Nowadays, the tax system in the country as envisaged by the current political dispensation in Islamabad is being fiercely debated. It is not an easy subject. Even for the entertainment industry, taxation has always been at the centre of all debates relating to financial gains and losses of those involved in the business.

Take, for example, Karachi’s cinema houses. On July 18, 1969, it was reported that one cinema house in the city had closed down while many others reduced their number of shows or seating capacity to escape any losses due to the introduction of the capacity-tax formula. According to official figures, there were a total of 62 cinema houses in Karachi at the time, including the ones in suburban townships. Out of them, two were under repair. Save for two, all of them had been put in category ‘A’ which, as per the newly introduced formula, were liable to pay tax at 60 per cent of the total seating capacity [of their cinemas]. Consequently, 50 cinema houses cut down the number of their weekly shows while 20 reduced the number of seats. Normally, there would be 22 shows a week (in total), three each day and four on Sundays. The number of shows had been lessened by eliminating matinees on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as well as the Sunday morning shows. Efforts of the exhibitors now appeared to be ensuring that the attendance in each screening was large enough “to avoid losses.” Under the law, exhibitors had to inform the deputy commissioner and the directorate of excise and taxation if they proposed to close down cinema houses.

Those were the days when, like today, screening of Indian films in Pakistan was not allowed. Speaking of Indians, on July 19, an interesting little new item got published in Dawn: four Indian nationals were arrested from a merchant ship at Keamari in response to a complaint made by the ship’s master. Police said that the Indians – V.V. Ashasham, S.M. Adam Ali, Hassan Eusof and T.K. Gohar Ali – were arrested on charge of ‘breach of peace’. It was alleged that they were ‘quarrelling’ with each other on the ship.

Maintaining peace is never easy. Ask the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC). There was a time when the KMC enjoyed a fair amount of power in terms of executing its plans. And even then, it had to face situations where its efforts would go embarrassingly awry. On July 19, 1969, an inspector of the KMC and his subordinate were beaten up and about half a dozen KMC men were chased out by 25 persons when they tried to impound some buffaloes at Dastagir Colony. The inspector told law enforcing agencies that he and his men had impounded over 65 buffaloes [which were illegally kept] from a cattle barra in the colony on the orders of chairman of the corporation. But when they were coming towards the city with the buffaloes, the cattle owner and more than two dozen of his servants attacked them with sticks, iron rods and knives. Two of the KMC employees, including the inspector, were roughed up while others ran away from the spot in order to save their lives. All the cattle were released from their possession and taken back to the barra.

Now, to the all-important cultural aspect of the Sindh capital. On July 20, a conference called by the Pakistan Writers Guild (PWG) in the city to acquaint the writers with the laws of copyright turned into a debate on the language issue after some writers objected to the reading of papers in English. Though the medium of the conference became Urdu after the objection was raised, the supporters of Urdu did not succeed entirely as Justice Safdar Shah of the High Court of West Pakistan, who was the chief guest, gave his verdict against the interruption arguing it wasn’t the right occasion to express that concern. Two papers had been read and the third was pending when a woman participant – Begum Hasan Zamani Alamgir – objected to the language being used to put across ideas. The honorary secretary of the guild’s Karachi region attempted to explain arguing the papers had been written in English and their translation, which was quite difficult because of the nature of the theses, could not be obtained despite efforts. Some others, including Fazlur Rahman Jafri, a member of the Karachi District Council, supported Begum Alamgir.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2019