We don’t need to tinker with the anthem. What is required is a more just and equitable order
As if Pakistan did not have enough issues to grapple with and resolve, the minister for information has decided to tinker with the national anthem of the country. It has been reported that she is not satisfied with its musical composition and wants to change it to make it more in synch with the sonic taste of the present times. She probably wants to do a Coke Studio thing on it.
So it seems the national anthem is not a sacrosanct entity that represents the inviolability of the state but is something that can be changed, altered and played around with. It is not supposed to be an enduring symbol of steadfastness and wall of solidity, especially against the winds of change that threaten to blow the given values and institutions that the state holds very dear.
The national anthems as we know them these days are representations of national states. Originating from Europe, it also saw the rise of the nation state as a credible political entity that the other regions followed. The anthem has spread all over, giving a musical form to the aspirations of that entity called the nation state.
The national anthems have always been the subject of many controversies and from time to time demands have been raised to change them according to changing times. This can be a very dangerous premise for the territorial limits of the state and the people living in it too can be subjected to the same variable or variables of time and change. Then both can be questioned, values set in time and determined by time, a very dangerous inference indeed.
Though the Dutch may have been the first to set the trend, it appears that the Spanish are the most advanced sonically for their national anthem has no lyrics -- it is exclusively a music composition. So the identification with the note and not the word signifies very high culture indeed.
There have been debates about the language used in anthems. Canada has them in many languages and so do the Swiss and the South Africans. The Canadians besides the language of the lyrics are also in the process of changing the words "O Canada- our home and native land" as the distinction between settlers and natives rankles and "true patriotic love in all thy sons command" to "true patriotic love in all commands" as to make it more gender neutral.
There have also been demands for the British Anthem or the anthem of the United Kingdom to be made more inclusive to be rendered in more languages. As it is, the Welsh and the Irish and the Scots have their own national anthems and there have been calls for England to have its own anthem as well. For them, ‘God Saves the Queen’ has been played since the year 1619 and one wonders what will happen if Corbyn becomes the prime minister. Will he continue to doff his tie, the formal dress code, and instead of inviting the Queen to address the parliament, snatch the speech from her hands and deliver it himself or will go and drink himself silly in a nearby pub waiting for the monarch to leave, before lording over the treasury benches. Only God knows for He has taken upon himself the task of saving the Queen.
The American anthem ‘Star Spangled Banner’ is based on a war song probably made famous in 1814 and it was set to music on a composition of a beer song much later, indemnified by Woodrow Wilson and formally elevated in 1931 by President Hoover. The composition was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, a Gentlemans Club of amateur musicians in London where it was sung in a heavily drunken state as the night deepened.
It appears that the Indian national anthem in Bengali was a poem written initially by Tagore as a tribute to King George the Fifth when he held the Delhi Darbar in 1911. It was sung at the then loyalist Congress Party meeting the same year to gradually become a regular feature at the following sessions. It was composed to music later in raag shankarabharan. The address "The God of Destiny" initially probably meant for the monarch was later perceived in more generalised terms, and when the Republic of India was proclaimed in 1950 its Hindi version was made the standard national anthem on the occasion. Before that, many wanted Iqbal’s ‘Sarey Jahan Sey Achha Hindustan Hamara’ or ‘Bande Mataram’ to be the national anthem but the dice was cast in Tagore’s favour.
If anything, the lyrics of the Pakistani anthem should be questioned for the excessively persianised expression, totally alien to native Pakistanis. The anthem took a long time coming. The composition was made first, by Ahmed Chagla, not brilliant in an east west mixture of military resolve, and then lyrics were written on it by Hafeez Jallandhari. This is always the right sequence to follow: it was formalised later in 1954.
One wonders, if the state of Pakistan has stuck faithfully to the anthem all these years, even after its disintegration in 1971.
Why is there this compulsion to change it and fuel another controversy? It will lead to the resurfacing with vengeance of all those under the surface controversies about language, ethnicities and the vision/ideology of the state.
The anthem is good enough; nobody has any concerns with it. What is needed is to make our institutions functional, usher in a more just and equitable order in a society that is lost to intolerance. A system needs to be fostered where people are free to think rather than bend over backwards to prove themselves more faithful than the next , respect women and institutions play their own constitutional role without wanting to overreach and finally counter and let loose zealotry.
One wonders how a new jazzed up composition will make the Pakistanis follow the aforesaid wish list.