The World of

Conquerors

Published in 1993

by the Frontier Post

(Daily) Lahore

Travelling in past, moving in future by Ahmed Salim “It is a pity that British people have failed to break the fetters of Norman subjugation. Again, they have failed to abolish monarchy. The people of France, Italy, Russia, Germany, Albania, Austria, Portugal and many other countries got rid of monarchy with the help of gallows and guillotine, Nevertheless, the people of Britain are, on the whole, the most oppressed and pitiable lot in Europe and deserve world attention.” These are the concluding lines of this book: a note with a “dying fall” and here lies the resurrection point of a new testament of history. These lines donate the redundancy of the Old Testament. These lines have not dawned upon Yussouf Shaheen, He has travelled bare feet upon the avenue of human history, passing every mile stone licked by flames and drenched in blood. The book opens with a dedication; “to Mikhail Gorbachev – a phenomenal personality whose thought and deeds shall leave a mark upon the world of tomorrow as deep as that of the French Revolution”. This brief line, bordering on the verge of aphorism, contains countless storms in its womb. 1789 - 1989, a span of two hundred years, a short interval from freedom to more freedom. In 1989, Eastern Europe rose as France did two centuries back and plunged the whole world in the bonfire of surprise and freedom. Sartre wrote about Franz Fenon, the author of “The Wretched of the Earth”, “Fenon is the first man after Engels who has bestowed daylight upon the mechanism of history.” It can be applied to Yussouf Shaheen as well. Fenon himself wrote “The foremost problem of today’s world is the re-distribution of wealth. Mankind shall have to solve this problem or it shall blow up the dream of human survival.” It was 1961. Algeria was going through the Birth pangs of national liberation. Those were the days when Sartre wrote, “France used to be the name of a country. We should take care or it may become the name of some neurotic distemper”. Yussouf Shaheen is opening up, cautiously but firmly, a new dimension to the realm of consciousness about freedom and slavery. “Almost all states have derived their present frontiers from ruthless vivisection of nations and disintegration of empires. Thus all national divisions and frontiers stand questionable.” It is 1992. The only super power, United States declares the plan to vanquish the world through the might of Pentagon and a deep anguish sits heavy upon every human being. One fears that United States used to be the name of a country. Now, it may come to denote some neurotic disorder. An ailment issuing from obsession to achieve military victories. United State is a land where people talk endlessly about man but the moment they catch sight of a man, they do not as much as think twice before killing him. “The world of conquerors” is a brief document. Its pages have smudge of blood and marks of ruthless flames. Even so its contents are legible and its message is crystal clear. While reading it, one should resist every temptation to derive hasty conclusion. Instead, it shall be wiser option to just enter the ostensibly pathless woods of its arguments. The reader will start in total darkness. After wandering about some involved and maze-like paths, one is certain to accost a group of people sitting around some sort of camp-fire and talking passionately about freedom. That exactly is the primary problem dealt with in these pages. Mankind has inherited some basic documents like Social Contract, Declaration of American Independence and Communist Manifesto along with religious scriptures. This document written by Yussouf Shaheen is, in actually, an affidavit to these earlier documents. It is not just a single book. It is a compendium of hefty volumes, dealing with a dozen or so fundamental issues, neatly summarized in a hundred odd pages. The document presents the antithesis to the religious, social, political and military history of mankind – an anti- thesis to all existing notions of human history. The book sheds light upon the following facts; 1. How did the Semitic migrants destroy Sumerian language and culture? 2. The ancient history of Greece was so far considered to be mainly a product of mythology. The present treatise establishes the fact that Greek mythology was, in fact, a religion for at least two thousand years and its roots can be traced in India and Indus basin. 3. Thousands of volumes on Roman Empire failed to transpire as to how Germanic migrants conquer the great Empire of Rome. These points essentially dilate upon the phenomenon of migration. In the above lines, I have somewhere mentioned that freedom is the main topic of this document. Now I would say that Yussouf Shaheen has primarily discussed the phenomenon of migration which inherently entails the dialectics of freedom and slavery. Migration is as old an aspect of human history as history itself. This phenomenon began with the quest for food and culminated in the form of private property and the sanctity of this exploitation. It gave birth to philosophy and religion. The conflict of philosophy and religion result the institutions of state and army. The phenomenon of migration assumed the form of cultural dominance. The local languages and cultures were annihilated and immigrants propagated colonial dominance in the name of “superior” culture. This is what happened in the past and the said story continues. The situation of Sindh in our times is a continuation of this ages old practice of cultural dominance. In other words, all cultural heritages are essentially an imposed heritages of conquerors. Yussouf Shaheen arrives at the conclusion that great migrations have done more harm that military aggressions. It is not without a tinge of pain that Yussouf Shaheen admits that ours is a world of conquerors. We shall have to revise the military institutions of the world to stall further conquests. Otherwise our cultures, religions and languages will continue to live in constant peril. It is a critical dilemma and this book is the first effort towards the solution of the problem at conscious level. Granted the conclusions derived by Yussouf Shaheen, the human history will require a thorough revision to establish facts abinitio. This will be tantamount to re-write world history. Thus, this document has taken upon itself a Herculean task. Established “facts” (at least assumption taken for facts) do not change overnight. However, the world is in a cauldron these days. A new order is emerging. The conquerors and the conquered are failing in new alignments. The ideological crusades are going under astronomical changes. This is a timely as well as effective document.