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issue Tourism
to terrorism review Thespian’s
life
issue On June 23 at
around 10:30pm, some 15-20 terrorists dressed in the uniforms of Gilgit
Scouts climbed up to the Diamir base camp of Nanga Parbat. The camp is
situated at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea level and is one of the
most frequent routes for climbers to scale the Killer Mountain. Situated in
Diamir district of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), the track is very difficult and it
takes at least two-days for professional climbers to reach the camp. The attackers, who were speaking local language Shina, Pashto and Urdu pulled out the nine foreign climbers belonging to US, China, Ukraine, Slovakia, Lithuania and Nepal, their guides, porters and cooks from their tents, tied their hands with rope and shot the foreigners. They then checked the ID cards of the locals and shot one local cook whose name, Ali Hassan, was Shia sounding.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP) took no time in claiming responsibility for the incident. “The
Jundul Hafsa faction of
the TTP has carried out the attack,” said the TTP spokesman Ehsanullah
Ehsan, adding the attack was carried out to avenge the killing of their key
leader Waliur Rehman Mehsud, and to express anger at the international
community for its support to drone strikes. The police have already
identified the attackers and claim that 10 out of 15 including the
mastermind Abdul Majeed belong to Diamir. It has so far arrested four of the
accused. A section of both
mainstream and social media termed it another conspiracy against Pakistan to
disturb its relations with China and prove it an unsafe country for tourists
and climbers etc. and seem convinced that a foreign hand was involved.
Locals in Diamir go further beyond and term it a conspiracy of international
forces against the district to clear a path for a military operation in
their area.
There may be some foreign
hands involved in the incident but the local police in Diamir have not found
a clue about it yet. “We have already arrested four out of 10 locals
nominated and also arrested several others for investigations,” Muhammad
Naveed, ASP Diamir tells TNS, adding that in the past incidents culprits
were not identified. “But local jirga and people have been cooperating
this time.” The incident has widely
been reported as the first such attack. This indeed is the first attack on
altitude climbers but even worse attacks occurred in the recent past in the
area. In April 2012, a charged crowd of hundreds in Diamir loaded off scores
of Shia passengers bound for Skardu and Gilgit and killed almost 40 of them.
A few months later, a group of terrorists killed 20 Shia bus passengers in
an adjacent valley Lulusar. The TTP claimed
responsibility for the last incident which indicated its presence in the
area. There is a long history of
sectarian animosity behind these attacks but the actual reasons are more
entrenched. Diamir is a Sunni-Deobandi
majority district situated in the Shia-Ismaili majority GB region. The
bigger Sunni-Deobandi region extends from Mansehra to Besham to Jaglot (Kohistan)
which also connects with Swat. Historically, it has more linkages with Swat
and Kohistan than GB. The areas are linked to each other not only through
roads but also through complicated high-altitude tracks on the mountains. A senior police official
who has served in Diamir district for several years tells TNS there were
some reports that the Taliban from Swat poured into Diamir. One of the most
backward areas of Pakistan with less than 10 per cent literacy rate and a
female literacy rate almost negligible at 0.02 percent, Diamir has a long
history of association with jihadi organisations. In 2001, after the US
attack on Afghanistan, the residents of Diamir closed Karakoram Highway for
11 days in protest and opened it only after Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai
personally visited the area and persuaded them to do so. The same year the UNDP
offices in two areas of Diamir-Darel and Tangir were burnt down. In October
2003, Pakistan’s security forces reportedly destroyed a training camp run
by Harkat ul-mujahideen (HUM) in Diamir. In 2004, nine schools including
seven girls’ schools were destroyed in the district on a single day. In
2009, the under-construction booster of PTV was destroyed in the district.
In 2011, once again two girls’ schools were destroyed in the area. There
were also some elements in Diamir which were involved in defacing and even
destroying the ancient rocks carvings depicting Buddha images. The walls in
the district are littered with sectarian graffiti and slogans. The name of the central
chowk in Chilas, district headquarters of Diamir, is Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. The
most ironic part is that not even a single culprit involved in any kind of
terrorist activity has been arrested in Diamir district. Police officials in Diamir
tell TNS that one nominated culprit in the killing of foreigners is a member
of the local chapter of SSP. “It is a complete tribal area like Fata.
People here are quite radicalised and opposed to modernity. They have strong
links with militant and jihadi organisations active in the tribal areas of
Pakistan. Diamir is also directly linked to Neelam valley of Kashmir. In
fact, in the 1980s, almost all the youth of the area took jihadi training
and took active part in the Kashmir and Afghanistan jihads. “There were/are no plans
to de-radiclise them. Mullahs are very influential in the area and the youth
blindly follow them. There are hundreds of madrassas in the area while the
number of schools is much less. The area is not going to change in the near
future. A lot of efforts from all quarters are needed to bring the area into
the mainstream,” says a senior official in Diamir. Interestingly, the police
and other law enforcement agencies (LEAs) are said to have been aware of
presence of extremist and militant elements in Diamir but still did nothing
to formulate a strategy to provide security to foreigners. Experts believe
the LEAs need to formulate a pro-active strategy to counter terrorism in the
country; so far they have been following a reactive strategy against
terrorists and extremists. Qazi Inayatullah, head of
Diamir Aman Jirga and leader of JUI-F, believes that the incident is part of
international conspiracy against his area. “The people of Diamir are
religious-minded and if needed would be on the forefront to fight jihad.
This incident is part of the plan to crush jihadi elements and to clear a
way to launch a military operation in this area. There are dozens of graves
of martyrs of Kashmir and Afghan jihadis in different areas of Diamir,” he
says. “After the Swat operation, the Taliban tried to slip into our area
but we requested them to leave our area alone and go somewhere else.” Inayatullah clarified that
in the April 2012 incident, “people of Diamir saved more than 200 Shia
passengers belonging to Gilgit and Skardu. What is highlighted is the
killing of people. That incident was a reaction of killings of Deaobandi
people from Diamir in Gilgit.” “No locals are involved
in the killing of foreign climbers,” he says. But the next minute he tells
TNS that families of four out of 10 locals identified by the police as
attackers have told the jirga that their sons are not in their control.
“They have linkages with jihadi organisations and do not listen to their
families. They may have been used by some anti-Pakistan group. We have
already decided to make a list of such young people and then we would also
contact the Taliban leadership and request them that do use these young men
of Diamir in Afghanistan war but please do not use them in our area. It is a
very sensitive area and such activities create a lot of problems. If they do
not listen to us, we would cooperate with the government to take action
against them.”
The incident no
doubt has directly hit the tourism sector in Pakistan, especially
high-altitude tourism in Gilgit-Baltistan. Between 250-300 teams of trekkers
and 50-80 teams of mountaineers visit GB in the summer season. A team of
trekkers usually consists of 15-20 people and spends 15-20 days and around
25,000USD. On the other hand, a team of mountaineers spends at least 60 days
and 100,000U The people in Buner valley
through which the climbers travel to reach the base camp receive Rs100
million only as tourism royalty every year. Amjad Ayub, president of the
Pakistan Tour Operators’ Association, tells TNS that this was the most
promising season after 9/11 but the incident has ruined everything. “Over 70 per cent
reservations have already been cancelled,” he says, adding that a
Japan-based company which used to deal in ‘Pakistan only tourists’ has
already gone bankrupt after the incident. Ghulam Nabi, owner of the
Fairy Meadow Tours, tells TNS that more than 500 tourists, mostly locals,
were visiting Fairy Meadows this year before the incident. “95 per cent of
all bookings have been cancelled. All 250 families in the Fairy Meadows area
depend on tourism.” He terms the government
more responsible for the damage than the terrorists. “The post-incident
handling by the government was poor. It did not allow the tourists to cross
Chilas and Babusar Pass. Hundreds were stranded there for hours and there
was nobody to guide them. No senior government official showed up at Chilas.
They took it as a normal incident.” Nabi says Diamir is not on
the priority list of rulers in GB. They instead try to isolate the area from
the rest of the region. “This has provided opportunities to religious
fundamentalist organisations like Sipah-e-Sihaba Pakistan (SSP) and
intelligence agencies of our enemy countries to increase their influence in
the area.” He says the current
incident may have been a foreign conspiracy against his area but definitely
done with the help of locals. “The pathway to the base camp is so
complicated that nobody without the help of locals could reach there,” he
says, adding that since 1998 scores of incidents of sectarian violence and
terrorism have taken place in GB but the government has not arrested even a
single culprit to date. — A Sahi
review On the Inde Seen through the eyes of
the state, the Other becomes the enemy, hostile and alien; despite the fact
that there may be more common elements than differences among two warring
nations. For instance, Pakistan and India or Israel and Palestine have many
linguistic and cultural similarities. States in their attempts
to keep their individual and distinct identities rely on a number of
symbols; like the national map, which is regarded a sacred demarcation of
boundary but is nothing more than a result of decisions made by a few
leaders and groups. In fact the idea of fixed borders is a modern concept;
during the medieval and ancient times, territories were altered with each
new expedition and invasion. Another symbol of
nationalism, the country flag, is a sacred item which commands such power
and prestige and r Artists have been looking
at this aspect of our existence in their works; many from diverse
backgrounds have used flags to denote more than one theme. Perhaps the most
prominent among them is Jasper Johns with his variations on the US flag (and
map too). Instead of political content, his flag and map painting are more
about the flatness of surface and choosing ready-made flat images for the
sake of painting (Other Criteria, Leo Steinberg). Alighiero e Boetti in his
Map, 1971-89, created the world map, while indicating each country
with its national flag. Another artist, Yukinori Yanagi, constructed an
installation (The World Flag Ant Farm,
1990-91) for 1993 Venice Biennale, in which national flags of
different countries were made with coloured sand stored in 170 plastic boxes
connected with each other through transparent tubes of the same material.
The artist inserted ants in this structure which moved the coloured sand
from one box to the other through tiny tunnels. After a few days, flags of
all countries blended with each other, to the extent of turning into
discoloured collection of sand at the end. During the Sharjah
Biennale 2013, Sara Rahbar also picked the image of national flags and
fabricated large scale pieces which were a critique/comment upon these signs
of identities and conflicts. Imrana Tanveer’s work falls in the same
league. Here, the artist has manipulated the visual of Pakistani flag along
with the flags of local parties and portraits of political personalities. In a series of small
pieces, intricately-formed like traditional textile, Tanveer shows (at her
solo exhibition being held from July 1-August 10, 2013, at the Drawing Room
Gallery, Lahore) how she responds to the surrounding political scenario. She
has picked the simple image of green and white flag and has introduced a
range of elements which reflect her ideas as well indicate the current
situation. In a combination of 40
pieces (each titled Road
Always Taken), the form of flag is converted to reveal the reality behind
the local and international play of power. Among these, the most
representative and obvious is the Pakistani flag in which the star is
dragged away through a small drone that
leaves its smoke line crossing the crescent. In another piece from the same
group, little bombs ar These works unfold how the
artist is keen on investigating the real reasons for the malice of our
nation. Due to her work, it appears that army’s intervention in the
political setup has been the main cause of our critical condition, but the
content is conveyed in a comical manner (and thank God for that because
there is nothing worse than a visual artist trying to be a political
performer/reformer or strategic analyst!). In another work,Golden
Moustaches, Tanveer alludes to the rule of Zia ul Haq, with his moustaches
sitting prominently on a surface which resembles an indigenous rug. The
artist, quite cleverly, colours the hair in the pattern of camouflage from
the army uniform; thus invoking the historical role of army which is further
illustrated through two rifles placed side by side as if two outstretched
arms are drawn against a neutral backdrop. The artist does not
contain her content to these images; she experiments with a range of
pictorial stuff and tries to create humour, irony and interest in our grim
situation. In that, she heavily relies on the history of visuals or history
of art; thus, in one work All these works — with
President Obama’s electrical poster, scenes of people pushing a train,
Uncle Sam’s figure in a frame with other smaller sections, our newly
elected prime minister wearing yellow glasses next to Edvard Munch’s
painting The
Scream, and Hokusai’s
well known print of weave in a mirror image — demonstrate how
the artist approaches her ideas and pictorial matter with a sense of
suspicion. These indicate that, for her, the work is a means to search and
navigate the essence of our political problem/existence. This, along with her
experiments with form, is a positive sign and proves
that Imrana Tanveer is a searching soul, especially in a time and
place where everyone is a self-proclaimed political scientist, regardless of
the fact that s/he is sitting at a road side café, in a posh restaurant or
on a news channels providing great entertainment to his audience, which Art
used to once upon a time!
Thespian’s
life Habib Tanvir can
be called the father of modern theatre in India. He drew his inspiration
from the various folk forms that were being staged in the various languages
of the subcontinent. There was obviously a
dilemma for the aspiring theatre enthusiasts in the subcontinent who did not
want to continue with the heightened traditions associated with the Parsi
Theatre and found the western theatre traditions too cold and alien to the
Indian temperam A rambling autobiography,
Memoirs covers not only the professional life of the thespian but also
meanders into nooks and corners very personal in nature. His various
crushes, infatuations, the temptations of youth and then his more serious
involvements, numbering more than one, are very quaintly delineated. He
talks about his large family, the various members in total recall, so
typical of the extended family scenario of the Muslim household in the
subcontinent. Habib Tanvir came to
Pakistan on many occasions; in the beginning, just to see his relatives, and
later as a celebrity. His extended family had migrated to the new country in
1947. Like many Indian Muslims, his family too was divided. He refused to
migrate to Pakistan and preferred to stay in India along with many of his
friends who were progressive poets, writers and film and theatre personnel. Not a very good student,
he dropped out of Aligarh and then the Royal Academy of Dramatics Arts in
London but came back to take up theatre as his career in fulfillment to a
promise he had made to Qudsia Zaidi before proceeding to London. It was only
the personal intercession by Jawalharlal Nehru on the strong recommendation
of Abul Kalam Azad that his name was cleared. The communists were not that
easily allowed then to travel abroad but he came back after seeing a lot of
theatre in Europe. The bug of theatre had
bitten him as a child in his native Raipur. His father was a Pathan who
settled in Raipur, then the capital of Central Province, later Madhya
Pardesh and now Chhattisgarh. He saw performances of song and dance on
important occasions. He worked for the Radio and earned the respect of Z.A.
Bukhari and later joined the Indian Peoples Theatre Association in about
mid-1940s. His hands-on exposure to
theatre served him well for he worked closely with Balraj Sahni, Shalendre,
Khawaja Ahmed Abbas, and Prithviraj Kapoor in the days when it was agitprop
theatre at its energetic best. When the top leadership of the Communist
Party was arrested, including the leading lights of IPTA, in the late 1940s
and early ’50s, Habib Tanvir ran the outfit single-handedly for about a
couple of years. Beyond IPTA, the theatre
scene was bleak. Ebrahim Elkazi did English plays in Bombay and the rest of
the theatre was conducted at the amateur level in schools and colleges. Post
independence theatre in India was dominated by Utpal Dutt and Shambu Misra
from Bengal who were both IPTA-trained and brought in modern techniques.
Though they performed in villages, it was basically urban theatre; Elkazi
and the National School of Drama productions were mainly based on western
theatre techniques but this interaction ushered in new playwrights like
Vijay Tandulkar, Grish Karnard, Mohan Rakesh and Badal Sircar. When Habib Tanvir decided
to do a play on Nazeer Akbarabadi in Jamia Millia, Delhi, in the mid-1950s,
it was as if theatre was given a new lease of life. In this play, even some
of the actors were not trained but were picked up from the adjoining village
of Okhala. Since Nazeer as a poet went contrary to the courtly mainstream
tradition of high culture song and dance, it was as if a reconnection with
folk India. It is difficult to characterise Agra Bazaar as a play — it was
at once a play that belonged to the proscenium as it did to the bazaar, a
modern narrative as well as a traditional one, a complete story as well as
an allegory; its use of song and dance seemed to take it away from modern
plays. When he used Chhattisgrahi
folk actors in Mitti Ki Garhi the attempted departure was audacious. Until
then, the city dwellers had taken their productions to the rural areas. For
the first time, he brought rural actors to the urban stage, not as exotica
but as equal participants. He also displayed that the secret of Sanskrit
theatre heritage lay via its folk heritage. The latter was a radical idea
and his productions were attacked for putting a shastriya tradition into
lokadharmi casing. It was a huge success and helped him form the Naya
Theatre. For thirty years, he and
his wife worked tirelessly for Naya Theatre, mounting productions, and
performing in different spaces. When Peter Brooks came to India in 1981, he
preferred Naya Theatre over the National School of Drama and its production
Charandas Chor created a storm winning the Edinburgh Fringe First Play
Award. Once he was particularly
invited to bring his famous stage play Agra Bazaar to Pakistan during the
first Benazir Bhutto government. He came on a recce trip but unfortunately
it was not possible for him to bring his play to Pakistan due to the angry
reaction of certain sections of the population. He did talk to the audiences
and the concerned people about his experiences of theatre and the need to
engage with a live art form. He was very keen to get the texts of the Parsi
stage plays which had been compiled and edited by Imtiaz Ali Taj while he
was heading the Anjuman Tarraqi-e-Urdu in Lahore. He admitted that such a
work had not been done in India. His wife of many years Moneeka Di too came
with him and was very eager to see visit Kinnaird College where she had been
a student before partition. The Memoir has been
translated by Mahmood Farooqui who is the spirit behind the revival of
dastangoi in India. He also co directed the acclaimed film Peepli Live with
Anusha Rizvi. His “Besieged Voices from Delhi in 1857” was also
well-received. (Memoirs is available at
Liberty Books) Habib Tanvir Memoirs Translated from Urdu by
Mahmood Farooqui Penguin Vikings India 2013 Pages: 343 Price not mentioned
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SD.
At least 250 locals are directly employed with one expedition.
pendence
Day of Pakistan in 2002, novelist and social activist Arundhati Roy spoke to
a large crowd 
in
Lahore. To this mesmerised audience, the Booker Prize winner talked about
the pomposity of patriotism, the false construct of nationalism and the
practice of dividing human beings into countries, states and alliances that
pitches the citizens against an imagined ‘Other’.
espect
that to rip, burn or drag it is considered a criminal offense. Without
realising that a piece of fabric in two or more colours and with some
patterns or motifs is designed by some humans and then the state decrees it
to be its national emblem, which can be modified with the consent of the
majority; hence the change in the national flags of Afghanistan, Iran and
Libya with the shift in regimes.
e
placed in a grid on green fabric, and are all white except one red (almost
about to explode!). In a similar construction, the stars are put on the
green portion with the face of General Zia ul Haq in the middle, and
composed inside a circle.
,
the famous Andy Warhol multiple portraits of Mao Zedong is arranged next to
an identical composition with each panel consisting of a political leader
and a splash of red on his/her face. This suggests the presence of violence
or it may refer to allegations of corruption that have disfigured the
character of our political leaders.
ent.
Very early on, he realised that the new Indian theatrical expression had to
have links with the age-old folk traditions. It was only then that the
people would connect with the thematic content of what was being presented
on stage.
