War of art

Escalating tension between Pakistan, India has brought worst out of our artists and they’ve picked guns over guitars

Human beings are capable of doing miracles. If our awareness that a past has to precede a future led to the genesis of story-telling than our ability to use our hands beyond fight or flight responses made us innovate and tailor the world as per our needs and requirements. Isn’t that breathtakingly beautiful? Indeed, it is. Due to our weight-to-size proportion we are a hundred times more likely to die of free-fall as compared to something as insignificant as an insect. By that logic, every fall should be a learning experience for us and every recovery, humbling. And every time you fall, it is a conscious decision and not a mistake. This cannot hold truer for Pakistani and Indian artists who have not only fallen on their heads again and again, but this time around even decided to take up a war with gravity.

The escalating tension between Pakistan and India has brought the worst out of our artists and unfortunately they’ve picked guns over guitars. The dominant voices on both sides of the border have favoured hate as a knee-jerk reaction in a situation that is nothing new for artists on both sides of the border.

Kashmir issue or not, Pathankot or not, Uri attack or not, I am not shocked by the ease with which artists on both sides of the border have antagonised each other. It is but natural to be a public figure and pick sides under increasingly conservative regimes but it is very unnatural and almost extraterrestrial for an artist to display such fondness for bloodshed. Maybe I am being unjust to the aliens as well.



Amitabh Bachchan who voiced the great peace anthem, ‘Nazar Mae Rehtay Ho Jab Tum Nazar Nahin Atay, Yeh Sur Bulatay Hain Jab Tum Idhar Nahin Atay’ may have made Gulzar fall from his bed, after his frivolous response. “Don’t mess with the Indian Army,” he tweeted, followed by a huge round of applause by his followers.

Our very own Jason Bourne, Shaan Shahid, like always took this opportunity to reinstate his denial of being a soldier. “Finally the Indian stars have tweeted in support for Indian troops; it is shameful from the Pakistani actors to not show support for Pakistani troops,” he posted on Facebook.

Within a blink of an eye all artists working in Bollywood became traitors although this league of extraordinary men and women are way more talented than Shaan and have cemented their identities on both sides of the border without an existing lineage. Mahira, Fawad, Ali Zafar and Atif, we feel for you and for the country that is increasingly carving a mainstream narrative with no place for sensitive people; thinkers who genuinely believe that art has no boundaries.



The irony is that in such a state of moral crisis, even India is very much a part of the problem. Despite having performing arts and rituals rooted deep into their religious mythology and culture, all it took was a Narendra Modi to turn the sane voices into echoes of the days past. Be it someone as legendary as Lata Mangeshkar to someone as ridiculously irrelevant as Varun Dhawan, they are united in favour of war. And whenever an Om Puri actually breaks silence on the million dollar question, the likes of Hamza Ali Abbasi and Ashir Azeem take us back to the Line of Control. And the rest is catalysed by the media on both sides of the border.



What I have drawn for you is not really the portrait of an artist as a young man but the portrait of an artist who has forgotten that art is the product of imagination, not policies. You don’t make art for any country, you don’t make art for a particular audience, you make it for yourself. And if people relate to it, they find an entirely new meaning to their own emotional experience.

Today, I miss the artist who writes of a better tomorrow when the world is about to end, who sings the song of Sassi where women are being killed for honour and who paints the picture of human suffering when his country is about to go on a battle.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2016.

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