| 18 February 2004 | Wednesday | 26 Zilhaj 1424 |
Music without lessons
Bomb & public opinion
In the current furore over the nuclear issue and its fallout not enough attention is being paid to what perhaps lies at the root of the problems that President Pervez Musharraf identified in his speech to the parliament as casting Pakistan in a negative light internationally and as threatening the domestic stability of the country.
He had talked of militant operations in Afghanistan, cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, nuclear weapons proliferation and "an impression of our society being intolerant" as being the four allegations that Pakistan had to contend with.
The president has since then acknowledged that while everything that is happening in Afghanistan is not attributable to cross border activity, there is also no doubt that certain things are happening in Afghanistan because of the people crossing over from the Pakistan side.
Prior to this public acknowledgement action, on the military and political front had already been taken in hand to cleanse the tribal areas and the particularly troubled Waziristan area of Al Qaeda adherents.
The American general in charge of American forces in Afghanistan is making monthly trips to Pakistan, not, as some extremists like to suggest, to pave the way for American military operations on Pakistan soil but to ensure better intelligence sharing and better coordination in military and political operations along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The optimistic predictions now being made by American commanders in Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden will be captured by the end of the year - an imperative for Bush's re-election prospects - flow from the expectation that better coordination will ensure that Osama and his followers are denied asylum and safe shelter on either side of the border and despite the relative inaccessibility of the remote reaches of the honeycomb of caves, they cannot remain undetected for much longer if they are indeed in the area.
Many American observers believe that Pakistan cooperation has improved following the adoption of the new Afghan constitution and the restoration in that document of some measure of equity with regard to the distribution of power between the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
I would prefer to believe that intelligence coordination has improved and we have been able, finally, to put our act together. What happens within Afghanistan is for the Afghans to decide and we must get our own people used to the idea that they cannot be the guardians of the interest of one or other group in that country.
On the Indian front the unilateral declaration of a ceasefire on the LoC, its acceptance by India and the extension of the ceasefire, at Indian instance, to the Siachen area relates directly to the question of cross-LoC infiltration and the Indian charge of cross-border terrorism.
Separately the landmark agreements reached at the Saarc summit have helped to create the atmosphere in which encouraging progress could and has been made on the resumption of the dialogue and on commencing the process of resolving bilateral problems.
It is accepted in Islamabad that a long and difficult process lies ahead; that both governments will have to be wary of domestic pressure groups which for reasons of their own may seek to derail the process, that even while substantive progress in the formal dialogue may have to wait upon the completion of the Indian elections, further CBMs will have to be initiated; and that all steps will need to be taken to ensure that the current relatively relaxed ambience is not spoilt by intemperate statements.
An encouraging factor perhaps is that all parties in India seem to realize that seeking better ties with Pakistan is a vote-getter in the political climate that currently prevails in India. Another encouraging fact or is the relative restraint exercised by the government and other Indian politicians on the A.Q. Khan affair.
On the nuclear issue it can be anticipated that every day will bring new stories on the extent of the proliferation. The western media will also continue to cast doubt on the claim that Dr. A. Q. Khan acted entirely on his own.
Pakistan's efforts to convince the world otherwise and to suggest that the investigation in the West should also focus on the western companies and individuals who formed part of the proliferation under ground or on identifying the nationality of the scientists working on these programmes may continue.
This may not succeed but happily the principal preoccupation at the official level in the western world remains not on painting Pakistan as the villain of the piece but on eliminating the proliferation underworld operators and the possibility of further leaks from Pakistan.
Pakistan will perforce cooperate recognizing that it needs to take resolute and comprehensive actions to restore a measure of credibility and to pre-empt any official requests for investigations about the degree of official involvement in the past proliferation practices of Dr. A. Q. Khan.
It would seem, therefore, that in greater or smaller measure steps are being taken to tackle these identified issues in substantive terms.
On the issue of extremism, or as the president put it "an impression of our society being intolerant" the indicators, to say the least, are mixed. The president admitted in an interview to the NY Times published on February 9 that little has happened.
According to the Times report, "When he spoke about his own efforts to combat fundamentalism in Pakistan, he conceded that some areas, like reform of hard-line Islamic religious schools, or madressahs, had proceeded slowly."
You must understand, I don't have a magic wand," he said. He said his biggest problem was getting the lower rungs of Pakistan's government to function. "There is really a very big gap between policy formulation and policy implementation," he said. "For a developing country, this gap is very large."
On the other hand the PML(Q) spokesman has been quoted as saying that the MMA is now to be inducted into the government. If this happens, the problems of reforming the Madressahs or of changing the Blasphemy laws will be compounded.
For the MMA it is an article of faith that the Madressahs must not be subject to scrutiny, nor should they be coerced into adopting a more comprehensive curriculum. It will not then be merely a problem of a gap between formulation and implementation
Addressing a women's conference the president talked about initiating a debate on the Hudood Ordinance but such a debate is hardly likely to occur unless the ministry of religious affairs or some other government organ gives it official sanction and perhaps funds the efforts of one or other women's NGO in this direction. The MMA is not the party that will as part of the government permit, leave alone, encourage such a debate.
The large majority of Pakistanis who oppose the narrow, intolerant interpretation of Islam and the misinterpretation of the ideology of Pakistan put forward by the religious parties have taken heart, at least since 2001, from the president's public statements that seemed to show that he and his government shared this sentiment. In a series of statements quoted below, the President made clear his personal views and hopefully those of his government.
"Islam is vibrant and forward-looking. But more than that, we claim it is the most tolerant of faiths. How does the world judge our claim? It looks upon us as terrorists.
We have been killing each other. And now we want to spread that violence and terror abroad. Naturally, the world regards us as terrorists."(President at Seerat Conference on 050601)
"There is no external threat which can do any harm to us. We are capable of handling any external threat. The enemy lies within and this element of religious and sectarianism may pull us down." (President speech on 041003).
"Increasingly, our image is being shaped by the extremist actions of a tiny minority that exists on the fringes of Muslim societies......
"We must not allow them to hijack our religion, to preach religious and sectarian hatred with impunity, and to tarnish the image of Islam and Muslims. (President's speech at OIC summit October 16, 2003)
There is no doubt that the evils of extremism engendered by intolerant and narrow vision of Islam was foisted on us by a ruler who regarded this as the only means of securing a measure of public support and by the mistaken notion that resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan required an appeal to Islamic Jihad rather than to Afghan nationalism.
The latter assumption on the part of the anti Soviet coalition led to the import into Pakistan and Afghanistan of extremists from all parts of the Islamic world and the setting up of the politically oriented Madressahs that have now become the bane of our existence. But all this came to an end more than 15 years ago. Much should have been done to rectify the damage done during the dictator's rule and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This did not happen.
The armed forces did nothing to persuade the politicians who theoretically wielded power to curb the extremists. There was in fact the well founded fear that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was planning to use the Senate majority he hoped to achieve in March 2000 to declare himself "Amir-ul-Momineen and to introduce his version of the Nizam-i-Mustafa. Many Pakistanis welcomed his overthrow in October '99 primarily because of the fear of what he had planned for the country.
It has now been almost three years since the president made his ground-breaking speech at the Seerat conference. Yet the promise of returning Pakistan to the moderate polity envisioned by our Founding Fathers remains unrealized.
There is an opportunity provided by the current international environment as much as there is by the impatience of the silent majority of Pakistanis. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity.
The writer is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.
Music without lessons
How many of us in Lahore, or in any other big city of the province, know that before partition the Punjab University also offered music as a subject. You could do your M.A. in Music, classical music of course, and before you did that many colleges enabled you to take it as one of the compulsory subjects in B.A. The university department was headed by a Kashmiri pundit.
Sounds incredible today, doesn't it? My memory went back to those days after a friend sought my help to find a tutor for his teenage daughter who wanted to learn to play the sitar and to acquire the rudiments of vocal classical music.
She had a fine voice and was truly musical, giving exact renderings of the best film songs, based more on melody than rhythm, with all the nuances of the originals.
There were two options available to us. Either the girl could enrol in the music classes conducted in the Pakistan National Council of the Arts or we could look for a suitable music teacher who could come home to give her lessons. the former looked easier, but my friend preferred the music teacher coming to his house. So we advertised for one and got a satisfactory person.
One may well ask why there are no private schools when institutions to impart training in computers and computer science or to enable youngsters to graduate in commerce are proliferating like mushrooms. The answer is simple. The latter provide avenues to lucrative vocations and build careers.
Music is at best a pastime and a rare aesthetic need. You may ask: who will throng to music schools as they do to computer and commerce classes? But that is not true. People are sure to patronize music- teaching institutions. You have only to look around you to realize how music has become an integral part of our lives.
There are as many shops of music cassettes as of property dealers, and you may roam the roads and streets for days and you will not find a car or a taxi without a cassette player. And if you still contest my point, try opening a music school and see what happens. You may face a problem finding suitable teachers for it, both men and women, but there will be no shortage of pupils.
The matter is such that by its very nature it does not confront us as a serious issue. People are not pining or agitating to learn music, but if an opportunity for the purpose does become available I can bet the school will be swamped by eager learners, and girls' parents wanting to know the details.
It is just like a new recreational facility. If there is no park in a locality the residents are not going to raise the demand for one. But let the authorities just build a park and then see how crowds converge on it in the evenings, and more so on Sundays and holidays.
Music schools will be like that. Here in Islamabad the music classes of the PNCA are said to be quite popular, but what should a young man or a young woman living in Rawalpindi do if they desire to join them? In Lahore too the Arts Council holds music classes, but Lahore is not the whole of Punjab.
Does no one in big cities like Faisalabad and Multan (to name just two) crave for a place where they can revel in music to their heart's content and feel uplifted? And what about the other provinces?
I think it is pointless to look up to the government to do the needful. The urge in the people must manifest itself in the form of private enterprise. I am always surprised at one phenomenon.
You can see new bands and pop groups coming up every day. Young boys who have the musical instinct, and who, without taking any lessons, become vocal and instrumental experts and capture the hearts of large audiences.
A couple of these Pakistani groups have won world fame. How did they do it without any training, without encouragement from society and, in some cases, in the teeth of opposition from parents?
This phenomenon only goes to show that the love of music, the urge to indulge in music, which some of our religious types describe as something devilish, was over powering in these youngsters and became more important for them than acquiring a craft that would lead to quick material prosperity and prestigious jobs. But this happened in the domain of pop music which has swept the world like a whirlwind. The case of classical music is somewhat different. There are not many devotees of this form of music. Even rarer are teachers who can appreciate and inspire new devotees and are also adept at communicating the art to others.
With classical music the one-teacher-one-pupil affair is a luxury that not many can afford, and is also a waste of opportunity. The need is for a place, an institution, howsoever small and unpretentious it may be, where lovers of ustadi mauseeqi can gather and drink at the fount provided by a genuine practitioner who may be making some money but who essentially is interested in propagating this celestial art form.
At the moment eager devotees of classical music go and beg some ustad to accept them as students, which the ustad does as a great favour.
Despite my conviction that it is pointless to expect the government to do something practical in the matter, the best way out that occurs to me is for Radio Pakistan and PTV to start classes in popular and classical music and for improving skills in the playing of various instruments.
They won't have to go out of their way to do this favour to culture; they are the repositories of music in the country, they have the personnel and logistics needed to teach music of every kind, and they do not require a financial outlay for the purpose. In the bargain they can earn some money too.
The fees should not be high. They should be just enough to pay the teachers. If the two electronic media agree to undertake this noble work, look how the world of music teaching in Pakistan would benefit.
In the case of PTV, five excellent centres would immediately spring up, while Radio has more than two dozen stations in the country and each of these could arrange music classes without any bother or extra expense.
The investment would be in genuine art, and fulfil a long-felt need, something unique for official bodies in this country to do. It would be a great cultural achievement.
Bomb & public opinion
As the nuclear proliferation saga unfolded in Islamabad and reached its denouement earlier this month, the government sought shelter behind the so-called public opinion in the country.
It was made out to be sacrosanct in this case which is quite intriguing since military rulers do not usually worry about mundane issues like public opinion.
We were told that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan is "a national hero", and is "next only to the Quaid-i-Azam" because he is the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. It was also said that the nuclear programme is sacred because it has the underpinning of public opinion. The government also adheres to its Kashmir policy rigidly because it claims that it is what the people of Pakistan want.
The question, however, arises whether the public in Pakistan at all holds an opinion on such complex issues as nuclear weapons and proliferation. And if it holds a vague opinion on the matter, can it actually be measured. There are two basic factors which determine the nature and significance of public opinion especially on a complex issue in any given society.
Public opinion has been defined by Robert Shapiro as the aggregate of individual opinions on issues of political relevance that can influence individual and group behaviour and the action of political leaders and governments.
The factors which shape opinion in a country are the people's perception of the national interest and their own interest, the influence of their cultural, religious and moral values, the social characteristic of society (race and ethnicity, economic status, gender and education), and the influence and credibility of opinion leaders and political organizations.
In a Third World country, especially like Pakistan, where education level is low, the culture of superstition prevails and the opinion leaders have narrow, vested interests, can one expect the people to be adequately informed about an issue to form an independent opinion? One also wonders how free they are - not just politically but also socially and culturally - to form their opinion and articulate it. We know very well that Pakistan does not meet either of the two criteria.
Given the very low literacy rate and a lower education level, it can be safely assumed that there are very few people who have information and knowledge about issues which do not have an immediate impact on them.
In early 1977 before the elections, Dawn had conducted a survey among women in Karachi to assess the issues of direct concern to them on which they sought tangible action by the candidates contesting the polls.
The voters appeared to be very well informed about the question of regularizing their land lease in the kutchi abadis where they lived, the water supply problem of the city, and so on. They did not have to be educated or be literate to understand their problems and how they could be resolved.
But not many of them would have any understanding of the repercussions of a nuclear war on the country and the people. It is even unlikely that many would have heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the havoc which was wreaked there in August 1945. Even the knowledge of the educated ones about such affairs would be minimal. They would not have been given details of the hazards of nuclearization especially when our nuclear programme has been glorified all along.
Four years ago, when I visited a government girls' school in Clifton, the children had put up colourful posters for the "Yom-i-Takbeer" which was to be celebrated on the first anniversary of the nuclear tests at Chaghai.
On talking to the children I found they had been well indoctrinated about the glories of the bomb and how they could now hold their head high with pride because Pakistan was a "nuclear power". When I asked the teacher if I could say a few words about the horrors of the bomb, she pleaded with me not to bring up the subject since it could cost her job.
Of course, there are schools which would be showing their students the other side of the coin as well. But how many? A recent report published by the Karachi-based Social Policy and Development Centre gave the result of a survey which found that 65 per cent of elite English medium school students said that they supported a nuclear status for the country.
Nearly 73 per cent of non-elitist English medium school students, 79.8 per cent of the Urdu medium school students and 96.2 per cent of the madressah students felt the same way. It is plain that those who were exposed to independent sources of information were more likely to develop an opinion which diverged from the conventional view.
The second criterion - that of freedom of expression and information - has not been Pakistan's forte either. In the absence of this freedom, it is simply not possible to disseminate information that militates against the government's policies or exposes the vested interests of some groups which are pre-eminent in the power structure. They might be the religious parties, those at the higher echelons of the social hierarchy or political leaders all of whom try to manipulate public opinion by misinforming the people or giving them partial information.
Admittedly, this is done in all societies, even the most educated and democratic ones. But a high level of education and exposure to information enables people to form unconventional opinions in a society where dissent is not a crime. Pakistanis do not enjoy this privilege - at least they didn't until recently. Now the Internet and the numerous television channels have opened up new avenues for airing a diversity of views.
Another important factor in this context is our system of education that does not encourage any questioning or analysis of issues. Students are discouraged from challenging the conventional wisdom . They are not equipped for independent thinking.
Even if we are to assume that we do have a public opinion on an issue, we have no means to ascertain it with accuracy. Even if the surveys are scientifically and honestly carried out, one cannot expect consistent answers from all the people polled.
In the SPDC survey mentioned above, 65 per cent of the students from elite English medium schools supported the country's nuclear status but 69 per cent from the same schools wanted the defence budget to be lowered. Obviously the children were not very clear about what they wanted. The nuclear programme and a cut in defence spending do not go hand in hand.
When the government and party leaders speak of public opinion on an issue they have been propagating, one can see it is a facade to justify their policies.
Since the political parties have never tried to educate the people on the nuclear issue and the fledgling peace movement has not yet had time to make a strong impact on the people's thought, not many people really understand the pros and cons of nuclearization and proliferation.
The demonstrations and protests you see in support of the nuclear scientists and the atom bomb can be mobilized by any party with a respectable presence at the grassroots level. It is not difficult to whip up war frenzy.
So before we attribute anything to public opinion it would be worthwhile to stop and ask if there is really any informed opinion on this issue in Pakistan. Don't be surprised if you are greeted with apathy and cynicism when you ask anybody how he feels about our nuclear bomb.