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Friday March 29, 2024

Is socialism really dead?

By Anil Datta
April 24, 2017

Happily enough, of late there’s been a lot of art and theatrical activity in town, thus providing the citizenry with the due dose of intellectual nourishment. Recently, there was a fortnight-long theatre festival at the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa), featuring plays which are classics both in Western and oriental literature.

Going on right now is the Karachi Arts Council’s theatre festival, featuring Urdu and Sindhi plays. A recent play performed in the series last Wednesday was Tasadum (clash).

It depicts the clash between the wily, exploiter capitalists who just take the workers for a ride to fatten their own coffers on the one hand, and the downtrodden oppressed struggling masses who are actually the ones who keep a country, keep a society going.

It is the story of the idealistically fired young people who are engaged in a constant struggle to usher in a more just, egalitarian order and the machinations of the seniors to retain the status quo and blunt the moves of the young in this direction.

Tasadum is the story of students in a college dormitory who are most idealistically fired and discuss ways and means of furthering the socialist cause.

It is a play punctuated with lots of humour and witticisms and reminds us of the many icons of revolution of the 1960s, like the romanticised, legendary Che Guevara. Little do these young people know that their moves are being constantly being monitored by their college principal. One fine morning, the principal (astutely performed by Naveed Kamal) goes over to the mother of one of the students, Azeem, who is aspiring to be the editor of a Leftist magazine and tells her that he has arranged for Azeem to pursue further education at Harvard. He leads her up the garden path and tells her what prosperous prospects Azeem would have when he returns. 

“He will be managing the financial projects of the country. He’ll be controlling the financial planning and the purse strings of the country”, which is also a subtle comment on the way the Western economists plan our economic development, all to their advantage rather than ours. Azeem spurns the offer down with the contempt it deserves.

Ultimately, the end of all these young people is manipulated.

The play was a reminder of the fact that ideologies don’t vanish when a country synonymous with these does, that social justice and egalitarianism will always be the battle cry of the downtrodden, that socialism will live as long as there is capitalist exploitation and inequality resulting in social injustice. It is testament to the fact that socialism will last as long as there are superlatively posh localities like Defence and derelict localities like Machar Colony in the same city.

That is the state of the capitalist world today. It is testament to the fact that no matter how much all the institutes of business administration may try and brainwash the people against socialism, it will last as long as the exploited are exploited, as long as the downtrodden are downtrodden.

All the actors performed their roles most effectively. Imran Aslam’s socialist ideals were well depicted as was the adroit direction Akbar Islam. However, as regards direction, one could take exceptions. For one, Che Guevara (played by Talha) is seen without his beard and the legendary black beret. The beret was Che’s trade mark. Besides Tota, when he wakes up, breaks wind, which certainly was not in good taste, something the more conservative audience would frown at.