Let culture flourish

IT IS difficult to understand the exact purpose behind plans to erect a national monument, whose foundation stone was laid in Islamabad by President Pervez Musharraf on Friday. From the indications available, it is probably meant to provide a ceremonial focus for foreign dignitaries visiting the nation’s capital. Islamabad did not have a central point of homage and remembrance like the Quaid’s mausoleum in Karachi or Allama Iqbal’s tomb and the Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore. But the fact that the monument will be dedicated to the people of Pakistan is nevertheless welcome. This will lend it a certain democratic and non-denominational symbolism, absent from some of the recent undertakings in building monuments like replicas of the Chaghi mountain that dot our cities or the symbolic representations of military hardware that adorns many public places.

Speaking at the monument’s foundation laying ceremony, President Musharraf linked the project to the general need to promote the country’s art and culture, an emphasis which is also well merited. Last month, the government had cleared the proposal to set up a performing arts academy in Lahore, to be managed as an autonomous organization. An initial grant has been sanctioned, and it is hoped that student fees will in time be able to help the academy to be efficiently run. However, the existing arts councils and other cultural organizations not only continue to be deprived of funds but remain saddled with many bureaucratic constraints. Museums and archeological sites of inestimable value have suffered a similar fate. The Lahore Museum has been depleted of priceless relics through thefts. Calligraphy is now a dying art. The country’s universities, which should be a cradle of learning and intellectual curiosity, are being run by vice-chancellors many of whom are not even educationists. There is also colossal indifference to the needs of the country’s writers, musicians, painters and other artists, many of whom have passed miserable lives and died in neglect and penury. If it had not been for individual efforts to run art galleries or music and dance schools or encourage creative writing, we would have been living in a cultural wasteland.

But there is more to the issue than government patronage of the arts and the construction of monuments. It is the entire atmosphere in which we have made ourselves exist and the culture of intolerance that we have developed that need attention. Political regimentation affects every field of endeavour. The absence of free debate stifles creativity. We have sought to subordinate culture to preconceived notions of political and ideological correctness. We want to regiment the arts, when they need non-conformism to flourish. Even such manifestations of popular culture as the annual Basant festival, now happily spreading throughout the country, have been frowned upon by the establishment. Theatrical productions have to be cleared in advance by censorious officials who try to obstruct depiction of our social realities. The Ziaul Haq period was a particular disaster in this respect, and we can only pray that it is now behind us forever. Political growth, the development of democratic institutions, recognition of the right to dissent, room for minds to be freed — we need these if we have to go past the present philistinism. It should be hoped that the government that comes into being after October 10 would make a conscious attempt to establish liberal traditions that would help not only our political growth as a nation but also permit a fuller and more exuberant expression of our cultural and artistic aspirations.

Victims of circumstances

ROME has finally allowed Islamabad consular access to the 15 Pakistanis arrested three weeks ago by the Italian police in Sicily for allegedly having links with Al Qaeda. All through their ordeal, the Pakistanis vehemently denied any such links, saying that they were sailors caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their only fault seems to be that they were from a Muslim country and looked Middle Eastern and happened to land in Italy’s waters on the first anniversary of 9/11. The Italian authorities, too, did themselves no credit by immediately claiming at a press conference on Sept. 12 that the 15 were Al Qaeda members. Since the Italian police made this claim within 24 hours of the arrests, it is plain that they did so without making any substantive inquiry.

The Pakistanis, it is now said, were sailors on a Romanian-owned ship passing through the Mediterranean when a salary dispute erupted between the vessel’s predominantly Romanian crew and the owner. Sensing trouble, the captain headed for the closest port, which happened to be in Sicily where he told Italian authorities that the crew posed a threat to his life. Unfortunately, the Pakistanis were caught in the midst of this despite having valid travel documents. Several agencies then proceeded to interrogate them, including, it is said, the FBI, but found nothing incriminating. Labelling anyone looking even remotely Middle Eastern as a terrorist seems to have become quite common in some western countries. In this particular case, the arrested men owe their ordeal also to the racist attitude of the Italian police, and to the Pakistani embassy in Rome which initially refused to intervene saying that the men were not Pakistanis. Rome has rather belatedly allowed the Pakistani embassy access to the detainees. Islamabad should now press for their prompt release now that it has been established that the sailors have no links to any terrorist outfit. It should also discuss with Rome certain unsavoury aspects of this whole affair so that such discriminatory incidents do not recur.

Over to CNG

THE arrival in Karachi of the first batch of Chinese buses fitted with Compressed Natural Gas kits is welcome in that it marks the beginning of a process to ease the city’s transport problems which have only been compounded over the decades. Karachi currently has some 12,000 non-standardized public transport vehicles, mainly mini-buses and coaches, which are operated with little regard for commuters’ comfort or convenience, or for road safety. A large number of such vehicles comprise smoke-emitting and shabbily-constructed cabins mounted on truck chassis and driven by ill-trained or unlicensed drivers. The city district government, in a move to improve Karachi’s bus transport system, has adopted a scheme for importing some 670 large standardized buses over the next few years. If properly implemented, the programme will help plug some of the inadequacies in the city’s public transport sector.

The CNG-fitted buses are particularly suited to Karachi’s needs in that the city is already experiencing a serious problem of pollution caused by numerous smoke-emitting vehicles. Some time back, the city government had hinted at requiring thousands of autorickshaws operating in the city to switch over to CNG. This process should be speeded up and pursued seriously, as rickshaws, despite their short-haul utility and small size, are among the worst air and sound pollutants. Over time, it would be advisable to require trucks, trailers and tankers that operate through and within the city, also to change over to CNG for fuel. This would help relieve the city’s atmosphere of the smog that engulfs its congested areas during rush hours and poses serious health risks to millions of its inhabitants.