|
|
|
|
 |
 |
  
|
society profile
Life, works and pictures Surging
waves of change
The women who died in Balochistan need to be given a face, a voice. The media can play a part in introducing them to us as the dynamic, brave persons they were rather than as corpses covered in sand. For eventually the change will come only as the process of challenging tradition head on grows and reaches into the villages and hamlets across the country By Kamila Hyat The grotesque story of five
women in the Jaffarabad district of Balochistan, who were apparently The women were punished for the decision taken by three teenaged girls, who are among the victims, to marry by choice. Investigations continue into the episode that took place weeks ago, in July, but made the news only recently. A cover-up is quite evidently on, with influential Umarani tribesmen, who include the brother of a sitting PPP minister being protected. Stories as to the facts have changed constantly. There have been claims the women were shot before being buried, accounts that say they were only two victims and others that state they had been killed at home. Three men, including a brother and father of the girls, have been arrested. The difficulties faced even today, in finding out what happened in a part of the country that remains isolated, are immense. Such tales, even in 2008, are not unique. New ones crop up regularly. Last month, six people were held in Mianwali after the marriage of a ten-year-old girl, given in 'vani' to an adult. Just days ago, another case of 'vani' involving six girls was reported from Shikarpur. In Karachi, a couple who married against tribal custom remain fearful of the death they have so far only narrowly been able to escape. As we all know, crimes committed against women in the name of tradition take place each day, somewhere in the country. Most cases are not reported, and never heard about. Based on reports that do make the public sphere, the Aurat Foundation has stated there were 90 'honour' killings in the first three months of 2008 alone. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) listed over 600 such cases for 2007. The killings have also spread across the country, expanding from rural areas into larger towns and cities. The flawed Qisas and Diyat law offers a ready loophole to perpetrators. A brother most often accepts blame for killing a sister. His father, as the 'wali' of the victim, then forgives him under the provision in the law that permits the victim's family to opt for blood money. No money of course ever exchanges hands, and no one is punished for the murder. While customs such as 'swara' and 'vani' are banned by law, they continue to take place. The exact numbers are unknown. Other 'traditions' including that of child marriage or marriages to the Holy Quran also continue, despite the existence of a wide social consensus against them. The reasons for this are clearly rooted in the fact that, inherently, our society remains deeply feudal and firmly patriarchal. The ancient system that holds people captive to overlords remains firmly in place. Senator Israrullah Zehri's now infamous defence of the live burial of women in his province of course brings out into the open this mindset. Other senators too, who should have known better, attacked the PML-Q woman Senator demanding condemnation of the incident rather than offering her any support. This is particularly true in Sindh, the southern Punjab and Balochistan. Police conducting inquiries complain of the lack of witnesses ready to come forward and testify. In the village of Babakot, where the recent incident of live burial took place, people are unwilling to even speak out as to the precise identity of the women murdered, leave alone the sequence of events that led to them being thrown into a shallow grave in the sandy wastes that lie beyond the settlement. News reports stating a tribal 'jirga' had in fact decided the fate of the women have not been followed up on. It is still uncertain if Tariq Khosa, the police officer conducting the investigation, will be able to get through the shield set up around those behind the action, whether the truth will ever emerge from the sands under which it lies buried. While a law imposing the death penalty for 'honour' killing came into force in 2005, it has had little impact in bringing down the rate of such crime. Certainly, the numbers reported by NGOs seems higher and higher each year. This of course is partly due to better reporting and increased awareness regarding the issue. While organisations of all kinds deserve credit for this, the lack of political will to back laws means they remain largely ineffective. This absence of commitment is being seen today in Balochistan, where a PPP government rules. Even the orders regarding a full investigation have come from the centre. In past years, 'jirgas' banned by courts continued to be held even within the home of ministers, even provincial chief ministers. The pattern continues. Un-backed by politicians or an administration that is too often itself a part of the feudal set-up, the laws written out on paper and present in statute books mean little on the ground. Too often, police lack the power, or indeed the desire, to enforce them. All this shows our society in its worst form. It seems at times that nothing has changed over the years, the decades, the centuries. It appears that we are in fact moving back from a period of relative enlightenment into the dark ages, where women can be buried while they still breathe, girls' schools razed to the ground or people beheaded for suspected 'immorality'. The trend is creeping out of more backward areas, into cities and towns. Even in Lahore and Karachi, women have been rebuked for failing to cover their heads or for wearing clothes deemed 'immodest' by the morality brigades that can appear anywhere, at anytime. But there is a dimension to the issue that is somewhat less bleak. The fact is that, everywhere in the country, women themselves have opted to fight tradition. Young women have taken steps that their mothers and grandmothers may hardly have dared contemplate. In many instances, education, the confidence and awareness that it always brings, has been the ally of these courageous young women. The teenage girls, who escorted by mothers and older relatives, took a taxi to the town of Usta Muhammad in Jaffarabad, where they planned to wed the men of their choice in court, are heroines. Perhaps, in time, tales will be told of their bravery and their effort, against all odds, to snatch their rights from an unyielding society. They may stand by women like Sassi and Heer, not only as lovers, but because they defied norms. There have been others like them. Two years ago, three sisters in Mianwali declined to accept their marriages to men to whom they had been given in 'vani' as infants. Their actions led to others rising up in their aid and withstanding the efforts of those who sought to enforce tradition, at all costs and at any price. Within days, mind-sets changed; habits of quiet submission were thrown aside. Similar, small revolutions have been seen in other places. In Waziristan, in Bannu, in other places tightly tied to 'tradition' in its worst form, ruthlessly imposed by mindless men who wield guns, young women and men have chosen to escape and exert their own will. At times they have died; in other cases they have succeeded. Mukhtaran Mai is just one among the women who have diverged from the routes women are expected to take, and carved out a path of her own. Her example has inspired many, helping lift up the veils that cover so much of what happens in our society, within households of the rich and poor alike. In time, these efforts will bring about change. But the process must be speeded along, so that needless deaths and unimaginable suffering can be avoided. Our politicians need to take the lead in this. But others can also play a part. The media has contributed positively by highlighting the incidents that have taken place. It is unlikely that, without this, the episode from Jaffarabad would have even come to light at all. But more can be done, going beyond sensationalism. The women who died in Balochistan need to be given a face, a voice, so that they can speak out from beyond the grave. The media can play a part in introducing them to us as the dynamic, brave persons they were rather than as corpses covered in sand. By doing so, these women would be assisted in their effort to change society, for eventually the change will come only as the process of challenging tradition head on grows and reaches into the villages and hamlets across the country.
Catching up with Huma Mulji as she prepares to unleash creatures other than camels on to the art world By Saeed Ur Rehman In the beginning was the
camel. It was taxidermied, packed into a suitcase and sent to Dubai as a I caught up with Huma Mulji as she was preparing to unleash other creatures on to the art world. The meeting took place after the camel had left Dubai and the monkeys had entered China and before the buffaloes were ready to take over New York. Surprisingly, there were no traces of any animal in the drawing room where we sat and talked. I ask her about her work, the transformation of animals into an art form, the apparent departure from the theme of travel that used to dominate her work. "I just went to the Lahore zoo to photograph some camels. I only had a vague idea for the show in Dubai. I knew I was going to use the animal somehow because it seemed the most obvious link between the Middle East and Pakistan. At the zoo, I met a taxidermist who informed me how Arab hunters come to him to have animals preserved. That gave me the idea of using a taxidermied animal. The link between Pakistani children being smuggled to the Middle East as race jockeys and the import and export of metaphysical beliefs all came together in this animal." I ask her if the journey
from conceptualisation to the final piece in the exhibition was easy. She That Mulji's artistic concerns are very political becomes obvious when I ask her why she put the original camel in the suitcase. Travel is becoming "very humiliating" for Pakistanis: "imagine you have to take your shoes off even at Dubai airport." She is also bothered by the way a human being is treated because he or she is carrying a Pakistani passport. Even within Pakistan, the whole security process at the Diplomatic Enclave "depresses me every single time I have gone to an Embassy to get a visa." So the suitcase full of scissors and blades is her form of critique and so is the phrase "Arabian Delight" embossed on the suitcase containing the camel. And her critique is thorough and rigorous. She has minutely observed the wretched condition of the visa-seekers in the waiting areas of different embassies in Islamabad. The foodless and waterless hours that people spend in front of the embassies have informed and shaped her work. She becomes even more intense when talks about the immigration process at the American airports. The claustrophobia-causing sniffing tunnels, the segregation of the Pakistani passport-holders, the body searches, the questioning, and the idea that you are a suspect being only because of the random accident of place and birth make her produce art that subverts all expectations of art by Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis. She plans to continue to surprise her audience: "I will only use this taxidermy thing for a short while and, then, move on to newer techniques and processes." Her philosophical inquiries, combined with their artistic manifestations, are yielding new theories that she plans to use in her work. She thinks the idea of "the survival of the fittest" is being redefined in the current global paranoia about security and border control. It is going to become "the survival of the greediest." Huma Mulji thinks it is symptomatic that families and children cannot travel with ease anymore because they need to carry liquids on the aeroplanes whereas a business person can travel anywhere on company expenses, buy new things at every destination and dispose them off and get the money reimbursed as part of the "businesses travel expenses." As an artist, she plans to continue to challenge the idea that this constitutes "normalcy" or "reality." "At the moment, I am going to use disfigured animals. I am planning to make a piece of sculpture in which a buffalo is trapped in a concrete wall. In another work, a pillar has smashed a buffalo into the ceiling. This is my way of dealing with the way the farmers are losing their natural space to different housing colonies and the process of urbanisation." Her conversation reminds me of the way student and union leaders rebelled against the dominance of concrete in May 1968 in France with the slogan "concrete breeds apathy." In the work of Huma Mulji, security and urbanisation are creating angst and a formidable form of critique. In a fluid, engaging and interesting prose, veteran art critic Marjorie Husain provides an overview of Rabia Zuberi's journey of art making and its education By Quddus Mirza All of us who are in the
habit of collecting old and second hand books must have experienced Some might perceive this kind of mutilation as a sign of diligent readership, but often it creates a nuisance for readers who pick up the book later. Underlining or highlighting certain paragraphs alters the original content and adds something extra, that was not intended by the author. If the writer wanted a part of his text prominent, he would have done so in the first place and the book would have been printed like that. Writing book reviews is an activity akin to highlighting the original text. A reviewer takes the readers' attention away from the actual work and introduces his own angle into another person's publication/ideas. But like the custom of putting marks and lines inside the book, reviews of new publications have become a normal practice. No one thinks twice about the 'outsider-author' who comments on a writer's efforts and craft, and intends to influence readers by imposing his own opinion. However, when it comes to books on art, there is a slight difference. Here the commentary is not only an addition to the actual text, it deals with the visuals as well. Like the author, the reviewer looks at the visuals and tries to relate with these in his writing. This provides another view on the work, even though the critic's point of view may range from being unauthentic or unblemished to (in ideal but impossible circumstances) unbiased. The recently published book on Rabia Zuberi provides such an occasion. A part of FOMMA's series of monographs on Pakistani artists, Rabia Zuberi: Life and Works, brings forth a selection of art works and images from the sculptor's life. The author, Marjorie Husain, has inserted a variety of incidents, anecdotes and account of life in different chapters, beginning from her early formative years at Aligarh Muslim University and Lucknow School of Art to the artist's efforts in establishing and then heading the Karachi School of Art in Karachi. In a fluid, engaging and interesting prose, veteran art critic Marjorie Husain provides an overview of the artist's journey of art making and its education. Husain also mentions Zuberi's illustrious students like Lubna Agha, Zaheen Ahmed and even Mashkoor Raza. In addition, the book recounts Rabia Zuberi's achievement in the form of awards, prizes and exhibitions in India and Pakistan. With her intimate and insightful style, Marjorie discusses various aspects of Rabia's life and her development as one of the leading sculptors of this country. Childhood influences, migration to Pakistan, involvement with the Karachi School of Art and her relationship to her work serve to formulate a complete and comprehensive portrait of the artist. However, despite the positive efforts of Marjorie Husain in bringing out a convincing volume on her personality and art (supported with a large number of reproductions of her sculptures and paintings), the life of Rabia Zuberi appears as bland as her sculptures and other works on paper. Although working for many years, most of her sculptures -- based on a stylised female figure -- are visibly inspired from British sculptor Henry Moore. Rabia Zuberi is not the only one working under the influence of Moore; a number of sculptors around the world have followed his example and produced their works in the image of Henry Moore. Moore's work offered a solution towards modernity in the art of twentieth century; hence, sculptors from Chile to China and from Finland to Fiji created works reproducing the aesthetic features of Henry Moore. Considering his stature in contemporary art, this vast range of influence is understandable. But, in our context, he facilitated the artists in another manner: Due to the real or imagined, self-acquired or imposed 'restrictions' on human representation in Islam, Moore's art was adopted as a way to counter the taboo, since his figures did not resemble actual human beings, and were stylised and transformed to such an extent that any of those statues could hardly be considered offensive or against the teachings of the faith. Hence, many sculptors in our surroundings – deliberately or unconsciously -- imitated or appropriated the art of Moore, perhaps to attain an acceptance for their 'extravagant' art activity. Yet several of these artists, after spending their early years in the style of Moore, moved away from his work and experimented in diverse forms and materials, including bronze, wood and stone. But it seems that Rabia remained stuck in that phase. This aspect of her art is not thoroughly discussed in the book, but it becomes evident once you go through the record her sculptures and paintings from different periods included in the book. Zuberi has for long been a tutor at the Karachi School of Art, which for many years functioned as the only art institute in Karachi. This must have influenced her whole approach towards art, and life in general. Perhaps, for her, the activity of art making, like teaching, is about continuity -- to repeat certain forms, which have been exclaimed, appreciated and admired before. The glimpses of her achievement can be viewed through a substantial number of snapshots with famous artists, such as Sadequain, Gulgee, M.F. Husain, F. D. Souza, Ali Imam, BM and Laila Shehzada among others. These photographs, one feels, are hardly needed in a monograph on the artist, except of course if they fill a gap that is too obvious, obtrusive and overpowering. The question to ask is whether we do need the classical forms or do they need to be treated differently from the other forms of art which are subject to change from within By Sarwat Ali The present situation,
which has been hit by a seismic change in contemporary taste, the debate It was an accepted premise that the classical forms were important, really essential for the well-being and growth of a musical expression. They symbolised a long tradition, the veneration attached to that tradition and provided a framework under which the experiments in contemporary music could be carried out. The classical forms represented in the true sense the particularities of a culture which had been time-tested and well-wrought and could not be replicated by any other culture. Now actually this very premise is either not challenged or considered too irrelevant to be addressed. The earlier premise was safely ensconced in another assumption that the culture of a country, land, people, was very unique and ought to be preserved for indemnifying the identity of that group of people. As the countries were striving for independence from colonial rule, the peculiarity of each culture had become the bedrock of justification of political freedom where people could live and set up institutions according to their own beliefs, values and compulsions of heritage. As the remnants of a debate that had lasted more than a century, dhrupad has gradually lost out to the kheyal as the most dominant classical form of music. By the middle of the 20th century there were very few dhrupad singers left while the banner of kheyal was heightening. It was really the validation of a victory that had been achieved long ago on the "maidaans" where the classical musicians displayed their feats to their hearts desire. A new threat was, however, perceived by the practitioners of classical music from the growing popularity of film music. Initially film music was brushed aside as its quality was not very good. But with the emergence of K.L Saigal, Noor Jehan, then Lata Mangeshkar and Muhammed Rafi the debate was taken a little more seriously but still with a caveat -- that the two not being at the same level could not be treated at par. One was the classical and hence an autonomous form and the other part of a composite art form, more dependent on the limitations imposed on it. Then the debate was hemmed in by the traditional concepts of a form existing for its own sake and the other driven by the concerns of the market forces placing the latter on a higher pedestal. Dhrupad was once the most significant form of music in the subcontinent. It is said that one of the creators of this form was Man Toomar, the Raja of Gwalior and his court musician Bakshoo and the greatest exponents were Baiju Bawara, Swami Haridas and reputedly the greatest musician ever born Mian Tansen. From about the 15th century to the end of the 19th century dhrupad dominated classical music and was considered to be the major form of singing. The grandeur of the Mughal court in Delhi, Fatehpur Sikri, Agra or Lahore, wherever the capital was shifted was given final touches by this form of music. The provincial courts emulated the example established by the highest court of the land and most of the great names of our music are listed as performers in these courts. Kheyal probably crawled and took its tentative first steps for a while -- only reaching adulthood as late as the reign of Muhammed Shah Rangeela in Delhi. This was the period of downfall of the central empire in India and soon the patronage shifted to the autonomous and semi autonomous states. Kheyal prospered when there was a weak central court, and the courts thrived only at the provincial level. Ironically, it really flourished during the colonial rule when these princely courts had no real political autonomy. If battle of Plassey in the mid-18th century is taken as a cut-off date then the entire growth of kheyal took place in the lengthening shadow of the waning Muslim rule. The superiority of the kheyal was hoicked in this country by flaunting it as the creation of the Muslim musicians thus representing their sensibility. They linked its origins to the ubiquitous Amir Khusro and then counted its virtues as compared to the dhrupad. These days as the kheyal is also in decline, can the causes for the decline of dhrupad like formalism and rigidity of its structure be applied to it as well? The state of down slope is more visible in Pakistan than in India but there are palpable fears that it might die off totally after losing acceptance of the elite in India which has promoted and patronised classical music in the past. The question to ask is whether we do need the classical forms; do they need to be set aside and treated differently from the other forms of art which are subject to a number of variables all forcing some kind of change from within. All this has to be placed within the context of what kind of society does the ruling class of this country aspire for. Change is inevitable but whether the seeds of that change should be received on a soil that has been prepared or let the surging waves of change just inundate the land.
|
|
shot, wounded and then buried while still alive, has re-focussed attention on
the issue of tradition and its impact on lives.
piece of art by a Pakistani artist named Huma Mulji. Then there was confusion
in the sheikhdom. Usually art is censored, through the process of inclusion
and exclusion, before the exhibition starts. But the camel invited reprimand
after entering the artistic tent. The piece was removed within a day because
of an anonymous threat. "I am only a messenger but this camel must be
removed," said the bearer of the warning without identifying the origin
of the impending thunderbolt. The camel left the Pakistan Pavilion of the
exhibition in March 2008 and entered the world of global legends. As it
entered the collection of Saatchi, the taxidermied camel was everywhere in
the desert of the art world.
gives a long list of bureaucratic and cultural hurdles. The difference
between animals we eat and the wild ones also makes the whole process a lot
easier or difficult. It is easier to export a stuffed camel but not a stuffed
monkey. "To send taxidermied monkeys to China was a huge problem. They
are part of the protected wild life even though I had used the skins of those
already dead." I ask about the significance of the monkey. "I have
sent two monkeys to the Guangzhou Triennial. The theme of the exhibition is
Farewell to Postcolonialism.
underlined or highlighted passages inside those books. This is not just true
of technical publications or books on science; the works of literature too
have marked pages and paragraphs, sometimes with comments on the borders.
on the issues regarding music has totally moved its target. The emergence and
domination of popular music has masked the issues which were being addressed
some twenty years ago. While I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s the
battle lines of higher music were drawn along the dhrupad versus kheyal
debate with most of the musicians siding with the kheyal in terms of its
formal superiority and greater possibility of improvisation.