During the music program, men and women get up and dance to the tunes of Dama Dam Must Qalandar or some other engaging tune. A number of prudes in the audience take exception to the women expressing themselves. “It is un-Islamic and against Pakistani traditions for women to dance”, they scream.
I don’t know where had they been their entire lives! In Pakistani weddings, both in urban and rural settings, dancing is part of the festivities. In gatherings of extended families women and men dance to celebrate the event.
I was at a loss to understand the mindset of such people at APPNA. Were they trying to change the cultural traditions and give them a veneer of orthodoxy or were they trying to reflect their own upbringing in a restrictive religious milieu?
Every summer the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo (in Ohio) holds an international festival on its spacious grounds. It attracts thousands of people from the surrounding area to taste food from around the Muslim world and to visit with Muslims from the region. There are merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels and camel rides. Tours of the Center are conducted by educated and well-informed guides from among the Center members. I participate by having a booth where I write names in Arabic, Urdu or English calligraphy and make money for the Center. I also sell books and music CDs from my collection for nominal prices.
From that day in 1948, Saigal, Jagmohan, Surayya, Kamla Jharia and their likes were banished from the newly anointed sacred airwaves of Radio Pakistan
One year a young woman, perhaps in her 20s, came with a four-year-old boy in tow and in an abrasive tone asked if I had Islamic music. I really don’t know what constitutes Islamic music. Does music become Islamic if it is sung by a Muslim? I asked her if she would tell me what is Islamic music. She looked at me in disbelief, said that she did not expect such a “dumb question” from a Muslim, and left, dragging her child by the hand.
In 1948 I saw a bizarre spectacle in the lawns of Radio Pakistan, Peshawar. There on the front lawn, a number of peons were smashing vinyl and plastic music records. Some hare-brained official had ordered the destruction of all music that had any connection with India. From that day on, Saigal, Jagmohan, Surayya, Kamla Jharia and their likes were banished from the newly anointed sacred airwaves of Radio Pakistan.
Seven years before the 1947 Partition, Kamla Jharia had sung a beautiful naat: Tumre Daya Ki Hai Aas Muhammad (SAW)/
Paapi hun kuch nahin paas Muhammad (SAW).
Just because she professed (or was born into) a different religion, the naat was also banished along with great songs and ghazals that she sang. Ditto for Muhammad Rafi, Talat Mahmud and others. In our naivete we had thought music had no religion. But on that day in the lawn of Radio Pakistan, Peshawar, a new definition was being recorded by destroying the priceless collection.
The peons breaking the records had reminded me of the labourers who, in a bygone era, would sit on the side of an under-construction road by a pile of rocks. Using hammers they would break the large rocks into small chunks to be used in paving the road. Perhaps the shards of broken music records were to be used in the construction of a new cultural highway in our new country. 72 years later, we are still searching for our cultural identity and are increasingly adopting an alien culture imported from the Middle East.
From signage at shops and stores to women’s dress to men’s beards, we are increasingly adopting the ways of Middle Eastern culture. A music store is called Dar al Sout rather than Aawaz Ghar. There are many businesses, large and small, that add the Arabic Al or El before their name. Pakistan is being referred to as Al Bakistan on some personalized auto license plates. Some one should tell these pseudo Bakistanis that we do have a P (pronounced pay) in the Urdu alphabet.
When I was a medical student at Khyber Medical College in the late 1950’s, the girls wore shalwar-kameez and a dupatta. There was not a single girl with a hijab or niqab. Over the years I have seen a creeping transformation in the college - where a majority of girls now wear hijab and quiet a few wear the niqab. One wonders about this transformation. Was there something that previous generations of Muslim women missed? Were the likes of my mother and grandmother any less Muslim when they wore a shawl when going out of the home?
Historically the Muslims of the Subcontinent had practiced a non-judgmental, inclusive and tolerant faith as advocated by the likes of Data Gunj Bakhsh, Nizamuddin Aulia and Moinuddin Chishti. Some times in the early 1980s, a strict and xenophobic version of religion arrived on the wings of petrodollars. They were ostensibly meant to help the Afghans fight against the Soviet Union. Those dollars, however, financed seminaries and madrassas that prepared young boys from poor families as fodder for the war machine in Afghanistan. And those dollars also emboldened and empowered religious fanatics.
I think we are acting more and more like schizophrenics. We ban Indian music from our airways but listen to it anyway. We tout Pakistani culture but increasingly take up alien values. However, at weddings we don’t hesitate to transform ourselves into Pakistanis!
72 years after independence, we are still searching for our true identity. Are we true South Asians or Middle Eastern look-alikes? Are we trying to cut our millennia-old roots in the Indus Valley and trying to adopt an alien culture with whom the majority of Pakistanis share only religion but precious little else?
And lastly where do the religious minorities fit in the newly created and still developing Pakistani cultural mosaic?
Dr. Sayed Amjad Hussain holds emeritus professorships in Humanities and cardiovascular surgery at the University of Toledo, USA. He is also an op-ed columnist for Toledo Blade and daily Aaj of Peshawar.
Contact: aghaji@bex.net