The lawyers' movement not only resulted in the early exit of Musharraf as president and the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry but also earned a lot of respect for the lawyer fraternity as a custodian of rule of law among the public. It emerged as the most organised and united section of society during the two year long movement.

The support of an overwhelming majority of people and political parties gave greater momentum to the movement which was, by and large, a peaceful one. A year after the movement began, though, in April 2008, the former minister for parliamentary affairs Sher Afgan Niazi's thrashing in Lahore at the hands of lawyers was one of the first signs that a section of lawyers was not ready to forgive its opponents for their "past sins."

May 31, 2009, saw lawyers verbally attack Attorney General Sardar Latif Khosa, while holding their shoes aloft, during a ceremony held in honour of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in Lahore by the Punjab Bar Council. Khosa was invited by the organisers but a group of lawyers started shouting insults at him. He was left with no option but to leave. Many people feel this incident could have been avoided had someone in authority intervened to ensure a better display of tolerance.

On June 5, the incumbent President Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA), Munawar Iqbal Gondal, was given a good thrashing and thrown out of the committee room by the lawyers allegedly belonging to the Professional Group once led by Hamid Khan after the general house convened by the bar's secretary unanimously allowed Gondal to hold the office of president until the next election. Gondal, vice president LHCBA, was elected president after the elevation of its elected president Shahid Siddiqui as a judge of Supreme Court.

The opponents held the view that a fresh election should be held for the office.

A fresh election of LHCBA was held on June 6 and Justice (r) Nasira Javed Iqbal, supported by the Professional Group, was elected as president. She got 715 votes while her opponent Nisar Kausar obtained only 97 votes in the polls. The number of eligible voters in LHCBA is more than 8,440, while only 814 members, less than ten percent of the total voters, cast their votes. Expectedly, secretary LHCBA, Muqtadir Akhter Shabbir, rejected the election, calling it "a drama staged by a group." Meanwhile, Gondal has reportedly set up his office under the banyan tree in the courtyard of the bar and challenged the election before Punjab Bar Council.

Senior lawyers are wary of the violent trends. "The lawyers' movement has empowered many young lawyers to a great extent in the politics of bar associations. They were used by the senior members to disgrace opponents during the movement and now they are not even in control of their own leadership and the result is a show of aggression," says S.M. Masood, senior lawyer and ex-federal law minister.

Justice (r) Wajihuddin Ahmed does not buy the criticism. "I think young lawyers played the most important role in the success of the movement. I do not say that media should overlook their wrongdoings but it should not be blown out of proportion. I agree that it is not acceptable to show the shoe to Latif Khosa, but at the same time we should not overlook the role played by him during the lawyers' movement and even after that."

TNS could not reach Attorney General Latif Khosa for his comments despite many attempts. Many of the lawyers in Lahore are not happy by the way Khosa was mistreated or by the controversial fresh polls at LHCBA. Azhar Siddique, chairman Judicial Activism Panel, says there are 11 precedents in the 110 years history of LHCBA where the vice president had succeeded the president who either died or was elevated as judge. "There is only one incident when a by-election was held to elect the new president. This was in the 1970s when Malik Saeed Hasan was elevated as judge but at that time the office of the vice president was vacant."

According to him, it is high time to talk about the welfare of lawyers who during the last two years had no cases "but the powerful groups are least interested because their leadership was least affected." Siddique says that there should be an inquiry and the people responsible for torturing Munawar Gondal be brought to book.

Ahmed Awais, ex-president LHCBA and a frontline leader of the Professional Group, set aside the allegations against his group. "A resolution was passed by the general house of the LHCBA some time ago, when Shahid Siddiqui was president, which said that LHCBA will file a petition against the PCO judges in Supreme Court. The anti-independence forces now are using Munawar Gondal to stop LHCBA to go to Supreme Court against these judges and that is why lawyers were angry with him. If we have a vested interest in the office of the bar's president, then why we have got Nasira Javed elected as president? It is true that the element of aggression has prevailed among lawyers these days but we need to understand that there is momentum of two-year-long struggle behind this aggression and it will take some time to normalise the situation"

Rana Arif Kamal Noon, Chairman Punjab Bar Council, admits that success of the lawyers' movement has resulted in more aggression. "After March 16, in the elections held in Multan High Court Bar Association, Bahawalpur High Court Bar Association and Islamabad High Court Bar Association, chairs were hurled by lawyers at each other as many refused to accept defeat in a polite manner. The situation in LHCBA is even worse. There are at least 33 different groups of lawyers on the basis of caste, sect and ethnicity. The bargaining during elections is done on the basis of the strength of the group."

He says that both groups of LHCBA have approached them on the issue of office of president. "I can't even mention the kind of allegations they have levelled on each other and many of them are correct. I do not see an end to this aggression in our community. The way Latif Khosa was treated in the presence of the chief justices of Lahore High Court and Supreme Court is shameful. Even some judges were given the same treatment. The silence of both chief justices is a big question mark for me as is that of Hamid Khan to whom I made a special request to stop his supporters."

Senior lawyer Hamid Khan dispels the impression that his group has any vested interest in the politics of LHCBA. "The opponents of independent judiciary have been targeting my group just to take revenge for its role in the success of lawyers' movement. We have only one interest and that is rule of law". He says the decision to hold a fresh election in LHCBA on June 6 was not of his group, "A committee comprising 15 ex-presidents of LHCBA had decided to hold fresh election of the bar."

Habib Tanveer, who died last week, can be considered one of the architects of post-independence Indian Theatre. Others in the run could be Vijay Tandulkar, Prithvi Raj, Utpal Dutt, Qudsia Zaidi, Alkazi and Grish Karnard.

HabibTanveer came to Pakistan a number of times. He was much sought-after by local theatre groups busy in promoting theatre that was different from the growing and popular commercial stage. The only example and source of inspiration that they could get nearer home was from the work done in India.

At one time the Indian films too were hearsay and, till the commissioning of Amritsar Television, happened to be a queer mixture of the reminiscences of those who had seen that cinema and the yarn spun by the print media (Filmfare, Shama etc). Film songs provided the gloss that people had access to, courtesy the radio. But Indian theatre existed behind an iron curtain; very few knew about it and even fewer were exposed to it. In the 1990s, some relaxation of rules facilitated the visit of Indian theatre personnel and the opportunity for our litterateurs and dramatists to travel.

The mixing of the folk elements like music/dance and the exploitation of the performance arena, which made them aware of the stage as other than the one known as proscenium, hugely inspired them. It also afforded freedom from a proper theatre as all areas could be converted into a performing arena like a roadside, a kachi abadi or a countryside fair. Habib Tanveer was invited and he was supposed to stage a play but the performance had to be cancelled due to violent protest by lobbies afraid of Indian cultural hegemony. Pakistan was robbed of seeing a proper Habib Tanveer production.

Somehow it was felt that Habib Tanveer was more connected to the spirit of the performing arts that was cultivated in the mainstream Indo-Muslim surroundings. One had not seen the works of Qudsia Zaidi but he was surely more connected to the classics of our literature and drew strength by placing them within contemporary India. The same direct influence probably was a little difficult to trace in Vijay Tendulkar and Utpal Dutt and even Alkazi who were seeking inspiration from sources more region and language bound.

He was aware of taking theatre to the masses and his plays spoke the language of the common man. In order to make his plays realistic, he even recruited stage hands from the communities, most not even familiar with theatre. What he yearned more was authenticity -- the craft he thought could be passed on. His plays in various dialects, especially Chattisgarhi, were examples of his closeness to the land and the common people and he created his theatre idiom with the mixture of folk dances and music. His was always a pleasant production not shackled by the gravity of preaching.

After his education, which included Aligarh Muslim University as well, in 1945 he moved to Bombay and joined the All India Radio, Bombay as a producer. He also signed up with the Progressive Writers Movement (PWA) and as an actor became an integral part of Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA). In 1954, he worked with Qudsia Zaidi's Hindustani Theatre. Later, in the same year, he produced his first significant play Agra Bazar, based on the works and times of the plebeian 18th-century Urdu poet, Nazir Akbarabadi. In this play he used local residents and folk artists from Okhla village in Delhi and students of Jamia Millia Islamia, creating a palette never seen before in Indian theatre. The play was not staged in a confined space, rather a marketplace. This experience with non-trained actors and folk artists later blossomed with his work with folk artists of Chattisgarh.

In 1958, directing full-time he produced Mitti ki Gaadi based on Shudra's Mrichakatika, the first important production in the dialect Chattisgarhi. This led to the foundation of Naya Theatre, a theatre company in 1959, along with his wife. In his exploratory phase, 1970-73 he totally switched to Chattisgarhi. Later, he even started experimenting with pandavani, a folk singing style from the region and temple rituals, making his plays stand out amidst the backdrop of plays using traditional theatre techniques like blocking movements or fixing lights on paper. Spontaneity and improvisation became the hallmark of the new style, with the folk artists allowed greater freedom of expression.

Further evolution was seen in 1972 with his next venture with Chattisgarhi nach-style, in a play Gaon Ka Naam Sasural, Mor Naam Damaad, based on a comic folktale.

The technique finally evolved to an accomplished form, by the time he produced his seminal play, Charandas Chor in 1975, which immediately created a whole new idiom in modern Indian theatre. The highlight was nach -- a chorus that provided commentary through song. In 1980, he directed the play Moti Ram ka Satyagraha for Jan Natya Manch on the request of Safdar Hashmi.

His Chattisgarhi folk troupe with his rendition of Ashgar Wajahat's Jisne Lahore Nahin Dekhya in 1992 and in 1993 Kamdeo Ka Apna Basant Ritu Ka Sapna, Hindi adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was much admired. In 2002, he directed, Zahareeli Hawa, a translation of a play by the Canadian-Indian playwright Rahul Varma, based on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. In 2006, he wrote and directed Raj Rakt, based on two of Rabindranath Tagore's works, novel Rajarshi, and play Visarjan.

His first brush with controversy came about in the 1990s, with his production of a traditional Chattisgarhi play about religious hypocrisy, Ponga Pandit. The play was based on a folk tale and had been created by Chattisgarhi theatre artists in the 1930s. Though he had been producing it since the 1960s, in the charged social climate after the Babri Masjid demolition, the play caused quite an uproar amongst Hindu fundamentalists, whose supporters disrupted many of its shows, and even emptied the auditoriums, yet he continued to show it all over.

During his career, Habib has acted in over nine feature films, including Richard Attenborough's film, Gandhi (1982). He was much decorated being awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1969, Padma Shri in 1983, Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1996, and the Padma Bhushan in 2002; apart from that he has also been nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha (1972-1978). His play Charandas Chor got him the Fringe First award at Edinburgh International Drama Festival in 1982.

His wife Moneeka Mishra, a theatre person too, had been educated in Lahore's Kinnaird College. She went looking for her friends and college fellows after a break of more than forty years but found none except Begum W. A Sheikh who was too afflicted by Alzheimers to recall the days gone by. It was a sorry sight to see the two together trying to rewind history after so many years. Her visit to Kinnaird, too, was filled with nostalgia as she disapproved of the many architectural additions that had been made in the once idyllic locale.

Imran Qureshi in Venice Biennale and Safdar Qureshi at Rohtas 2 reflect the highs and lows of modern miniature from Pakistan. There are other practitioners of this genre but the case of Safdar Qureshi is important for many reasons. It presents the range of choices -- both formal and conceptual -- a contemporary miniature artist has in this time and place.

Safdar Qureshi, like many others, was trained in miniature painting at NCA, and later exhibited at Dubai and Karachi. His earlier work was heavily inspired from the miniaturists around, including his teachers. It is a natural phenomenon since every graduate starts under the shadow of his teachers; it is only after some years that he devises his own voice. So, lines of Mohammad Ali Talpur were transformed into sequence of dots in Qureshi's miniatures along with his experiments to construct three-dimensional pieces with nails and threads.

All these attempts were means to create a distinct and daring mode of expression amid the chaos created by young graduates in miniature painting. The persistence of Qureshi is visible in his new body of work, shown from June 3-8, 2009, at Rohtas 2 in Lahore. Contrary to expectations, the work on display was far from conventional or modern miniature as it has a conceptual background and a shocking content.

At Rohats 2, four works, each comprising different small paintings, were exhibited. In each frame, images were painted like illustrations of children's primer, glued to black slates. The simple method of making coloured drawings on paper and then sticking it on slate (an object extensively employed by Ahmed Ali Manganhar in our art) indicates a link with the system of education here. Children are taught alphabets with the letter and image/object association, when they begin learning. Hence in our shared memories, aleph is for anar (pomegranate) and bey is for bakri (goat), a process of education that many of us have experienced and still fondly or painfully recall.

It seemed Qureshi has questioned this structure of knowledge by challenging the usual allocation of words to meanings on a child's text book. His work, a series of visuals hung close to each other, appears senseless in the first glance, as one hardly understands the relevance of a goat displayed next to a deer, or to a tap or knife, because the first letters of these words did not connect in alphabetical or any other order. It is only when the artist confides that the viewer realises that the link between these haphazard images is of swear words. Basic expressions of disgust, both in English and Urdu, are deconstructed and described by the visuals arranged in lines, which convey and complete swear-words.

So the expletives, denoted through each series of work, are no more than mere visual substitution of indecent terms. On the surface, it appears that Qureshi is questioning the notion of learning in our schools (something that was probed by Ahmed Ali and Mohamamd Ali Talpur in their works, by using different strategies). Yet another reading of the work could be autobiographical, personal and private.

Safdar Qureshi's settling on swear-words could be a sign of frustration the young artist faced at the beginning of his career. With the abundance of miniaturists emerging every year, it is hard to survive as an artist. Promoters, galleries and curators do support new artists, but their fascination or fondness is a short-lived affair. Following the market, every latest offering is a temporary bubble in the permanent world of art. This must have happened with Qureshi as it did with many others. So, in a sense, his descent from Dubai to a local gallery in Lahore and finding the market choked for miniature, may have led to the visual utterance of swear words -- an expression of one's hidden feelings towards contemporaries and the art world in general.

The fact that an artist has ended up painting swear words – a set of imagery that is not much sophisticated in terms of rendering or composition otherwise – is crucial because it delineates the situation in our art world. Safdar Qureshi's decision to paint swear words reveals the extent to which an artist is ready to go, in order to bring something new to the 'art' market. One needs to make compromises, alterations and revisions in one's ideas and imagery for the sake of satisfying the customers, who are keen to collect unusual items.

This situation has been experienced by many other artists; in the name of invention, majority of them are imitating a certain formula for new miniature. White background, realistic rendering and personal imagery have become norms. This is a paradox because whatever is being presented in the guise of experimentation is just a line of re-production, following uniform patterns. This conversion of new miniature has been observed in the past few years mainly during degree show displays.

Subsequently, both options, the fashion of forging new miniature or succumbing to a boring method of imitating old examples, have posed problems for Safdar Qureshi who is desperate to develop his artistic position. His recent work could thus be interpreted as an expression of his unique identity or a reaction to the world of art, especially the scheme of making modern miniature, like a machine, habit and stereotype or all in one.

Dear All,

The British political scene was still reeling from the damning revelations about MP's expenses printed in The Daily Telegraph, when a further blow was dealt to it with the shocking news that the fascist, anti-immigrant party, the British National Party (BNP) had managed to get two seats in the European parliamentary elections.

The BNP is the modern day face of the National Front, and an inheritor of the Oswald Mosley brand of fascist politics in Britain. The BNP has been consolidating for some time but up until now, it was considered a sort of an aberration, a hateful group outside the mainstream of the country's politics. But its success at the European Parliament election was startling and actually slightly frightening. Until now, BNP has been regarded as a fringe, slightly crazy, group of publicity hungry neo-nazis. But these elections results have propelled them into the centre of politics, and nobody is quite sure how to deal with the situation.

This white supremacist group does have supporters -- but so did the Klu Klux Klan in the United States. In the BNP's case, its support base seems to have widened as tensions with immigrant communities -- most notably Muslim communities -- have increased in recent years. Political correctness and laws defending groups from religious persecution and bias have triggered a feeling in many indigenous (!) British people that the law only defends non-white groups no matter how extreme the politics of those groups is. The BNP has capitalised on tensions in Northern cities around Bradford, on the London bombings, on the disenchantment expressed by Muslim communities and on the extreme measures taken by various militant Muslim groups. Many English people now resent the protection offered by British law to people who resolutely oppose the British way of life and government.

Apart from the way the BNP has exploited and manipulated all these situations, there are many instances in which the incidents have angered many people who never really shared the BNP's xenophobic views. A good example is a homecoming parade for British soldiers in Luton just a few months ago, in March, which was disrupted by an aggressive 'Muslim' group who heckled the soldiers and held up banners saying things like "Butchers of Basra", "Anglican Soldiers" and "Cowards, Killers and Extremists." The situation in Luton became rather unpleasant and the people who had turned up at the parade to support the returning soldiers were extremely angry about the protestors.

Incidents like this have helped to fuel the BNP's message of persecution and prejudice. And a knee-jerk reaction to their newfound electoral success may only serve to worsen the situation by providing them with more publicity. After the gain in the European Parliament election, the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, felt that since the party appeared to have become an important political force, he should hold a press conference outside the houses of Parliament. He was holding forth rather bombastically to the press when the event was suddenly charged by protestors holding placards and chanting anti BNP slogans calling them "Nazi scum." The protestors threw eggs at Nick Griffin and forced the BNP leaders to flee the scene.

While it was gratifying for people who don't like the BNP's politics of hate and prejudice to see protestors throwing eggs at Griffin, this may be the wrong way to treat this group. It makes them appear to be reasonable people who are being harassed by unreasonable people, rather than fascists who are being told by non-fascists that they will not tolerate them. It also does not expose their politics and policies on a rational level.

But I suppose it is difficult to know when to depend upon rational discourse and when to clearly articulate that fascism and violence cannot be tolerated. Rightist groups preaching messages of hatred and bigotry whip up a frenzy of emotion through their rhetoric of violence (as people in Pakistan well know). This is a dangerous tool but to my mind the best way to control the groups using it is through a rational enforcement of law.

Incidentally, the BNP is against immigration; they don't want immigrants who they claim will take away opportunities and resources from the local people. We all denounce this message -- but is it really any different from the Sindhi nationalist view expressed so recently in the wake of the enormous domestic refugee crisis? The view then was that the IDPs from Swat should not be allowed to enter the province (a province in their own country, mind you) because they would take away opportunities and resources from the locals.

Prejudice is prejudice, whether it appears in the guise of British thugs, extremist Muslims or Hindu nationalists. And this is something we need to resist, a battle that we must fight every day, every hour.

Best Wishes

Umber Khairi