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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Arts & Reviews |
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Feature |
The Other Kashmir Problem
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| Bhand Pather, Kashmir’s indigenous theatre that has thrived on pungent social and political satire, is now an endangered tradition |
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Published : 1 September 2011 |
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ALL IMAGES BY ZULFIQAR KHAN FOR THE CARAVAN |
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| A Bhand Pather performance in Pakherpora village.
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| G |
ULZAR FIGHTER is the most watched TV comedian in Kashmir. Appearing on the garishly decorated sets of local cable channels dressed in Western outfits, he has come a long way from his years as a performer in the National Bhand Theatre, a repertory of Kashmiri folk plays following the tradition of Bhand Pather (minstrels’ satire). The tradition is |
known for taking on social, political and environmental themes, and is performed by a company of drummers, clowns and jesters. In 2004, at the age of 45, Fighter shed his pather attire—ragged phiran, skullcap, wooden sandals—and stopped performing with the National Bhand Theatre. These days, the shows on which he appears are recorded on second-rate CDs available in the pirate markets of Kashmir, and don’t depict much beyond petty marital brawls. Fighter records 25 episodes a month, each 30 minutes long. Working for TV has made his life comfortable, he says.
As an artist with the National Bhand Theatre, Fighter was known as the best maskhara (jester). Once on stage, his acts had the audience in raptures. Wearing the bhand’s typical ragged phiran, and occasionally a lambskin cap—an unmistakable marker of white-collar Kashmiri society—with an egg glued on top, he’d mock the Kashmiri elite. He started as a bhand at the age of seven, and spent his entire youth performing pather shows. Once he reached his 40s, though, he couldn’t take the financial suffering anymore, and moved over to TV.
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Ghulam Nabi Aajiz, head of the National Bhand Theatre, outside his house in
Wathora village. |
“I was treated like a donkey, I was paid peanuts,” Fighter said in his gruff voice. “I realised it is all about money. I was poor when I was a bhand, but today I can’t say I am poor. My children are happy, my wife doesn’t complain, and I am not stressed anymore.”
After he took to TV, Fighter was dismissed entirely from the group by his teacher, who is also the head of the National Bhand Theatre, Ghulam Nabi Aajiz.
Sixty-one-year-old Aajiz is a seventh-generation bhand. By the mid-1990s, when the insurgency in Kashmir was at its peak, an ideological shift among militants from nationalism to Islamism was underway. The Hizbul Mujahideen—a pro-Pakistani militant group—had taken over most of rural Kashmir, with gun-toting militants a common sight around mosques, butcher shops and corner stores. These militants would try to influence people into believing that their form of Islam was purest. The Jamaat-e-Islami, which follows a strict interpretation of Islam, denounces cultural expressions like the performing arts as a breach of the tenets of the religion, a position that stands in contrast with the valley’s history of a tolerant Sufism. Over time such views began to percolate down to the village level, and this new attitude made the bhands nervous.
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Abdul Salam Bhat, a veteran bhand of Kashmir. |
Aajiz pursued his craft steadfastly in spite of the growing atmosphere of extremism. He chose secret locations to rehearse, which he frequently changed in order to train his two sons and the children of fellow artists; he was afraid that militants would recognise a Bhand Pather performance from the characteristic sound of drums. “All of a sudden people started questioning us in mosques,” Aajiz said, sitting in his office-cum-study in the village of Wathora. “They’d often tell us things like maskhari is a sin, and we should stop it.”
One night in 2005, three militants asked Aajiz to let them hide in his house. He couldn’t refuse. The next morning, the Indian Army came knocking, killed the militants and razed the house. The incident tarred Aajiz’s image in his community. The villagers started suspecting him of being an army informer. He couldn’t step into his village for the next six months. Eventually, it was his fellow bhands who arbitrated the situation and made it possible for him to return. A medium-built man with green eyes, Aajiz has vowed before theatre artists that “pather roze jaari (pather will continue).”
While Fighter has sacrificed his art for economic survival, Aajiz, who has survived militant attacks and army crackdowns, lives to recollect what he’s lost as an artist. The future of Kashmir’s Bhand Pather teeters between these two disillusioned performers.
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EFORE THE 1950s, Bhand Pather was a celebrated tradition in the villages. The bhands were the only credible and critical source of information about local and political happenings. They would enter a village in the dark, holding torches raised on long bamboo sticks, and within a minute or so the village would erupt with the sounds of jesters. |
But things changed after 1987, when a rigged state election resulted in the formation of militant wings and the beginning of the mujahideen insurgency. Since then, Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir has been the site of conflict between the Indian armed forces, militants and separatists, and the turmoil has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and serious human rights abuses.
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Bhands perform in the courtyard
of a Sufi shrine in Pakherpora. |
“Who does it now?” Abdul Salam Bhat, a veteran bhand, asked when I met him in his village Wathora. “Neither king will survive nor slave. I am alive today. I will be gone tomorrow. That pather is over now.”
A lean, bearded man with an expression of pain and worry, Bhat is among the last of Kashmir’s great bhands. The satire he did in his youth was impolite and irreverent, its dark humour invariably touching upon the most pressing political and social questions in Kashmir. In the summer of 1988, he, along with his fellow performer Ghulam Ali Majboor, mocked the then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah in a pather performance for being negligent toward the government’s health policy and the state of disrepair of government hospitals. After the performance, Abdullah walked backstage and told Majboor in jest, “Spare me next time.”
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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karan
27 January 2012
12:40 AM
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i am really impressed with ur writing and research ,i m a mumbai based filmmaker working and researching on my film script n that's how i encountered with ur story about bhand. its really interesting n want to get in touch with u plzzz contact me need ur help n support ....
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Souzeina
27 September 2011
11:11 PM
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Brilliant! I enjoyed reading the piece like anything! Keep writing Mehboob. God bless.
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Joseph
8 September 2011
03:51 PM
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What a narrative! An eye opener! I never knew Kashmir had such a great theater,and terrorists and Indian army men were screwing people from all sides.
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Maqsood
6 September 2011
08:07 PM
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very good
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Adi
1 September 2011
02:02 PM
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Great piece! I wish to see folk art revive and flourish. I think theatre is one of the few mediums that can bring peace in the Valley.
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