By IA Rehman

The debate on culture, freedom of artistic expression and the limits to it has revealed widespread confusion about the subject and underlined the need for a rational discourse.

Originally published by Dawn

The debate started when the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) disallowed the production of Ajoka’s Burqavaganza on its premises and persuaded the sponsors to have another Ajoka play staged instead. Ajoka disregarded this understanding and presented Burqavaganza before an audience that had come to watch another play.

Whatever one may think of Ajoka’s action it led to unwelcome consequences. As elsewhere, our audience is divided into several groups that follow their different preferences. Many would rush to watch Burqavaganza and many others might wish to avoid it. An audience that had not come to watch this play had a reason to protest, regardless of the quality of the plays.

So far the matter concerned Ajoka and the PNCA and the latter was perhaps entitled to satisfaction for a breach of its understanding with the sponsors of the programme. However, the matter was taken much farther. Defending its decision to disallow Burqavaganza, PNCA ruled the play was “incompatible with the religious and cultural traditions” (of Pakistani people, one supposes). A committee of the culture ministry was said to have found the play “discriminatory”. Then the Senate Standing Committee on Culture deemed it prudent to recommend a complete ban on the play because, among other things, it was a conspiracy against Islamic traditions!

Some of the issues that need to be seriously addressed are:

— Controversial plays should not be allowed.
— Ajoka cannot be allowed a hearing because it is vending a ‘bad’ play.
— While asserting their rights the liberals/modernists should not ignore the rights of the rightists/conservatives.
— Is the culture ministry the sole authority to decide what is against the people’s culture or belief?
— What is the role of public-sector institutions of culture and the performing arts?

The call to ban all controversial plays is the most ridiculous idea one expects to hear from any quarter. Most purposeful theatre, if not all of it, is controversial because it challenges social norms and practices. Shunning controversy means suppression of dissent and perpetuation of the status quo with all its decadence. Those who cannot make controversy palatable to their audience harm only themselves.

No action against any play on the ground of its being bad can be sustained. No censor, or any other authority, anywhere has objected to a performance by calling it bad art/theatre. The stock argument with all censor authorities is that they cannot allow a performance that has an unhealthy effect on the minds/morals of a class of the audience or the whole of it. Now, Burqavaganza has been staged many times in Pakistan and abroad, including thrice by the PNCA, but there is no record of any riot or protest anywhere. Many critics may not like the play but if each play disliked by critics were to be banned there will be no theatre left in many parts of the world.

Besides, the argument that the government has a right to suppress a play it considers ‘bad’ has extremely dangerous implications; it will be invoked to kill ‘good’ plays too. This is the argument used by usurpers of power in Pakistan to justify their absolutely impermissible acts by branding the victims of their coups as ‘bad rulers’. Plays may be good or bad, the essential test is whether they are worth seeing or not and the authority to decide lies with the viewers and not with any babu.

The plea that nobody should offend the conservative elements’ sensibilities should be thoroughly discussed. Up to a point the argument is valid — even those who need to shed their archaic norms should not be provoked. But this argument is often advanced to urge modernists to surrender to the traditionalists.

Taken to its extreme limits this line of thinking has led to a bar against ijtihad in the realm of fiqh and it will exonerate the extremists who destroy schools in the northern region and justify the planting of explosives near the wall of the Peerzada brothers’ cultural complex. The Rafi Peer theatre group has made a tremendous contribution to Pakistan’s culture. Should they be abandoned because the conservatives’ sentiments are supposed to have been injured? Quite obviously no general orders can be passed on the subject. There is much in our native culture that deserves to be preserved and promoted and at the same time there is a great deal in our cultural traditions that must be discouraged and scrapped in favour of norms and practices that are in harmony with the spirit of the age.

That brings us to the key issues as to who will decide what is compatible with the healthy part of the indigenous or Islamic culture and what should be the role of public-sector art institutions?

The PNCA rejoinder to Ajoka and the press coverage of the Senate committee meeting indicate that the culture ministry has arrogated to itself the right to protect Pakistan’s culture and Islamic traditions. Its claim to this privilege is backed neither by the constitution nor by law and its wish to function as a ministry of inquisition will not be accepted by any section of society. Moreover, its factotums have no proven qualifications to sit on judgment on the merits of art performances or to decide what is in accord with Islamic culture and what is not.

Both these tasks can only be performed collectively by bodies of art audiences/consumers and persons of widely recognised credentials as appraisers of art and culture. The same applies to the role of public-sector art bodies (PNCA, Al Hamra, etc). These institutions see nothing wrong in holding on to the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876 and the bureaucrats running them tolerated neither Iqbal Husain nor Colin David, not even Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi. If nothing else the government may learn from the British decision to choose professors of literature, Fielden and A.S. Bokhari (also an authority on arts and aesthetics, much ahead of his time) to found and establish the radio in the subcontinent instead of civil servants. The PTV’s golden age ended when its control was transferred from professionals to mere administrators and accountants.

Culture is much too important a matter to be disposed of in bureaucratic routine or lost in an inconclusive debate. Let the debate continue in earnest so that the government can be convinced of the need for a dynamic and forward-looking cultural policy. This policy must be based not only on the people’s fundamental right to partake of cultural activities, as both producers and consumers, but also on a clear appreciation of the fact that denial of cultural diversion through art and music amounts to jeopardising a people’s intellectual growth and their sanity. Pakistan urgently needs a cultural flowering to overcome the curse of extremism and intolerance — the evils that are apparently upheld by some official decisions.