Burqavaganza (?)

It is increasingly difficult to be optimistic about self-appointed liberals and progressive intellectuals in Pakistan. A shining example of the bloated sense of self-importance in some of their initiatives is Ajoka Theatre‘s play Burqavaganza. When I first heard about Burqavaganza, apparently a really popular play on the burqa and its place in the Pakistani society, I was intuitively suspicious about its politics and the kind of questions it would raise.

Personally, I’m vehemently opposed to banning any form of purdah anywhere in the world and I get especially livid with anger when the issue comes fallaciously and erroneously cloaked as a sincere effort to uphold Western liberalism and freedom.It is the ultimate fatwa based on hypocritical European liberal philosophy that considers Muslim women as incapable of making decisions about they wear on their own and feels the need to be invasive, patriarchal and didactic in its approach. On occasion, I have reluctantly shared some thoughts on other people’s work on the subject here and here.

I think my stance can be minimally summed up in a single sentence: I’m vehemently opposed to banning any form of purdah anywhere in the world and I get especially livid with anger when the issue comes fallaciously and erroneously cloaked as a sincere effort to uphold Western liberalism and freedom. It is the ultimate fatwa based on hypocritical European liberal philosophy that considers Muslim women as incapable of making decisions about they wear on their own and feels the need to be invasive, patriarchal and didactic in its approach.

At the outset of the play, the director and writer of the play Shahid Nadeem talked about how Pakistanis waste a large portion of their time pontificating on small issues like the burqa whilst forgetting bigger problems when ‘our very survival is at stake’. Why he chose to then write a play that claims to make a bold statement about that very minor issue and not on other subjects that he considered more important for Pakistan, is beyond me. Ajoka’s own stance was that it is an “outrageous, over the top, provocative musical that entertains while raising a meaningful debate”.

The play was about a man and woman who fall in love, get married and have a baby in a society where everyone wears a burqa and displays religious machismo. The backdrop is a war on terror where two policemen are looking for a renowned terrorist called Burqa Bin Batin (I know, the humour is killing me too) and there is growing militarism in the form of religious T.V. shows, religious social activities and religious song and dance. Every character is wearing some caricatured and ridiculous form of the burqa and has an IQ level of a rotten tomato. The lack of an actual storyline, character development and a narrative was shocking. Necessary ingredients in any play one would assume.

“We should once in a while laugh at one own self and one’s stupidity,” remarked Shahid Nadeem before it started. Ajoka promised the play was fun while being food for thought for its audience. However, it turned out to be infantile, ridiculous and not funny by any stretch of the imagination. The humour was of such awful quality it made Nadeem Farooq Paracha sound like George Carlin. It was forced, clichéd and Bollywood in its delivery. The dialogue was quite telling of the writer’s assumption that the Pakistani audience has not mentally grown beyond fifth grade and would be content with obvious, run-of-the-mill, Geo type entertainment.

In a segment mimicking religious talk shows such as Aalim online where religious scholars take questions, the callers were from Sindh, Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The accents and dialogue delivery assigned to these characters reeked of typical exaggerated stereotypes and cultural caricatures. Given how some folks in the theatre were howling with laughter, I suppose Ajoka’s knows its audience well and I simply don’t. I, on the other hand, am willing to bet that the educated, elite class of Pakistan can engage with intelligent humour but it’s requires tedious mental labour to produce it.

As someone who is largely disinterested in religion as a practise, it did not provoke me or offend me with its politics. I imagine it was probably provocative and offensive to people of religious sensibilities because it made some very generalized, judgmental, biased and thoughtless allegations about women who wear a burqa and men who encourage it.

So what questions was it raising? If that audience left the room being a bit more sceptical of religion and patriarchy, Burqavaganza would have achieved some thing but it was largely a missed opportunity. Maybe my reading was flawed but to me the only obvious statement being made was anti-burqa.

Perhaps the only redeeming part was the segment that mocked religious talk shows on TV that take phone calls by sincerely conflicted people. There was scope for intelligent satire there but since most of the lines were taken verbatim from the shows themselves, the credit would not go to the writer. Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to see the writer explore the inanities of ‘dars’ and Peace TV televangelist culture.

The play also poked fun at the growing militarism in Pakistan by painting a mockery of police and armed forces. This also had the potential of being critical, engaging, funny and intelligent but all those possibilities were sidelined to prioritise absurd, silly, trite humour. Admittedly, I was mostly peeved by the poor quality of the production. The songs, the dances and the dialogue were so badly done it really distracted one from any meaning the play may have evoked. Then again, maybe that was the point.

What is comical about a group of people singing and dancing in burqas? Is watching someone rap to a song while wearing a burqa really that funny? Is juxtaposing young love in binary opposition with growing religiosity an intelligent way to portray a situation? Is it hilarious to repeatedly insinuate that women who wear burqas are ugly, hideous, mysterious, hairy and revolting? The stage is set up so that the educated, elite, rich people in the audience get a good laugh at the expense of conservative, working class, religious women.

Furthermore, the well-meaning democratic folk at Ajoka seem to have no conception of how socio-economic class factors into conservative, religious attitudes in a deeply polarised society like Pakistan. Ajoka’s plays, priced at a whopping Rs. 500 per person, conveniently excludes the very people it uses as objects of ridicule from its audience.

After the hero and heroine are happily wedded, they have their first child. There is ambiguity surrounding the sex of the child because the body clearly has both male and female genitals. The burqa-clad parents invite more burqa-clad experts, hijras, policemen, religious scholars and extended family to speculate and determine the baby’s sex. Ajoka, in all its meaningful progressiveness and liberal pride, deemed it fitting to insert standard cheap jokes about transgender people and the confusion of having a child of a gender or sexual minority.

What was projected as a sincere effort to provide wholesome entertainment whilst debate the increasing prevalence of burqa in the Pakistani society, turned out to be anything but. It was a tacky performance that relied too greatly on kitsch gimmickry and jokes that poked fun at transgender people, poor people, religious people, conservative people and just about anyone else who lives in the margins of the upper class Pakistani mainstream.