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Music hits some controversial keys

Nirupama Subramanian

The introduction of a Master's course in music at the University of Punjab in Lahore is seen by many, despite the protests by the Islami Jameeiat-e-Taleba, as a "big victory."

IN A basement room at the Alhamra cultural centre in Lahore, a few men and one woman are seated on a dhurrie, deep in discussion. Hands poised on a harmonium, one of them is making a point about the music styles of different ghazal singers.

"It is important for a singer to develop his own style. When someone tries to copy a great like Mehdi Hassan, no matter how good you are, you will be caught short," says the man at the harmonium, Jamsehd Azam. He teaches the Light Music section of the Master's music programme at the University of Punjab in Lahore, and his class is not very different from music classes anywhere in the subcontinent. Except that this is the first time ever music is being formally taught at the University of Punjab, a move that has pitted University officials against students affiliated to an Islamic party.

Activists of the Islami Jameeiat-e-Taleba, the students' wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, took to the streets of Lahore, describing the course as anti-Islamic and demanding that it be scrapped. But the University, apparently determined to battle a wave of orthodoxy and conservatism sweeping through its student body in recent times, refused to back down. With 11 students and a faculty of five, the M.A. music course began in late September. All the students have previous training in music.

"The idea is not to turn out first-rate singers but people who can appreciate and relate to their cultural heritage and that of others," says Asrar Chishti, one of the faculty members. Included in the degree is a course on Western music appreciation, taught by a Westerner. Classes have begun in right earnest, and it seems that the IJT has withdrawn defeated.

"Music in Pakistan is not taboo. It's everywhere, it's on the radio, it's on television. Even the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami uses music in his election campaign, the Jameeiat students also use music when they go on a fund-raising campaign. So the opposition did not make sense to anyone, and the IJT was obviously on a weak wicket," said Hasan Shahnawaz Zaidi, principal of the College of Arts and Design, which offers the music degree programme.

But as Mr. Zaidi said, the protests against the introduction of a department of music were only part of the larger battle the IJT is fighting to assert its clout in the University. In many ways, it is a mirror of the larger political battle between those who want Pakistan to be an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic, brought to the fore recently with the adoption by Pakistan's Lower House of the Women's Protection Bill.

The IJT considers Punjab University its stronghold. Indeed, the IJT won the annual students' union election every year from 1971 until 1983, when the Zia-ul-Haq regime banned students' unions. But the IJT survived, thanks to Pakistan's jihad project in Afghanistan. In 1989, the only year students' elections were held after that, the IJT triumphed.

In the last few years, despite the continuing bar on students' politics, the IJT appears to have been strengthened for a number of reasons. Some faculty members cite the "indefensible" policies of the United States that is radicalising Muslim youth everywhere. Some say it is still powerful because in its heyday, it influenced appointments to the administration and faculty. Many of those people are still in their jobs, and function as the IJT's "eyes and ears" on the campus. Some point to the scholarships the IJT gives to needy students, subsidising tuition, hostel, and canteen fees.

Considerable street power

The IJT's street power became apparent when it responded to the rustication of some of its activists on a variety of charges including arson — many of them were involved in the protest against the music course — by blocking traffic and paralysing Lahore for most of a day. In the last few weeks, the IJT, which claims to have 60,000 affiliated students in 50 universities and colleges nationwide, has been working towards holding November-end protests across Pakistan. Its demands: restore students' unions, Islamise education, and roll back the "secularisation" of the syllabus.

"Music is only the thin edge of the wedge," said Khalid Waqas, national assistant secretary-general of the IJT. The students' party has an office with a generous compound on Ferozepur Road, a prime commercial district of Lahore. "The education policy of the government should reflect and promote the values and culture of Islam, and music has no place in it. The government has launched some educational policies in order to subvert Islam, the main reason for which we fought for and won this country," said Mr. Waqas.

His colleague, the party information secretary Abdul Wadood, said it was a victory for the IJT that the University could not start the music classes on campus, but had to hire a room at the Alhamra. But teachers said the music course would move to the campus as soon as a new building, complete with sound-proof rooms and studios, was ready.

Last month, the IJT conducted a nation-wide "referendum" of students and professionals, in which it posed the question: "Do you want a secular education?" Ballot boxes were placed in colleges, universities, courts, and also at places such as bus-stops and market squares. According to Mr. Wadood, out of 2.1 million responses, only 1,000 said yes.

Aside from the important issue of the syllabus, the party seeks to exert influence in other areas too. The IJT runs a parallel admissions counselling regime, in an attempt to win over students right at the start. It also seeks to control how students conduct themselves. At the University's new campus alongside Lahore's leafy Canal Road, a bamboo screen came up recently in one of the canteens to separate the women students from the men.

In the College of Arts and Design, housed in the stately red-brick buildings of the old campus, such segregation is not yet visible. Girls and boys are chatting away together, sitting — like students anywhere — on the floors of the corridor. But on the new campus, where the IJT is most active, women wearing veils are more visible, and boys have been thrashed for talking to girls, in one instance, for taking a group photo with them. In the hostels, the IJT runs classes on Islam and the Koran, attended by students who benefit from its largesse.

The IJT denies beating up anyone for interacting with women students or enforcing segregation of the sexes and a dress code for women on campus. But, said Mr. Waqas, "we are an Islamic party, and it is natural that we will encourage practices that are in keeping with the religion and discourage those that go against it." According to him, parents are secure in the knowledge that the IJT will ensure the security of their daughters and the "good behaviour" of their sons while they pursue their studies.

The violent incidents on campus, Mr. Waqas said, were not a consequence of the IJT's activities but of the absence of a platform for students to express themselves after the ban on students' unions.

But in this ongoing battle, many faculty and students view the introduction of the music course as a "big victory" for Vice-Chancellor Ershad Mahmud, a retired army general handpicked by President Pervez Musharraf to enforce discipline on campus.

At the Alhamra centre, the students in Jamshed Azam's music class are unruffled at all the controversy, convinced it is all an exaggeration of the media, and are more concerned with hitting the right notes.

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