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The News International Pakistan
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The Pakistan report card
By Fasi Zaka
When General Musharraf proclaimed the second emergency in Pakistan to stave off legal challenges, there was universal condemnation by most people in the country. One group was conspicuous by its silence, and in some cases by its ferociousness in defending an illegal second martial law. They were the celebrities and musicians of the country.
Under Musharraf they had flourished with his appropriate and laudable interest in the arts that had ostensibly been killed by the previous military regime and successive kleptocratic democracies acting under misguided populism. So when the time came to stand up for what's right based on principle, they chose to surrender to the client agency relationship they had developed with the dictator because his emancipation of the arts (and that is one thing we thank Musharraf for) created opportunities for the top tiers in the entertainment world to become the new moneyed class.
So when it mattered to Pakistan, it mattered less to the world of celebs. This is partly why the new and emerging round of protest chic we are seeing in the media is so disingenuous. The concerns that the artists are raising are safe ones. For example, several years ago the super duo Strings released a song on the plight of Beirut. While well intentioned, it did not push the boundaries because the song came at a time in a country where there was universal support for criticizing the excesses of the Israeli war machine in that city state. We don't see anyone going out on a limb and putting out a song and video that puts to shame the Taliban who have not only killed our culture, but massacre our people. To do so would require imagery that challenges our stereotypes of what constitutes the representation of good moral people, people in kameez shalwars, sporting beards and still cutting off the noses and tongues of those they disagree with and conducting public executions to display the bodies later on in a macabre morbid voyeurism. They are Pakistan's cancer, and the sad thing is that the only chemotherapy for it is money, those with it are leaving Swat, including both government and elected officials. That deserves a protest song.
Recently I was told a personal experience by the journalist Nadeem Farooq Paracha who said someone submitted him a protest song about Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Yes, it remains one of the greatest tragedies of our time and should be condemned, but with world opinion already having been coalesced on the same disgust for it, how is it a true gutsy protest in Pakistan?
Pakistani music has been stuck in a moribund state for the past several years ever since every one started following the sound developed by both Jal and Atif Aslam. Last year phenomenal musical change came from where it was least expected, by the oldies of the industry, Ali Azmat and Shahzad Roy.
Both have followed social change issues in the context surrounding the music they released, but with markedly different contexts. Ali Azmat's recent video denounces capitalism, totalitarianism, socialism, the drug industry and regurgitates the theory that the world suffers at the hand of a few conspirators. But unfortunately, it is hollow. While taking a jab at genetically engineered foods, he forgets that the first round of crude genetic engineering was what saved India and Pakistan from future starvation in the 60's and 70's by increasing crop yields. Similarly the long overdue crises of capitalism is a western phenomena, our banks have little exposure to it in Pakistan. Our problem with capitalism last year was mainly debt from a multilateral institution the whole world already criticizes for being faulty, and secondly, a worldwide surge in demand for raw materials and energy that put prices through the roof. The real question therefore is, who is the audience, Pakistan or elsewhere? If we need a video protesting this, why not our bloated federal cabinet and MNAs who cost the country 100,000 rupees each per day? The irony is that in the case of Ali Azmat, who has been an uber-capitalist in the past, he would have been better off criticizing McDonalds whom he once endorsed, by highlighting, for example, the fact that they serve their original high-calorie and artery clogging menu in Pakistan, due to the lack of organized consumer groups, while they serve a healthier menu abroad because of long term criticism in the West.
By that token, Shahzad Roy's efforts are more meaningful. His album is full of interesting and good songs, but musically it is a lesser achievement than Ali Azmat's. He has worked with corporations and used all the money paid out to him (20 lacs in one go, in one case recently) to fund education for the poor. He combines message with proof of intent. His video for "Laga Reh" did not talk of worldwide mysteries, but accessible themes about what needs to be fixed in Pakistan. Most gutsy was one part of the song that says the word "Allah" in a more guttural tone to decry religious hypocrisy and both the fatalism of people who, for example, believe in conspiracy theories and by extension the collar of belief that little can be done against the powerful.
Sadly, a process of mainstreaming is becoming evident by lazy thinkers of conspiracy theories who preach hate. In Pakistan the documentary Zeitgeist has become extremely popular which is based entirely on unsubstantiated truths and opportune evidence. But what most of these people do is they only pass on the amended version of the documentary because one part of it is wholly about the assertion that Jesus was fiction, something Islam contradicts. It is intellectual hypocrisy to take one part of an argument that serves one purpose while hiding the other that doesn't.
The issue here is that protest needs to be three basic things. First it needs to have an intellectual core of logic that does not contradict itself. Second it needs to be followed with evidence of action that corresponds to the belief in the intellectual logic of the protest. And lastly, if it is merely an aesthetic (such as preppy rich kids wearing Che Guevara T-shirts), it is not believable and an exercise in futility.
The writer is a Rhodes scholar and former academic. Email: fasizaka@yahoo .com
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ISSN 1563-9479