A Whiter Shade of Green

In the last few months a good chunk of the e-mails that I received asked me point blank that how come I, a person who was once such a “surkha/commie rebel” in the ‘80s and someone who was always willing to play a passionate part and role in the many student-led movements against the Zia dictatorship, has never, ever written a single word denouncing the Musharaf “dictatorship?”

At face value the above question _ especially considering the fact that as a journalist and writer I have always tended to bring forth many of the social and political ideas that were basically formed during all those years attempting to cultivate a cultural and political rebellion against the Zia regime _ is certainly valid.

Even though in other words, this question is actually a mockingly diplomatic way of making a stinging point: “You and your generation turned out to be such sell-outs!”

Ah, yes. But then I remember how my generation grumbled continuously as well about how all those wonderful radicals of the ‘60s and the ‘70s had so easily bend over, some proudly becoming what began to be called yuppies, while others actually ending up singing praises for Zia!

Oh, yes, how we bit**ched about them, mocking them with unabashed sarcasm, as we marched ahead with our PPP flags, Bhutto portraits and Das Kapitals, trying to defy the many cultural, social and political norms unloaded upon our frowning faces by things like “Nizam-e-Mustapha,” “Afghan Jihad” by lots of hairy/holy men, lecherous landlords and a new breed of petty-bourgeois capitalist thugs!

Not that we were actually really all that fond of opportunist populists like Bhutto. Because thanks to the Cold War, my generation and the ones before us were not only more idealistic than the post-Cold-War generations, we were better students of politics as well. And since Bhutto had been turned into such a taboo by the Ziaists, he was the most convenient tool to p*ss-off anybody ranging from cops, to your Pakistan Studies/Islamiat college professor to your granddad!

But Zia’s sudden death was not the end of it all. The guy had been around for a long time. And the culture of cynical, amoral politico-religion-ism, economic exploitation and state/government-sponsored social myopia continued across a series of so-called democratic governments as well. Governments that not only included the Ziaist Pakistan Muslim League, but the “liberal” Pakistan Peoples Party, (both continuing to play pragmatic footsie with Ziaist intelligence agencies to remain in Islamabad.)

Both are also guilty of accommodating (for the same reasons), the leading cast of such wonderful Ziaist creations like quasi-fascist nationalism and unchecked obscurantism.

So why, dear readers and questioners, should I scream bloody murder and exploitation and chant “freedom, freedom!” after listening to a Presidential General, who as a head of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, openly declares a social and political war against the very mentality (if not all the personalities), that have reaped social and political havoc in the last 25 years or so? Sometimes in the name of Islam, sometimes in the name of Jihad, sometimes in the name of “popular mandate,” and sometimes democracy.

Not that the dear General is wining this war. After all, it’s his six years against their 25! Not that a military man calling himself (or worse “electing” himself) as the President is such a pretty or proud sight (especially for former “surkhas” like me!), but hey, at least he’s making the right noises.
Noises that should have been made many years ago.

And I do feel rather curiously strange basking (rather than squirming) in the irony of all this. Maybe perversely so. The irony of this scribe who once relished burning the American flag to show how ticked-off he was at that American-led Afghan Jihad against the Soviet-backed Afghan regime in the ‘80s, now wondering that had the Americans not invaded Afghanistan and then occupied Iraq, would the General been making these noises?

My problem with many of the General’s detractors is that most of them I know sat pretty doing nothing when the social and political mayhem caused by Pakistan’s frontline status during the so-called Afghan Jihad started to become starkly apparent, while others in this league actually applauded Zia’s “Nizam-e-mustapha!” A nizam weaved from the foreign and internal policies that gave birth to the very culture of intolerance, corruption, hypocrisy and contradiction that is still at the heart of the country’s many social and political problems.

And saying that Musharaf is now making all the right noises only because he is being pressurized by the West, this to me is a rather simple minded assumption. A blatant tact maneuver by those who will cling on to this rapturous cliché to bag votes. It is also a cynical drawing room rant, mostly by people who saw absolutely nothing wrong when the West was (a lot more obviously) pumping guns and dollars into Zia’s always growling tummy. A tummy that never failed to growl “Islam” as well. An Islam fed by the big bucks and bullets that not only seemed to be hurting the confused Soviet troops in Afghanistan, but the very soul of whatever this nation’s political, social and moral fabric stood for.

So yes, if I have never written a single word against Musharaf then I have neither written a single word for Musharaf either. Until now. Right now.
But this now is addressed to the young. Those who were just toddlers or in their knickers in the ‘80s. A decade that still haunts not only this country but also the whole world. A decade in which “Communism was defeated.” No not by the nobility and power of democracy or the pure fire and spirituality of “true Islam,” but by warmongering egos nurtured by and drunk on distorted ideologies (both of left and right) and post-Keynesian power capitalism feeding off the last remains of the artificially animated corpse of Stalinism.

The results are now all too obvious. Unabashed, cynical capitalism playing the defender of democracy up against a chaotic, deadly and rather psychotic religious streak glorifying itself in the role of the avenger.

I may stand to be a jaded leftover of a bygone age of focused struggles (‘80s) and post-Cold-War cultural revolutions (‘90s), but I remain to be an idealist in at least the following belief: Extremes maybe far more dramatic, but they never last. They are symptoms of the last few desperate plunges by a frustrated, dying ideology or thought. In this respect I know, in the next ten years or so, the two biggest causalities of changing times will be the two biggest threats of the times today: Bush and Osama.

Go Musharaf, go!

Go fly a kite!

Recently while speaking at the inauguration ceremony of National College of Art’s Rawalpindi campus, General Prevez Musharaf candidly spoke the language and words usually mouthed by the common layers of the “moderate majority.” Words and sentiments one just never expected from a Pakistani head of state. At least not after General Zia-ul-Haq spoke about how his Martial Law regime planed to root out obscenity and vulgarity in the print and electronic media of Pakistan. The following were his words when he first appeared on PTV soon after overthrowing the Bhutto government in July 1977: “Main jaanta hoon log ab TV kyoon nahi daiktey. Chiriaan jo urr gain. (I know why people have stopped watching TV. The birds have all flown!).

He had quite wittingly planted the first seeds of the myopic petty-bourgeois concept of morality that would eventually run and dictate the media and censor policies of the Zia regime and as well as those of the so-called democratic governments in the ‘90s.

A vicious mindset that was however mocked by general Musharaf in that NCA speech of his while taunting the usual mullah suspects for criticizing and attacking events like the basant, theatre, painting, films, et al.

He even went to the daring extent of asking that why when kids in a madressa are shown on the TV reciting the Koran, they look so miserable? Why can’t they be shown smiling, he asked? He said reciting the Koran is a pleasant thing and one should portray it such.

These are bold words. Daring talk that may not get headline coverage but reek of something special in a social and cultural context. Especially when compared to the long-drawn, cynical and cosmetic shpeels about “Islam,” “Pakistan” and “Awam” we have come to expect from our leaders in the last twenty-five years or so.

However, if this speech can be taken as the government’s stand on cultural issues that bother the ulema hazraat so much, what about the recent bungling by the government in matters such as the Mukhtar Mai case and the Punjab government’s highly questionable, rather, deplorable behavior towards the Asma Jehangir led “mixed marathon” in Lahore?

That’s where the good General stumbles. As mentioned in the main section of this article, he does make all the right noises, but the actions taken to follow these noises fail to do the level and intensity of justice that these noises demand. Because if, for example, the all powerful General and head of state has no problems with things like the basant or mixed marathons, then how come there is always such tension and fear surrounding these events and in the minds of those organizing such events?

The fear of not only being attacked by the mullah brigade but (as witnessed during the course of many related happenings recently in cities like Lahore, Gujranwallah and Faisalabad), the brigade is usually accompanied by a heavy army of baton-swinging cops as well!

But in the same speech, Musharaf was quick to add (and rightly so), that, politically, it was his government’s plan to tackle the violent and reactionary ways of the moral brigade, but it was the “enlightened/moderate” people who will have to defeat them socially. Don’t fear them, he said.

The proverbial mullah was unwittingly turned into a monster by the ways of the Zia dictatorship. That served his Machiavellian purpose. But that mullah actually relished his enhanced new status. He understood the power of fear well. It is this power he wields the best. And it is this fear that has stayed with us even long after Zia blew up somewhere over Bhawalpur. When this fear comes armed with state owned law enforcers, it becomes almost impossible for even the boldest to take a stand. And maybe here is also where even the most powerful man in Pakistan belongs? Scary thought.


You’ve come a long way, baby!

“Irrational, illogical, hypocritical,” these are some of the words Pakistani film makers, musicians, playwrights, directors and actors have constantly used about the decisions and policies of the country’s censor policies and personnel. And even though things in this respect have changed (albeit in a rather chaotic manner, thanks to the mindlessness that stalks the emergence of many private TV and radio channels across the country), the state policies regarding what is moral and immoral, right and wrong in entertainment and art is not really such an old story.

It is true that the “Irrational, illogical, hypocritical” nature of these policies reigned supreme during the Zia dictatorship that came to an abrupt end seventeen years ago, but this myopic and cross-eyed mindset had by then become a convenient tool for the following leaders and the moral brigade. A tool to impose one eye-wash after another regarding “Islam” and morality, using feeble and trivial moral posturing and Islamist exhibitionism in the media to distract the already numb attentions of the middle and the lower middle classes from the “real” and basic issues of life.

It is interesting to note the look of disbelief and horror on the faces of most young people today after they are told the list of the many do’s and don’ts that used to be regularly handed down by the Information Ministry of the Zia dictatorship to PTV personnel and advertising agencies.

For example, below is a list of don’ts that the ad agencies and PTV were given and which they did for a good ten years!

It all began with Zia inviting the Jamat-e-Islami to join his first cabinet soon after he overthrew Bhutto. One of the ministries the then staunchly anti-Bhutto party got was the all-important Information Ministry. And one of the first things they decided to do was ask PTV to destroy all footage of famous Z. A. Bhutto speeches (some did survive though and were used by PTV during Benazir Bhutto’s first stint in Islamabad.). Then it was also under the Jamat’s ministership that Zia obsessively used PTV to run a highly concentrated propaganda campaign against the “misdeeds of the Bhutto regime.” Thousands of Rupees were spent sanctioning one-sided documentaries about “Bhutto’s victims” and thousands more on televised readings of the military government’s “white paper” against Bhutto.

Then all hell broke loose …

· Television plays were barred from showing married couples sharing a bed. So much so, that even a bedroom with a double bed was not allowed to be shown.

· No physical contact between male and female was allowed. Not even between brother and sister, or mother and son.

· Ads showing models blowing a chewing gum bubble or licking an ice- cream cone were not allowed.
(*A debate on this ‘topic’ that actually took place on the floors of Zia’s Majlis-e-Shoora in 1982 was the basis of this particular directive. In fact, more time in these henpecked shooras was spent talking about the need to “uproot vulgarity” than on other matters like unemployment, crime, the economy, etc.).

· Television ads were only allowed to show female models for only 30% of the total time of the commercial.

· Playwrights were barred from ever using the word “Bhutto” or “Jamhooriat” (Democracy).

· Making fun of or even critiquing the clergy and the Army was not allowed on radio and PTV.

(*The whole tradition of teleplays having the “wise moulvi” and the “gallant, patriotic and God fearing army/air force jawan” have their roots in this directive. The last television play to critique the institution of mulahism/clergy was Munu Bhai’s Jhog Sial in 1975).

· Female singers were only allowed minimum physical movement while singing on television.

· Newspapers and magazines were warned against publishing news about sexual crimes committed by members of the clergy.

(*In one incident in mid-‘80s when a pesh imam of a mosque in Karachi incited an enthusiastic group of namazies to stone to death an illegitimate child left outside a mosque, the government made absolutely sure that the news was blocked. However some aggressive Urdu papers of the time, like Aman and Musawaat did manage to publish the horrific news. Later, when news items about pesh imams being arrested for child molestation started to grow, the Zia government “advised” the papers to stop publishing such news).

· Female announcers and newscasters were asked to appear on screen without any make-up!

(This directive was given in 1985 but soon withdrawn after some popular newscasters complained that they looked horrid under bright, white shooting lights without make-up).

· Plays dealing with issues like heroin addiction were suddenly disallowed.

(* The rationale given behind this directive was that scenes of people intoxicating themselves with heroin actually encouraged its usage. The truth however was that the Zia regime did not want the dramatization of the rampant raise of heroin addiction and smuggling that had started to grip the country after 1979. The directive was issued sometime in 1982).

· “Good guys” in plays were asked to always wear shalwar kameez while the “bad guys” were always to be shown in western attire. Actresses however were always to be shown in shalwar kameez and under no circumstances allowed to wear western clothing.

(*This directive was given in late 1981 and some serials that were already underway had to comply halfway through. Hasina Moin’s popular soap, Ankahi was one. If you have a VCD recording of the play, do notice how midway across the serial all the male leads start appearing in shalwar kameez).

· Quied-e-Azam’s quotes were liberally distorted and tweaked around to make him seem like a likable Islamist, or the sort of an image Zia was trying to cultivate for himself.

· All females appearing on television (whether in a play or otherwise) were asked to always keep their dupatta over their head!

(*This directive was given by the first Nawaz Sharif government in 1992. The policy was reversed a year later when some prominent directors protested that the directive was too restrictive. One can see this in plays like Urusa. In one scene Mishi Khan playing the lead character is shown drowning in a river and clearly struggling to keep her dupatta on her head. In another scene (of a different play of the era), a woman is seen fast asleep on her bed at night with a dupatta neatly placed over her head!).

· No males in jeans and long hair was allowed to appear on TV.

(*This directive was given by the second Nawaz Sharif government in 1997 when he made former newscaster and the ultra-loyal Ziaist, Azhar Lodhi, the new General Manager of PTV. However, the Jamat-e-Islami had already agitated and protested against the showing of pop shows during the first Benazir Bhutto government in 1989).