politics
Old tricks, new Pakistan
Pakistan is learning some hard lessons and they seem 
important and good ones for sustainable statehood. These are 
shaping up the contours of a new country
By Adnan Rehmat
For most part of the past fortnight — in true Pakistani fashion — politics became caricaturised in the hands of a shaman before being restored back to its pedestal by a show of conceptual clarity and force in its defence. This was alone by representative political parties from both inside and outside parliament united for electoral democracy.

review
True to kathak
Last week in Lahore, Nahid Siddiqui’s fine 
division of taal left everyone spellbound
By Sarwat Ali
The dance performance of Nahid Siddiqui’s Company was a welcome initiative taken by the Alhamra in Lahore last week.
The inspiration for the evening programme was derived from the poetry of Bulleh Shah, probably the most popular of the classical Punjabi poets. The commonality between the sensibility of the Punjabi poetry and the dance forms of this part of the country needed to be explored.
As it is, over the past few years, Nahid Siddiqui has been occupied with the stark similarities between the basics of kathak and the dances broadly categorised as being inspired by mystical practices. She has been very observant of the dance techniques of the malangs who let themselves go in their abandon to seek communion with the ultimate reality. 

Urbane delights
The new works by Hasnat Mehmood and Ahmed Ali Manganhar displayed at Canvas Gallery have several common traits but their distinct effect is strongly felt
By Quddus Mirza
Never did one suspect the division of day and night could become a crucial point in determining the worth of an art work. It was always considered normal for a piece to look different in daylight and artificial light; natural light enhancing the impact of some works while spotlights adding new elements to some art pieces.

The disturbing four
A peek at new painters at the NCA Thesis Show, 2013
By Ali Sultan
Minaa Mohsin’s large paintings are chock-full of vibrant paint, women, no girls actually, either pose on a large bed, do their nails in spacious bathrooms, are waxed by lower-class women or end up dreaming of luscious red high heels on a shocking yellow floor. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  politics
Old tricks, new Pakistan
Pakistan is learning some hard lessons and they seem 
important and good ones for sustainable statehood. These are 
shaping up the contours of a new country
By Adnan Rehmat

For most part of the past fortnight — in true Pakistani fashion — politics became caricaturised in the hands of a shaman before being restored back to its pedestal by a show of conceptual clarity and force in its defence. This was alone by representative political parties from both inside and outside parliament united for electoral democracy.

For a while, it seemed, we were committing collective hara-kiri by allowing the national discourse and political narrative in the hands of the extrovert Tahirul Qadri who forcefully sought to impose an agenda on the country that seemed anathema to the mainstream consensus. But the end results are proving to be the proverbial silver lining in a dark cloud — the contours of a new Pakistan are emerging; make no mistake! But more on that in a minute.

As analyst and scholar Arif Azad succinctly noted, Qadri was “out to demonise politics, democracy, political class, parliament and elections with much vehemence and all from the all-too obliging megaphone of 20-odd current affairs TV channels.” His “siyasat nahi, riasat bachao” movement reeked of “Pehlay ehtesab, phir intikhab” and “Sab Sey Pehlay Pakistan” campaigns of the military Establishment piloted by Generals Zia and Musharraf respectively that has had really only a one-point agenda: discredit representative democracy in favour of a ‘guided democracy’.

Having said that, the whole “alternative politics” template — touted first by Imran Khan and now by Tahir-ul-Qadri over the past 15 months — as some sort of “mega solution” to Pakistan’s messy plurality and fractious polity (variously labelled as ‘muk muka politics’ and ‘meri bari, tumhari bari’), has paradoxically ended up arresting the withering democracy project and really exposing the unsustainability of oversimplification ideologies that run afoul of ground realities.

Pakistan’s democracy project has for two decades been crying out for the right narrative that properly explains and educates all about a complex state and its primal battle for ‘normalhood’ to a people trained in oversimplification. This was first done by an information-control freak Establishment and then by a muddled up, faulty ratings-based media — in order to retain populist support of Pakistan’s teeming millions weary of the state’s drift from reasonable governance (much less good governance).

The grandstanding by both Imran and Qadri have inadvertently ended up shaping the opportunity to do this articulation and correct the narrative that non-representative forces have been employing to whip up frustrations into supporting their elitist systems. The summit meeting of opposition parties hosted by Nawaz Sharif — in response to Qadri cornucopia of demands and deadlines — rejecting a pause in the representative democracy cycle epitomises a big step forward in this direction. Staying the course and holding elections will only reinforce this opportunity.

Nonetheless, as Pakistan braces for the first time a peaceful transfer of power from not dictatorial military rule to representative governance but from a civilian-led transition to another representative dispensation, many things have changed although the likes of Qadri would have us believe otherwise. Pakistan is learning some hard lessons and they seem important and good ones for sustainable statehood. These are shaping up the contours of a new Pakistan, warts and all. There are at least seven characteristics of the ‘new Pakistan’:

Demand side of democracy

The first clear one is that the demand side of democracy has firmly increased. There are few takers for Fauji solutions any more that seek to undermine democracy. Cognizant, even the military is taking extra pains in keeping up appearances firmly on the right side of the barracks.

And political groups — even the likes of PTI, PML-Q and MQM that harbour tolerable sentiments about the military’s place in the scheme of things than most of us do — would these days not be caught laying their careers on the line, seeking a Bangladesh model of full-time caretaker government.

Qadri and Sheikh Rasheed, of course, are merely the exceptions that prove the rule.

Betting on representative democracy

The second is that there has concretised a discernibly irreversible national consensus on representative democracy as the key to an inclusive polity and governance. No political party inside or outside parliament wants faux democracy birthed or chaperoned by men in khaki. Or to try hybrids that tend to disown Pakistan’s pluralisms and promote a polity that seeks a patronage system partial to numerical majorities only.

Citizens of minority faiths, linguist groups, ethnicities and nationalities are plumping for participatory systems by putting their faith in centrist parties. That’s why not only the federal and provincial governing alliances constitute mainstream parties such as PPP, PML-N, ANP, MQM and PML-Q.

Partial towards participatory statehood

The third is a clear, unified vote for electoral politics as a system of participatory statehood. People don’t want sectarian groups, religious parties, pir-murid clusters and informal patronage systems to govern their lives.

They may be conservative, they may be less formally educated than they should be and more willing to expose themselves to violence and lack of good governance than they ought to but a very big majority clearly favours putting their trust in mainstream political parties as the vehicles of collective aspirations. The vote of trust to parties in the 2008 elections snubbed by Musharraf’s military regime is a reflection of this.

Faith in the Federation

The fourth is a sustainable faith in the federal state structure as a viable guarantor of fundamental rights. Despite the negativity generally implied around the increasing demand for more provinces over the past five years in particular, calls for more federating units is an affirmation of trust in a structure that can give the demographic, nationalistic, ethnic and linguist pluralisms a tangible stake in the system and a viable delivery mechanism of fundamental rights.

The completion of the constitutional tenures of the federal and provincial legislatures under a popularly elected dispensation — despite a general degree of frustration at poor governance by representative governments — is promoting faith in the federation as a system of equity and the need for more federating units to strengthen the federation. Witness all mainstream national (PPP, PML-N, PML-Q) and regional (ANP, MQM) parties supporting the need for more provinces even though they differ over mechanisms to create more provinces.

Plumping for politics

The fifth is a reinforced faith in politics as a repository of complex solutions. The last bout of military rule aimed at depoliticising society — as all previous military dispensation’s projects — and discrediting politicians have failed to dampen or dilute people’s belief in politics as a means of effecting economic, social and cultural trade-offs that defend the interests of Pakistan’s numeral pluralisms. The irony is that even military dictators now need political parties — General Musharraf’s APML a case in point — if they are interested in claiming even a misplaced claim in politics under representative rule.

When not directly in power, the military also plants and protects protégés in politics, for the people of Pakistan have simply refused to believe that their collective interested are best served by mechanisms other than politics. This is why the arrival of the likes of Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri has helped the politicised society, which keeps politics in business, much to the chagrin of generals in their labyrinths.

Pressure for reforms

The sixth is creating a positive — even if not especially intended outcome — pressure for reforms within established political parties that remain trapped in a time warp in the 1990s in terms of structures, processes and practices. First Imran Khan and now Tahir-ul-Qadri have helped far more established monoliths like PPP, PML-N, ANP and even MQM to improve their game by stealing their thunder on political narratives and forcing these giants to shake free of their stupor grounded in the lazy excuse of longevity, and therefore an exaggerated sense of self-entitlement of leadership.

Despite the doubts about legitimacy that doggedly stick to them ,both Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri have ended up enriching politics by carving out new spaces of expression in politics and dramatically enhancing political mobilisations – not just their supporters but followers of the self-assured political giants who have found they have to respond to corrections in the rules of the political game being dictated by new political players.

Stress test of democracy

The seventh is what my friend Zaigham Khan calls the state undergoing the strenuous “stress test of democracy.” Over the past five years in particular, the country has agonised over stark choices between dictatorship and democracy, between extremism and moderation, between faith-driven dogmas and secularist-leaning ideologies and between the wild leanings of corporate dependencies and state’s welfare instincts.

Lateral entrants, young turks, old players in new parties with new ways of playing old tricks, and mobilisation of demographic groups such as urban, tech savvy youth groups such as those inspired by Imran Khan and moderate sectarian groups such as those represented by boys and girls instructed in co-education environments in schools run by Tahirul Qadri’s Minhajul Quran are new forces to reckon with.

Startlingly large groups such as these have become agenda-setters and in some way game-changers that have forced people to get off the fence on issues around fundamental rights and the state’s capacity to deliver basic services.

Demand for governance

Qadri has proven to be a demoniser par excellence and there can be more debate about the messenger than his message but say what you will, ahead of elections he has forced the agenda around the needs for reforms that puts governance at the centre of the democracy project of Pakistan. Few may agree with his methods (deadlines and headlines) or his medicine (harbour the delusion that generals and judges are more honest and committed than politicians and therefore can help pilot reforms), fewer can outrightly reject the core of his argument for the reinvention of the state in a way that dramatically improves its capacity to put people’s welfare at the centre of all its business.

Traditional Pakistani parties adept at electoral politics that actually puts them in office can no longer pooh-pooh populist new pressure groups and parties that have idealism on their side. Ironically, Qadri’s at-times juvenile tantrums have brought seriousness in the efforts among the traditional political parties who have scrambled, and succeeded, in realising how simple it really is to thwart the Establishment: fight the common enemy, not each other. We all know the system is not perfect, but it is the only system we have got to throw out bad governments.

Happy empowerment through voting in the elections, everyone!

 

 

 

review
True to kathak 
Last week in Lahore, Nahid Siddiqui’s fine 
division of taal left everyone spellbound
By Sarwat Ali

The dance performance of Nahid Siddiqui’s Company was a welcome initiative taken by the Alhamra in Lahore last week.

The inspiration for the evening programme was derived from the poetry of Bulleh Shah, probably the most popular of the classical Punjabi poets. The commonality between the sensibility of the Punjabi poetry and the dance forms of this part of the country needed to be explored.

As it is, over the past few years, Nahid Siddiqui has been occupied with the stark similarities between the basics of kathak and the dances broadly categorised as being inspired by mystical practices. She has been very observant of the dance techniques of the malangs who let themselves go in their abandon to seek communion with the ultimate reality.

This strain of creative thought also took her to the tomb of Maulana Rum.

The more she observed the whirling dervishes, the more she was convinced of the similarity in rotation, the spinning movements, so full of energy and so much an integral part of kathak as the postures were the same and so were the bases on which revolved the entire movement. The extremely fast spins symbolised movement through which the dervishes made their “contact”.

The basic shortcoming of allying poetry and dance is often the illustrative role dance is subjected to. While poetry stays in the minds of the audiences, the function of dance becomes only an interpretative one, and the possibilities are then so limited and curtailed that it inhibits the actual physical expression of the body. Similarly, when lyrics are rendered in song, the entire focus shifts to music and lyrics again, limiting the possibilities inherent in the movement of the body.

In the past, to avoid this limitation, the gurus wrote thumris and composed them in a particular manner to retain the major role of dance. These thumris were specifically called nach ang thumris.

Our classical dances are extremely stylised. They have evolved a definite language of their own. Many choreographers, who have attempted to seek a new idiom, have come to grief by reducing it to being merely illustrative.

Nahid Siddiqui has been very aware of these familiar pitfalls. In many of her past performances, by keeping the storyline very loose, she has mixed it with pure kathak numbers — to let no one remain in doubt that all her innovations have grown out of kathak.

The link with tradition is more than emphasised by her experimentations.

But with the poetry of someone like Bulleh Shah, its traditional composition in a musical score had to be negotiated anew. It was done by the rendition of the raag only in the background with lyrics sparingly used, as it is done in a classical performance, while the words of the kafi were broken down into syllables which sounded like the parhant of kathak.

Being very aware of this characteristic, the dances were choreographed in a manner where the entire poetical line was not rendered in a melodic form. Instead it was broken up into phrases and these were so uttered as to appear being the nach ang bols of the tabla or the vocabulary of dance.

She also went through the kathak repertoire, the invocation, the thumri, and the tarana and moved on to the last part of pure dance with subtle rhymthic variation on intricate taals. It was breathtaking and transported you into another realm. Her very fine division of the taal left everyone spellbound and added to the traditional view that the most important aspect in kathak is footwork. Her footwork was exceptional, and it retained effortless grace.

The various bodies that have been set up under the government for the promotion of culture of dance have rarely been patronised. At the Alhamra the policies followed have been paradoxical. While the classes of dance have been held almost uninterruptedly over the past four decades once started by Maharaj Kathak, many hurdles were raised when the staging of dance programmes were to be held by any  private person or an organisation at a public space like the Alhamra. 

In one of the evening sessions of the recently concluded Alhamra Aalami Adbi Saqafati Conference, organised by Alhamra, the dance performance of Nahid Siddidui was held. It was praised by most in the audience as well as the participants of the conference. The chairman of the Alhamra, Ata ul Haq Qasmi, in a television programme admitted that he liked the dance so much that he expressed his desire of holding such programmes in future at the Alhamra. He also admitted at the same time that all these years he had never seen Nahid Siddiqui dance and, when he did, it was an artistic experience that he thoroughly enjoyed. He also stressed that he found nothing objectionable in the dance performance of Nahid Siddqui and found it totally in accordance with the cultural norms of our society.

Where the performing arts are concerned, there is an inherent prejudice about it in our society. It is thought to be another name for licentiousness and permissiveness and most, even the apparently educated, do not embrace it without reservation. Many have only been exposed to dance in what they see in the subcontinental films or in the plays that are staged in the theatres across the country.

The association of dance with the salons is so ingrained in the minds of the general public that they do not find any other forms than the one that he have preconceived ideas about.

They fail to realise that the objections about dance could only be because of its poor quality as there can be many objections about the poor quality of poetry or poor quality of singing or poor quality of film. It is more a question of artistic integrity rather than the condemnation of the form itself.

Nahid Siddiqui has been teaching a number of students and they form the core group of her ensemble. She now prefers to call it the Nahid Siddiqui Company and performs with them rather than solo as she did earlier and is remembered for it. Hopefully, these young dancers will put in the required effort and fulfill the promise, the glimpses of which could be seen during the two hour long performance.

The evening programme was dedicated to the memory of Faizaan Peerzada who passed away last month. Faizaan’s contribution as a painter, puppeteer and above all organiser of international festivals was huge and it was an apt gesture to remember him.

The performing arts formed the core of the international and national festivals that he so successfully helped in organising.

 

 

 

   

 

Urbane delights
The new works by Hasnat Mehmood and Ahmed Ali Manganhar displayed at Canvas Gallery have several common traits but their distinct effect is strongly felt
By Quddus Mirza

Never did one suspect the division of day and night could become a crucial point in determining the worth of an art work. It was always considered normal for a piece to look different in daylight and artificial light; natural light enhancing the impact of some works while spotlights adding new elements to some art pieces.

The significance of light was felt in a recent two person exhibition, held from Jan 8-17, 2013, at the Canvas Gallery in Karachi. The new works by Hasnat Mehmood and Ahmed Ali Manganhar had several common traits but their distinct effect was strongly felt in altered sources of light.

Interestingly, on the opening night, Hasnat Mehmood’s pieces made with reflective plastic tapes and spray paint had a mesmerising quality whereas Ahmed Ali’s paintings somehow faded in contrast. However, the next day offered different possibilities; in the morning hours, the painted canvases of Manganhar looked majestic compared to the rather plain and simplified surfaces of Mehmood.

For what might seem like a problem to some added a new dimension towards deciphering a work of art in its full content and context. Mehmood’s work that was fabricated with plastic tape did not only need a spotlight to enhance its properties, its subject, formal structure and technical details also required an artificial, fixed and unchanging source of light. On the other hand, Ahmed Ali’s imagery — consisting of layers of images painted on top of each other and derived from diverse sources such as cinema, art history and political posters — glowed in the bright and natural light of the day, reminding of how the Impressionists infused the ingredient of natural light in the art of painting.

The work of Hasnat Mehmood was based on how images from our surroundings have become part of our inner self. Today the public, instead of experiencing a work of art in museum or public and private gallery, is exposed to visuals in urban space, electronic media and newspapers and magazines. With the latest means of communication — Websites, Facebook and Twitter — a whole new range of imagery is seen by several individuals in the world despite the difference in language, region, religion and race.

Hence certain visuals — such as the standard wall paper of Microsoft; a landscape of hilly fields with a few clouds against a blue sky — are viewed more than, say, the most famous work of art like Mona Lisa. Thus our age of information technology has created its own icons which are shared and understood by people across the globe. The remarkable quality of these icons is their clarity in communication, a trait that has led to the sensibility for something direct, with a message and having minimal vocabulary.

Mehmood’s work responds to that pictorial experience of contemporary times; especially in a place that is caught up with issues of security, and clash of cultures, an unavoidable part of any post-colonial society. He has addressed these issues through his choice of subject and his preference for a familiar visual vocabulary. Drawn from the world of advertisement, either of cigarettes, local brand of beer, tabs on social media sites or signs at public places, he has shaped a format which conveys our current conditions and reflects our popular mode of communication.

Visuals, such as silhouette of two security guards put on the gates of gallery, surfaces which resemble official British signs but deal with the ban on YouTube and drone attacks, promotional messages about male pleasure and potency from Facebook suggest how our society has transformed into an arena for selling items and marketing ideas. Mehmood has, in a clever way, adopted an impersonal and mechanical mode of making these visuals. So, one is deceived by the ‘normality’ and ‘naturalness’ of these pieces. Only at a second glance does it become obvious that the artist has intervened into a usual series of text and images in order to register his comment.

The comment is a form of critique too because, in a number of works, Mehmood has sought to mix the East and the West (a favourite pastime of our painters) but in an ironic scheme. The wrapper of a cigarette pack (king size) is juxtaposed with the figure of a Mughal emperor, and the sequences of beer cans are placed on top of Islamic geometric patterns. These are references to two different civilizations, cultures and societies, which may seem separate but are actually blended in our present reality.

Another world depicted for us on the celluloid has, over the years, replaced life and attained a status of immortality. Mehmood has dealt with this area of our experience by composing photos from our popular cinema and show business, like faces of Madam Noorhejan, Babra Sharif and Nazia and Zohaib Hassan, as emblems of a life that is mechanical, repetitive, short and derived.

In fact, these Andy Warhol-istic pieces connect Hasnat’s work with the paintings of Ahmed Ali Manganhar who has also concentrated on imagery from cinema. In his canvases, scenes from various sources are superimposed — not in any logical order — to concoct a complexity that is associated with the realm of desire. This scenario is extended to art too; in several canvases, portraits of painters (like Picasso) or of their works (Fountain          by Marcel Duchamp) are rendered. Majority of these paintings are based upon appropriation of art works in loosely-applied and freely-executed brush strokes. Hence each work is a testimony of how diverse, often paradoxical images, can coexist, both in the physical world and in the domain of ideas.

The series of these paintings by Manganhar echo his earlier works. He possesses a remarkable ability to combine and compose images through his skill in rendering and his capacity to transform everything into a personal vision. Yet one feels that the works, even when seen during the day, betray a certain kind of stagnation in the artist’s life.

There are similarities between the two artists showing at the Canvas, but their difference relates to their source of imagery and their positions as artist. Night suited Hasnat Mehmood’s work because of his visuals stem from glowing computer monitor, colourful media and luminous screens of TV while Ahmed Ali’s imagery is derived from visuals which were created (before the age or from the early years of electricity) in daylight or light gained from natural substances. More importantly, it was the critical approach of Mehmood that differentiates him from Manganhar.

caption

Ahmed Ali Manganhar; ‘A Tribute to

Mohsin Manganhar’, Acrylic on Canvas.

 

 

 

The disturbing four
A peek at new painters at the NCA Thesis Show, 2013
By Ali Sultan

Minaa Mohsin’s large paintings are chock-full of vibrant paint, women, no girls actually, either pose on a large bed, do their nails in spacious bathrooms, are waxed by lower-class women or end up dreaming of luscious red high heels on a shocking yellow floor.

On first glance though, Mohsin’s work might seem simple portraiture done in lively Technicolor, it however has deeper, unnerving connotations. The figures themselves might not be grotesque, but the beds, the bathrooms, the drawing rooms are, as the colour instead of freeing them up traps them and their possessions in bawdy almost on-the-surface imagery. Mohsin’s paintings therefore become inverted, pointed case studies on class and materialism.

Saud Ahmed’s series called ‘Sustained’ is a heady nightmare of sculpture, sketches, paint and miniature models. Figures are tied up, gagged and hooded, one hangs from the ceiling, the other seems to be wearing what looks like a uniform. A half-snake half- human figure dances in the shadows. All of them hint towards the ‘war on terror,’ this is, however, never really determined.

Ahmed’s most enigmatic sculpture, however, is a figure carrying a lot of sacks, its face  obscured, but there seems no suggestion of violence, well almost. It is enigmatic, almost unreadable, for without the surrounding paraphernalia, it could easily pass as a study in sculpture, because one can’t really say if the sacks contain potatoes or dead human parts.

Naira Mushtaq’s mixed media paintings are perhaps the darkest next to Zahid Mayo’s work.  Childhood, history, dreams and the concept of time —marked by the titles of the works, ‘august.18 1989, 1:15’— seem to uneasily mix, match and accumulate in dusty, sombre mutations of colour on canvas.  Here too faces are obscure, hidden, smudged up or cut off, browns and dried-up black-reds, swimming in pools of black darkness.

And while Mushtaq’s work seems to deal in the horrors of memories and individual figures, the darkness in Zahid Mayo’s paintings is about crowds. The evident theme might be a Karabala procession, figures flagellating in the distance or in close-up, but perhaps this is too easy an analysis.  Perhaps it hints at the general mood of people in a country, of defiance and coming together even in the grimmest of situations.  But perhaps his subject matter, the content, is subservient to the form. Mayo’s technique, the etching of swarms of bodies, the faces, the use of the darkest hues, the enforcing of a certain mood is masterful.

caption

Naira Mushtaq; ‘december.6 1991,7:48,’ mix media.

caption

Saud Baloch; ‘sustained’, mixed media.

   

 

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