By K. Santhosh, "Theatre diplomacy at it best" - The Hindu - Chennai, IndiaSunday, January 11, 2009
Pakistani actor-director Madeeha Gauhar on what it took to bring her troupe to the recent International Theatre Festival in Thrissur in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
Friends and relatives warned Pakistani actor-director Madeeha Gauhar about safety issues when she planned to travel to India last week. Hardly a month had passed after the Mumbai terror attacks and she was advised against taking her troupe, Ajoka, to the International Theatre Festival of Kerala in Thrissur.
Post-26/11 tempers were still raging in India and Pakistan. New Delhi had even called off Indian cricket team’s tour of Pakistan. “I told my actors India was a safe place and that Indians had always welcomed Pakistani artistes warmly. Not everyone was convinced,” she recalls. Under pressure from their families, three members of her troupe backed out. Two others could not get the no-objection certificates for visa requirements. But she was determined not to give up.
Many struggles
Daughter of an army officer, she has always abided by her father’s advice: never lose courage. It had seen her through her struggles over two decades against gender inequalities, religious intolerance and bigotry. It helped her keep her chin up when she was arrested and jailed twice for her activities, when she lost her job as a lecturer in a regional college and when authorities clamped restrictions on her play, “Burqavaganza”, which depicted the burqa (veil) as a metaphor for double-standards and cover-ups in society.
She decided to travel to India, come what may. She knew that leading the first Pakistani troupe to India after the Mumbai terror attacks was a historical obligation, a small but significant step towards keeping the peace process alive, and a balm to heal wounds of distrust and hatred. She calls it “theatre diplomacy”.
The message of peace and tolerance the play preached through portrayal of the life and times of Sufi mystic Bulleh Shah echoed voices of reason from across the border. Her words and deeds reflect what Benazir Bhutto once said, “There is a little bit of India in every Pakistani.”
“For me, India is a home away from home. It exerts a compelling, but complex, fascination. I have staged more plays in India than in any other country. How can we forget our roots? My mother was born in a Gujarati-speaking family from Bharauch in India. India is a part of our soul. How can we forget the land where our parents and grandparents were born? When Indians and Pakistanis dislike each other, they hate their own past,” she says.
Some of her plays staged in India have sought to fight hate and prejudice. “But to carry on the campaign is increasingly difficult in the wake of the Talibanisation of Pakistan. Taliban militants in Pakistan’s restive North-Western Swat Valley have banned girls from attending schools because they considers education for girls ‘un-Islamic’. Militants also target music and movies. Freedom of expression is under threat. A blast at the Lahore International Theatre Festival indicated this. The worst is yet to come,” she says.
Breadth of vision
Religious hardliners, however, are a minority in Pakistan, she claims. “Overcoming initial trouble from authorities, ‘Burqavaganza’, was staged there in a different name. “Bullah” was staged 15 times in Pakistan and its message appreciated. Bulleh Shah was a revolutionary. He negated orthodox Islamism. A puritanical interpretation of Islam, which originated in the Middle East, reached Pakistan only recently. Practitioners of this relatively new credo are out to destroy Pakistan’s Sufi traditions.”
She owes her breadth of vision to her mother, Khadijah. “She was a fearless writer, human rights activist and social worker. She shaped my political consciousness. When I chose to be an actor, my family faced opposition from our relatives. During General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation of Pakistan, my mother urged me and my sister to form Ajoka and use theatre for a democratic political offensive.”
To hone her skills, Gauhar went to London and did a master’s in theatre studies. There she met writer Shahid Nadeem, her future husband. The duo went on to revolutionise the alternative theatre movement in Pakistan, creating plays such as “Barri” (Acquittal), “Marya Hoya Kutta” (The dead dog), “Chullah aur Chaar Divari’” (The stove), “Teesri Dastak” (The third knock), “Lappar” (Slap), “Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban” (Watch the play and move on), “Aik Thee Naani” (Once there was a grandmother), “Kaali Ghata” (When the cloud turned away), “Kala Mainda Bhes” (Black are my robes) and “Dukh Darya”, based on the harrowing real-life story of a Kashmiri woman.
The most defining moment of the festival came when Gauhar shared the stage with Bangladeshi playwright Mamunur Rashid and Indian actor Murali. “It was a reversal of history when a Bangaladeshi and an Indian honoured me. It showed the love we, people of the three countries, have for each other if we forget unnecessary religious, ethnic and geopolitical conflicts. Terror never pays.”
Are perpetrators and backers listening?
Pakistani actor-director Madeeha Gauhar on what it took to bring her troupe to the recent International Theatre Festival in Thrissur in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
Friends and relatives warned Pakistani actor-director Madeeha Gauhar about safety issues when she planned to travel to India last week. Hardly a month had passed after the Mumbai terror attacks and she was advised against taking her troupe, Ajoka, to the International Theatre Festival of Kerala in Thrissur.
Post-26/11 tempers were still raging in India and Pakistan. New Delhi had even called off Indian cricket team’s tour of Pakistan. “I told my actors India was a safe place and that Indians had always welcomed Pakistani artistes warmly. Not everyone was convinced,” she recalls. Under pressure from their families, three members of her troupe backed out. Two others could not get the no-objection certificates for visa requirements. But she was determined not to give up.
Many struggles
Daughter of an army officer, she has always abided by her father’s advice: never lose courage. It had seen her through her struggles over two decades against gender inequalities, religious intolerance and bigotry. It helped her keep her chin up when she was arrested and jailed twice for her activities, when she lost her job as a lecturer in a regional college and when authorities clamped restrictions on her play, “Burqavaganza”, which depicted the burqa (veil) as a metaphor for double-standards and cover-ups in society.
She decided to travel to India, come what may. She knew that leading the first Pakistani troupe to India after the Mumbai terror attacks was a historical obligation, a small but significant step towards keeping the peace process alive, and a balm to heal wounds of distrust and hatred. She calls it “theatre diplomacy”.
The message of peace and tolerance the play preached through portrayal of the life and times of Sufi mystic Bulleh Shah echoed voices of reason from across the border. Her words and deeds reflect what Benazir Bhutto once said, “There is a little bit of India in every Pakistani.”
“For me, India is a home away from home. It exerts a compelling, but complex, fascination. I have staged more plays in India than in any other country. How can we forget our roots? My mother was born in a Gujarati-speaking family from Bharauch in India. India is a part of our soul. How can we forget the land where our parents and grandparents were born? When Indians and Pakistanis dislike each other, they hate their own past,” she says.
Some of her plays staged in India have sought to fight hate and prejudice. “But to carry on the campaign is increasingly difficult in the wake of the Talibanisation of Pakistan. Taliban militants in Pakistan’s restive North-Western Swat Valley have banned girls from attending schools because they considers education for girls ‘un-Islamic’. Militants also target music and movies. Freedom of expression is under threat. A blast at the Lahore International Theatre Festival indicated this. The worst is yet to come,” she says.
Breadth of vision
Religious hardliners, however, are a minority in Pakistan, she claims. “Overcoming initial trouble from authorities, ‘Burqavaganza’, was staged there in a different name. “Bullah” was staged 15 times in Pakistan and its message appreciated. Bulleh Shah was a revolutionary. He negated orthodox Islamism. A puritanical interpretation of Islam, which originated in the Middle East, reached Pakistan only recently. Practitioners of this relatively new credo are out to destroy Pakistan’s Sufi traditions.”
She owes her breadth of vision to her mother, Khadijah. “She was a fearless writer, human rights activist and social worker. She shaped my political consciousness. When I chose to be an actor, my family faced opposition from our relatives. During General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation of Pakistan, my mother urged me and my sister to form Ajoka and use theatre for a democratic political offensive.”
To hone her skills, Gauhar went to London and did a master’s in theatre studies. There she met writer Shahid Nadeem, her future husband. The duo went on to revolutionise the alternative theatre movement in Pakistan, creating plays such as “Barri” (Acquittal), “Marya Hoya Kutta” (The dead dog), “Chullah aur Chaar Divari’” (The stove), “Teesri Dastak” (The third knock), “Lappar” (Slap), “Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban” (Watch the play and move on), “Aik Thee Naani” (Once there was a grandmother), “Kaali Ghata” (When the cloud turned away), “Kala Mainda Bhes” (Black are my robes) and “Dukh Darya”, based on the harrowing real-life story of a Kashmiri woman.
The most defining moment of the festival came when Gauhar shared the stage with Bangladeshi playwright Mamunur Rashid and Indian actor Murali. “It was a reversal of history when a Bangaladeshi and an Indian honoured me. It showed the love we, people of the three countries, have for each other if we forget unnecessary religious, ethnic and geopolitical conflicts. Terror never pays.”
Are perpetrators and backers listening?
Photo by: K.K. Najeeb.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment