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review The War on Terror and the Freedom Agenda looked at from the Bush prism By Aamir Riaz Decision Points By George W. Bush Publisher: Crown Publishers, 2010 Pages: 508 Rs:1595 People may only have experienced invasions, wars, tribal feuds and colonisation in one particular country but we, at the beginning of the twenty first century, are witnesses to massive destruction of countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan. Not only that, we have seen the arm-twisting tactics used for countries like Libya, Yemen, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, India and Georgia by the US under the banner of "Freedom Agenda". The term, used by the younger Bush in his recently published book Decision Points, served the US war industry through foreign policy initiatives during the most controversial eight years of Bush's presidency. Zia
Mohyeddin column
Classical prototype An attempt to portray the real Josh Malihabadi behind the myth and the image By Sarwat Ali
Josh Mere Baba By Farrukh Jamal Malihabadi Publisher: Poorab Academy Pages: 296 Price: Rs 350
Somehow Josh Malihabadi fitted the classical prototype of a poet. Reckless, creative, brash, uncaring, tempestuous and romantic were some of the attributes that could be associated with him. His dashing image was further indemnified when he wrote his autobiography Yadoan Ki Barat where he emerged as a totally uncompromising person willing to stake his life and property for poetic licence. But was Josh Malihabadi as tempestuous as he is generally perceived to be? Every book that has been published on him has been an investigation of that image. Now his maternal grandson who had lived with him in Karachi Farrukh Jamal Malihabadi has come out with Josh Mere Baba with the express intent of portraying the real man behind the myth and the image. Josh the man and not Josh the poet cuts quite an average flesh and blood profile. In his effort to humanise, Josh the grandson Farrukh Jamal has perhaps reduced him to the level of the ordinary. These days the general trend in Pakistan is to not only to demystify the person but also to make him appear as following the general rules which has the endorsement of the mainstream. The emphasis is more on conformity and acquiesces to the basic values of society rather than the quintessential and the eccentric. Previously, people only looked for the idiosyncratic and the peculiar when investigating the image of a well-known person. But Josh was larger than life. He emerged on the literary scene with a bang. He advocated a more proactive approach and called in his poetry for a revolutionary change in society. This revolution was to be merged with the freedom from colonial yoke and could only be completed with the overthrown of an oppressive system. Josh's tone too was grand and aggressive and in the 1930s was able to capture the imagination of the youth, political workers and artists. He was labelled Shaer-e-Inqalab. His anger was larger than life and his designs grand -- he chose a corresponding idiom and was thus seen as leading from the front rather than be the ruminative, meditative poetic type, slinking in the shadows wallowing in his own sorrows. Josh too had an uneasy relationship with the state of Pakistan. Like many others, he kept switching sides between the two countries --at times he was Indian, at times Pakistani, representing the agony of those whose cultural and political proclivities partition could not coincide. The atmosphere and the system of patronage that emerged in Pakistan was too brash and crude in its trappings and did not have the finesse to accommodate people with talent.The system of patronage should be properly couched in decency and decorous terms so that the creative person should not feel as being a burden living off the largesse of the state or the ruling classes. This Josh found to be irksome and gave him the impression that he was not wanted or that his talent was not being recognised and hence not rewarded. Josh had an amazing vocabulary and a gift of coining words and phrases -- his style was principally declamatory in nature and he chose the form that facilitated his expression and style. The Musaddas was most suited to his sensibility and he expressed himself adequately in that. Before him Hali and Iqbal too had vented their creative bile in these two forms. Unlike the ghazal where melody reins supreme, in the Musaddas the charge and the violence of the upper register overrides the low notes of the ghazal. Mussadas was used by Josh on a number of occasions as well as his rubai both as signs of master craftsmanship. He was not that comfortable with the ghazal and rightly so. His temperament did not suit it as such. Farrukh Malihabadi has included in the book selections from the poetry of his grandfather but also but also some of his famous prose writings. His famous essay on the need of revolution in Urdu literature was very well-received when it was published and continues to be a milestone Then his comparison between the nations of the world and the reasons for our backwardness, and in his essay Khodkar Parwarish Ghah Fikr o Qalam Pakistan autonomous academy of thoughts, a kind of a national brain trust which should be divided into two sections shobao sahete uqal and shobae wusate zaman displays the man who though and felt deeply for the people of this land, the Muslims in general and the colonised people on the whole. He did not indulge in the stereotypes responses and solutions to the problems that faced societies like us. He was fully aware that it was not a consequence of an aberration that needed correction but fundamental restructuring in the thinking and attitudes on a civilisational level. Today, December 5, is the birth anniversary of Josh Malihabadi Justifying absurdities The War on Terror and the Freedom Agenda looked at from the Bush prism
By Aamir Riaz Decision Points By George W. Bush Publisher: Crown Publishers, 2010 Pages: 508 Rs:1595
People may only have experienced invasions, wars, tribal feuds and colonisation in one particular country but we, at the beginning of the twenty first century, are witnesses to massive destruction of countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan. Not only that, we have seen the arm-twisting tactics used for countries like Libya, Yemen, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, India and Georgia by the US under the banner of "Freedom Agenda". The term, used by the younger Bush in his recently published book Decision Points, served the US war industry through foreign policy initiatives during the most controversial eight years of Bush's presidency. World economic powers included in G8 and China are among the major beneficiaries of this Freedom Agenda yet, except America, no other country is ready to advocate this term as an essential to Project democracy. Tony Blair's recent memoirs do not even touch upon this term. In the book, Bush has quoted numerous examples where the non-US world powers obstructed US initiatives, in response to which he created space for them and finally they joined the US. The US authorities knew they could not pressurise North Korea in bilateral talks. Until October 2002, China was not even ready to listen to the US reservations. Bush invited Chinese President Jiang Zemin to his ranch in Crawford and said "The United States and China have different kind of influence over North Korea. Ours is mostly negative, while yours is positive. If we combine together, we would make an impressive team". Chinese President replied that North Korea was not the US but his problem and it was a complicated matter. In January 2003, Bush played the trump card of a nuclear Japan successfully and so Beijing initiated the six party talks. In September 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon all nuclear weapons and returned to her commitment under NPT. In July 2006, North Korea fired a barrage of missiles into the Sea of Japan. China not only criticised but also became part of the unanimous UN Security Council resolution 1718 which imposed economic sanctions on North Korea. Two-times Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in an explosion on February 14, 2005. Hariri was a critic of War on Terror and a strong candidate for presidency who was not in favour of immediate withdrawal of Syrian army. But his death changed the political scene in favour of Freedom Agenda. It is remembered in Lebanon as intif??at al-istiql?l or Cedar revolution. Bush wrote about it as "The Cedar Revolution marked one of the most important successes of the freedom agenda". It is interesting how Freedom Agenda was differently applied, depending on the US "interests". In 2004, Bush supported Musharraf, the military-chief-cum-president in Pakistan and seemed to have no regards for the Pakistani Constitution. It was March 2006, when according to the book, Bush first time told Musharraf to resign as army chief because it is violation of the Pakistani constitution. He dared not tell Musharraf that he was not a legal head of state. Admitting that the US made a mistake in 1989, he fails to nominate the then president who was none other than his own father. "After the Cold War, the United States gave up on Afghanistan. The result was chaos, civil war, the Taliban takeover, sanctuary for al Qaeda, and the nightmare of 9/11". Expectedly, the former president is all praise for the US army, its intelligence networks and its achievements regarding the War on Terror. But he does not dwell too much on why such a brilliant army and efficient network could not catch Bin Laden. "I sometimes wondered how anyone could hide from our military for seven years" is all he has to say. Before 9/11, in the year 2000, former President Bill Clinton spent five days in India on a door-opening visit. Then Bush made "the most dramatic gesture" by entering into an agreement with India to cooperate on civilian nuclear projects; the move effectively legitimised India as a nuclear power "and lifted a 30-year moratorium on nuclear trade with India even though India had not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty". Freedom Agenda is haunting the Chinese borders. The first decade of 21st century witnessed dramatic jumps in Sino-US relations. US consumer industry needs to exploit the Chinese market of one billion people. Bush was ready to support the Chinese entry in WTO yet according to Tony Blair's account, the US was not happy with Britain when Blair invited Chinese President in its G8+5 in July 7, 2005 meeting. The Chinese are adamant to have economic stability as their number one priority and then move towards political rights while the US over-emphasises freedom of press, religious rights, human rights etc. By April 2001, Bush was confused due to the EP-3 incident yet in February 2002, he managed to visit China. Under the Freedom Agenda, he found it convenient to play on religion. "Laura and I attended church in Beijing, met with religious leaders like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, and spoke out for the rights of Chinese underground preachers and worshippers, bloggers, dissidents, and political prisoners". He did not meet with Indian Christians during his visit to India, though, knowing that they are living under a threat of conversion from Hindu religious extremists. Christianity was not the only religion he uses; he met Dalai Lama five times and used Buddhism too. At the 2007 APEC Summit in Sydney, Bush told President Hu that he planned to attend a ceremony where the Dalai Lama would receive the Congressional Gold Medal. But when Chinese president alarmed him for a strong reaction, Bush said ""I'm afraid that I have to go to that ceremony". The book is an attempt to justify the US-led War on Terror and Freedom Agenda. Inadvertently, though, it only exposes the double standards and war hysteria of the Republicans. Can Obama remove these absurdities spread in the name of freedom by the Bush family is the multimillion dollar question faced by the world? The book is available at Readings, Gulberg Lahore
The other Suzuki On my first brief visit to Tokyo, my hosts, out of
politeness no doubt, asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to
see. I said I would very much like to see a Kabuki performance and, if at all
possible, to go backstage and meet the performers. Alas! that was not to be.
I learned later that it was not because my hosts were unable to acquire
tickets; it was the visit backstage which they had not been able to gain
access to. Japan is a highly protocol-conscious culture. I realised this on my second visit when I led a sort of a cultural delegation. Because my antecedents were now kosher, I was given all the treats laid out for a dignity: a tea ceremony conducted by one of the most renowned geishas, visits to various sushi bars, and not just a Kabuki but a Noh performance as well. I cannot say I was moved emotionally, but the stillness that the actors exuded, every now and then, was riveting. My guide Mr Wattanabe, who accompanied me to the Kabuki performance, told me afterwards that it had been directed by one of the best known directors, named Tadashi Suzuki. No, he was in not in any way connected to the Suzukis who ran the automobile empire. Mr. Wattanabe who had a nice sense of humour referred to him as "The other, Suzuki." Kabuki is a highly stylised Japanese classical dance-drama (Noh is a slightly more ancient and lengthier musical drama in which many characters are masked). Both Kabuki and Noh in Japan were the staple theatrical diet throughout the 18th and the 19th centuries. In the 20th century there was a strong reaction against the formalised codes of Kabuki. By the end of the First World War, Japan had gone through a rapid process of Westernisation. The middle and upper middle classes had taken to tails and top hats. Psychological realism began to revolutionise Japanese theatre. It was now Ibsen and Chekhov and Somerset Maugham. Tadashi Suzuki conducted a campaign which was basically a reaction against this reaction. He saw how the modernisation of acting had abandoned one of the most potent aspects of traditional theatre -- the contact of an actor's foot with the floor. Suzuki's most significant contribution is his emphasis on the actor's contact with the floor. He writes: "I stamp. I stamp. I send the energy of my lower body into the ground and I sense the power of ancient energy that wards off evil and eradicates my ordinary sense of self. I stamp and in so doing expand my performance presence." Kabuki and Noh plays are performed in special socks with the actors' feet being a significant part of the audience's entertainment. Western plays and many of our own modern as well as melodramatic classical plays are performed in shoes of some sort. This, for Suzuki, compromises the most basic aspect of acting. "Modern theatre," he says "is tedious…it has no feet." For Suzuki, a performance begins when an actor's feet touch the ground. This earthly contact forms basis of his method of actor-training. He maintains that an actor's contact with the floor affects the whole alignment of his spine and it also determines the strength and nuance of his voice. In order to get the actor back in touch with his feet Suzuki has devised a series of set exercises involving, stamping, walking, squatting and vocalising. In not too dissimilar a manner, the Gurus of Kathakali make their pupils learn to acquire stamina, stability and mobility which they need (in plenty) when they become technically equipped to appear in their night-long performances. But Tadashi Suzuki is not a hide-bound traditionalist. He is much impressed with the working of the Moscow Arts Theatre and Stanislavsky's method. His study of the relationship between a word and gesture is intricate and owes a fair amount to Stanislavsky's connection of thought to action. He also acknowledges Grotowski's 'ritual' element of acting and incorporates into his system Grotowski's belief in an inner spiritual world which you can access through self-development. Suzuki's book, The Way of Acting is now considered to be a work almost as important for actors as Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares or Michael Chekhov's Lessons for the Professional Actor. For Suzuki, stillness is the starting point for energy. In order to find the strength and inner stillness he recommends stamping and walking exercises. He suggests that you think of yourself as a puppet imagining one string pulling you up from the crown and one string pulling you down; one string pulling you forward and one string pulling you backwards. By radiating your energy out in all four directions, you will find the presence that magnetises the audience. A couple of years after my return from Tokyo I learnt in London that Suzuki, whose fame had now reached the West, had been invited to the acclaimed Paris Festival, Theatre des Nations. His work was so impressive that a whole aspect of Eastern actor-training was introduced to a Western audience. So began Suzuki's influence in Europe and America. The space in which a performance takes place is vital for Suzuki. For over 20 years he collaborated with the redoubtable architect, Arata Isozaki, in creating the right environment for a theatrical event. They renovated a farm house in a village outside Tokyo, to create a performance space that combined a sense of the natural with the expansiveness of an ancient Greek amphitheatre. Suzuki feels that the right architectural environment is vital for the actors. A troupe who has trained and grown up on a particular theatre get to know it extremely intimately in terms of its walkways, stage and pillars, not to mention its ritual grandeur. They should be able to walk around it with their eyes closed. He believes that it is only in such an environment that a highly skilled troupe of actors shares with its audience the dramatic experience. Nearly all the great theoreticians of acting -- Artaud, Copeau, Adler, Lecoq, Grotowski -- and Suzuki -- agree that theatre is a social form of artistic expression where a community of people meet at a specific time in a specific place and share the telling of a story. If there is one clear bond between them it is the common belief that the function (aim, task, objective, whatever you like) of an actor is to pass on the collective experience of humanity through the form of a story. Their tools are different but their aim is identical: the actor must have the means to free his creative nature so that he can create magic. In 1966, Suzuki formed his Little Theatre group in Tokyo. It became a leading company of Japanese avant-garde theatre. The company still exists. It is now known as the Suzuki Company. "The other Suzuki" would be remembered a lot more.
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