The following article is from The Frontier Post (October 13, 1999):
A tribute to Akhtar Hameed Khan
By Shoaib Sultan Khan
On his last visit to Islamabad, Akhtar Hameed Khan (AHK) confided to me that in 1929 Cheerio, the world famous palmist, had told him at Delhi that he would live up to 85 years of age. I dismissed it as the figment of imagination but even the thought of the event sent shivers through my spine. He was my mentor not only in name but in reality. Every time I met him, I learnt something new. Every time he visited the Rural Support Programmes (RSPs), he gave the programme a new dimension, a new interpretation and a new direction but his humility was overpowering. He would explain that his job was very difficult. His students are like McEnroe, Bjron Borg and the-like. They need the most refined and the minutes of infinitesimal adjustments in what they are already doing. He found it very challenging and exhilarating. Now that he is no more, who is going to be my beacon? He never failed me in showing the light when I would be desperate and have the feeling of being caught in a cul-de-sac or faced with an insurmountable wall. He would explain every issue __ social, economic, temporal or metaphysical __ with the ease of a person having full command on the subject. His explanation of the religions of the world, especially of Islam, used to have a depth and breadth which left even the most ignorant deeply moved. When in Sri Lanka I took him to a Buddhist monastery and the monk started reading 'Dhamma Padda' in Sinhalese, Khan Sahib recited it in the original Pali. The monk was simply amazed and couldn't believe his ears. He had, of course, never read it in 'Pali' like Khan Sahib.
Although I had heard about this unusual person who had resigned from the most coveted service in India, the ICS, I came face to face with him for the first time 1959 on Green Arrow train in then East Pakistan. He had already selected the sub-division of which I was the assistant commissioner as orientation and training ground for the Academy for Rural Development of which he had accepted the directorship. He said how chief secretary Azfar called him and said "Akhtar you are a fool but a good fool and government would very much like you to run the academy."
This was the beginning of my long internship with AHK. I had suddenly found a teacher who opened new horizons and vistas for me but I was still too deeply steeped in status, power and the glitter of the civil service to become his true disciple. He was disappointed and accused me of running away. The unfortunate events of the break-up of the country in 1971 brought me close to him again.
In 1970, I got an opportunity to visit my old subdivision after ten years of interval. I could not believe the changes brought about by Khan Sahib's approach to development in the area. In my road travel throughout Comilla and Brahmanbaria subdivisions, I did not come across a single paddy field which was not scientifically planted. The Thana Training and Development Centres, as he had visualised, were real symbols of development as against thana building which for centuries had been the symbol of law and order. The condition of the poor people had changed beyond recognition. Traces of poverty were nowhere visible and even today 30 years after Khan Sahib's departure, Comilla district has a per capita income of US$600 compared to the national per capita of US$220 in Bangladesh. His photographs still adorn the houses of Comilla district dwellers.
I was enthused with what I saw and as director, Pakistan Academy for Rural Development, Peshawar persuaded him to come to Peshawar. He was reluctant. He had seen that his report on IRDP had been made a mockery of in acceptance by the government in 1972. He complained that like an architect as chairman of IRDP Committee, he presented the well-planned and thought-out design of IRDP but the government accepted to build the dome disregarding the foundations and the supporting structure for the dome. He went away to Michigan as a visiting professor. I kept on sending him the project reports on Daudzai IRDP model. He got so interested and enthused that he himself offered to come back provided I agreed not to pay him more than Rs 1,500 pm. I refused to accept his condition and he finally agreed to accept the director's salary package.
One day on the complaint of a disgruntled trainee whom I had sent back to the department for taking no interest in training, Khan Sahib and I were bundled out of the academy, accused of subversion and conspiracy to overthrow the government of the day. I felt awful. I retrieved the letter he had written to me before coming to Peshawar saying "you picked me up from the dustbin like a discarded rose and put it in your lapel. What you are doing is like an island of sincerity in a sea of hypocrisy." I cried at what I had landed him in and felt totally helpless. He said to his wife jokingly "I am going to Karachi to work as a day-labourer."
I left the country and sought asylum under the United Nations. One day he came to visit me in Sri Lanka and asked me to come back to Pakistan to initiate the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP). I agreed on condition that he would guide the programme. The AKRSP is history now. Without his guidance, advice, direction and supervision, the AKRSP would have been nowhere.
AHK was visionary and a perfectionist. When I accepted the challenge to expand and replicate AKRSP, he would caution me not to expand, only to replicate. But his affection for me was unbounded. He would always agree to help me even if I got into something which he did not approve of. I forced him to become a director of the Sarhad Rural Support Corporation (SRSC), but he always looked with suspicion at anything to do with government. On occasions, he would exclaim like Dante's Hell when it came to government. "All that ye enter give up hope." Till he met Tasneem Siddiqi and developed the strategy on how to work with the government.
His apprehensions of supping with the devil came true when a change of government threw National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) in disarray but on the day the Board of NRSP had agreed to succumb to the pressures of the government. Khan Sahib carried the day by exhorting the moral responsibilities of the directors. Today the Rural Support Programme Network in Pakistan is his creation. Although he always tested me "I am only Todurmal to you" and I always rebutted that he can't go back on his words "Was it his fault that in forty years he found only one follower in Shoaib Sultan Khan?"
He would never give up an opportunity to help the poor and downtrodden of the rural and urban areas of Pakistan. On his last visit to Islamabad when I mentioned about an opportunity to start a sewerage and sanitation programme in Lodhran Town, he readily accepted Jahangir Tareen's invitation and set off with me to Lodhran on his way back to Karachi. His last communication to me was an email from the US about Lodhran project.
Khan Sahib was a towering personality but innocent like a child. I used to chide him about his being an awfully bad judge of people and of course I used to have full support of his wife. He accepted everyone on his or her face value which sometimes landed him in deep trouble. The blasphemy case was one such example. All engineered and crafted by a man, Khan Sahib so genuinely trusted and wanted to become his right-hand man. He would dismiss my protestations but listen with great attention what Tariq Siddiqi had to say.
In all my travels throughout the world, I have never come across a person of the stature of Akhtar Hameed Khan. I sometimes wonder did Pakistan really make the best use of his unique experience with which he was so willing and keen to benefit his countrymen and women. But now it is too late even to ask this question. The country has missed an opportunity of a century.
