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interview Survival
of a community New
meaning of Oedipus Norman Morrison On November 2nd 1965 in the multi-colored multi-minded United beautiful States of terrible America
"We’ll start new projects" The celebrated Punjabi poet, novelist and politician Fakhar Zaman recently took charge as the chairman Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL), his second term in office. An intellectual of with a progressive stance, he has authored more than thirty books in Punjabi, Urdu and English winning him Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1994), Millennium Award for best Punjabi writer, Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2008) and Shiromani Sahitik award (2008) by the government of East Punjab, India. Five of his books were banned by the military regime in 1978, a ban that was eventually lifted by the Lahore High Court in 1996. He is the chairman of World Punjabi Congress. As the chairman of PAL he successfully organised the 1995 International Writers Conference – the first of its kind. TNS recently got hold of him to hear his future plans for PAL and hopes for literature and writers. By Abrar Ahmad The News on Sunday: As PAL chairman how would you rate the past work done by the Academy and the areas you intend to address in the future? Fakhar Zaman: Pakistan Academy of Letters is a prestigious
institution whose importance, unfortunately, has not been recognised by
successive governments. I would not say that it has failed in its objectives.
But, yes, a lot more could have been done. I was the Chairman of PAL during
the second tenure of Benazir Bhutto. I did my best to make it effective and
make it visible internationally. An international conference of writers and
intellectuals in 1995, attended by 400 delegates from TNS: The academy’s provincial offices present a desolate look, devoid of any meaningful activity. Isn’t it a gross under-utilisation of resouces? FZ: It is true PAL’s regional offices are not up to the mark. They are nothing more than post offices. This time, I have a firm plan to make these provincial offices more effective by allocating more funds so that they can organise seminars and conferences and other functions for the promotion of languages. We are also opening Kitab Ghar at the provincial levels which will display and exhibit PAL publications. We intend to propose to the government publication on no-profit no-loss basis. A number of writers, especially those from small towns, are unable to publish their books on account of financial constraints. TNS: What steps would you take to promote the academy’s role in the promotion of literature in Pakistan? FZ: The complexion of PAL will be of a progressive and enlightened organisation. We shall bring out realistic publications which are closer to real life. A lot of emphasis is being put on the Sufi tradition in South Asia with a plan to publish publications of Sufi movement which is devoted to cultural tolerance, brotherhood and humanism. TNS: The key posts of our literary and educational institutions are being held by manipulative old writers, decades after their retirement. Where are all the young scholars? FZ: I agree that the literary and cultural bodies should be headed by younger scholars with fresh vision and modern sensibility. The writers with a reactionary mindset who cling to these institutions should be removed. But, in my opinion, the most important and foremost thing is to de-bureaucratise the literary and cultural institutions. As long as bureaucracy keeps interfering with those institutions they will lose their progressive character. TNS: The nominees for the prestigious awards are scrutinised through a taxing process but finally the honour goes to the most unexpected authors. FZ: The literary awards which are given by the government nationally go through many processes. There is a lot of room for the selectors to show favouritism and cronyism. As far as Chairman PAL is recommending names for literary awards, I will do my best to forward the names of deserving writers without any bias. TNS: Any new project which would improve the Academy’s image and repute? FZ: We are going to undertake many new projects, some relating to history, for PAL to maintain its image as an active body which brings out thoughtful work, new ideas and a fresh vision. TNS: During Zia ul Haq’s regime, writers were bribed with land. Those against military dictatorship never applied for these schemes. Would these men of integrity be compensated? FZ: The nation takes pride in those writers who stood against Zia’s ruthless dictatorship with integrity and commitment. PAL till now has not paid proper attention to these great writers. I will try that these writers should be compensated in a befitting way. TNS: You announced the establishing a TV channel which is a good idea. But it is generally feared that the same "mafia" would hijack this project too. FZ: I am determined to establish a TV channel and FM Radio at PAL Headquarters, Islamabad. I understand the difficulties in the completion of these ambitious targets I will accomplish it at all costs. TNS: Life insurance scheme seems getting shut for good. It is so? FZ: Life Insurance Scheme has not been closed but slowed down because of internal problems. I assure that during my presence no one in my office will have the audacity to procrastinate. We decided to establish linkages with at least nine countries of the world. We have also decided to translate the foreign literature into Pakistani languages and Pakistani literature will be translated into languages of the countries with which we are going to establish linkages.
The history of Pashtun migration can provide a critical reference for understanding the histories of Asia and the world
By Sarwat Ali A History of Pashtun Migration(1775-2006) By Robert Nichols Published by Oxford University Press, 2008 Pages: 266 Price: Rs495 History has also been studied by attributing certain characteristics and idiosyncrasies to ethnic groups. One such much attributed ethnic group has been that of the Pashtuns. Roberts Nichols, in his latest book, discounts this argument as impartial and of imperial construct. He laments the fact that the imperial notions of inherent social and political hierarchies, often using the rule of colonial difference to subordinate particular ethnic communities, continues to operate in post colonial nation-states. These states have consistently ranked internal and national identities for economic advantage. Robert Nichols is an Associate Professor of History at the Richards Stockton College in New Jersy. He teaches South Asian and Indian Ocean history and has worked on the regional histories of the Pashtun communities of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has taught history at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Yale. He argues that in considering individual and community histories and representations, it must be remembered that ethnicity is never a given factor in identity formation but always socially and politically constructed. He then traces the history of the Pashtun migration and the main cause, according to him, is that the regionally agrarian districts with little irrigation and limited rainfall in Eastern Afghanistan, northern western colonial Punjab and the North Western Province produced surplus workers which always looked outside the immediate village economy for subsistence and opportunity. In the 18th century, tens of thousands of Rohillas migrated from the west of the Indus to settled northeast of New Delhi in the Rohilkhand region. This followed centuries old pattern of migration, especially for employment in the north Indian labour market for soldier entrepreneurs. In the early 19th century many migrants sought service in the East India territories or in areas still under local rulers. After 1849, when the British had occupied much of the north Indian region, a small administrative cadre was recruited for low level colonial government service. But most sought unskilled or semi skilled work in police, military, agriculture or urbanizing market towns and port cities as Karachi. In the mature colonial period, after the imposition of direct colonial rule in 1858, Pashtuns from the Peshawar valley were also recruited for positions in colonial plantations and trade networks that linked South Asia, Africa, various Indian Ocean archipelagos and South East Asia. Some Pashtuns pursued trading, which included the selling of livestock across northern India. Others became small financiers. Under colonial penal codes Pashtun prisoners were transported across the waters to the Strait Settlements and Andeman Islands. By the late 18th century Rohilla communities had developed political control and economic consolidation. The term Rohilla reflected less a fixed ethnicity based on kinship or essential culture than a constructed, inclusive often professional identity that reinvented idioms and norms to integrate a diverse body of individual and interests. The Rohillas suffered a setback when the Nawab of Awadh armies, helped by the colonial army, defeated them in 1774. Some were exiled, many died but most rallied to the cause of the new Rampur State set up to diffuse Rohilla resistance and subordinate the leading lineage to the influence of Nawab of Awadh and his allies in the East India Company. This then moves ahead in time to the colonial era and focuses on the Pashtun diaspora within the provinces and princely states of colonial India and continues to follow the circulation after decolonisation within the independent nation-state of Pakistan. The possibility of incremental change and equity was noticeable as a more circulating commodity, a trans-national idea that continued to motivate and unify striking workers in Pakistan, the Gulf, including different Pashtuns as they ranged and earned their way across the modern world economy. Pashtun history remained indispensable to an integrated Pakistani national history, but the history of Pashtun migration would also now provide a critical reference for understanding the histories of Asia and the world, of global capitalism and the universal quest for personal security and human fulfilment. Nichols sees the effort to mobilise the Pashtun workers in the Middle East as a reliving of the essential cultural notion of the Pashtuns "Pashtunwali" of justice and equality. Choosing to work or strike, Pashtuns in Dubai lived, as had others for centuries as mobile individuals with lives shaped by particular historic circumstances and evolving economic and political conditions. Pashtun cultural notion of justice and equity and of Muslim solidarity had been subordinated in the 1970s to the Gulf hierarchies of employers and employees. But by 2006 Pashtun notions of honourable behaviour and group loyalty helped inform new workers’ identities as members of the multi ethnic labour cohorts engaged in new forms of labour activism and resistance. Pashtun identity, language and ethnicity remained central for much of this history of circulation even as the same inter-regional forces and influences operated with similar effects on other regional communities across the Indian Ocean World. Robert Nichols is, however, not very clear how the Pashtuns arrived at this notion of justice and honourable behaviour. Is it the accumulated response to living in very hostile circumstances and has revolved round the basic idea of survival of the community or is it something innate and very peculiar to the ethnic group?
Sophocles was the first playwright to bring tragedy down
to human level. His characters are ordinary men and women, their sufferings
resulting from their own mistakes. Of the 110 plays that Sophocles is said to
have written, only seven survived, rated amongst the greatest literature ever
produced. Oedipus Rex, however, is considered to be his best. Freud’s
famous theory of Oedipus Complex is said to have been derived from Sophocles’
masterpiece. The theory explains infant sexuality which, Freud believed, is
directed towards the mother and the child starts seeing the father as his
rival. Another interesting interpretation of the play came from Frank
McGuiness who recently adapted it for Jonathan Kent’s production at the
London’s National Theatre. The columnist Charlotte Higgins has highlighted another interesting interpretation of the play in a recent article in Guardian where she says that what springs most grippingly out of the play for Frank McGuinness is the tragedy of a son who loses his father and a father who loses his children. "There can be few more devastating and yet unsentimental moments in theatre as when Oedipus, blind and about to be driven from his home as a polluted exile, bids farewell to his children, by now revealed as the product of an incestuous marriage. There is real tenderness here." She also adds "Oedipus must also grapple with the loss of his birth father, Laius whom he unknowingly murdered and with that of his adaptive father, Polybus, whom he always feared he might kill. These are the real bones and sinews of life. By outliving our parents, we kill them. This is the harsh metaphorical truth that Oedipus the King brings us."
Lost and found Gulzar Bano, a poet and a powerful bureaucrat during Zia’s regime, recently launched her collection of poetry Lost Found, Found Lost at the Dorab Patel auditorium of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. I.A.Rehman, Raza Kazim and Shaista Sirajuddin spoke about the Bano’s poetry. Bano was also the first woman ever to become cabinet secretary in Pakistan. She was born in Jalandhar, went to college in Lucknow before migrating to Lahore in a Military Special Train without her parents and eight younger siblings in November 1947. "My luggage included a few books, my paintings, illustrated manuscripts and a copy of the Pioneer dated 20 October 1946, in which my short story. ‘The Bedroom Ghost’ was published. About her life in the new country Gulzar Bano says: "Intensive concentration as a single working woman in a large family forced me to neglect my aptitude for words. Words, however, can be drawn without paints and brushes. Often on note papers here and there I started writing poems, many of them lost. Somewhat egoistically, later in the life I thought of getting these 67 poems published." I got a copy of Gulzar Bano’s book past week through a common friend Agha Ikram. Following is a short poem from the book which was written in 1994 and was first included in an anthology published by the Oxford University Press, Karachi in 1997. Earth Dreams (II) The butterflies celebrate the rainbows The humans damned their weapons The earth people sleep and wake without fear The flowering trees scatter their fragrance The arts and sciences bestow on LIFE abundance The frontiers of knowledge expand minds ascendance The lands oceans and skies boomering with peace The Universe reveals some innermost secrets The weapons are DEAD devoured by PEACE
Love of Indus Sindh Cultural Department recently hosted a reception for the Indian playwright Jetho Lalwani and poet Hero Thakur. While expressing their thoughts on Sindh they told the Sindhi people that Sindh "is not merely the name of their province, it also refers to the great civilisation that the people of this region developed during their long history." They said that the river Indus played a central role in the life of the people of Sindh who always identified themselves with the mighty river. No other South Asian river enjoys this status. During a recent visit to the interior Sindh, I came across a village poet who recited five Sindhi poems all composed in praise of the Indus. I asked him if he was a fisherman. He was not, he told me. But, he said, the Indus is not loved by fishermen only. "We all love it."
Adrian Mitchell died on December 21, 2008 in London. A prolific poet, novelist and playwright, he was perhaps best known for saying "most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people." He was a strongly committed anti-war poet and wrote extensively against Vietnam and Iraq wars.
Norman Morrison On November 2nd 1965 in the multi-colored multi-minded United beautiful States of terrible America Norman Morrison set himself on fire outside the Pentagon. He was thirty-one, he was a Quaker, and his wife (seen weeping in the newsreels) and his three children survive him as best they can. He did it in Washington where everyone could see because people were being set on fire in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see Their names, ages, beliefs and loves are not recorded. This is what Norman Morrison did. He poured petrol over himself. He burned. He suffered. He died. That is what he did in the white heart of Washington where everyone could see. He simply burned away his clothes, his passport, his pink-tinted skin, put on a new skin of flame and became Vietnamese. Playground Playground dark brown eyes scanning dusty tarmac a boy on a swing head down mouth humming a boy swinging intensely before dust he must go to his grandmother’s house on the edge of the city alone on a swing thinking on a swing a boy his mother will stay home she won’t go to the shelter people here are afraid of shelters they remember last time the chains of the swing they clang they creak the boy’s head fills with explosions a boy on a swing This poem was written during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. |
110-countries, was also organised for the purpose. Moreover, we published
selected Pakistani literature translated into seven languages (six languages
of UN and Persian). Resistance Literature written during the military
dictatorship of Zia ul Haq, mystic poets of Pakistan and writings of women
writers of Pakistan were also translated in the said languages. Five Central
Asian poets were also translated into Urdu. We increased financial assistance
to the writers. A number of research projects were started. For the first
time in the history of the PAL, publications in all Pakistani languages were
made because we wanted PAL to represent all the languages spoken in the
country.
