From Burger Bacha to Burger Mullah Dear Maulana, From the air-conditioned recording studio where you preach Islam, you have no idea that if peasant women were confined to home, the economy would come to a halt. Further, the global economy would take a nosedive minus women’s unpaid labour. From the air-conditioned recording studio where you preach Islam, you have no idea that if peasant women were confined to home, the economy would come to a halt. Further, the global economy would take a nosedive minus women’s unpaid labour. Salam. It is impolite to say that I was never your fan. But that’s how it is. Never, not even when you commanded large, mostly middle class, youthful audiences as a celebrity singer. I found your ‘Pop music’ an unattractive attempt at imitating the West. Like other working-class kids, I grew up listening to legendary folk singer Alam Lohar. In my home town, Sargodha, Mansoor Malangi and Attaullah Esakhelvi were popular as well. Beyond Punjabi, legends like Muhammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshker, Mukesh, Kishor Kumar, Noorjahan, Ustad Amanat Ali and Mehdi Hasan cast their spell on me as I was growing up. I was in grade 10 when my friend Muhammad Ali Khan introduced me to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan [NFK] back in 1986. NFK had not yet been discovered by Peter Gabriel. At the time both my friend and I, despite our working-class backgrounds, went to city’s elite school, Air Base Inter College. There we learned our first lessons about class society. At the time we were staunch PPP supporters. Our classmates–hailing from city’s elite families—ridiculed us for our ‘crude’ manners and taste in our political and musical preferences. Since you also went to an air force school, I realize that you too are the product of an elite education, although you were like my classmates, arriving from PAF bungalows in chauffer-driven cars. While my friend and I were considered bumpkins [‘paindos’], my classmates would come to school with Walkmans, listening English music. For us, in turn, you elites were Burger Bachas [burger-eating kids]: alien, rootless, unoriginal, above all fake. Being a celebrity among them, you epitomized that generation of ‘burger bachas’ in the 1980s: Westernized in lifestyle, conservative politically, a celebrity by status and an elitist in outlook. Twenty years down the line, nothing has changed except the hyper-deterioration of an already declining society. In this downward cultural, social and political spiral, you remain a middle-class celebrity, albeit with a different role to play. Of late, with your flowing beard, you have become a celebrity televangelist. Again, it seems, you have won a sizeable middle-class audience. I wouldn’t care about your new role except your ill-informed remarks provoked me to pen this letter. You dismissed women’s public role; you want them to stay home. Women, in your view, should not be allowed to drive either. In the first place, I simply wonder if you know that seventy percent Pakistanis live in the countryside. They are what you call, paindos. They can’t drive cars, but they can’t stay at home either. They must leave the four-wall boundaries of their homes and lucky for you that they do. Without their production of the burgers you eat, the Halwa you relish and the kheer you cherish little would be available on your dining table. From the air-conditioned recording studio where you preach Islam, you have no idea that if peasant women were confined to home, the economy would come to a halt. Further, the global economy would take a nosedive minus women’s unpaid labour. The Maulvi Sahab in my village knows this. He also knows because he lives on the income from his villagers. True, from the village mosque fitted with loudspeakers, he scares people about the day of Judgment and ‘kabar ka azab’ [life after death]. But he is not a petro-dollar mullah; he never preaches that a woman should wear a burka and stay home. I doubt peasant women would abide by any such calls either. One simply cannot wear a burka and sow rice. Do you know how and when a Munji [paddy] is sown? First the paneeri [seedling] must be planted. During the process of sowing, the field should stay submerged in water. Standing knee-deep in water, a bouquet of paneeri in one hand, a peasant bows and skillfully plants a seedling in the mud. This exercise is carried out in August, in a race against time. All of this when the monsoon hits and the rainwater pours down. But the water subsides so quickly peasant men working alone cannot win this race. Women must play a role. After taking care of household chores, which also includes caring and feeding farm animals besides children, the women go to the paddy fields. Often they outpace men in planting paddy seedlings. I have done this and it is no fun. As the sun rises, the water heats to a boil. Sun rays pierce one’s back like needles. Of late, the use of pesticides has turned the water into poison. By the time one reaches home at the end of the day, one’s body itches beyond forbearance. That is how rice is grown, at least the Banaspati variety. It is clear that one cannot wear a burka and work in a paddy field. The harvesting of wheat is no different. When the crop is ripe, rain is the last thing a peasant wants. In fact, the hotter it gets, the better. A very hot and rainless April translates into a better crop. But once the harvesting begins, again it is a race against time. Before any unwanted downpour, harvested wheat must be removed to granaries while chaff should be gathered and plastered over with mud. In all these stages, burka-less women work equally hard to insure crops will reach the granaries, and subsequently, the market. It is not only rice and wheat that is sown by peasant men and women, but vegetables and other crops as well. If peasant women were confined to a chaddar, or a chardewari [four walls and head-covering] as you preach, Pakistan would starve. It occurs to me that you run a chain of boutiques selling expensive dresses [often shopped by middle-class, car-driving women. Wonder if your boutiques sell burkas as well?]. Hope despite your burger-upbringing, you would know that your business depends upon cotton. Do you realize the cotton is picked by peasant women often too poor to buy the dresses sold at your boutiques? Cotton picking is almost exclusively a woman’s job. I have never seen women clad in burkas picking cotton. Should you ask Maulana Tariq Jamil if dresses made out of cotton picked by women is halal? After all, they neither wear burkas nor stay home; therefore in your eyes the process itself is unIslamic. But I know you will not ask; I know Maulana Tariq Jamil will not issue a fatwa either. Why? It would ruin your business! Thus the futility of your born-again Muslimness. Ironically, your Saudised religion is as alien as was your music. Once you were a burger Bacha. Now you have become a Burger Mullah: alien, rootless, unoriginal, above all fake. KHUDA Hafiz, Farooq Sulehria
Posted on: Wed, 07 May 2014 08:24:49 +0000
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