In a nauseating replay of hypocrisy, the Punjab police recently raided some theatres in Lahore and arrested many actors on the charge of “obscenity”. The “evidence” was provided by police officials (who are not counted among the most “civilized” of government servants in Pakistan according to the frequently bitter obiter dicta of the High Court). The police sat among the packed audience to determine if the double-entendre of the comedians amounted to “obscenities” that the pure state of Pakistan simply could not tolerate. And sure enough, it was soon discovered that the apocalyptic offence of fahashi (vulgarity) had been committed, especially in the sexually arousing (to the police) nature of a sequence called “balti” dance. The police then arrested the actors in its trademark brutish manner. People ran for cover, screaming in confusion and fear. The actresses were particularly distressed because of the anticipated rough embrace of the police who are the custodians of our honour.
As the Urdu idiom goes, the Punjab government thereafter made “music from its armpits”, telling citizens that the label of “liberal” pasted on its forehead by Pakistan’s aggressive clergy was misplaced. In fact, the message was that the new order under General Pervez Musharraf was as strait-laced as under General Zia ul Haq and all the ideologically blinkered governments that followed. Accordingly, the Punjab Governor’s advisor preened himself at a religious conference in Lahore the same week and boasted about the way “propriety” had been restored by the police. Clearly, General Musharraf’s visit to a Deobandi seminary in Lahore last month had not been enough to demonstrate his agreement with old causes, so a more solid demonstration of intolerance to “liberalism” had to be given to reassure the old guard.
The Urdu press was predictably obsequious in its high-pitched welcome to the clampdown on the entertainment industry. But some Urdu newspapers carried comments stating that obscenity on the Lahore stage was actually the handiwork of General Musharraf’s “permissiveness”. This is not true. The comedy theatre of Lahore was born under General Zia ul Haq and has been kept alive by citizens who seek to relieve their boring lives in the puritanical state of Pakistan. The ad-libbing plays of Lahore have attracted audiences for the past twenty years on the basis of their use of the double meaning, a practice that has continued from time immemorial all over the world.
Thankfully, though, not everyone was pleased or relieved. Justice (retired) Javid Iqbal, the son of Pakistan’s poet-philosopher, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, told a Lahore newspaper that the brutal rounding up of the entertainers was an ill-advised attack on the liberty and free will of the people. There was no clear-cut edict against dance and music in the Quran, he said, and if governments in Pakistan persisted in hounding the entertainment industry, society would produce nothing but morons. The actors manhandled by the police and condemned by the state have also tried to voice their opinion but to no effect. They are guilty of entertaining a pleasure-starved population that lives a dull, unrelieved existence under the threat of violent crime about which the police does nothing. In fact, some actors became so disheartened after their mistreatment by the police that they decided to retire from their profession. The cable channels, already depleted through the government’s fiat banning “Indian” entertainment, were told not to show videos of comedies performed by these stage actors. This, despite the fact that these comedies on cable are not considered obscene by audiences because the exchange of such “vulgarity” has been normal fare in our part of the world for centuries.
It is fashionable to decry “liberalism” in Pakistan without understanding its meaning or choosing an alternative path. Droning about the middle path of “moderation” between extremism and liberalism is misplaced concreteness because moderation is nothing but liberalism just as extremism is nothing but fundamentalism and terrorism. So what is the government going to do next? Crack down on the cinema? Raid private parties? Order the youth to stay at home? Or worse still, push “immorality” and “obscenity” into the chardevari of the rich and powerful and thereby strengthen the system of apartheid which is stifling public creativity and growth in the name of ideology? What will happen when the citizenry that is to be saved from perdition goes down the dangerous road of repression and violent release?
Not long ago, the government was forced to confine some religious leaders because their plans to enforce the cultural shariah in Pakistan were potentially violent. The plan was to take over 20 cities and enforce pieties like the hijab for women and compulsory prayers for men. There is no end to the sort of demonstrable piety that governments love to flog. But General Musharraf must not fall into that trap. He was won goodwill at home and abroad for the making of a modern and liberal Pakistan. He should stick to his commitment rather than diminish his credentials by supporting the sort of bureaucratic action that caught the headlines recently.