Barrier of tradition
With the passage of time soz and marsiya khawans instead of reciting their own verses took to the texts of Anis and Dabir
By Sarwat Ali
It is now becoming obvious by the year that the recitation of the marsiya, hamd, naat and the renditions of the qawl, qalbana and munqabat remain the repository of our traditional manner of the application of the note.

One after the other, suicide bombers struck in different parts of NWFP and in Islamabad, setting a record of sorts by managing an attack almost every day in the run-up to Ashura. But the attacks didn't trigger sectarian riots because the Moharram gatherings and processions weren't the main target. Instead, police officials were targetted and scores of them were killed and wounded.

There are reports that at least 16 suicide bombers were ready to strike and were on the look out for suitable targets. Some were able to undertake suicide bombings but most of them failed to do so and were either captured or are still at large. It is possible that more suicide bombers are on the way and could cause harm if they aren't intercepted.

The authorities first claimed the arrest of a would-be suicide bomber in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in southern NWFP not far from the troubled South Waziristan tribal agency. Subsequently, it was claimed another six militants had been apprehended on suspicion of involvement in the string of suicide bombings in the NWFP and Islamabad. Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema, chief of the National Crisis Management Cell in the federal interior ministry, was quoted as saying that two of the captured men were suspected suicide bombers and the remaining four were masterminds of the suicide operations. He said it would be the first breakthrough by the security agencies against the terrorist network if the links of the suspects with suicide bombings were established.

Brig Cheema and other government functionaries have all been arguing that security personnel in Islamabad, Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan and elsewhere foiled attacks on Moharram processions of Shia mourners by intercepting the suicide bombers before they could strike at their targets. In the process, they pointed out that police officials paid with their lives while averting such attacks. If one were to accept this line of argument, it means that the suicide bombers were planning to hit the Moharram processions and not the police contingents providing security on the occasion. The government officials may have their arguments to support this viewpoint but the suicide bombers could possibly have struck the unarmed mourners taking part in the processions more easily than targetting the well-armed and equipped police. Or it is possible that the suicide bombers panicked after finding their passage to the Imambaras and Moharram processions blocked by the police and, therefore, decided to strike at the cops.

Obviously, there are no easy answers to such questions and the investigators would be able to do a better job on the basis of the evidence at their disposal and once they have interrogated the detained suspects.

In the case of suicide bombing in Islamabad, the attacker apparently wanted to gain entry into the Marriott Hotel from the back door and then blow himself up somewhere inside the hotel. He failed to do so when intercepted by security guard Tariq Mahmood, who died along with the suicide bomber as a result of the explosion. This was a straightforward case of terrorism-inspired suicide bombing and was unrelated to any event connected with Moharram.

The suicide bombing in Dalgaran Bazaar near the historic Qissa Khwani (Bazaar of Story-Tellers) in Peshawar was the most devastating because the bomber was able to come close to senior police officers and blow explosives strapped to his body before he could be overpowered. The police later found two unexploded hand-grenades and a detonator from the drains near the spot where the bomber had struck. Peshawar's new capital city police chief Abdul Majeed Marwat, who replaced the slain Malik Mohammad Saad after the bombing, said the suicide bomber was carrying three hand-grenades but only one exploded and caused 16 deaths. The human and material losses would have been more had all three grenades exploded.

The Peshawar bombing deprived the Frontier Police of one of its finest cops, Malik Saad. He had served with distinction wherever he was posted and earned the praise of his superiors and the gratitude of the people. Being a civil engineer, he even got lucrative postings as administrator of Peshawar Municipal Corporation (PMC) and director general of the Peshawar Development Authority (PDA). On these positions, he was responsible for provision of civic services for the citizens of Peshawar and development of the ever-expanding Frontier metropolis.

There was no scandal attached to his name and, in fact, he quit his job as head of PDA when he refused to accept political pressure in the award of a contract in the upcoming Regi Lalma housing project. His good reputation, performance and professionalism as a top cop won him quick promotions and before long he was made deputy inspector general of police despite being junior in rank and grade. A few months after his promotion, Malik Saad was gone and so was deputy superintendent of police Khan Raziq, another competent cop known for his friendly and witty nature. Six other policemen, two nazims of union councils, Asif Baghi and Mohammad Ali Safi, naib nazim Iftikhar Hussain, and five civilians were also killed.

Prior to the Peshawar bombing, a suicide bomber and bystander were killed in Hangu, a volatile district in southern NWFP with a history of sectarian violence. On the ninth and tenth Moharram, Hangu witnessed more violence as mortars and rockets landed in the city and killed and injured a number of people. Subsequently, a suicide bomber struck in Dera Ismail Khan, killing himself, a policeman and a passerby and causing injuries to seven others including two cops. The bomber had been intercepted by the police before he could reach some congregation and cause more damage. It was following this attack that the six suspects were picked up in Dera Ismail Khan and reports about the ready-to-strike 16 suicide bombers began circulating. Later, it was reported that nine suicide explosives jackets had been seized before being put to use. To make matters worse, two rockets were fired into the neighbouring Bannu city. The rockets landed near an Imambargah, or Shia place of worship, and injured 12 persons. Rockets were also fired at police posts in Tank district and bombs and weapons were recovered in Kohat. It seemed none of the southern NWFP district was safe.

Suspicion was directed at militants operating in Waziristan, more so due to the threat hurled by one of their top commanders, Baitullah Mahsud, following the airstrikes in Shak Toi area in South Waziristan. He had vowed to avenge the death of eight tribesmen belonging to South Waziristan in the airstrikes within 10 to 12 days. The Pakistan Army claimed to have launched the airstrikes against militants' hideouts even though residents of the area maintained that they were attacked by missiles fired by a pilotless US plane. It reminded of one of the suicide bombings in Dargai in which 42 soldiers were killed a few days after the airstrikes against a madrassa in Bajaur Agency that caused the death of 82 students and their teachers.

One cannot rule out the involvement of militants in the recent suicide bombings in the NWFP even though the MMA-led provincial government is claiming that it was the handiwork of foreign elements. No names are being named but privately Afghan refugees and intelligence are blamed for the attacks. An anonymous caller from North Waziristan phoned an Urdu daily in Peshawar to claim responsibility for the Peshawar attack and, therefore, reinforced the suspicion about involvement of tribal militants in these attacks.

Still one would have to wait for official findings about the spate of suicide bombings before arriving at any conclusion.

Mobina Zuberi -- painter (she had her most recent show at Indigo, Mumbai), block printer and gallerist (she founded the art gallery that later transformed into Khaas) -- has been employing the female figure as her reference point. Unlike the volatile surface quality of her paintings, her characters are oddly gentle. They float or recline like swimmers in an uncertain terrain, intent only on their own inner rather dreamy modes of communication. Here she talks to TNS about the long journey and her travails as a woman painter. Excerpts from the interview follow

The News on Sunday: Who, in your opinion, did you acquire the artistic bend from?

Mobina Zuberi: I was born in Bhopal but grew up in East Pakistan. I was only two years old when partition took place. My parents were in Calcutta around that time. In my opinion, I inherited a certain sensitivity to the arts chiefly from my parents who were collectors of art. In Rajshahi where we used to live, I remember my mother inviting the local potters to design ashtrays for her in clay or paint over a large clay pot she used to store grain in. There was a Hindu dance master who would come to the house, play flute and teach me to dance. I grew up with this activity around me and became sensitive to it.

TNS: How did you get to discover the artist in you?

MZ: I was in a boarding school in Darjeeling for two years. My family came to West Pakistan in 1957. I came to discover the artist in me very late in life when my father got posted to the University of Iowa as a teacher in English. I was in high school in the US where painting and drawing were part of the curriculum.

The prospect of making a career out of it, being a young woman, was virtually non-existent in those days. Women from 'good families' got married and 'lived happily ever after'. To go out to pursue a career was not considered good in my family for women. At that point, I was not even aware that one could earn a living as a painter!

When I was 18, my parents thought I was becoming too 'Americanised'; I was sent back to my grandparents soon after. My mother followed and got me engaged at the age of 19 before I had even graduated. I also wished to join the NCA but they refused.

TNS: When did you make your first incursion into the art world?

MZ: After a year and a half of my marriage, my husband got posted to Texas where I started taking community art classes in painting. While we were in New York in 1967, I joined drawing classes at the International Art Students League, and painting classes at the Greenwich West Village.

Once back in Karachi, I began to teach English at the PACC where I met Ali Imam for the first time.

First I took my drawings to the Karachi Arts Council but the director refused to offer me a show on the grounds that they were nudes. Then I went to see Ali Imam who used to run the Indus Gallery, and give art lessons to 5-6 students upstairs. Imam loved my work and took me in as his student.

TNS: Can you dwell on your memories of Imam Sahab?

MZ: Ali Imam is the one who gave me my first solo show at the Indus, ten years after I had met him, in 1983. As a teacher, he was tremendously knowledgeable on Western art history and its sensibility in approach to painting. The most admirable thing about him was that he'd never impose his style on anyone. He would discuss art on an intellectual plane rather than as a craft.

I registered as a student with him because I had never had any formal training in art, and I still feel the lack in solving certain problems on canvas. He would often tell me, "With your travels around the globe to so many museums and having been acquainted with great works of art, you shouldn't waste your energies on being an extrovert; instead, you should internalize your experiences and express them in your painting".

Somehow, I couldn't devote the entire chunk of my life to painting because the demands on me as a social being had been such. This has also been a matter of conflict inside me, to this day.

TNS: How did you land up at the Garhi Studios in New Delhi?

MZ: On one of my visits to Karachi from Abu Dhabi, where we were living now, Ali Imam advised me to go to Delhi and paint away from home. I met Gogi Saroj Pal in New Delhi who found me space in Arpana Caur's studio at Garhi, lying vacant.

Since I had no academic background and had not gone through the mill of technical training, I had to search for the tools on my own which was a positive thing. I had just come back from a trip to Italy where I had visited the Etruscan tombs and seen Medieval painting, so gold was on my mind. At Garhi, I wanted to reproduce that Medieval luminosity in painting and translate it into a very modern idiom. Therefore, I developed my own technique of laying textured gold paint as the ground and applying oil paints on top in thin layers. The imagery was very Eastern. I wanted to depict the different stages of life a female has to go through because I also felt that that is what I had been familiar with. I painted at Garhi for three months and produced a huge body of work. Well-known figures in painting, such as Krishen Khanna, Paramjit and Arpita Singh, B R Santosh and Manjit Bawa were all there around that time. Once, Roshan Alkazi of Art Heritage came around and asked me if I was a graphic designer because of the way I had balanced my spaces. That was a huge encouragement.

TNS: Paired or single, the female figures in your early work appear to be desolate and lonely, painted in a rather somber palette. Who are these women?

MZ: My colour palette did not change until the late 1990s. In those days, I was drawing on canvas directly. At that point, the circle of friends I was moving in comprised mainly of executives' wives and socialites who used to talk exclusively about servants' problems, clothes and houses. I used to feel isolated among them. I was quite perturbed because I couldn't paint full time and forget about my household duties. I never saw fellow artists who I could communicate with intelligently, except Bashir Mirza. The discontent in me reflected in my work which has always been semi-autobiographical.

TNS: How did the decision to open up an art gallery in Islamabad come about?

MZ: Since my daughters had grown up, I wanted to do something outside home. By this time I knew a lot of artists, so the best thing for me to do was to open an art gallery. I introduced a lot of Karachi-based artists to Islamabad who did not have the opportunity to exhibit in Islamabad. The only other gallery at that time was Rohtas which focused primarily on artists from the NCA or Lahore.

TNS: Tell us about your latest body of work?

MZ: My latest work is an off-shoot of block printing. First I dipped Nepalese handmade paper in a bath of black vegetable dye, and then treated it with a mixture of limestone and Multani matti. When it dried, I washed the top layer off. The only other colour I later added to my vocabulary was red. On top of this treated surface I drew basic shapes.

Girish Karnad knows a thing or two about theatre. He is one of a small group of playwrights who, together, make up what can be called a national theatre in India. This group, in Karnad's own words, comprises Dharmaveer Bharti, Mohan Rakesh, Vijay Tendulkar among others and has been instrumental in a consistent dramatic activity in India.

But Karnad is hardly satisfied. "Indian theatre is nothing except a coming together of dedicated individuals who keep writing and producing plays knowing that it wins them no commercial success," he tells The News on Sunday, during a brief conversation on the sidelines at a seminar on theatre at the National College of Arts, Lahore. "There is no groundswell of public support for theatre in India," he says in a matter-of-fact way.

This makes people related to Indian theatre do something on the side to earn their living. Karnad had been acting, producing and screenwriting in cinema as well as working for the government to make ends meet. Others like "Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah have been doing commercial cinema to be able to keep their theatre-related ambitions and activities going".

The reasons for this sad state of affairs are many, most of them still to be explored, says Karnad, a winner of many awards and a much-translated writer in many languages. "Take traffic. In most of the big cities in India, traffic is so bad that once you reach home after day's work you have hardly any energy left to move out again to spend your evening at a theatre."

He discounts TV as one of the factors stopping people from turning out to watch theatre. "Television (in India) is so bad that it should throw people out of their houses," he remarks, but still people "don't go out and look out for something else". To him, moreover, there is some reason why Indian TV (as well as Hindi movies) are so full of theatrics. "Sanskrit drama of the old was written as well as performed. This continued till 8th century. After that performance remained but we don't have a record of any written plays until the 18th century. Drama depended in that period not on the text but on the improvisation of individual actors like music does on the improvisation of individual musicians. This apparent disconnect between 'text' and 'performance' has over the centuries accentuated physical movements at the cost of thought content. TV and Hindi film industry are just the culmination of that process."

In theatre, too, this emphasis on performance has hindered what he calls 'theatre of thought'. The other factor that has contributed to the evolution of TV into what it is today is the promotion of Hindi as the national language, Karnad points out. "Since Hindi is hardly related to the ground realities outside of a small part of India, the so-called pan-India reality that is the staple of Hindi TV has to be constructed. It has hardly anything to do with life in any part of the country," he tells TNS.

Girish Karnad writes in his mother tongue Kannada, something that is rather out of favour with most Indian writers of the current and previous generations. He says he writes in Kannada because it is his mother-tongue. "I think in this language," he says. Yet he has to his credit plays which have won him acclaim much beyond his home state of Karnataka and not just in the West.

Recently, he has become the first post-partition Indian author whose work has become a part of syllabus at a Pakistani institution. But he is modest to the extent of being self-effacing. "It is because of the National School of Drama (in India) that people like me who have been writing in different Indian languages became known to a national (and then regional and international) audience. The school keeps translating plays written in various Indian languages into Hindi and from one language to the other. This creates a situation where every playwright gets the chance to reach audiences across the country," he remarks.

Still, Indian theatre, according to him, remains "as big as the Marathi theatre", one of the few reserves of Indian theatre which continues to thrive and produce playwrights, directors and actors of renown.

But as well as in other parts of India, theatre in Maharashtra faces quite a lot of pressure from religious extremism as well as social and political lobbies, Girish Karnad says.

One of his films was banned by the censors for being based on caste-system. Still some of his critics accuse him of hiding behind history and mythology (the staple of his art) to avoid antagonising the establishment. "It's difficult to render the political into artistic and creative," he told the audience at the NCA seminar.

His way of handling the problem is writing allegories. By couching them in modern diction and infusing them with current sensibilities, he has been able to write about contemporary issues without having to sacrifice the universality that all art should aspire to. He seems to have successfully turned his knowledge of theatre into art that is highly likely to survive the test of time.

It is now becoming obvious by the year that the recitation of the marsiya, hamd, naat and the renditions of the qawl, qalbana and munqabat remain the repository of our traditional manner of the application of the note.

Music in the last two decades has changed so much that our traditional style of the application of sur seems to have been lost in the mist of massive innovations. In the last decade and a half the musical rendition under the generic label of pop has totally infiltrated the way the note is applied and the bandish structured.

The more popular forms which originated in the West, the United States and Britain in particular after the Second World War were aped by a very small number of performers here. Usually these were amateurs springing from the so called English medium backgrounds being more exposed to the culture of the West than the happenings at home. But in the nineteen eighties when the same type of musicians substituted their English lyrics with local languages and dialects a revolution in music followed. Such groups which are in large numbers now outsell the more traditional musicians and singers by a pretty big margin if the charts are to be believed.

Initially these groups wrote lyrics which were about the happenings of urban people here, the experience was centered round the youth, what they faced, their desires, aspirations and heartbreaks. The language too was neither poetical in the conventional sense, nor restricted to the purity of the idiom. Instead it was more spoken in style and it necessarily included a large number of English words and phrases which the urban youth in any way speak. It was a musical expression limited to the youth and was in sharp distinction to the music which the older generation in the urban areas and the people at large listened to in the other areas of the country.

The distinction between the music of the youth and music of the older generation seemed to be under the threat of erosion after these recordings were released. Many scoffed at what these pop musicians were daring to do and rested in the belief that their manner and style being of greater musical value was inviolable. But if one surveys the changes that have come about in the more popular folk forms and film music the case for complacency is ill founded.

Though it can be said that due to the binding clause of being quasi religious there is greater possibility of it remaining faithful to tradition. The marsiya, hamd, naat recitation and the qawwali rendition has been less susceptible to change despite Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's innovations. Most of the qawwali, hamd, naat and marsiya, soz, salam is rendered in the traditional manner, composed in modal structures where the application of the note is specifically in accordance with the indigenous 'ang'.

Their effort found correspondence as the Asian groups emerged, particularly in Britain. By combining the South Asian instruments like the dhol and picking on bits and pieces of forms like the bhangra they synthesized a new kind of singing and dancing using English, Punjabi and inscrutable word sounds more in the style of Rap.

But then the pop musicians started to sing the texts that were considered to be the preserve of traditional singers. Iqbal was sung by them and then a number of kaafis, some being the most sung verses in the languages other than Urdu. Historically it is not very clear as to how these holy texts were recited. Probably the form of recitation has changed with the changing aesthetic and social requirements of the ages. The present form of the qawwali with the accompaniment of the musical instruments, harmonium being predominant, and a steady and vibrant tempo reinforced by the clapping of the hands seems to be of recent origin or is a contemporary version of a much older form. Ustad Chotey Ghulam Ali in his private moments broke into what he called qawwali as it was rendered in Kasur, and it was very close to the musical structure of the dhrupad without the accompaniment of an overbearing rhythmic pattern.

It appears that marsiya, soz, noha, salam became a more specialized form as a distinct community of marsiya go or soz khawaaans emerged. From the writings of Abdul Halim Sharar on Lucknow it appears that during the Nawabi rule in Awadh soz or marsiya khawan specialists, almost comparable to the best known vocalists or singers were instrumental in evolving the form of recitation prevalent now. One lead vocalist while the rest identify the tonic note or at best recite the refrain seemed to have been perfected in the nineteen century Awadh.

Marsiya had been recited (soz) but Mir Zamir used a popular spoken rhythm called the tahtul lafz. Gradually marsiya in tahtul lafaz replaced the traditional Rawzatush Shuhada and Dah Majlis. Mir Zamir's rival was Mir Hasan's talented son Mir Mustahsan Khaliq (1804). He had inherited his father's capacity to vividly versify subtle emotions and made his mark on the basis of linguistic artistry. The characteristics of marsiya created by Mir Zamir were perfected by Mir Khaliq's son Babar Ali Anis and Mir Zamir's disciple Salamat Ali Dabir, and both were the precursors of modern Urdu poetry in the twentieth century. With the passage of time soz and marsiya khawans instead of reciting their own verses took to the texts of Anis and Dabir and became specialists of sorts and had a niche following.

In the various regions like Southern Punjab and Sindh distinct marsiya recitations are rendered in Punjabi and Sindhi while in urban areas the leading vocalists have been the main reciters of the marsiya. Noor Jehan, Mehdi Hasan, Chotey Ghulam Ali Khan, Amanat Ali, Fateh Ali, Hamid Ali Bela, Nusrat Fateh Ali, Ghulam Ali, Hamid Ali, Ghulam Abbas may not have been professional marsiya reciters but they all partook of this religious obligation. But one wonder how long it will take for the barrier of tradition and veneration to break before an invasion of sorts takes place. Hopefully it will take some time, only after a more wholesome synthesis of style has evolved.