Pakistan is going through a bizarre phase. On the one hand, the traditional sites, places or venues, which house and promote culture are under attack and, on the other, huge festivals are being held in the major cities of Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore and even in a place like Mohenjodaro.
A cinema has been bombed in Peshawar and this is not the first time that a cinema has been destroyed with people sitting there, dying while viewing a film. A couple of weeks back, a cinema had bombs detonated and it, too, resulted in fatalities. The mausoleum of the sufi and poet Mast Tawakali in Kohlu, Balochistan was torched last week and another site Astana of Peer Meharban Shah was also hit by bombs in Karachi, resulting in casualties.
All this has had an effect on the cultural activities where people throng in large numbers. The recently concluded Urs of Khawaja Farid in Kot Mithan was the tamest that one could remember. The cultural activities were not allowed to be held for security reasons and that resulted in a sharp drop in numbers visiting the festival.
One could not have imagined the Urs of Khawaja Farid without the singing of his kalaam. He must be the most-sung poet in the language and his kafis have been rendered in all forms, in pure folk, semi-classical and even by those assigned the status of an ustad.
It is said that even Ustads Fateh Ali and Ali Buksh, the duo that set up the Patiala Gharana, sang in the presence of Khawaja Farid himself.
Though, the Urs of Waris Shah has been held in the last few years, the customary singing of Heer has not been held.
It was unimaginable a few years ago that certain of the most venerated shrines have been bombed -- like Data Sahib in Lahore, Baba Fareed in Pakpattan, Rehman Baba in Peshawar and Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi. These shrines were not touched in hundreds of years when the land was ruled by non Muslims -- Hindus, Sikhs and British.
Not many years ago, the Rafi Peer International Festival was targeted in Lahore after which the festival was toned down considerably, many cinema and theatre houses, too, have been targeted across the country. It seems that there is a systematic campaign to destroy the "addas" where dance and music takes place. And so many of the performing artistes have been killed, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the last few years.
As against this, in the last few years, one has seen an explosion of festivals that have been held across the country, particularly in the three major cities: Lahore Karachi, and Islamabad. The various hugely popular literary festivals organised both by the government and the private sector have also included dance, theatre and music performances.
The recently-concluded Sindh Festival held in Mohenjodaro and other cities of the province was a bit of an extravaganza, participated in full by the people. It included a number of shows, some of performing arts and tableaux. And the ongoing Youth Festival in Punjab, which has spread all over the province, has been held in the district headquarters, breaking away as it were from the monopoly of the three cities that usually hog in all the cultural investment.
It may be said in the same breath that all these festivals have been held in places or venues which have been secured for the purposes of safety. The venues are either controlled spaces or, as in Sindh and Punjab Youth Festivals, being government sponsored, where the law enforcing agencies have been deputed in larger numbers.
Due to security concerns, one safer way out has been to avoid public congregation and air cultural activity on television. Even now, many of the music and popular shows are no longer held in public because it is thought much safer and securer to make a video and release it on channel or stream it on the networks.
The choice now is being narrowed down to either listening to music, seeing theatre/viewing exhibitions of visual arts in full acceptance and glare of the public or none at all. Whether all this is fast becoming a proscribed activity for which injunctions will be included in the legal code, penalising offending citizen of the country if found indulging in film, theatre, music or that the public venues or platforms will cease to exist.
It may not be very surprising because there are many countries where such innocent acts are outlawed in public and citizens either secretly huddle in private space or have to travel abroad to see a film, listen to music and view an exhibition.
The elements of culture have always been used or exploited by advertising, whether to sell an idea or an ideology. Since the corporations now have a multinational presence, both in terms of ownership of the enterprise and the outreach of its market, the cultural elements become the tool of their advertising campaigns. Since the products that they advertise cannot be customised but are mass produced, the market, too, has to be big to offer itself to the uniformity of production. Huge corporations target an area or a region but by bringing in the local flavour they create a certain level of intimacy.
For ideological, economic, and political reasons, artistic expression is snuffed, mutilated, trimmed, tailored but the human race-cherished dream of freedom has always been rescued by the development of a parallel or counter narrative.
There might be a case for the existence of an organic culture that rests and grows surreptitiously while wars with grand gestures are fought on the surface.