| January 5, 2002 | Saturday | Shawwal 20, 1422 |
The ban on Indian cable channels: TV REVIEW
THE Pakistan Academy of Letters has been observing the death anniversary of Hafeez Jullundri for last few years. Once a big function was held on the occasion in the Lahore Press Club and even the director-general of the PAL came down all the way to participate in it. However, on that occasion he had imported a speaker from Islamabad who bored everyone with a long-winded and meaningless speech. He continued with his harangue despite repeated slow hand-claps from the audience. He went to the extent of making such a stupid statement that by marrying a foreigner Hafeez had paved the way for Taseer and Faiz to follow suit.
Anyway the function this time was more sober. Despite ill health I managed to go up the stairs to reach the upper floor of PAL’s local offices where the function was held. My only regret was that the attendance that evening was very thin. However, Prof Khwaja Zakariya, who was presiding, was there on the dot and the chief guest, Begum Hafeez Jullundri, did not take long to show up.
The keynote speaker that evening was Prof Nawaz Zaidi of the FC College who is working on a thesis for a doctorate on Hafeez. he dwelt mostly on his early life, how he discarded his studies while still at school, how he tried to join the army but was not accepted as he was underage, how he did some odd jobs for survival and so on. But what surprised me was that he made no mention of the time spent by Hafeez under the tutelage of that great poet, Girami.
In his presidential remarks, Dr Khwaja Zakariya referred to the unique contribution of Hafeez to all genres of poetry. He particularly referred to the geets written by Hafeez in which he had not used Hindi words like so many others. He said the prime need of the day was to have his Kulliyat, or a full collection of his works, published. He offered his services in this regard.
It was at the same function that I met a charming young lady, Parvin Sajjal, who is the chief editor of a tastefully produced magazine, Lady Reporter. It is obviously devoted to women and the issue I have seen covers the beauty parlours of Lahore. Now, as I have written earlier as well, producing a magazine in the hope that it would be read, and would also sell, is almost like asking for the moon. But the number of ads I saw in the magazine made me feel that those behind this venture had a good PR and would be able to weather the storm.
EARLIER, the PAL initiated a monthly programme to project new publications and their authors. The books chosen for the session were the maiden novel by Aasim Butt, Daira, an Urdu translation of Afzal Ahsan Randhawa’s Punjabi novel under the title, Dia aur Darya, and Azra Butt’s collection of short stories, Ana ke Morr Par. The function was presided over by Javed Shaheen.
Whereas the first two authors were present on the occasion and spoke about their effort, the last named did not turn up.
Afzal Ahsan Randhawa’s novel, one of the first to appear in Punjabi, was published during the 1960s. It has been written in the background of Sikh culture and has appeared in the Gurmukhi script as well. It is for the first time that Zahid Hasan of the Punjabi Adabi Board has rendered it into Urdu.
So far as the novel of Aasim Butt is concerned, it depicts, as the author asserts, the culture of the Walled City of Lahore, where he is supposed to have lived. However, while going through the book, I could not trace anything like it in all that has been written. The author has probably lived in some area around Gowalmandi and not in the Walled City. Moreover, his diction is amateurish. A novel is always built around characters but this one is rather too heavily loaded with them. The author’s immaturity in every respect becomes evident where he has tried to add spice to the novel by describing the rape of a girl. He has only succeeded in turning it into a horror story.
HATS off to Payam Shahjahanpuri for keeping his weekly, Taqazay, going and tantalizing the readers with his pithy editorials. In addition, the regular write-ups in the latest issue are also worth reading. Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi has written about those who claim to be authors through plagiarism. Munnoo Bhai has chosen to denounce the capitalist system and blamed it for all the ills of the under-developed world while Dr Agha Suhail has mourned the happenings in occupied Kashmir. Azhar Javed is somehow missing this time.
The piece contributed by Aslam Kashmiri, my colleague of the PPL days, is about the fortune tellers ad palmists who foretell correctly at times but are mostly proved wrong. He regrets that some people have faith in them.
Taqazay continues to draw some prominent poets to its pages. The latest are the ghazal maestro, Murtaza Barlas, and Prof Afaq Siddiqi of Karachi.
AS USUAL, ordinary people have had to suffer because of the tension between India and Pakistan. Many people might be somewhat relieved that as the way things look, we might not be heading towards a war after all (though one can never tell), but there has been clearly some very negative fallout because of these tensions. The most obvious casualty will be the people-to-people contact. The only train contact between the two countries has been cut off, the bus service has been indefinitely suspended and airlines of both countries have been prohibited from travelling to the other country (quite unfortunate because other airlines which do travel to both India and Pakistan will stand to gain, and both Air India and PIA are hardly in a position to lose any more money).
Obviously, getting a visa will be even harder, and if you get it, going to India will be next to impossible, or probably through a third country. To make matters worse, both countries do not allow their newspapers and magazines to be exchanged. And, now with the ban on the electronic media there is practically no flow of ideas or information between the two neighbours. Unfortunate, because even if there is no war, these barriers will be in place at least for the foreseeable future, for the simple reason that the BJP coalition would not want to lose its mass support for whatever it’s been doing since December 13 by taking a policy U-turn.
True, a lot of the Pakistan-related programming on Zee News can hardly be called ‘informative or categorized as an ‘exchange of ideas.’ The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s chief Maj-Gen Shahzada Alam Malik announced the ban in retaliation against what he said was a ban on PTV by the Indian authorities. He said the prohibition was temporary but necessary to stop the barrage of anti-Pakistan propaganda beamed from across the border, especially on Star and Zee News.
Having said that, most Pakistani viewers could easily see through the bias on these news channels just as most of them can see the overtly pro-government stance of PTV’s Khabarnama. So, in a way it could justifiably be said that Zee News has, rather had, as much credibility as PTV. But, it probably has to be understood — or so the public has to be told — that in situations resembling close to war such restrictions might have to be placed.
The argument against this is, let the people make their own minds. To this, many people would say that since our population is more illiterate than literate it’s good to have such a ban. Such simplistic thinking, though, tends to assume that people with no formal education in the villages are like blank slates and will lap up any kind of propaganda, even Indian. However, if that were the case, PTV’s Khabarnama would be a big hit among our illiterate population. Other than that, propaganda by Zee News and Star News is not even done in a subtle way. It’s so blatant — badly done, probably Goebbels would have said — that even an imbecile can see through it and simply change the channel or switch his TV off. And, last but not the least, isn’t it possible that watching such programmes which you know have an extreme bias against your country might make you hate the news channel even more? It certainly won’t convert you to their way of thinking.
The All Pakistan Cable Operators Association seems to be more loyal than the king since in a press conference its chief, Hasan Mustafa, said that the ban was quite appropriate and was needed to protect Pakistani culture and traditions (sorry, but we can do without such lectures). So far the only channels that seem to have been added are obscure ones in German, Chinese, Arabic and in some cases even Russian and Vietnamese.
In any case, simply banning channels is not exactly the right way to go about showing one’s patriotism. A better, more constructive way for the Pakistan government to counter the Zee and Star news would have been to set up its own round-the-clock news channel. We have been hearing of this for quite some time but realistically speaking, one shouldn’t expect it to materialize in the foreseeable future, not least of all because of myopic government policies related to dissemination of information and because of the mediocrity of PTV’s existing news staff. —Omar R. Quraishi