Lit fests and the saloon option

Islamabad diary
It’s the old Pakistani problem which I have no idea how we will ever come around to fixing: if you have walked a lit fest, done the rounds, listened to the good and great, and taken in as much high-minded stuff as ordinary mortal can stand, what do you do if you want to sit down and pour something worthwhile down your throat?
They have second-rate tea or coffee at such places and the subcontinental staples of chaat and samosas thrown in. To think that all that intellectual stuff should end in this…takes the fun away. Suppose, on the other hand, there was a place tucked in somewhere in the Alhamra where you could sit down and order a glass of the right stuff. It’s a safe bet that the place would be crowded and the talk more animated than anything going on in the main halls. One could then return to the heavy weightlifting with spirits restored.
I know this is never going to happen, certainly not in my lifetime. When you mess around with virtue and piety and get into the business of not letting the Musalman be as he is, insisting, much against his will, of making a better Musalman of him, then the steps you take in that direction are irreversible. The Americans could impose prohibition and then repeal it. Such a thing is impossible in societies dedicated to the higher pieties. Take such a step and it is cast in stone.
We are still living with the consequences of the 1977 anti-Bhutto movement. Acting on Maulana Kausar Niazi’s advice Bhutto of all people imposed prohibition in a bid to appease the religious forces which had ganged up against him. Far from having the desired effect, the ban on gambling and drinking and horse-racing was seen as a sign of weakness, of Bhutto being pushed against the wall. The raging clerics redoubled their efforts to topple him. We’ve gone from bad to worse but Pakistan has been a dry country ever since.
This is the official position. Unofficially it is a different story, with bootlegging an honourable trade and imbibing widespread across the length and breadth of the Republic. The loser is the state which gets no revenue from this activity. Can we learn anything from Dubai, one of the favourite destinations of all Pakistanis, where you can’t drink in the open but if you have a thirst you can slake it in the privacy of your premises or in a bar without any questions being asked? No, we can’t, because we have to do things differently… and stupidly.
I know not from hearsay but personal knowledge that there is a small but powerful Vodka Wing in the clerical movement – spirited divines not above taking a glass or two in the evenings after their pious work is done (an instance of what can only be called endearing hypocrisy). But they can have no effect on their peers because everything else is permissible in the Islamic Republic – land-grabbing, rule-breaking, bribe-taking, militant-training – but being rational about matters relating to virtue and piety is out of the question.
You can break these taboos in private – and when Pakistanis drink in private it is a sight to behold – but no one dare talk about such things in public. This is the double face we have developed and it is a necessary defence because the climate in this country leaves no other choice.
Some hypocrisy is essential in public life, these being the wages of democracy. You have to be more upright in public than what you really are. But here we have tightened the screws of hypocrisy unnecessarily, even when no larger purpose is served. Take the ban on YouTube which now is more cowardice than hypocrisy. Lifting it would lead to no uproar but governments won’t do it because they simply lack the guts and say to themselves, why provoke an unnecessary controversy?
Well into General Zia’s second year in power there was a liquor shop open bang on the front face of Islamabad’s Super Market, which was then the capital’s leading market. It was run by a Parsi – if he is around, may he enjoy good health; if departed to the eternal shades may he sit amongst the angels. When it opened in the evenings a long line of disciplined clients would form, and no one would be the worse for it.
Islamabad, as we know, may not have a functioning library, and its two government-run hospitals may not be of the best. But, Allah be praised, it has the highest concentration of mosques not just in Pakistan but perhaps anywhere in the world – a mosque or several mosques for every sector and sub-sector. General Zia’s Islam was not only being enforced; it was all the time being reinforced. But through all this extended piety the Parsi liquor shop kept functioning – in a way living up to the Ghalib ideal of ‘masjid ke zere saya kharabat chahiye’.
Not only this, but at that time the bar at the Marriot (which then was the Holiday Inn) and at the Pearl Continental in ‘Pindi were open. True, they used to be deserted for the most part but for non-Muslims and foreigners they were technically open…although by that time it was a hassle going in.
Gen Zia, however, faced three problems: one was the Bhutto trial which was going on at the time; second was his quest for legitimacy in that he had to create some basis for his rule; and third his government was broke, it had no money. Quite apart from the fact that he himself was a religiously-inclined person, beating the drums of Islam, which he proceeded to do, fitted all three necessities. So in February 1979, just two months before Bhutto’s hanging, he tightened the screws further.
The Parsi liquor outlet was closed. The bars were closed. To further bolster his pietistic credentials the Hadood Ordinance was passed which prescribed tougher punishments for zina (fornication) and drinking. This last according to Sardar Muhammad Chaudry, a senior police officer at the time (in his book, The Ultimate Crime) was a sop to Saudi Arabia to which Gen Zia looked as a likely financial benefactor. (Incidentally, Pakistan’s finances were in such a state at the time, that the government felt little qualms in taking a loan of 100 crore rupees, a substantial sum then but in today’s money a pittance, from Seth Abid the well-known ‘financier’.)
Simple prohibition is easily dealt with. The problem is the Hadood Ordinance which turns drinking and the possession of liquor into major crimes. Drinking hasn’t been cut down as a result. Only the police’s ability to harass citizens, mostly the defenceless and the weak, has increased. There is no need for anything else. Only if the Hadood Ordinance is done away with Pakistan immediately becomes a more free society.
Democracy and freedom of speech are for the rich and the drawing room classes…and for the liberati who throng to such praiseworthy endeavours as literary festivals. They don’t mean a thing to the masses. But the removal of the Hadood Ordinance will have an impact on the poorest sections of society. The police sniffing your breath or asking couples for their marriage papers is done on the strength of this law, a millstone round the country’s neck if ever there was one.
We can’t keep this a hermetically-sealed society and hope at the same time to defeat extremism. A more relaxed and a more open society is part of the answer to extremism. But a country which can’t bring itself to be sensible about something as innocuous as YouTube, how do we expect it to show courage over something slightly more complicated? So I suppose we’ll have to survive our lit fests on the second-rate coffee that is available.
Lit fests, I can’t help adding, are brilliant occasions to interact with and preach to the already converted. They are occasions for the liberati to get together and feel good about themselves…that they are engaged in a worthy cause and are discussing worthy things. But lit fests also underscore one of Pakistan’s basic problems: the vast gulf between the liberati and the rest of Pakistan.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com