By Manish Chand, IANS
New Delhi : Pakistani entrepreneur, politician and activist Salma Ahmed has a genius for "cutting free" – be it from tyrannical husbands, oppressive regimes or burqa-clad radical women. But one thing she finds hard to shake off is her India connection.
Born Indira Salma Husain, it is her visceral sense of belonging to a shared history and heritage that propels her to pitch for free trade and free flow of people and of ideas between India and Pakistan.
"For one thing, there is more support – cutting across all sections – for the peace process in Pakistan with India than there was ever before. On the bilateral trade front, after decades of dilly-dallying, things are finally looking up," Ahmed told IANS in an interview.
"We should eliminate the restrictive trade list and reduce it to a bare minimum. I am all for free trade," said Ahmed who was here to release her autobiography "Cutting Free: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Pakistani Woman" (published by Roli).
The book is the riveting tale of a woman who surmounted formidable odds, survived the tyranny of three husbands and the prejudices of a feudal society to make it in the world of business and politics.
Talk to Ahmed of India and her voice has a tinge of emotion to it.
Spiritually anchored to India since her girlhood before the subcontinent was portioned in 1947, Ahmed feels at home in the country and keeps returning again and again. Part of the reason is that her daughter lives in New Delhi and runs a restaurant here.
"I never went away from India mentally. There has always been a strong linkage. I have an organic and spiritual connection with India," she said. Which is why her last wish is to be buried in the precincts of Dargah Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya.
Ahmed is known in business circles as the "lady ship-breaker of Pakistan" as she was a pioneer in the industry.
Being a free spirit who had always struggled against stifling situations, she finds the "creeping fundamentalism" in Pakistani society, especially among women, distressing and bets on democracy as a cure for the country scarred by recent civil unrest.
"Fundamentalism has moved from the border areas of the country into the very heart of Islamabad in Lal Masjid. This is quite disturbing," Ahmed said while defending Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's use of military force to flush out radical students and militants from the mosque early this month.
"Women in burqa tend to be aggressive and have a kind of complex. They want to hold their own. They like to think of themselves as keepers of morality," said Ahmed while alluding to scores of women who were found holed up inside the Lal Masjid complex during the bloody standoff between government troops and radicals.
"This is the first time we have seen radicalisation among women in Pakistan in such a pronounced manner. These women feel let down by liberalised, educated and emancipated women," said Ahmed while calling for more enlightened education for women – an area in which Pakistan can learn from India, she said.
A privileged insider to the Pakistani establishment, a former parliamentarian and widely recognised as a highly successful woman entrepreneur, Ahmed is well aware of the hopes and fears of the masses.
"The mood of the people on the street is quite restless. They want change," she said while referring to the protests that followed the suspension of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry by Musharraf.
An understanding and power-sharing agreement between former prime ministers Benazir Sharif and Nawaz Sharif will be an ideal solution to the present crisis, she asserted.
(Manish Chand can be contacted at [email protected])