By Sarwar Kashani
New Delhi, Aug 19 (IANS) The widening gulf between “fundamentalists” and “liberals” will perhaps end up in the partition of Pakistan, says Lahore-based theatre director and political activist Madeeha Gauhar.
“The growing intolerance shown by Taliban followers is proving lethal for the country,” Gauhar, the founding member of Ajoka Theatre, told IANS in an interview.
“There is no overnight solution to the problem. I am afraid it will break up the nation,” she said, adding: “I don’t mind that but am only worried about the bloodshed the partition brings along.”
She, along with her troupe, was here on the eve of India’s Independence Day to do a play based on Saadat Hassan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”, a short story on the miseries of India’s partition in 1947.
Gauhar has been promoting the anti-extremist theatre movement in the country since 1983. She has been imprisoned twice and won awards as well.
Clad in a sleeveless raw-silken black and white salwar kameez and hurrying to catch her flight back to Lahore, Gauhar spoke about her life – as a political activist, a TV artiste, the founding member of Ajoka and then her movement to “root out Taliban- style policies in Pakistan”.
She said that fundamentalism exists in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province that border Afghanistan and is being spread into the progressive Sindh and Punjab regions.
Her satirical play, “Burqavaganza”, was banned after MPs of the hardline religious alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alleged that the series of skits made an “unacceptable fun” of Muslim law.
Set against the backdrop of the sensitive issue of the burqa, which has polarised Pakistan society, “Burqavaganza” challenges mindsets, provokes rethinking and “breaks the chains of prejudice and outdated values”.
A series of skits based on news clippings about the veil, the play represents a hypothetical society where every individual draped in Taliban-style burqa takes on the obsession with the veil and the crimes and hypocrisy that go behind it.
“The ban (on the play) was imposed because of the pressure from the burqa brigade,” Gauhar said, referring to students of the Islamabad-based Lal Masjid and its seminaries.
Many of the students were forced out of the mosque or killed during a military operation in the first week of July that claimed over 100 lives.
“They are using the burqa – a part of Pakistani culture if not forced – to gain political mileage,” said Gauhar, who also believes that “crimes are committed behind the veil”.
“The Lal Masjid cleric tried to evade in burqa and that is what is usually being done by the militants.”
Appreciative of President Pervez Musharraf’s policies of creating a modern and progressive Pakistan, Gauhar said “wrong people and advisors” flank him. “They are the army men and the Pakistan Army was never secular.
“I am afraid Musharraf’s so-called enlightened and modern policies are not taking practical shape,” said Gauhar.
In 2002, she received recognition and was awarded the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz – a medal of excellence – by the government of Pakistan for distinguished merit in the fields of literature, arts, sports, medicine or science.
Born in the port city of Karachi, Gauhar, 51, started her career as a TV actor when she was 17. In a male-dominated society, where acting by women was “un-Islamic”, her choice of stage and television was a conscious one. However, the going was expectedly never smooth. She had to face the wrath but survived gracefully.
Inspired by her mother, Gauhar grew as a political and social activist at a time when fundamentalism was fast brewing up in the country. Pakistan’s late military ruler Zia-ul Haq had amended the laws and put curbs on the freedom of women.
Gauhar, along with a few women activists, held rallies and initiated a movement on the empowerment of the fairer sex. She was arrested and jailed twice and also lost her job as a lecturer in a regional college.
“I am a firm believer of gender equality. Ideas should be allowed to flourish,” said Gauhar who studied theatre in Britain.
“Anger and zeal gave birth to Ajoka in 1983, which also marked the beginning of the theatre for social change movement in Pakistan,” she said about her group.
Gauhar, involved in what she proudly calls “theatre diplomacy”, has contributed to the India-Pakistan peace process as well. She visits India frequently and feels that cross border cultural exchange will always be rewarding for the two neighbours by ushering in peace.
(Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at [email protected])