पुराना पाकिस्तान

[abhisays]

दोस्तों, आज जब भी पाकिस्तान की बात होती है तो हमारे जेहन में लाशें, बम विस्फोट, मुल्ले, बुरखा पहने हुए महिलाएं आदि की तस्वीर उभरती है. लेकिन ७० के दशक तक पाकिस्तान ऐसा नहीं था, वो कैसा था, और कैसे लोग वहां रहते थे आइये देखे इस चित्रों की मदद से.

अधिकतर चित्र dawn अखबार से लिए गए हैं.


It is an effort that with the help of painstakingly researched and collected images, tried to capture a Pakistan that now seems like a different planet compared to what it has been ever since the 1980s. A strange, alien place that was also called Pakistan.

Pictures and Notes by :: Nadeem F. Paracha, who is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com

[abhisays]

Che in Karachi: Yes, that’s the great Marxist revolutionary and legend, Che Ernesto Guevara, standing along side Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan.

Guevara stayed for a short while in Karachi during his whirlwind tour of Arab and third world countries (in 1959). He again visited Karachi in 1965 and that is when the above photograph was believed to have been taken (inside the VIP lounge of the Karachi Airport).

It is interesting to see Che standing with Ayub Khan whose military coup (in 1958) was not only backed by the US, but was also highly repressive of leftist forces in Pakistan.

The irony is that the widespread leftist uprising in Pakistan in the late 1960s that helped topple the Ayub dictatorship was mainly led by leftist students many of whose icon and hero was, yup, one named Che Ernesto Guevara!

[abhisays]

PIA press ad, 1965: This 1965 PIA ad (published in Dawn) bares claims that one can’t even imagine PIA to make in this day and age.

Pakistan’s national carrier has been crumbling for the last many years and today stands on the verge of bankruptcy. And yet, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, PIA stood strong and proud, awarded on multiple occasions and being a constant on the list of top ten airlines of the world!

When this ad appeared in print, PIA was enjoying rapid growth within and outside Pakistan. It had already been noted for having ‘the most stylishly dressed air hostesses’, great service, a widespread route and, ahem, ‘having a generous and tasteful selection of wines, whiskeys and beers’ on offer.’*

*Serving alcoholic drinks on PIA was banned in April 1977.

[abhisays]

PPP formation, 1967: It’s amazing how little is available by way of any visual documentation of what was perhaps one the most iconic events in the history of Pakistani politics – i.e. the formation of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) during a convention in Lahore in 1967.

The convention gave birth to a populist democratic party that for the next four decades would go onto become both passionately loved, as well as loathed by Pakistanis in equal measure.

Chaired by the suave and yet exuberant Z. A. Bhutto, the convention was attended by some of the country’s leading progressive and leftist intellectuals, journalists and radical student leaders.

This photo shows Bhutto seated among the men who would turn the PPP into a fervent progressive platform that not only accommodated committed Marxists, Maoists, ‘Islamic Socialists’ and liberals alike, but would also go on to sweep the 1970 general election (in former West Pakistan). The most endearing characteristic of the image is the way J. A. Rahim (an otherwise serious and sombre Marxist thinker and PPP’s leading ideologue) is actually sitting on Bhutto’s lap!

Rahim was one of the founders (along with Z. A. Bhutto) of the PPP and co-author of the party’s original socialist-democratic manifesto.
Unfortunately in 1975, Rahim had a falling out with Bhutto and was humiliatingly expelled from the party.

Bhutto, on the other hand, was hanged by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in 1979 through a sham trial, taking with him what still remains to be one of the most populist, dynamic and yet, contradictory eras in Pakistani politics.

[abhisays]

House full: Pakistani film industry and cinemas began experiencing a creative and financial peak in the late 1960s; a high that would last till about 1979, before starting to patter out in the 1980s and hitting rock bottom a decade later.

There were a number of reasons for the rapid fall of the industry and the consequential closing down of numerous cinemas.

Two of the leading reasons were the brutal censorship policies of the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship in the 1980s, and the arrival of the VCR.
As Zia’s so-called ‘Islamisation’ process began stuffing public space and collective socialising spots with moral policing and restrictions, the people took their entertainment indoors.

Cinemas were hit the worst by this as not only the ‘respectable’ audiences stopped frequenting cinemas; the Pakistani film industry too began to fall apart.

‘Illegal’ video shops renting Indian films and porn (allowed to openly operate after bribing the police) sprang up and cinemas began to be torn down by their owners and turned into gaudy shopping malls.

For example, in Sindh alone there were over 600 cinemas between 1969 and 1980, but only a few hundred remained by 1985.

Similarly, the Pakistani film industry used to generate an average of 20 Urdu films a year in the 1970s, but by the late 1980s, it was struggling to come out with even five a year.

The above photo was taken in 1969 outside Karachi’s famous Nishat Cinema. It was also one of the first cinemas to introduce in-house air-conditioning in cinemas in Pakistan. The picture shows a crowd of cine-goers gathered outside the already packed cinema waiting their turn to see the premiere of a Pakistani war flick, ‘Qasam uss waqt ki.’

Nishat survived the thorny Zia years, the VCR invasion and the local film industry’s collapse.

In fact Nishat still stands, reeking out a survival by running latest Indian and Hollywood films.

[abhisays]

Just before the fall: This is the front page of Dawn that appeared only days before Pakistani troops surrendered meekly to the Indian army in former East Pakistan (December, 1971).

It is easy to spot the haunting irony on the page that is splashed with disastrous reports about the Pakistani war effort and an impending sense of doom – and yet (on the bottom right) there is a quarter-page ad placed by a large trading company showing the emblems of the Pakistan army, air-force and navy and assuring us that ‘Inshallah (God willing), the victory would be ours.’

In hindsight, one can suggest that denial is not exactly so new a trait that Pakistanis have acquired, post-9/11; because the truth is that to most Pakistanis the stunning 1971 surrender actually came as a rude and shocking surprise.

State-owned media and the armed forces had continued to claim that Pakistani forces were on the verge of a glorious victory right till (or just before) the final fall.

In fact, in the bulletin read out on Radio Pakistan only hours before the final defeat, the newscaster had reported that the Pakistan military was ‘continuing to deliver numerous setbacks and losses to the Indian army’. And we lapped it all up, like a kid smilingly licking an imaginary popsicle.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

एक अद्भुत सूत्र के लिए आप बधाई के पात्र हैं अभिषेकजी ! मेरे पास भी पाकिस्तान के बारे में कुछ रोचक सामग्री है, जिसे मैं शीघ्र इस सूत्र में शेयर करूंगा ! आपका हार्दिक आभार !

[abhisays]

Hippie invasion: Cover of the soundtrack album (LP) of 1974 box-office hit, Miss Hippie. The film depicted the ‘effect hippie lifestyle and fashion were having on Pakistani youth.’ (sic)

Starring popular 1970s Pakistani film actress, Shabnam, the film conveniently forgot that more than half of the hashish that was being consumed by the ‘invading hippies’ was actually being produced and smuggled in and from Pakistan!

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Pray tell: Photograph showing late Pir Pagara talking to the press at the Karachi Press Club in 1977. Pagara was heading a right-wing movement against the Z. A. Bhutto regime.

Here he is seen talking to the press (surrounded by some members of the Jamat-i-Islami, Jamat Ulema Islam and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan).

The men then got up to say their evening prayers.
However, a commotion broke out between the religious leaders of the movement when JI and JUI men refused to pray behind JUP leader, Shah Noorani.

JUI was inclined towards Sunni Deobandi school of thought whereas Noorani was from the pro-Barelvi JUP. Though united in their opposition to Bhutto’s ‘socialism’, both men thought the other was a ‘misguided Muslim.’

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The King wuz here: Rare poster of Indian Ghazal king (and queen) Jagit & Chitra’s tour of Lahore in 1979. They held a series of successful concerts, with the most colourful one taking place in the city’s historical Shalimar Gardens.