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issue interview Last
look at Ziarat Life
in a cassette
issue When Pakistan
looks at Balochistan — from Islamabad and its National Assembly, the
Sharif residence in Lahore and Raiwind, or the commercial capital of Karachi
— it is as if the country’s biggest province takes on the shape of a
playdough. From Rehman Malik to Chaudhury Nisar Ali Khan, and from one
television channel to the other, it is those sitting at the centre of power
who get to decide how events in Balochistan are interpreted. The view of the average
Baloch is silenced — either unintentionally, by the more ignorant lot of
observers from the centre who have not spent enough time in understanding
the province, or deliberately by those who want to ensure that alternate
(and more accurate?) interpretations of events in Balochistan remain hidden
from view. In the course of the last
week, the centre’s politicians and media organisations, commentators and
activists, have lamented attacks carried out by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ)
and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in a way that make it seems like
both events are equal. On the day of the attacks, Interior Minister Chaudhry
Nisar Ali Khan, and Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid, decided to skip the
funerals of the 40 victims of the atrocious LeJ attacks on a university bus
of female students and the Bolan Medical College Complex to visit the Ziarat
residency. The News reported that the two federal ministers were
“particular about visiting Ziarat since they both had an emotional
attachment to the site”. The death of one police
officer at the hands of the BLA and the 40 deaths in Quetta were low in
priority than the integrity of this quintessential symbol of Pakistani
nationalism. At the press conference
hosted by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan’s ruling
party failed to mention the LeJ or the police officer killed in Ziarat.
Facebook and Twitter feeds swelled with mourning social media-types
lamenting the loss of the “Quaid’s residency” at least in equal
measure as (if not more than) they mourned those who lost their lives. The
attack on the residency already has a Wikipedia page with far more detail
(including “domestic” and “foreign responses”) than a shorter page
dedicated to the attack on the students and patients of Quetta. When the interior minister
presented his preliminary report to the National Assembly two days after the
attacks, he made sure to allocate an equal amount of time to the Ziarat and
the Quetta attacks (circa 5 minutes each). Though Nisar can be lauded for
his criticism of security agencies in Quetta (he openly asked how Quetta
could be the repeated target of terrorists with the “police, FC, security
agencies and intelligence agencies […] at every corner.”), his
insistence on ensuring that a newly-formed Joint Investigation Team (JIT)
probes both attacks in one stroke indicates the tendency by those in power
to equate the attack on a building with 41 lives. The elephant in the room The PML-N’s coalition
partner in the National Assembly, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP)
has been refreshingly critical of Nisar’s tendency to equate and
prioritise the BLA and LeJ attacks. Unlike the National Party, which called
a strike to mourn the attack, the PkMAP Secretary General Akram Shah pointed
out that the residency was a “symbol of slavery.” Originally built by
Sir Robert Groves Sandeman, “the colonial British officer […] who ruled
Balochistan until his death in 1892”, the residency “reminded the Baloch
and Pashtuns of the long period when they were slaves of [the] British
Empire.” Sandeman successfully
established a colonial policy that turned the Khan of Kalat and Baloch
Sardars into agents of the British Crown, in exchange for an allowance that
covered their personal expenses. The policy persisted long after the
creation of Pakistan. Balochistan did not become a full-fledged province
until 1970, and the legal loophole that allows Sardars to maintain a form of
personal police force (in the form of levies) can be traced back to Sandeman
himself. Despite his bold remarks,
however, even Shah fell short of seeing the elephant in the room. The centre
seems far more intent on protecting the integrity of “the Pakistani
nation” than the lives that reside within its borders. Fudging the truth It is easy, and much more
comfortable, for Pakistanis around the country to paint Balochistan as a
province in anarchy, where brainwashed, crazy, and foaming-at-the-mouth
terrorists roam the streets “killing hope and history” (as one newspaper
so aptly put it in its front page headline the day after the attacks). Easy,
because it means that we do not actually have to expend any intellectual
energy on learning something new or disconcerting about another part of the
country that we were not already fed in our Pakistan Studies class. And
comfortable, because that way we get to avoid the uncomfortable truth that
the state institutions and Pakistaniat that we hold in such high regard
might potentially be complicit in hurting the very lives that they claim to
protect. In the last few weeks
almost everyone, from Pakistan’s politicians to its media organisations,
its liberal activists to its political analysts, has celebrated the coming
of a new democratic dawn in Balochistan. There is little doubt that the rise
of National Party’s Dr Abdul Malik Baloch as the chief minister is a
significant step forward in the way the centre has dealt with the province. But, whether we like it or
not, the new face of the provincial government’s leaders is more a shift
in the establishment policy than it is a shift in the situation on the
ground. Unverified reports speak
of up to 49 Baloch who have either gone missing or turned up dead since the
May 11 elections. In the unwritten agenda that is circulating among the
Pakistani media, there seems an unwillingness to accurately report or follow
up on the continued issue of missing persons and kill-and-dump policies in
the fear that it might undermine politicians that Pakistan’s liberal elite
like. Just like our analysis of
the provincial government’s new leadership, our interpretation of the two
attacks reflects a bias in how we understand Balochistan — or for that
matter how we understand Pakistan. For many of those looking at both,
politics only exists within the confines of the “nation state”. That
means that we only find those individuals and groups who are represented in
state institutions (provincial assemblies or the parliament in Islamabad) as
legitimate representations, and voices, of “the people”. Anyone who
falls outside these limits are either ignored out of ignorance (we do not
know about them, or we are so used to aping the language of state and
democracy that we forget to include them), or on purpose by those who are
afraid that bringing them into the conversation will undermine the integrity
of the Pakistani state. If we want to understand
rather than misunderstand Balochistan, we cannot look at either the Ziarat
or the Quetta attacks without looking at the larger context of violence and
counter-violence in Balochistan. Or without acknowledging that when it comes
to exercising force, the state is just as bad as the militant organisations
that we love to hate. Take the Quetta attacks.
According to a source in the Balochistan FC that I met last year, army
cantonments occupy around half the city’s territory. Twenty-seven
platoons, or almost 1000 soldiers, from the paramilitary force patrolled the
streets alongside the police in 2012. Several attacks against the city’s
Hazara community have taken place less than 100 metres away from
checkpoints, according to Asmatullah Niaz, the chairman of the Hazara
Student Federation (HSF), and it is near impossible to drive more than 10
minutes before being stopped by a boy in khaki asking for identification. Time to listen There are only two
possible explanations for the continued attacks against Quetta’s Hazara
community: Either the security forces are incapable, or complicit. If the security forces are
incapable, then one could argue that the PML-N and Chaudhry Nisar should see
the arrest of the LeJ on criminal charges of murder as a bigger emergency
and more important goal to reach within the next 3 months than the
rebuilding of the Ziarat residency. One place that Nisar could start is in
his own backyard: Punjab, where the LeJ actually comes from. According to Niaz,
however, the real issue could be that the security forces are complicit. He
says the security establishment allows militant groups to operate with
impunity because it helps dilute attention on the widespread separatist
uprising that has taken hold among the Baloch. The security establishment
sees the LeJ as a strategic asset in an area close to the Afghan border as
NATO troops plan to step down their presence, says Niaz. During the Hazara protests
at the beginning of this year, the unintentional or deliberate nexus between
the security establishment and the LeJ seemed to have been silenced as
thousands across the country sat in solidarity with the hundreds who had
lost their lives. As the Hazaras called for army intervention and
governor’s rule, the simple analysis, that their solution might just be
part of the problem, was brought up by a select few. But the mainstream
politicians, media and activists chose to ignore it. Like the Quetta attacks,
the Ziarat one has been taken out of context too. Whatever one might think
of the BLA, it makes sense to at least attempt to understand the reasoning
that was given. Given that Ziarat falls in Balochistan’s Pashtun belt, the
BLA called on “their Pashtun brothers to build a monument in tribute to
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Abdul Samad Achakzai” in a press release
issued after the attack. The BLA spokesman, Meerak Baloch, also said they
can “only think of negotiations after we have destroyed the symbols of
invaders on Baloch land and regained our national geography and national
identity.” At a point where both the
federal and provincial governments are interested in negotiations with
Baloch separatists, it makes sense to start the process by seeing Pakistan
from the eyes of the Baloch. The attack on the Ziarat Residency, where the
BLA replaced the Pakistani flag with their own, is an indirect invitation
and attempt to prompt Pakistan at seeing itself through the eyes of the
Baloch. Any negotiation that wishes to be long-lasting, and avoid further
uprisings — this is the fifth Baloch uprising in Pakistan’s history —
should at least start from a position of listening. If we listen, we will find
out (whether we like it or not, or whether it is true or not) that Jinnah is
seen as someone who ordered the Pakistani Army to annex Balochistan and
force it to become a part of Pakistan in 1948. The Pakistan Army has,
several times, promised safe passage to Baloch rebels in exchange for
negotiations and peace, only to be met with arrests and hanging. One of the more circulated
stories is of the 90-year old Nawab Nouroze Khan Zarakzai, the chief of the
Zehri tribe, who led a 750 to 1000 man strong guerilla force. According to
the Baloch, the army had promised the abolition of the One Unit Plan, a
return of the Khan of Kalat (whom they had arrested) and amnesty to the
guerillas. Instead, when Nouroze Khan returned with his men, they were
arrested and his son and five others were hanged on treason charges. The Baloch still celebrate
the date of their hanging on July 15 every
year — and they call it martyr’s day. The stories go on, and
include ones of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto cooperating with the Shah of Iran to
carpet bomb Balochistan with F-14 fighter jets, and trumped up charges that
helped dismiss a democratically-elected government in Balochistan. Though
they are too many to sum up here, they are widely available to anyone who
cares to know about them, and are essential to understand by those who are
genuinely interested in bringing about a lasting peace in Balochistan. The deliberate decision to
see the Ziarat and Quetta attacks only through the eyes of the Pakistani
state reflects a broader tendency by us at the centre to dismiss alternate
voices that might give us a chance to understand what is actually going on.
No one is saying that the Pakistan-centric interpretation is deliberate —
as has been mentioned before, it might be happening because people just do
not know. But when lives are at stake, it is high time we stepped up and
began to listen to those we have not heard.
interview An eminent music
academic — he is part of the Faculty at the National Academy of Performing
Arts (NAPA) in Karachi — and having created melodies for the past many
decades, Arshad Mehmood is gentle with his appraisal of the current crop of
musicians. Not that he decries the importance of learning the craft. “I think the songs will
not die away because they [musicians] have decided to do something which was
not on the cards. If you look ten years back, there was a pattern for young
musicians: they would have one national song, one soft ballad, one love song
and one Sufi song in their album. But this crop of youngsters has possibly
gone beyond that,” says Mehmood. It seems like a blessing
that despite constant violence and resistance towards the arts in this
country, music has still survived. Mehmood’s hopeful outlook also points
in this direction. Moreover, it is in response to their immediate
surroundings that some musicians have shifted focus to political or protest
songs. This genre of political
music is nothing new for us. There were, of course, the resistance poets who
were sung during the authoritarian rules by our classical masters. Then
there were token political songs by the pop and rock bands in the late 1980s
and early 90s. But the powerfully-political and satirical songs that we have
seen lately are a phenomenon unto themselves. To the skeptic, the
question remains: can bands like Beygairat Brigade and Ali Gul Pir survive
for long? “I listen to their songs and enjoy them. They wanted to do
something new. So they picked on politics and composed their music and wrote
lyrics in a funny way. And they have the audacity to call themselves,
let’s say, “Beygairat Brigade”. So that gives me hope because they
know what they are doing.” “You know why I have
hope for them — because they are thinking musicians. And when you think,
you are bound to come up with something engaging and interesting. So
tomorrow, if they feel that romance or passion needs to be discussed,
obviously they will go for it and their music will change.” However, he expresses some
reservations about this new brand of musicians “Most of them are not
trained in music; thus, personally I am afraid of them disappearing soon.
There is nothing wrong in doing music without learning it first, but the
chances of a musician vanishing away are very high. But if you build your
capacity and acquire the skills, what you are guaranteeing is actually a
longer shelf life.” Arshad Mehmood seems
adamant that young musicians should learn the craft. “It should not be
misunderstood. All marks to the youngsters for successfully doing music and
being able to sell and entertain. But deep down I have a fear they will
possibly be taken over by another group of musicians in the near future
which has the same capacity and passion because it is god-gifted.” Mehmood feels if you
don’t see yourself in the profession for 25 years, you are not in the
right profession. Thus, not limiting the
discussion to political songs we move on to discuss other more popular and
commercial singers such as Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Atif Aslam. Sitting in
the shadow of a portrait of Madam Noor Jehan, he is quick to declare Rahat
did receive musical training “Even if it’s Qawwali, it is deemed proper
classical singing. In his original compositions, though he also sings other
people’s compositions, you find as they say in Qawwali — Bol Khulna. It
is only because of his background. And that elevates the audience in a state
of transcendence. Every now and then he comes up with that kind of a melody
hence he is a successful composer also.” But Rahat’s fame owes
itself primarily to Indian composers who made melodies for Bollywood films.
Does that not mean the listeners were attracted to those compositions, I
ask. “The singer has to have the skill of fulfilling a particular musical
requirement. He has that ability. He can perform a large variety of music
compared to, let’s say, Atif Aslam. Because the Indian composers also want
a hit song, they give more complicated melodies to Rahat Fateh Ali and less
complicated melodies to Atif. “I am not so sure if
Atif Aslam may go on for another 10 or 20 years for the same reason [of not
acquiring training in music]. I am not worried about the likes of Rahat
Fateh Ali, Sajjad Ali, Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan, because they possibly can
come up with a hit song anytime in life. They say sixty years is usually the
age of retirement. Can you believe that Atif Aslam will run that long? Lata
Mangeshkar was singing in her seventies and gave hit songs because of her
training and of course the gift she had.” Music bands of the pop and
rock variety have shone on the scene for shorter stints than one would have
thought. From 1980s to 90s to 2000s, these include Vital Signs, Junoon,
Mizraab, Aaroh, Entity Paradigm (EP) and Noori. In fact, EP’s lead singer
Fawad Khan is now the most sought-after actor on television. That’s kind
of depressing for music enthusiasts in the country. Arshad Mehmood does share
the thought, but sees its bright side too. “I think there was no money
when they broke up. They did not make enough money as singers. I saw EP in
the Battle of The Bands. Fawad was as good-looking as he is now. I remember
I was one of its judges and he looked really good. But it did not work out.
Simple. Later he found his place in television. “This is why I tell all
youngsters not to refuse work of any kind. They may find themselves in
something they may not have imagined before. As a youngster, I used to make
short films for PTV and was told that some of them were good. But then, at
the age of 40, I decided I would only do music.” In his two-shot picture
with Faiz Ahmed Faiz hanging by his cabin wall, he seems happier than the
great poet. Arshad Mehmood gathers his energy with a perfect smile as soon
as the topic of contemporary classical music is touched upon: “Definitely,
it has moved on. Things which are accepted now are totally different from
what was accepted decades ago. I don’t think it is possible for anyone to
go back. You can only go forward. For instance, ten years ago we had an era
of great Sitar players, Pundit Ravi Shanker, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad
Sharif Khan, Ustad Fateh Ali Khan. They were all very good. Similarly, we
had great ghazal singers like Madam Noor Jahan, Farida Khanum, Iqbal Bano,
Ghulam Ali, Ustad Mehdi Hassan, etc. “But it is in the nature
of music that it moves on; it does not operate in a manner of being
repeated. You don’t find any singers these days of the quality of these
giants. However, I don’t think we have been digressing. Ghazal is still
being sung. There are young singers of ghazal who may not be as good as
their predecessors but they might become great singers. Or some other
generation, after ten years, may produce a crop of giants.” Finally, it is time to ask
the master musician for the perfect recipe to produce music. He provides it
readily: “Do it with passion”.
Last look
at Ziarat The burning of
Ziarat Residency shocked the whole nation. It was a symbolic act —
communicating a distance from the state and distaste for its ideology. The
government’s decision to rebuild the Residency and restore it to its
original form appears timely and sensible. But is it possible to
refurbish the destroyed building to its original state? Of course, the
conservationists have the capacity to reconstruct the burnt structure but
would it be regarded with the same awe and respect as the original building?
This invokes some further queries: since the rocket explosions and fire
could not eliminate the foundations, some elementary parts and walls, would
the building, proposed to be remade in Ziarat, belong to the last century or
to the contemporary period. Many of us could not be
bothered about this dilemma. Since many people had not seen the original, to
them it hardly matters whether the walls that bore the last touch of Quaid
or the room where he lived are
actual or reconstructed. They may be content with the reproductions
as long as these satisfy their patriotic passions. Only a few of us would
think of it as a matter of serious concern. In the realm of art, this
difference between the real and the reconstruction is crucial. Collectors
buy and show off their “original” Holbein, Hopper, Hockney or Hirst. One
wonders if their pride rests on the quality and visual impact of these
pieces or in their attachment with the hand of the celebrated artist who
made these. This behaviour signifies
the importance associated with the authenticity of an art work rather than
to its intellectual, formal, visual and conceptual qualities. Hence, a minor
drawing by a great artist (like Picasso or some other big name) not only
fetches big money but would be praised more than perhaps a better painting
created by an obscure artist. So ordinary viewers as
well as trained eyes of critics are impressed by the name of the maker
rather than what they see on the surface. Undoubtedly, no artist can attain
the level of greatness without proving it through innumerable examples of
original and innovative works, but it is also true that all works produced
by an artist are not of the same standard. If one looks at the entire output
of an artist, one comes across a numbers of works, which are derivative,
repetitive and mediocre (particularly from earlier and formative years), but
these are rated higher than sometimes better works by other, relatively less
famous, artists. Historically, the artists
from the Renaissance period and Mughal miniature ateliers were not making
the works that are attributed to them today. It was their pupils who were
working for them. They would just put a few marks at the end, towards
completion of a picture (hence the term master stroke). Likewise, in
contemporary times, many artists — from Andy Warhol, to Damien Hirst and
Rashid Rana — did not produce the art pieces by themselves; instead their
assistants helped them. Yet, whatever is shown and purchased is associated
with the celebrated artist. Paradoxically, if the same assistants decide to
produce a work in the master’s style, it won’t have any recognition and
would be considered a counterfeit item. Thus it is the original
thought or idea that is more important than its physical manifestation. The
building may be physically constructed by masons and labourers but is named
after the architect who designed it. Similarly, a work of art is also
connected with the person who conceived the initial idea and possesses the
power to change it at any stage. So, it hardly matters if
the Ziarat Residency is reconstructed in present times because, in a way, it
will remain ‘original’ and linked to the Quaid. Its restoration would be
like Argos’s ship. According to Greek legend, once the vessel left the
shore, its wooden planks had to be replaced one by one to the extent that
once it arrived at its destination, it was a whole vessel with new timber.
But it was still the same Argos’s ship. Thus the Ziarat Residency, in
spite of its many transformations, will still be the same site or
ziarat!
Life in a
cassette The compact
cassette is now fifty years old. According to the books, it was commercially
introduced in 1963 by Philips and, by next year, was poised to lead the pack
in what is today called the consumption of the music. When did I come to know of
it? Probably in the next three to four years when friend Imran Aslam brought
back one small gadget from his vacation trip to Abu Dhabi. Instead of big
spools it had miniature ones bound in a plastic shell. The cassette was
inserted in a void flicked opened by a lid. The handy devise known as
cassette player and recorder could run both on dry battery and direct
electric connection. This gadget became the
centre of our lives. Those days music on television and radio was not
recorded and marketed. Probably in 1969 the centenary of Ghalib was observed
and Mehdi Hasan, Farida Khanum and Iqbal Bano sang his ghazals on Pakistan
Television. Imran Aslam had the good sense to record these, and then
whenever we met, which was at least every alternate day after college, the
long afternoons and even longer evenings were filled by playing and
replaying these ghazals. The next year during the television transmission of
the first general elections ghazals were sung by Mehdi Hassan, Habib Wali
Muhammad and Farida Khanum. These were again recorded and played endlessly
as it helped in defining the contours of our fluid passion. It also was our
initiation to the sacred rites of High Culture.
Cassettes were mostly used
for playing and rarely for recording, only when one of us thought of doing
one better than Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud.
Shakespeare’s speeches from Hamlet or Julius Caesar were recorded
and listened to intently by Usman Peerzada and Imran Aslam, and a case made
out unfailingly for a native accent in the rendering of the bard. Before the cassette player
became our companion, Nazir Kamal somehow had got hold of an LP of Lara’s
Theme with a gramophone player. It was played ad infinitum in the lazy
afternoons at Loyala Hall while we fantasized about the film Dr Zhivago
while reading passages from the novel. Naturally
we were all in love with Lara, the beautiful but tragic heroin of the novel
and wondered about the film set in the lovely Russian landscape amidst
upheavals of the revolution. It was years later that we saw the film for
then these big blockbusters were usually released on their second run in
countries like Pakistan. The long playing records
as indeed the seventy eight, forty five rpm vinyl records usually buckled a
little, the groves on which the needle scratched to produce the sound
widened a little, the rubber bands in the machine slackened a little and
this brought variation to the production of sound.
But we were content to listen to music with these hazardous
variations till it was finally reduced to a long groan or a yawning moan. Cassettes were different.
They were portable, smaller in size and appeared to be more durable. These
probably did not need the maintenance and attention that the long playing
vinyl records did. The sturdiness appealed to our lazy selves till suddenly
the tape would stop producing music. We would be told that it had snapped. A
small screw driver was found, the plastic shell tapes unscrewed and the tape
rejoined by a cousin’s nail polish. Well it started to roll again, albeit
with a small bump where the tape had been joined by nail polish. But then, one day the
required speed was not maintained and on another day there were distortions
in the sound track. The head needed to be cleaned, the rubber bands needed
to be replaced, or that the head had developed a groove and needed
replacement. So off we went looking for a mechanic of these equipments in
the mushrooming by-lanes of Hall Road. Then we were told by some
others, experts in sound engineering and mechanics, that since the tapes
were very brittle for better quality and durability we should switch to
chrome tapes, and a then little later to metal tapes. So off we went looking
for these tapes which were marketed mostly by TDK. To be extra careful about
getting the genuine brand, we went to wholesale dealers. In Shahalam Market,
where in huge buildings shoved into narrow lanes, big warehouses did
business in millions, one wholesale dealer had huge stockpiles of such
cassettes. He condescended to let us buy in dozens while he did business in
hundred of thousands. But as we found out later, in the many huge warehouses
stacks of TDK labels and empty cassette shells were hoarded which were
assembled and the labels glued on both sides of the shells on cue. So much
for our desire to acquire the original label. But again our friends and
well-wishers, who were connoisseurs of music and geniuses at physics of
sound and its engineering, found fault with our purchases and levels of
maintenance. They spoke with so much authority on frequencies, Hz range,
Dolby and Hi Fi that one wondered if one was in the company of Mr. Edison
himself. But despite the criticism and gestures of belittling, we were happy
listening to the ghazals of Mehdi Hassan and Habib Wali Muhammad, what if
there was a little drawl, a little bump or a few silent gaps. It was later by the
mid-1970s when music was released on prerecorded cassettes that the entire
scene changed. The vinyl record started disappearing from the market and the
gramophones, the radiograms and those fancy laser beams started vanishing
from people’s drawing rooms. The spool tape reorder, once the pride of a
house hold with its speeds of 7 and 3 ¾ and 1 7/8 started becoming a gadget
that was either particularly prized or was just a museum piece. The Grundik
and Philips were replaced by the more functional Sony and National
Panasonics. The Cassette Recorder and Player had taken over. It came in all
sizes from miniature to mini miniature ones. And now it this age of
Streaming, iTunes, Spotify and Deezer; all one wants is good music and not
an obsession with technology.
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