The Black Marker Brigade

JUNE 2000 - Our fundamental rights have always been precariously placed. Most of us are not even quite certain what these are and which ones are still allowed to us by whoever is running the pawn shop in Islamabad. Just about every regime has been on record with solemn pledges about the hallowed value of these rights and how earnestly they protect them. In fact, most have claimed with straight faces that defence of these rights is the cornerstone of their policy, their reason for existence. Just the mention of these glorious words quite naturally causes most discerning Pakistanis great anxiety. They all understand that when such things are said, the opposite is happening. They have never been wrong.

Personally, I had more or less shelved this fundamental rights lark. With the country on a roller coaster ride going nowhere, what difference does it make if we have the F-rights or not. So much that is vile and hideous is enacted in the name of the poor people of Pakistan that one more betrayal, one more failure can really make little difference to people who are more concerned with survival and less with ideals cast in granite. And since we have a unique way with laws, breaking them always and never observing them even in our best moments, their presence or absence are both largely irrelevant, but the chance sight of the March issues of Cosmopolitan and GO, have shocked me through and through. Something I had thought we had done away with when Gen. Zia ul Haq picked up an extra consignment of mango crates in Bahawalpur, is very much present right in our midst. Both magazines have been thoroughly mutilated by men with large black markers. Each page has been examined and the sight of the female body has obviously sent brigades of men running for black markers, which are then deployed to run left to right or top to bottom (as in the bottom of the page; please don’t understand it any other way). The result is the dark ages in full glory.

On censorship we have of course any amount of absurd people running equally absurd policies, the sum total of which seems to be save the souls of the people. Someone decides somewhere what you should read or not read, hear or not hear and see or not see. In previous years this used to be a fairly easy exercise, which we mastered without too much difficulty, Had we applied the same zeal to collecting taxes, neither would we have had this long strike on our hands or for that matter the absence of a tax-culture (another culture we don’t have). With technology jumping borders and by passing little men with scissors, it has become difficult for the men who protect our morals to carry out their petty tasks. The fact that many differing standards of censorship exist side by side, that there is no real policy and never has been, again seems of little significance. It is just as futile to convince policy makers and its executors that they need to take a look at what other cultures and civilizations have done with this business and follow some sound thinking rather than reverting back to the caves. But these are foolish thoughts and quite rightly find no response in the higher quarters where a new strain of intelligence rules. If the State must force its views down the throats of the people, it can justify it only if it offers something tangible in return. When Lee Kuan banned bubble gum in Singapore, it might have raised a few heckles, but when you see the law and order, the security and peace, most people would happily give up bubble gum or a satellite channel, because there is some compensation. In countries such as ours, the State takes everything but returns nothing. In such circumstances, a black marker running haywire over magazine pages, is nauseating. In effect it makes you feel angry, resentful and frustrated. It is offensive and if the idea of covering the female form is to keep it hidden, the highlighting merely serves to achieve the opposite. However, who can ever convince a ‘babu’ with a marker and a supervisor who should be rubbing stones together to make fire, that such thinking neither cleans up a society nor does it help the people achieve nirvana. It merely drives people into the kind of thinking that shows up on Lahore’s canal when five Dutch girls go walking, or seven Christian girls who get raped to settle scores, or husbands who axe wives to death on mere grounds of suspicion or brothers who kill sisters because they cannot endure brutal husbands any more. The list is endless.

It is not just magazines. Text books, manuals, art books, all suffer. What I cannot get over is who are these people who actually have such jobs ? Where are they located ? How is it all managed ? Do all the magazines which come into the country – and there must be thousands daily, end up in these rooms where men sit with a huge quantity of black markers and a vague directive from their heads to do the needful ? Visualize it yourself. What kind of conversation flows ? ‘Should we get rid of her…er…this ?’ Or does the supervisor personally endorse the first copy with his own black marker and everyone dutifully turns to pages 17, 26, 35, 47, 54, 67 and 81 and methodically eliminate the front and back end of Eva Herzigova and the likes of her ? What about bare legs ? Perhaps the supervisor likes legs. In this case can we expect to see female legs in our lifetime ? Who can tell. And how many magazines are they able to censor daily ? What about the ones they miss ? Are these circulating in the country like booby traps capable of destroying our entire existence in one, swift stroke ? What about the written word ? Some believe that it is even more powerful than a picture because the imagination can be limitless and a single word can often drive people insane ? Who knows. I am no expert in human psychology. Have these gentlemen ever seen a Pushto film where what looks like huge, tall buildings throughout the film are the lower torsos of the ample women who are filmed from a height of six inches from the floor as they dance and writhe. Have these people seen any of the steamy dances that are the ritual in all Pakistani films or even understood the lewd words that go with these thinly draped attempts at bad pornography ? Where are the nation’s morals then ? This whole business is absurd.

Each succeeding government has had its fling with censorship and made pathetic attempts to justify every wrong by papering it over with platitudes and sermons. The freedom to read should become Javed Jabbar’s bedtime story and lifelong supporter of the freedom of expression as he has claimed to be, should make him reflect before he arrives at another function to tell the people how progressive we have become since his lot came to power.