Day: June 18, 2012

SARGODHA – A man gunned down his married daughter for honour here in village 157/NB in the remit of Shah Nikdar Police on Sunday. Reportedly, 16-year-old Akhtar Bibi, daughter of Mumtaz, a resident of 157/NB village, was married off to a relative namely Khalid, a resident of District Jhang one year ago. Meanwhile, she developed illicit relations with someone due which the relation between the couple strained. The often quarrels led the girl to settle with her parents some four months ago. Meanwhile, her father also advised her to mend her ways but she didn’t heeded. On Sunday, her father shot her dead with pistol and fled the scene. The Shah Nikdar Police removed the body to THQ Sillanwali for medico-legal formalities.

Condolence reference held: A condolence reference was held here the auspices of Sargodha Union of Journalists (Dastoor Group) at Press Club to pay tribute to former Sargodha Press Club president late MH Zafar for his remarkable services. Federal Minister of State for Water and Power Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi was the chief guest on the occasion.

SUJ President Rao Aslam Fraz, General Secretary Malik Muhammad Asghar, Syed Riaz Hussain Shah, Muhammad Imran Goraya and a great number of journalists, politicians and civil society members attended the event.

Meanwhile, Quran Kawani was also held and the participants offered special prayers for the eternal peace and tranquillity of the departed soul.

The Nation

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain on Sunday said the girls at the centre of the Kohistan video scandal, claimed to have been killed in the name of honour, were alive and the provincial government had found no evidence of their murder.

Addressing a press conference, Iftikhar requested the Supreme Court to dispose of the suo motu notice it had taken over the issue and take action against those who had made allegations regarding the girls’ murder.

He said the parents and sister of one of the girls had recorded statements in front of a fact-finding commission.

The minister said the commission had also recorded statements of eight other locals and found no evidence that the girls had been murdered, adding that the video scandal was an attempt to disgrace the jirga system and Pakhtun traditions.

Iftikhar said tribal elders, parents of the girls and residents of the area had assured the provincial government that protection of the girls would be ensured.

He further said that neither the local jirga nor any religious scholar in Kohistan had issued a decree to kill the girls.

End.

Daily time

Karachi
The decomposed body of a woman was found buried in her residence in the Khokrapar police limits on Sunday.

Decomposed body of Rubina, 36, wife of Muhammad Aslam, was found buried in her residence in Madina Colony. People were getting the stench coming from the house and informed the police.

Police broke open the main entrance and found mud dug up in the verandah. They started digging that portion of the verandah and recovered the body. The police shifted the body to the JPMC for legal formalities.

The lady MLO said that the body was at least five days old and that the woman had been strangled. Police said that Aslam was Rubina’s fourth husband and that he was involved in this murder.

Meanwhile Ikhlaq Khan, 35, was shot dead when two armed men riding a motorcycle opened fire on him near Chandni Chowk in the Baldia Town police limits, while he was in his shop.

People informed the police who shifted the body to the CHK for legal formalities.

Police said that Ikhlaq Khan lived in the same area and was the owner of a Naswar shop. They said that he was an eyewitness in one case and received death threats on telephone. Police said that this murder was due to some personal enmity.

The News

Karachi: To famous writers, poets, artistes and scholars, Mehdi Hassan was an unparalleled singer – a true maestro when it came to ghazals, singing them with a semi-classical touch. He was also an expert in musical compositions that were never previously introduced.

He was perhaps the only singer who was patronised by poets like Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Ahmed Faraz.

His passing away came as a terrible shock to the world of showbiz. Renowned writer Anwar Maqsood observed, “We have lost a man of manners and a great singer who was so versatile, his range extending over ‘ghazals’, ‘songs’ and all ‘raags’. I feel that it would be unfair to project the legend as only a playback singer.”

Elaborating his viewpoint, Maqsood said in the past, the art of singing classical pieces (thumri and ghazal) was limited to Akhtari Bai and Ustad Barkat Ali Khan. Hasan made it an art that appealed to novices as well.

Another TV artiste, Anwar Iqbal, said Hasan was a legend, but it was ironic that he spent his last days in a deplorable condition and some people had to collect funds for him.

Athar Javed Sufi and Wasi Qureshi, president and secretary of the Pakistan Film, TV Journalists’ Association, respectively, said they were in consultation with the bereaved family of the departed to hold a condolence reference within the next couple of days.

Hasan, who first earned his popularity for being a playback singer, later gained command over Urdu ‘ghazal’ and produced wonderful musical compositions – receiving the title of the ‘King of Ghazal’.

He was honoured with the ‘Tamgha-e-Imtiaz’, the ‘Pride of Performance’ and the ‘Hilal-e-Imtiaz’ by the government of Pakistan. He had also received the ‘Gorkha Dakshina Bahu’ from the government of Nepal. Besides Nigar Film and Graduate Awards, he was also given the ‘Tamgha-e-Sehgal’ in Jalandhar, India. Mehdi Hasan ruled the Pakistani film industry along with Noor Jahan and Ahmed Rushdi.

A famous Indian poet, Nida Fazili observed that the singing of Hasan had proved that heart-touching music has no boundaries of beliefs and no ideological limitations as he was equally popular in India and other countries, where people loved poetry, art and singing.

“The language of the music was unique and articulate and that bridged the gaps between the people of India and Pakistan.”

He recalled that the late popular Indian singer Jagjit Singh had visited Pakistan and presented five thousand dollars to the ailing Hasan.

Famous film stars, Dharmendra and Rekha were among the admirers of Hasan and whenever the legendary singer visited India, they arrived at concerts to listen to him.

Sharing his personal experiences, Ahmed Umer Shareef said the great poet Ahmed Faraz had told him that he (Faraz) became famous after his one of ghazals, ‘Ranjish hi sahee, dil hi dukhane ke leeye aa’, was sung by Hasan.

“Some people also used to request Faiz to recite the lines, ‘gulon mein rang bhare baade nau bahar chale, chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka karobar chale’, sung by Hasan.”

TV actor Urooj Abbas said, “We as a society did not take care of such a great singer and on an official level, he was not recognised according to his laurels and status.”

Some admirers, in reference to Ustad Salam Ali, Ustad Ghulam Qadir and Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, concluded that Hasan had his own school of thought in the field of singing.

There were some critics who said the ghazal singer was very popular among ordinary people, but a few hailing from musical ‘Gharanas’ had a relatively different opinion on the grounds that in India, he was given the ‘Tamgha-e-Sehgal’ instead of the ‘Tamgha-e-Sangeet’. These critics argued that had Hasan been truly recognised in India, he would have been awarded the ‘Tamgha-e-Sangeet’ that was absolute appreciation.

But instead, he was given an award that indirectly declared that Sehgal was better in the field of singing.

To make both the ends meet, Hasan started working at a bicycle shop and later became a car and diesel tractor mechanic. Despite the hardships, his passion for music did not wither and he kept practicing on a daily basis. He started his career as a singer at Radio Pakistan in 1957. Primarily, he was regarded as a thumri singer that earned him

recognition within the musical fraternity. At that time, Ustad Barkat Ali Khan, Begum Akhtar and Mukhtar Begum were considered to be the stalwarts of ‘ghazal’ rendition.

Hasan also had a passion for Urdu poetry and he began to experiment by singing ghazals on a part-time basis. Eventually, he became a ghazal maestro and a famous playback singer as well.

Following a severe illness in the late 80s, Hasan quit playback singing. Later, due to the severity of his illness, he completely departed from music. He then chose to live a secluded life in Karachi. Nevertheless, he kept visiting Lahore, where he had earlier spent a lot of time with his children and other family members.

In October 2010, HMV released “Sarhadein” in which probably the only duet song featuring Hasan and Lata Mangeshkar, “Tera Milna”, was released. The song was composed by Hasan himself and written by Farhat Shahzad. Hasan recorded it in Pakistan in 2009, and Mangeshkar later heard the track and recorded her part in India in 2010. The tracks were later mixed together for a duet.

The News

Understanding the concept of ‘honour’ and its place within Pakistani culture is something that western cultures do imperfectly if they perceive it at all. That lack of in-depth understanding of a core concept extends to western governments as much as it does to individuals; and into the diplomatic services of those states which interact with Pakistan.
The last week has seen a matter of honour – America’s failure (or refusal) to apologise for the Salala incident – come front and centre as a significant impediment to the restoration of the Nato convoys transiting our lands.
This brief note will attempt to capture what is meant by ‘honour’ within Pakistani culture, and whether the experience of honour at an individual or family level can credibly be extrapolated to an entire nation. Any mistakes or misperceptions are entirely the responsibility of the author.
There have been several high-profile cases in which honour killings have featured in recent years. Canada, Turkey and Italy have all seen trials in which (usually) a young woman has been killed by close family members, sometimes a parent, for besmirching the family ‘honour’. Most cases involve Muslim families but it is wrong to suppose that honour killing is a Muslim problem.
It is as prevalent in Hindu society with parts of India particularly afflicted, and there are documented instances in Sikhism, the secular cultures of Northern Europe and within several African cultures and countries. Italy and Greece both report honour killings.
Two parents are currently on trial in the UK for murdering their daughter. She had refused an arranged marriage and it is alleged she was killed in the family home in sight of her siblings, one of whom is giving evidence against the parents. So why did they allegedly kill her?
The very idea of a parent killing its offspring is counter-intuitive and counter-Darwinian in the human context. (Many animals kill and eat their newborns, but few kill their adult progeny.)
The UN reports that at least 5000 people, mostly female and mostly young daughters, are killed for ‘honour’ every year but this is generally agreed to be a gross underestimate. The prevailing wisdom used to be that these events occurred primarily in rural and backwards or ‘uneducated’ cultures but this is not so.
Honour killings occur at every level of the cultures they happen in and are as likely to be committed by the educated as the uneducated, the rich as well as the poor.
They are so much a recognised part of the culture in some states that the legal codes ‘accommodate’ such acts. In Syria the law says that if a man catches a female relative having sex with another man and kills them both and ‘owns’ the crime then he will serve a maximum of two years in prison.
The countries of the sub-continent have a very ambiguous view of honour killing. Such cases are rarely prosecuted, being seen as a ‘family matter’ and thus outside the purview of the law. Police will often refuse to register a case.
In cultures with the highest prevalence of honour killing the women of the family are seen as the repository of its honour. How that honour may be defined is rarely explicitly stated, and there is a dearth of empirical research as to what constitutes honour in cultures where it is a key part of the individual psyche.
Women are from their earliest years under intense pressure to conform to the honour codes. They are to behave ‘properly’ – and the definition of ‘properly’ in each context may be as much determined by other female members of the family as the male. They must dress modestly, not interact with men to whom they are not closely related, agree to marry a partner chosen by the family and never, but never, have sex before marriage or after it other than with their husband.
Other ‘dishonourable activities’ may be a desire to pursue higher education, political activism and interest in a religion other than that which the family espouses, or a wish for a divorce. All can trigger the death of the individual at the hands of their family. Homosexuality can also trigger the honour killing of young males.
Any deviation from the code sullies the family reputation, which can only be retrieved by the death of the person responsible. That person may be innocent of any crime – indeed they may be the victim of a crime such as rape – but despite their victimhood they are still judged guilty of dishonouring the family and pay the price.
As referenced above honour killing is counter-Darwinian in that humans should be least likely to kill those with whom they share the greatest number of genes – their offspring. Logic says the reverse – that they should give their lives protecting their progeny – and perhaps the fact that humans can display altruism towards others to whom they have no genetic connection points to a flaw in Darwinian theory, which there is not the space to explore here.
To be concluded
The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email: manticore73@ gmail.com
The News