return home two hours after midnight, particularly during these days when people are mugged every day.

The next time I meet him and if he starts talking about religion, I'll tell him about my own wedding dinner, which was at 8 pm. My friends at the time thought I was joking and didn't believe me when I told them this. A minute before eight, my father announced that dinner was being served. My friends were amazed. They thought I had deliberately arranged an early dinner to avoid going to a shrine in Clifton (in those days, every believer was supposed to go there and beg the dead man buried there to help them become fathers in nine months). One of my friends (now deceased) even told me to pray and ask the saint (Abdullah Shah) to forgive me for this transgression. As it turned out, his own wife sued him for divorce after the birth of their first child (a girl). I should have asked him why the saint didn't help him, but of course I didn't have the heart to do it (due to my upbringing in a missionary school). 

I regret giving up teaching!

In Pakistan two of the most difficult professions were always under-paid: teaching and writing. Nowadays teachers (especially tuition teachers) are highly paid. In my apartment block, there is a man who lives in a penthouse on the fifteenth floor (the rent of which is about Rs. 400,000 p.m.). He is so much in demand that aside from his regular job (in a prestigious college), he teaches students who live twenty kilometers away. He even has armed guards when he moves around, so he must be very rich.

Then there is this young chap of 25 or so who teaches maths to children of my relatives and neighbors. He has his own car and dictates the time and day when he can come to teach. He even goes abroad for vacations once or twice a year.

I used to teach in NED Engineering College and would be paid Rs. 25 per lecture. In my spare time, children of neighbors and relatives would come to my house to solve math problems (I did it for free). It was widely believed by Memons that only losers took up teaching.

Members of other communities (particularly Urdu speakers) of course regarded teachers with respect. I remember how a Customs officer changed his attitude when he discovered that I had once been a lecturer in a prestigious institution. Until then, he had treated me like he did all other businessmen, thinking that I was a tax evader. Another time a retired officer in the oil industry was amazed when he was told that I had given his son (my assistant) time off to study for exams, as his son was also a student of mine.

Memons too have taken advantage of the boom in teaching, but instead of becoming lecturers they have opened tuition centers where they employ others to teach. Among them is the son of a distant relative of mine who gave up his job to open a tuition center. Another Memon has spent a fortune for his sons to become partners of Anis Hussain, the man who prepared many students for IBA and other colleges.

Two prominent Memons

Being a Memon myself, people are surprised when I speak disparagingly of Memons. This is because most Memons have become extremists and have given up reading. Whenever I'm in a gathering full of Memons, I don't open my mouth, mainly because I'm afraid I'll get lynched for expressing my views. I also can't understand why some filthy rich Memons prefer Imran Khan over other politicians, even though they accumulated their wealth when Nawaz and Zardari were in power. 

So, I thought I might talk of two Memons who were very prominent in years past. One was the cardiologist Dr. Kassim (whose first name I've forgotten). I knew both his sons Rafiq (a cardiologist himself) and Yousuf. Dr. Kassim died of heart failure at the age of 44, his sons also died in their fifties. His daughter Shehnaz lived up to the age of 65 or thereabouts. Not only Dr. Kassim, his brothers and nephews also suffered from cardiovascular disease. 

The other prominent Memon was Dr. Juma (a neurologist). He was so famous that people from all over the world used to consult him. The wives of Dr. Kassim and Dr. Juma were sisters. I used to hear some uncomplimentary things about Dr. Juma's greed. A young Memon was injured in a road accident, and Dr. Juma reportedly refused to operate until he was paid in advance. Another incident involved a woman who cursed him because he refused to operate on her son. Later Dr. Juma's own son died in a road accident, apparently this was due to the poor woman's curse, although I'm not certain if Dr. Juma was indeed as bad as they used to say.

There were other prominent Memons (like my maternal grandfather who died in 1951) who also deserve to be mentioned, mainly for their charity (in which Memons excel, even today). But suffice it to say that even though the Memon community is disliked for being obsessed with collecting wealth, occasionally it does produce heroes.

 

The future is bleak

There are days when I see or hear something that fills me with despair. Yesterday was such a day. I'd been invited by a close relative for lunch at his house. Among the guests was a renowned banker as well as a filthy rich Memon who has never done a day's work in his life, nor read a book, but considers himself an authority on every subject under the sun. Of course, being acting as if he's deeply religious (like most Memons), he couldn't refrain from lecturing us on his version of religion. I had a hard time diverting the conversation.

The Memon, who has skillfully avoided paying his due share of income tax, reacted visibly when the banker said that Bangladesh has progressed due to having 65 percent of its women in its work force. Obviously this was anathema to the heavily bearded guy, after which he said that Pakistanis don't know much about Sharia. I could have told him many things about the subject which he'd never heard, but having been taught to be polite and not argue about religious matters, I held my tongue. 

I'm despondent that the majority of my countrymen are just like that Memon. They think women being allowed to work is the reason why the country is so backward, that watching TV and films should be banned, women should not be allowed to venture out of their houses and a man is not a good Muslim unless he manages to make his wife produce fifteen children.

Fat young Memons refusing to reduce

Two days ago a close female relative (about 68 or 69 years old) passed away. I rarely go to funerals because of the fear of getting Covid, but this time I had to attend the funeral as well as the gathering on the next day just so her husband wouldn't feel bad. I was astonished to see men in their thirties and forties weighing more than a hundred kilos and already on insulin. Among them was a son of the deceased woman. He used to be an active boy in school and I had thought he would be a huge success in the corporate world, but because his late mother was deeply religious and wanted her sons to be like her, he had joined the Tableeghi Jamaat and became unemployable. No surprise, yesterday, just two days after his mother's death he was off to attend a huge gathering of his fellow Tableeghis where they are told what will happen to them after they're dead.

What I don't understand is why they accumulate so much weight. My late cousin's son is one of them. His father died nine years back, and at that time he didn't weigh so much. In fact, he used to be regular at the club gym, many times he would be on the treadmill besides me. Yet even though he has sufficient will power to get up very early in the morning for prayers, he just can't summon the will to walk half an hour a day. Surely, being a gold medalist graduate in business administration, he must be aware that obesity can cause him to have a stroke or an early heart attack. But no, he's been brainwashed into believing that if it's in his stars to be obese or die an early death, there's nothing he can do to avert it. Already, at the age of 40, he's on insulin and suffering from arthritis also. 

I know these fat young Memons will go on gaining weight for the remainder of their lives and will be lucky to live beyond 60.

Cousin marriages have turned most Pakistani and Indian Muslims into morons

Cousin marriages have been so common among Pakistani and Indian Muslims that most of them are morons. I refer particularly to my own community (Memons) who not only look like morons but also behave like imbeciles. They are the ones who suffer from the delusion that marriages to first cousins ensure the purity of race, besides of course ensuring that there are no property disputes in the family.

Last night, after a very long time (due to Covid), I went to a wedding dinner. Since it was held at an air force base, the dinner was served at 10:30 p.m., which is an hour earlier than what most Memons are accustomed to. But the way heavily bearded and corpulent Memons attacked the food, one would have thought it was their last food before dying. Contemptuously ignoring the queue in which I stood, they pushed people in the queue aside and stuck their hands into the plates. I glared at such a one, but it had no effect. He told the man ahead of me, "Give me five of those fish and two of those rotis". Really, I think Memons are headed for extinction, the way they crave food and refuse to exercise.

I am reading about the Moghuls nowadays (I'm on the fourth book on the subject). I found that besides marrying cousins, they also took wives from other communities, even Hindus. Perhaps this is why there are a few Pakistani and Indian Muslims who can be called intelligent. Some have even become presidents of India, and there are some intelligent ones working in western countries. Let's hope such Muslims multiply.

Why are some Memons not satisfied with one wife?

I have never understood why some of my fellow Memons take second and even third wives even though their first ones are still around. Over the years I've seen one Memon with three wives, he took a second wife when the first one couldn't give birth to males, with the second one he had a male child, but then he took a third one to look after him in his old age. And old he certainly is nowadays. Five years senior to me, he is now bed-ridden, having fallen down a few times and broken a few bones in the process.

Then there was that cinema owner (a neighbor of mine) who one day sent his wife and children to Murree for a couple of weeks, and before they returned he had taken a second wife (a close relative of a film actress). She was not a Memon, and her children didn't look like Memons either. But the man kept both wives and their children in his huge mansion until his death. I suppose that's what wealth does to men who acquire it without much effort.

There was a relative of mine who took a second wife because the first one couldn't conceive. He became the father of three, so at least he had some justification. But there are two cousins who are childless and have not used that reason to marry again, despite having endured years of taunts from their friends. 

Some mullahs are also to be blamed. Years ago there used to be a woman writer who would advise other women to help their husbands get second and third wives, because (in her opinion), there were many unmarried women in society who might turn to prostitution to support themselves. And that is also what a mullah says every Friday to his audience, one of them being another relative of mine who is almost eighty. The only thing wrong with this kind of thinking is that there are many more males in Pakistan than females, and if some of them take many wives, there will be more males who will not be able to find women to marry, so there is great danger of such men to go to prostitutes to get sex. 

Corruption can never make you happy!

Way back in the 1970s, I was a construction engineer in an oil company. It had been newly launched by my fellow Memons from Bantva in India. I had been out of touch with members of my community and hadn't made any Memon friends in school or college. So I was shocked to find that they used four letter words frequently in their speech. I was also astounded to find that practically every Memon there tried to take bribes from suppliers, contractors and every outsider who needed to get something done.

The managing director was an illiterate son of the richest man in the country. So he naturally thought I was also taking bribes from the many contractors who reported to me. One day he actually said it, and I immediately went to the house of my boss (a great man named Farukhi) and offered him my resignation. He tore up my resignation letter and said he would let me go only after I found another job. The poor man himself was sacked by the illiterate boss a couple of months later. 

I also knew that the guttersnipe was looting the company. I won't go into details but I got confirmation when some bills were accidentally sent to me for verification for work which had never been done. I went to my immediate superior at the time and asked him what the hell was going on. He winked and pointed towards the MD's office to indicate that the money was going to him.

When the company was nationalized, I felt sorry at first, but then I thought the owners deserved it,  considering that they had looted the company and deprived poor shareholders of their legitimate profits. Among the shareholders there were poor widows and people who were struggling to survive on meager incomes.

As for myself, even though I never took money from suppliers or contractors, I was thought to be highly corrupt by practically everyone who worked in the company. To make both ends meet after my marriage, I had started working as a visiting lecturer at the engineering college where I had studied. I had also taken contracts to build storage tanks in a paint factory. One day as I was lecturing to the students, I saw with horror my department head standing outside the Dean's office nearby. He hadn't seen me, but I decided to tell him that I was doing part time work without taking permission from him. He was amazed. Like everyone else he too had been thinking that I was highly corrupt. So he said, "This proves you are not making illicit income, you're honest". He then told me to go on giving lectures until my retirement. And he always treated me with the greatest respect whenever we met.

I've never regretted being honest, even though some of my relatives told me I was a fool. I've had students who went on to become millionaires before they turned forty, I've had relatives who made billions illegally, but I doubt if I'd have been happy if I had been corrupt.  

Another rich Memon kicks the bucket

For many years now, I've noticed that more Memons are dying before they reach the age of 70. In fact, most of them pop off before they're 65. There are two corpulent Memons I know who should have been buried long ago, yet they somehow manage to evade death.

Such a one was Siraj Kasim Teli, who didn't have to work very hard to accumulate his billions. He inherited millions and these turned into billions without much effort. I always knew there was something wrong with him. The man had to force himself to speak loudly, there was a defect in his respiratory system. Whenever he spoke, it was in a loud whisper. 

I do not know if he was a victim of Covid 19. He was in Dubai when he died, having been hospitalized after he contracted pneumonia a couple of days back. Health care in Dubai is nothing to rave about, as its hospitals are state-owned and the doctors are mostly poorly-paid Indians.

He made the same mistake most Memons make: a sedentary life, rich food and practically no exercise. Unlike most Memons, though, he was clean-shaven and apparently very educated (or else he would have joined a religious party). May he rest in peace.

 

Today I complete seventy six years on the planet

I am probably the only Memon among my peers who knows his date of birth. I have my original birth certificate (in Gujrati, which I can read with the greatest difficulty), so I know that I was born on the fifth of September in 1944. I have lived seventy six long years and there are times when I feel that I haven't accomplish much and it wouldn't have made much of a difference if I had never been born or had died in infancy.

For some reason, some of my deeply religious relatives stopped wishing each other "Happy birthday" for the flimsiest of reasons: as it is a Western custom, it is un-Islamic. But there are still some who call me to wish me all the best. There is one friend of sixty years who sends me a birthday card through email, but this year he seems to have forgotten, even though I chatted with him yesterday as well as today. The poor chap hasn't been well, and was due to be admitted to hospital today, but it has been postponed to tomorrow as he had to take further tests due to his mysterious fever for which his doctors can't the cause. He's had the fever for more than a month now.

So, as I reflect on my past, I can't help thinking that I didn't expect to live beyond forty when I was a teenager. Those years were tough; I was always afflicted with sinus and nasal allergies, besides being stricken with malaria a few times. One year I was so sick I missed an exam in my third year of engineering college. 

The missionary school I went to had employed a doctor who told me I wouldn't be able to become a parent if I didn't take the tonics he prescribed and sold (he lived in a flat where he examined his patients and sold them medicines). That doctor himself never married and was found one day with his throat slit. He must've been fifty or thereabouts.

A cousin of my father visited Karachi before I was engaged to be married and told me (in the presence of many relatives) that if I ever got married, my wife would ask for a divorce within three years. He was a dentist in Bombay who had fathered fourteen children. He had studied palmistry and he used to look at the palms of fellow passengers in the bus and would tell them things they liked to hear (like, "You are very confident" or "You have a great future"). Of course I didn't take his warning seriously, as years of reading had made me able to recognize fraudsters and charlatans like him. 

So, as I begin my seventy seventh year, I'm deeply pessimistic about the future. I know I don't have long to live, but I feel sorry for my children and grandchildren. The future of the planet is bleak; if it isn't destroyed by nuclear bombs, pollution or deadly viruses will do the job. As for myself, I have not been able to do much for my progeny to remember me more than a couple of years after I'm gone. Perhaps a descendant of mine will look through what I've written, and think that I must've been a person worth knowing and talking to. 

Why are Memons so extravagant?

I used to know a man who had attended my parent's wedding in 1943. He said that all the Muslims and many Hindus in Savar Kundla had been invited. There were many days of feasting, and he particularly remembered that my maternal grandfather had showered all guests with gold coins (called "ashrafees").

My father, on the other hand, was very careful with his money. Perhaps it was because he had not been born in a rich family, or maybe because he had to struggle for years to make both ends meet. There were only about a hundred guests at my wedding dinner, and most of them were close relatives. The dinner was served exactly at eight, and all the guests had eaten by nine. The whole affair was over by ten. This kind of thing would be unthinkable today.

Last night I made the mistake of going to a Memon's wedding, the son of my wife's niece. I knew it would be midnight before I got home (as on such occasions dinner is served late). But I should have known better. I had eaten about an hour before leaving my house, as I cannot remain hungry for long. The eating and splurging began just two minutes after midnight, and I already had a headache due to the loud music being played, with girls and boys yelling and shouting and dancing on the stage. When we got home it was two o'clock. My wife said it would be five in the morning before the groom and bride went into their room.

I calculated that at least ten million were spent on last night's dinner alone, and there have been other dinners. I admire the Bohris, who spend very little, their wedding dinners are held in their 'jamaatkhanas", and only one dish is served. But Memons will never learn, even though they see many of their own becoming paupers.

Why I wasn't born in Bombay

It's customary for a Memon woman to spend the final days of her first pregnancy in her parent's house. The hospital and medical expenses are also borne by her parents. In my case, my parents lived in Bombay after marriage in the house of my mother's parents, as my father was working in that city at the time. I should therefore have been born in Bombay but the fates decided otherwise.

In April 1944 (five months before I was born), a ship carrying explosives on its way to Bombay was loaded with cotton in Karachi, even though the captain warned that it was dangerous. But those were war years and his warning was not heeded. A few days later, while the ship was in Bombay harbour, it caught fire and explosions rocked the city. Many men died, and for many hours there was no news from my father (in those days there were no telephones). He returned home after many hours. In Colombo eight years ago I met a man whose near relative had been tossed into the sea (while working in the harbour) and remained missing for ten days. When he returned, his relatives thought they were seeing a ghost-they had announced his death and had even gone through the religious ceremony of "soyem" or "ziarat" (the offering of prayers and other rituals on the second day after death).

Due to lack of communication, my maternal grandfather didn't know about the fire in the ship, he thought the Japanese had bombed the city (they had already captured Rangoon, and were fighting British Indian forces in northern India). So he sent my mother away to his ancestral home town of Savar Kundla (a small town about a thousand kilometers from Bombay). This town has the distinction of being the birthplace of the late Indian prime minister Moraji Desai.

Religious discrimination in Karachi

The residents of a new building in Clifton (Macchiara Residency) put up a notice that non-Muslims would not be allowed to buy or rent apartments in it. The residents (undoubtedly those belonging to my ethnic group, the Memons) were astonished when there was an uproar in the social media. They hastily removed the notice when media personnel came over to interview them. Apparently they didn't know that it is a crime to prevent those of other religious or ethnic groups buying or renting property in their premises.

It's like what happens in India all the time, where Muslims like Shabana Azmi were not able to buy a house in Mumbai because of their religion. In fact, some Indians don't like having even Hindu non-vegetarians as their neighbors.

There are buildings in Karachi where only the followers of the Aga Khan and Bohras are allowed to live (of course it is not a written rule, but brokers have been told about it). So when the Memons decided to follow suit, they thought it wouldn't be noticed. 

Years ago, a neighbor's son came to me and said he wanted to rent out his flat in Amber Tower. He said he would not allow a Shia to live in his flat, although there were already a couple of Shia families in the building (in fact, when I sold my flat, it was a Shia who bought it). Until that time I didn't know that Sunnis hated Shias so much.

In the building I live in now, there are all kinds of people, not only Shias, but even Hindus and Christians. This was never a serious matter, and in one Bohri locality (Shabbirabad) they had to waive the rule of not allowing non-Bohris living there, so now many Memons have moved into some bungalows there.

It's a pity, this practice of discrimination on the basis of religion. Some of the best people I've known have been non-Muslims. Perhaps one day we'll see our people treating minorities as one of their own.

The origin of the Memons

I had always thought that Memons had converted to Islam around 250 to 300 years ago. My own elders told me that a Lohana Hindu named Nathu Ram or Nathu Lal in Bhavnagar had embraced Islam around that time, and the approximately thousand Memon families originating from Bhavnagar (Gohilwad) area of Gujarat are his descendants. There are of course Memons from other areas of India as well, like Bantva and Dhoraji. The total Memon population of the world is not known, it could be ten million, considering that they can be found in every country in the world.

So I was surprised to see a tweet by the Indian Gujarat Society that about 600 years ago, a holy man named Saifuddin had converted  700 Lohana Hindus to Islam and they became known as Memons (from "Momin", meaning Muslim). "Lohana" is a Hindu caste meaning "soldiers" or "warriors".

I have issues here. We've known that a few Lohana families were forced to flee Sindh to Gujarat and had got lost in the Thar desert. It was a holy man (not Saifuddin, as far as I remember) who gave them water and food, and they were so impressed by his piety that they asked him to convert them to Islam. When they reached Gujarat, the local raja told them to surrender their arms and weapons and take up some other profession. So they adopted trading and to this day they believe that they have succeeded in business due to the prayers and blessings of the saint who converted them.

Some Memons believe that the saint was none other than the famous Abdul Qadir Gilani, others think that it was one of his sons or descendants. Whoever it was, Memons came to Pakistan in 1947 with all their possessions, which they used to set up industries and businesses in the new state of Pakistan, and in just fourteen years the strongman of Pakistan (Ayub Khan) said admiringly, "Memons own half of Pakistan". It should be remembered that at that time Pakistan also included Bangladesh, where Memons owned most of the factories which were seized by the government.

There is a popular misconception among northern Pakistanis that Mr. Jinnah was a Memon. He may have had Lohana ancestors, but he was born in an Aga Khani family but later joined the Shiite Ishna Ashari community. Similarly, the cricketers Hanif Mohammed, his brothers and Jawed Miandad are also not Memons. Then there are the Chippas and Khatris who also claim (falsely) to be Memons. It's just like saying that because most Sikhs speak Punjabi, therefore all Punjabi speakers are Sikhs.

Another misconception is that Memons can be either Sunnis or Shias. Though there are a few Sindhi-speakers calling themselves Memons who subscribe to Shiaism, they are a tiny minority. By definition, Memons belong to the Hanafi branch of Sunni Islam.

Attending a "Memon" wedding dinner

I do not like to attend wedding dinners for obvious reasons. The venue is usually at a great distance from my house, involving a long drive (in most cases, 45 minutes), the dinner is almost invariably served very late, and by the time I return home, it’s an hour and a half after midnight. The next day is usually a working day, which means for the whole day I feel as if the police have beaten me up. I suppose if I were a drinking man, I would describe it as a hangover. And for some reason, my community members (called "Memons") take great pleasure in inviting at least a thousand guests and serving food after midnight. So I take an early dinner whenever I have to go to one of these dinners, and I remain seated calmly while most of the guests fight with each other to get food on their plates before it disappears.

I should have mentioned another reason for my dislike of such dinners. Most Memons are now radicalized, and because I'm clean-shaven, I look and feel like a fish out of water. I try to avoid their suspicious looks by reading online newspapers on my smartphone, which convinces most of them that I'm a dangerous man who should be locked up (even though they themselves look like the man who killed his own mother the other day).

Last night, I had to go to a wedding dinner because the bride (who didn’t look older than sixteen) is the niece of my younger brother's wife. The bridegroom too looked like he hasn't yet celebrated his eighteenth birthday. This kind of thing (child marriage, I call it) is now very common among Memons. Most marriages are now between first cousins, and the bride's name is not printed on the wedding invitation cards (although there is no bar on this in Islam). The bride is now referred to as "daughter of.....). In fact, there is almost a complete ban on printing the names of women on wedding invitation cards, as if reading a woman's name will turn a Memon into a rapist.

Of course, this wedding was no different, the food was served just a couple of minutes before midnight, and when I and my wife got home, it was almost two. During the drive back home, I was expecting to be held up, but fortunately the mobile phone snatchers had gone home early last night.

Muslim TV channel owner charged with killing wife

A woman who was closely related to my niece’s in-laws and who belonged to my community (Memons) was murdered by her husband, who slit her throat and surrendered to the police. As reported by Times Online, Muzzamil Hassan, 44, walked into a police station last Thursday evening (February 12, 2009) and told detectives that 37-year-old Aasiya Zubair Hassan's body was lying at the Bridges TV station where they both worked.

"He came into the police station at 6.20pm and told us that she was dead," said Andrew Benz, the police chief in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo in New York state.

Officers went to the headquarters of Bridges TV and found Mrs Hassan lying decapitated in a hallway, having apparently died that afternoon. Police are still hunting for a murder weapon, according to reports in The Buffalo News.

Mrs Hassan's lawyer said that she had recently filed for divorce from her husband after eight years of marriage, citing previous incidents of domestic violence.

According to the victim’s family, the killer had married once before marrying their daughter and already had two children from the first marriage. They had got to know each other through the internet. The murdered woman was the mother of two kids.

The murderer is the chief executive officer of the satellite-distributed news and opinion 

channel that he and his wife set up in 2004 to portray Muslims in a more positive light. He graduated magna cum laude with an MBA from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester in 1996. In a 2005 interview with The Buffalo News, he said that the idea for the TV station was sparked two years earlier when the couple heard derogatory remarks about American Muslims on a radio talk show.

Why I love Pakistan

Published in Dawn Magazine on December 5, 1999

Sometime I meet people who say that the only way they can be happy is to get out of this country. To such people I'd like to give my own reasons for being in love with Pakistan. I'm a memon, born three years after partition, and I thank God that my parents abandoned India after partition.

The migration of 1947 was, of course, not the first one for Memons. About three centuries ago, my ancestors were forced to migrate from Sindh to other parts of India for reasons that have never been recorded. Perhaps, it was a plague or they were expelled for waging wars.

My late father often told us how Muslims were treated like pariahs in the pre-partition India. Geography tells us that the climate of Sindh, West Punjab and East Bengal wasn't conductive for setting up of industries, although both cotton and jute were grown in these areas. Cotton mills were therefore established in Ahmedabad and jute mills in Calcutta. Another reason for not setting up industries in these regions would have been bias against the Muslims.

An uncle of mine says that in most eating houses in Gujrat (then Kathiawar), Muslims were not allowed entry. Back in 1975 I was dealing in fuel oil supplies to vessels calling at Karachi Port. I would often come across Muslims serving in ships from Yogoslavia, Greece and Germany, but I never saw a Muslim working in an Indian Vessel. The ships would have Parsis, Christians, Sikhs and, of course, Hindus on board, but no Muslims.

To those who wonder if Mr. Jinnah did the right thing in creating this country, all I can say is that the creation of Pakistan gave Muslims of the sub-continent a new identity and saved them from virtual extinction.