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by Gertrude Samuels, Staff
Writer, The New York Times Magazine.
"The United Nations cannot achieve its purpose unless the
peoples of the world are fully informed of its aims and activities.
"General Assembly resolution,
1946.
 With the reconvening of the General
Assembly, many in the world organization admit they are puzzled by this
major question: Are the people of the world really informed about the
U.N., created of, by and for them?
In the United States there are indications of widespread indifference
and misconceptions. Many earnestly believe, as one educated Miamian put
it, that "the U.N. is canceling the United States Constitution". Despite
the new "Geneva spirit", high tensions remain in the U.N. that keep
people I skeptical about whether any world organization can serve this
country's best interests.
In other parts of the world there is a somewhat clearer understanding of
the U.N.' s aims, for millions in the less developed areas are now
benefiting directly from U.N. projects. U.N. doctors and nurses are
rescuing their children from the menaces of malaria and tuberculosis;
U.N. technical missions are improving their farm crops and industrial
,output; U.N. "social engineers" are guiding their inexperienced
Governments in ways to improve their living standards.
But even in those areas, the U.N.'s humanitarian efforts directly touch
the lives of but a fraction of the population. There are many in Asia
who have never heard of or are suspicious of the U.N. The Afro-Asian
Bandung conference held this year, was, among other things, a rebuke to
the United Nations as "Western dominated".
Informing an indifferent and often hostile public has always been one of
the problems of the U.N., made thornier by its own self-imposed
regulations. It may not promote or interpret its work, but must rely
primarily on the cooperation of existing media, and on governmental and
voluntary agencies to get its story told. Any suggestion of "propaganda"
has always been frowned on.
The bridge between the U.N. and the people is the Department of Public
Information. Staffed by some 270 persons of thirty countries, including
editors, writers, film and radio technicians and photographers who cover
the day-to-day events in the headquarters building in New York, D.P.I.
serves the daily press, radio, television and movies, and prepares
factual publications for world-wide distribution.
Not only does D.P .I. have to contend with public apathy, but also it
must face delegates with distinct - and widely varied - notions of what
approach , should be taken to a story. Practically every line of
publicity must , therefore be made as bland as baby food, since D.P.I.
has to please sixty delegations before informing the public. And D.P.I.
is one department that has been considered expendable at the U.N., many
diplomats believing that publicity is a luxury, that the U.N.'s deeds
can speak for themselves.
At the moment, this belief is on the wane, however. The growing
importance of Asia, with great populations emerging from their colonial
status; the coolness between Occidental and Asian peoples; the concern
of the U.N. over the atom - all these developments have been making
delegates more publicity-conscious.
This new awareness was dramatized last November by Secretary General Dag
Hammarskjold's selection of Ahmed Shah Bokhari, former Ambassador to the
U.N. from Pakistan, as Under Secretary for the D.P.I. He has chosen an
Asian who has dedicated his life to a better understanding between the
Orient and the Occident, and who, perhaps more than anyone else at the
U.N., is a synthesis of the cultures of both worlds.
Now in his fifties, Bokhari is a craggy-faced diplomat, extremely urbane
and sophisticated in Western ways, or - to use one of his favourite
words - a "cosmopolitan". A writer in a number of languages, a one-time
actor and student of Shakespeare - he has translated many of his plays,
as well as those of Shaw, Ibsen, Galsworthy and Wilde, into his native
Urdu - Bokhari has been in diplomatic service long enough not to want to
look the part.
He dresses informally, sometimes in flannels, drives his own car, and
mixes with gusto at parties. He is also as absent-minded as the
proverbial professor (which he is - on leave as principal of Lahore
College), forgetting his raincoat when it rains and leaving the
windshield wipers going on his car while driving in the sun.
Before his appointment to D.P.I., Bokhari was chiefly known in the U.N.
for his off-the-cuff speeches as Pakistan's permanent representative and
as an unofficial spokesman for Asia. His talks crackled with humour and
bite, always enhanced by a sense of timing as shrewd as Bob Hope's.
Bokhari built a reputation for speaking his mind: few who heard them
will forget his words during the sharp debate on Tunisia and the
colonial question when he told the Security Council that, by its refusal
to discuss the issue, it was inviting the people of Asia to "go to
hell".
It is apparent that Hammarskjold, who is deeply concerned with the
problems of underdeveloped areas, picked Bokhari for the information job
because of their common interest in this field. In addition,
Hammarskjold regards Bokhari as a genuine man of the world. Born in
Peshawar, then India and now Pakistan, Bokhari attended Punjab
University where, at first, he studied physics. But, even while he was
doing experiments, he was reading poetry "under the counter". The switch
to literature was inevitable and Bokhari took honours first at Punjab
and later at Cambridge, where he was elected Senior Scholar of Emmanuel
College. (Fascinated by dialects, he once studied Cockney for six
months.)
British correspondents remember Bokhari warmly as a "man of ideas"
during World War II when, as director-general of broadcasting for India,
he helped to interpret the War's aims for all Asia and sought "to
popularize the same war we were fighting".
Bokhari's least known accomplishment to the Western world is also his
proudest the writing, under the name of Patras, of several humorous
short stories which often portray the little man trying to be a big
politician and stumbling on situations that he doesn't understand. In
1950, Bokhari became chief of Pakistan's delegation to the U.N.
Today Bokhari continues to impress those who meet him with his charm and
wit. But there is a hard, serious core beneath the surface. He does not
suffer fools gladly, and his intellectual vanity and brusqueness have
rubbed more than one diplomat the wrong way. Under the charm, there is
the impatience of the egocentric; Bokhari has been known to wheel away
abruptly from a conversation that bored him. He has also been known to
coddle a grudge for years - this happened with a photographer who once
wrote a critical caption on a picture of him. Both his humour and his
earnestness are evidenced in an incident that occurred soon after
Bokhari moved into his D.P.I office. He decided to remove a huge map of
the world from his wall. When a colleague protested, Bokhari replied
that people who come to the U.N. should know geography. "Anyway," he
laughed, "Australia was hidden behind the sofa, and that won't do."
Out of his long experience with the cultures and aspirations of many
countries, Bokhari has developed his own idea of how peace can be
promoted through the U.N., and of how people can be better informed of
the U.N.'s aims. Its essence lies in making cosmopolitanism a positive,
forceful way of life, and in encouraging a world movement of
cosmopolitan leaders.
The dictionary defines a cosmopolitan as "one whose sympathies,
interests and culture are not confined to his own race or country - from
the Greek cosmos, world; and polites, citizen". The other
day Bokhari amplified this definition.
"In my short lifetime," he said, "I have seen my country grow in
importance, and I think I'm not wrong in saying that the vital point of
history is shifting eastward. This does not mean that Europe and its
civilization have suddenly been emptied of importance. But it does mean
that people like me, who have every reason to feel grateful to the West
I as we certainly do - realize that unless we do something about the
tremendous gap of understanding that exists between Asia and the rest of
the world, there will inevitably be the most enormous cultural waste in
history. Suspicions are splitting the world.
"Yet all over the world there are people interested in people -
leaders in anthropology, music, literature, art, science, poetry. Many
are at home in their field in any country, whatever its culture. They
are the cosmopolitans, and their numbers are growing. They are probably
the coming aristocracy of the world - aristocracy in the sense of a
certain grandness of sympathy rather than of wealth or position. And the
future of the world is in their hands - in cosmopolitanism. They offer
the only way out. Perhaps the most important development in the world
would be a movement as far away from chauvinism as possible.
"This does not mean that each nation's sovereignty is to be broken down
or demolished. But it does mean that sovereignty must be sublimated. At
this point of the world's development, it's important for nations to
understand that 'your sovereignty' and 'our sovereignty' have greater
responsibilities than ever before -for peace and freedom, and for better
living throughout the world."
In the past, D.P .I. has been reticent to the point of coyness about
promoting the U.N. works that are aiding the world. For the future,
Bokhari feels that the department has the task of promoting the concept
of cooperation among people. He maintains that the V.N.' s economic,
social and technical programmes, by their very nature, are helping
nations to understand one another - that the backbone of the whole U.N.
programme is the concept that those with resources are to come in
contact with those with needs.
He thinks that D.P.I. must proudly show the world how this is being
achieved by the U.N. - this promotion of what the preamble to the U.N.
charter calls "social progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom".
Fundamentally, Bokhari believes that people are misled about the U.N.
rather than hostile to it, that they simply don't have the information
about what's being done for their benefit. By stimulating talk about the
U.N. in all nations, by encouraging cosmopolitan leaders everywhere to
get the facts to the people "so that the world will not walk blind" - in
this way Bokhari hopes to penetrate public apathy.
"The U.N. cannot be sold in the way that a commodity is sold," he says.
"Internationalism is a tiny baby with, so to speak, sixty nationalistic
nurses. The surprising thing is not that the darn thing is weak, but
that it is living at all."
On a typical day at the U.N. (though he says every man has four or five
"typical" days), Bokhari arrives at his tenth-floor office overlooking
the East River about 9 A.M. Fully half his time is spent "upstairs with
the Secretary General" - sometimes alone on political matters relating
to international peace and security; sometimes for discussions with
delegations or with the nongovernmental agencies, along with such key
people as the Secretary General chooses. To such circles of "quiet
diplomacy", Bokhari brings his political sense, his diplomatic
experience, his European background -clearly the bridge-builder, in the
public relations sense, among people of various cultures.
Then there are staff conferences and meetings with delegates, reporters,
people in the specialized agencies (World Health Organization, Technical
Assistance, etc.). Bokhari leans almost entirely on informal personal
contacts, inviting in or lunching with one or two radio people at a
time; a couple of reporters or publishers; a group of university people.
He is also developing more and more contacts with opinion leaders in
other fields. He has been meeting with artists, playwrights, explorers,
business men - some on their first visit to the world's capital.
There is little time for peaceful meditation at the U.N. This is usually
left for his simply furnished, three-storey house near the U.N., a home
filled with books, unframed paintings from Pakistan and sculpture from
everywhere; and on its own stand, like a pointed reminder, a huge,
handsome folio edition of Shakespeare.
"I am what I am because of these interests," he tells the visitor, "and
if I cannot pursue these interests, I cannot be happy in my job or do
justice to it."
Sometimes, on a restful Sunday, Bokhari drives back to the U.N. to walk
alone in the rose gardens, to read and to think. He likes his pot of
China tea at 6.
In his D.P.I. work of "injecting the U.N. into the thinking of the
world", Bokhari is aided by: A press and publications division, which
serves some 140 newspapermen and bureaus from thirty-three countries. It
prepares summaries of meetings, arranges press conferences, and sends
"clip sheets" about U.N. happenings to newspapers throughout the world
that lack their own U.N. coverage.
A radio, television and film division which broadcasts news and features
around the clock in twenty-four languages; sends records and
transcriptions to all parts of the world, and makes film documentaries
for TV and theatre showing.
A lecture division which arranges talks by members of the U.N. There are
many on D.P.I.'s staff who recognize that the U.N. story remains untold
and mysterious to most of the world, despite the constant activity of
these divisions. The explanation may be found in the U.N.'s resolve not
to "propagandize". This has led to a kind of closing of the doors, which
has frustrated members of the press greatly.
But those on the D.P.I. staff hope for a change under Bokhari. "People
have to get some measure of the U.N.' s work and significance," said one
staff man, "if they are to realize their own relationship - or oneness
with other people in all parts of the world."
Members of D.P.I. and the press in general are heartened by Bokhari' s
dislike of red tape and protocol. Within some D.P.I. lower echelons
there is often a stiff-necked attitude toward providing facilities for
media that have shown hostility to the U.N. or to anyone considered
"below the salt". Even at a recent D.P.I. reception for the news media,
most press photographers were omitted as being not comme il faut. These
days, Bokhari may as often be found lunching with reporters in the press
bar or cafeteria as with Ambassadors in the exclusive dining room.
During his first year in his new post, the Asian diplomat has been on
trips r out of the country a good deal -to Peiping with the Secretary
General concerning the imprisoned American airmen; to Geneva on various
conferences. The straight information services have been continuing
without any radical change. But Bokhari' s personality is making itself
felt in two ways now: (1) there is more emphasis than before on contacts
with opinion leaders - in the media, in government, in education -
partly by Bokhari himself, partly by strengthening information centres
in twenty-one countries; and (2) D.P.I. is placing more emphasis on the
substance of the job, the deeper political meaning of the V.N. , rather
than leaving it for history to record the U.N.'s deeds.
The Bokhari touch is just beginning to reveal itself. This is his first
Assembly in his new role. He is meeting former fellow delegates as
D.P.I. chief. For the first time in this new status, he is meeting the
several hundred more correspondents who have been pouring in from
allover the world for the Assembly. The informal gatherings, social
affairs, press conferences which each Assembly stimulates are Bokhari' s
cup of tea and his opportunity to make his policies felt.
"The D.P.I.", he says firmly, "has the responsibility of interpreting
one part of the world to the other to promote peace and understanding.
This is not a specific responsibility, but something one should not
shirk."
He adds that it is useful to explain the failures as well as the
successes. "As long as you can get people to regard the V.N. as a factor
which must be taken into consideration - even as a target for criticism
- the idea of a world parliament is establishing itself."
And that approach leads Bokhari right back to his crusade - to that
small band of leaders, the cosmopolitans, who will carry a light into
the darkness and with that light kindle other lights. The cosmopolitan's
task of educating the world may be an awesome one, Bokhari concedes, and
it calls to his mind a story of a boy in Syria.
The boy was sent to school to learn the alphabet. A year passed; he
still did not know the first two letters. When five years had passed and
he still did not know them, his father cried out, "Why is it that you
can't even learn the first two letters of the alphabet?" The boy
answered, "Because after say 'a' and 'b', you'll ask me to say 'c' and
'd'. Then I shall have to learn arithmetic and history and geography.
And there will be no end to it. So, I will just not let it begin."
Bokhari thinks the cosmopolitans can make the learning process begin
-for all men. He has faith that they can keep the people informed.
The New York Times Magazine, October 9, 1955. @ 1955 by The New York
Times Company. |
