Arts, Culture & Heritage

Romanticism in Gilgit: Past and Present.

Published

2 years ago

January 9, 2023

Cinema goers in Pakistan nostalgically look back at what’s called the Vintage Era of Pak cinema starting from early fifties till the end of 1990s. Pakistan film industry watchers maintain that the Lollywood studios in Lahore and Karachi produced epoch-making blockbusters in that golden period. Arif Waqar, a veteran Pakistani journalist associated with BBC Urdu did a series named “Lollywood aaj or Kal” (Lollywood present and past), archived at the BBC Urdu’s website(www.bbcurdu.com) . He has chronologically analysed the glorious times of Lollywood. The fact that Pakistani films could vie with Indian movies at the box office (when Pakistani cinemas could parallelly show Indian movies before being disallowed in 1965) is a testament to the once-flourishing film industry. Starting with General Zia’s islamisation/censorship project, the film industry experienced a steady slump from which it’s still struggling to come out.

Gilgit-Baltistan(GB) in those thriving years of Pakistani film industry had a vibrant cinema culture. In Gilgit, the headquarters of the region, three cinema halls were located within a radius of less than 10 Kms. The cinemas screened two to three shows daily to jam-packed viewers. On Eid days, long queues could be seen outside the box office. The cinema halls have now given way to commercial plazas.

Side by side with the cinema, Gilgit an upsurge in composition of Shina songs and audio dramas which covering a gamut of social and cultural issues. These were aired weekly from the newly established Radio Pakistan Gilgit. In a way, Radio Pakistan Gilgit was to the local artistes what was PTV to the stalwarts in Pakistani drama and music industry for decades when it came to grooming of their artistic skills.

Shina is the lingua fanca of GB spoken by roughly 60-70% population of around 2 million people. The poets/lyricists in late 1980s and 1990s made singers out of many ordinary men and a few women too. However, what made the artists stand out from their counterparts in the rest of the country was that a majority of them wrote, composed and sang their own kalam or poetic lyrics .In a way , the period of late 1980s and 1990s can be called the era of Romanticism in Gilgit, resembling the shifting of literary interest towards fine arts in 18th and 19th Century Europe. Like Europe, the overriding theme of the poetry of the time centered around the melancholy of a heart-broken lover’s travails. Some artists used sarcasm to criticize the government’s public service delivery in hospitals and provision of electricity.

One might wonder as to what exactly caused the growth of art in Shina music and poetry in that time? It is, indeed, astoshining how an area perched in the mountains could get affected by a booming film industry in the main land Pakistan with whom it shared little or no cohesion in terms of culture, tradition, identity and social values except that the partition had bandied the region (by its own choice) to the newly formed country of Pakistan. Perhaps the ideas found it easy to penetrate in the region after the construction of Karakoram Highway (1968-79). However to say that introduction of the audio visual media of radio, TV and Pakistani movies didn’t impact the cultural expression in GB would be an understatement.

While the opening up of the mountainous region brought about an interface of ethos with the mainland, it encouraged the growth of Shina music and drama. The influence of mainland milieu is evident from the fact many singers sang about “Nizam e Mustafa” of General Zia’s era while others shunned singing altogether and started reciting Naat and Hamd. A case in point was the famous singer Neemat Wali (just like the late Junaid Jamshed of the now defunct Pak music band Vital Signs who abandoned singing after Maulana Tariq Jameel preached him). Mr Neemat Wali reportedly requested Radio Pakistan Gilgit to stop broadcasting his oeuvre of songs as he had undergone a change of heart about singing and music terming them haraam (against islamic law). Some singers of that vibrant era of Shina music and poetry are Jan Ali, Abdul Khaliq Taj, Amin Zia, Neemat Wali, Salahuddin Hasrat, Iqbal Parvana, Bahram Khan Shad, Aurangezeb Alamgir, Nazeem Dia, Sayyan Chodhary, Naseem Shaedai, Khadim Hussain, Aqil Khan etc.

To capture the mood of that time a few verses are translated from Shina.

Iqbal Parvana: Thai mohbatai khayalur gay school ga phat thiganus ( Lost in the reveries of your love, I have dropped out of school)
Neemat Wali: Jake khair anay donater Thai gamer laeejin maat (Nothing good came out of my wailing in your love’s grief)
Jan Ali: Jagot mootu dhudh khaeray mat cha thainay powder gini ( You serve other guests with yogurt while present me merely tea made of powder) { In GB “mootu Dhudh” or Yogurt was considered healthier and socially more valuable than the powdered milk sold in the market}
Salahuddin Hasrat: Aasmanai taares maat khojainen, aye gitay daizi yaad tharainen ( stars of the sky question me and remind me about the bygone days)
Aurangezeb Alamgir: Na thay o Yar zalimi razaali zabaaner ( dont be a cruel to me in sweet words)
Salahuddin: Ispitaal Hin Ispitaal sirf nomai ispitaal ( The hospital exists for only the name (it doesn’t provide any services)

The sample lyrics here above paint the picture of an era when air waves of Radio Pakistan Gilgit and the audio cassette recordings in music centres of Gilgit resounded with these popular lyrics. How and why such themes gave way to Islamism (and sectarianism) is a moot question beyond the scope of this article.

However, a revival of sorts can be observed in the poetic and musical landscape of GB. It is partly brought about by social media and partly because the region seems wary of the hatred and division centered around sect, ethnicity and language. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and music-hosting sites such as SoundCloud, Audio Boom, Mix Cloud and YouTube share and transmit the songs recorded in remote regions of GB to the national and international diaspora. These transnational viewers/listeners feel more attached to their mother land once they are out of it for jobs and education. On these sites a search with words like “Shina songs” gives results of songs and playlists in hundreds.

As times change, the old guard of poets and singers is being replaced by a new group of singers, poets and musicians who prefer to blend the modern music and instruments e.g. harmonium, piano and other mixers with the traditional musical instruments of GB like Dadang (Drum), Sorunai (Flute) and Daamal ( a local drumbeat) etc. Modern Shina singers, if they can be called so, include Jabir Khan, Sher Khan, Majeed Ahmer, Salman Paras, Sajjad ur Rehman, Iftikhar ud din, Imtiaz Shehki, Mubarak Ali Sawan etc. Pleasantly enough, some female singers have sung duets. Perhaps the difference between the old and new guard is that the latter legion of poets and singers focus mainly on romantic or regionalistic themes unlike the former who lampooned social issues besides the love lines e.g the famous album of Salahuddin Hasrat highlighted the service delivery issues at the GHQ Hospital Gilgit, doctors who ran clinics, the members or local election candidates and load shedding during those days.

A popular modern poet of Shina, Mr Zafar Waqar Taj, has penned a couple of lyrics expressing his love for Gilgit, his birthplace as follows:

Shina Mai Baash Hin Ma Gileeto hanus (Shina is my mother tongue and I am a Gilgiti)
Masaat wala Yar wala bay bone la Tom Giltet bujun (Oh companion let’s return to Gilgit) {addressing the diaspora away from their home for education and employment)
Mas sochuu raam to Tujh bay mai Giltet ga khosh waan jeel (To be honest, I love Gilgit more because you live here)

The revival of art has been left to either artists or so-called “arts councils” which arrange shows at the behest of the bureaucracy to mark the regional and/or national days. Given the cultural diversity of the region, it is necessary that the government supports the promotion and preservation of cultural heritage. This assumes more importance as the government, both at the national and regional levels, showcases the area to the outside world as a region which is traditionally peaceful with world class natural beauty in terms of mountains, valleys, glaciers and lakes. A government sponsored promotion whereby traditional art is studied (eg by opening a cultural centre in Karakoram Interantional University Gilgit) thus providing institutional protection could very well keep the forces of division at bay which have earned a bad name for the region by exploiting the sectarian differences among the otherwise closely-knit people.

About Author

Zameer Abbas

The author is an alumnus of the Institute of Development Studies, UK. He is currently associated with the government of Gilgit-Baltistan and tweets at @zameer_abbas21.

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Arts, Culture & Heritage

Rumi, the Moral Psychologist

Published

3 weeks ago

January 14, 2025

Zameer Abbas

Maulana Jalal-ud-Din Mohammad (1207-1273), popularly known as Rumi, was a Muslim theologian-turned-poet. His poetry, published in two genres of masnavi and ghazal is mainly focused on the idea of love and its relation to the intimacy with God. However, the thoughts of Rumi, expressed through thousands of verses and ghazals, go beyond love and touch upon various aspects of human life and the universe. Even a cursory reading of Rumi’s poetry reveals his wide-ranging and thoughtful expressions on nature, universe, world, anger, lust, justice, purity, etc. According to Ahmed Javed, a contemporary literary critic, Rumi is the best author of human experience in the world. In other words, Rumi best describes the meaning of being a human on planet earth. Alan Williams, professor of Iraninan studies and translator of the works of Rumi, has identified the voice of moral reflection or homily as one of the seven voices while defining the narrative structure of Masnavi, a long poem by Rumi published in 06 volumes. Similar vein of advice and observations on moral psychology can be found in over 3,000 ghazals of Divan or Divan-e- Shams, the collection of ghazals by Rumi. Brittanica, an online encyclopedia, defines moral psychology as “the empirical and conceptual study of moral judgement, motivation and development”. This article details the verses of Rumi, from both Masnavi and Divan, which convey the deep observations of the poet regarding moral psychology. The verses are easily discernible for enduring reliability.

Like other poets, Rumi deploys the tropes of allegory, metaphor, simile, folklore, historical events, personalities, Quranic verses, Hadith etc to make his point. I will present a selection of verses from Rumi’s Masnavi and Divan highlighting the moral psychology therein.

این جہان کوہ است و فعل ما ندا
سوئ ما آید نداہا راصدا
(M I:215)
This world is the mountain, and our action the shout: the echo of the shouts comes (back) to us.

Rumi has explained the recompense for deeds and misdeeds by comparing the whole world to a mountain. Just like the mountain returns the schists by echoing it, the good and bad deeds are accordingly rewarded in this world.
Rumi’s places a lot of emphasis on the importance of thoughts in the life of a human being. He considers that a human being is nothing but a thought itself.

ای برادر تو همان اندیشه ای
ما بقی خود استخوان و ریشه ای
گر گ‌ُل است اندیشه ای تو گُلشنی
ور بوُد خاری تو هیمه گُلخنی
Brother! Your worth is in your thoughts alone; you are blood and flesh apart from that
You are rose, if all your thoughts are selfless
If bitter, you are a thorn that is judged worthless
Brother, your worth is in your thoughts alone
M II, 277-278

The formidable effect of a person’s thoughts are highlighted in the above verses. The precursor of every action is a thought. In a sense Rumi is ahead of René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher, by three hundred years who affirmed cogito ergo sum ( think therefore I am!). In other words, the ability to think and perceive constituted the most important element of human existence. At many places in both Masnavi and Divan Rumi elucidates how negative thoughts disempower and depress a human being and how he can rise above those thought processes. In the opening verse of Ghazal 2500 of Divan, Rumi diagnosed that the doom and gloom is always characterised by mean thoughts of a man:

چه افسردی در آن گوشه چرا تو هم نمی‌گردی
مگر تو فکر منحوسی که جز بر غم نمی‌گرد
Why are you depressed and cornered instead of moving ahead?
But then you are an epitome of mean thought and you are obsessed over grief

In numerous verses, Rumi emphasises the layered and unfathomable inner world of a human being, making it all the more important to avoid judging someone through appearances alone. An example:

َمرد را صد سال عم و خال او
یک سر ُمویی نہ ِبیند حال اُو
A man’s paternal and maternal uncles (may see him) for a hundred years, and of his (inward) state not see (so much as) the tip of a hair (M:3, 4249)

Rumi underlines the complexity of human psyche in that it is characterised by an inner world which is rarely apparent. In other words, he implies that our judgements based on the outward appearances or behaviour of a person may well be wrong considering that appearances never represent the human being on the whole.

Regarding worldly gains and glory, Rumi maintains that on the one hand they uplift and increase a person’s standing among the people but conversely they become the reason of the downfall too as succinctly expressed in the verse below:

دشمنِ طاؤس آمد پر اُو
ای بسی شہ را بکشتہ فر اُو
The peacock’s plumage is its enemy: O many the king who hath been slain by his magnificence!
(M1:208)

Rumi is of the view that by reciprocating a bad deed, one becomes equal to the perpetrator of the act. He, therefore, exhorts restraint or better still good behaviour in response to treatment.

گر فراق بندہ از بد بندھگی است
چون تو با بد بندگی پس فرق چیست

Have I deserved my fate for some offence; If you hurt sinners what’s the difference?(M:1,1564)

It can be discerned from the above selection that besides numerous themes in his collection of verses (in Masnavi and Divan) Rumi conveys a message of morality in unmatched eloquence and clarity. Perhaps it is beauty and depth and a sense of wonder in these verses that remain relevant to date and keeps guiding anyone who immerses in the ocean of his wisdom.

About Author

Zameer Abbas

The author is an alumnus of the Institute of Development Studies, UK. He is currently associated with the government of Gilgit-Baltistan and tweets at @zameer_abbas21.

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Arts, Culture & Heritage

Exploring Baltit Fort: A Jewel of Hunza Valley

Published

4 months ago

October 10, 2024

Zeeshan Alam

Nestled in the heart of Pakistan’s breathtaking Hunza Valley, Baltit Fort is a testament to the region’s rich history and cultural heritage. This stunning fort, with its majestic wooden architecture and panoramic views, offers visitors a unique glimpse into the past while providing a gateway to the natural beauty of the surrounding landscape.

A Glimpse into History

Baltit Fort dates back over 700 years, originally built as a defensive structure to protect the local population. It was the residence of the ruling Mirs of Hunza until the mid-20th century. The fort’s design showcases a blend of Tibetan and Central Asian influences, reflecting the diverse cultural tapestry of the region. In 1993, it underwent extensive restoration, making it a significant site for history enthusiasts and casual visitors.

Architectural Marvel

As you approach the fort, you’ll be captivated by its distinctive architecture. The intricate wooden balconies, colorful frescoes, and robust stone walls create a striking visual appeal. The fort is built on a hillside, which adds to its charm and offers stunning views of the surrounding peaks, valleys, and the picturesque Hunza River.

A Journey Through Time

Once inside, you can explore various rooms and halls that were once occupied by the ruling family. The museum within the fort showcases artifacts, traditional clothing, and tools used by the locals, providing a deeper understanding of the region’s heritage. Each room tells a story, making your visit a journey through time.

Breathtaking Views

One of the highlights of visiting Baltit Fort is the breathtaking panoramic views it offers. The fort overlooks the vibrant landscapes of Hunza Valley, with terraced fields, orchards, and the majestic Rakaposhi and Ultar Sar mountains in the background. Be sure to bring your camera; the vistas are simply unforgettable.

Cultural Significance

Baltit Fort is not just a historical site; it is a cultural hub for the community. Throughout the year, various cultural events and festivals are held here, showcasing local music, dance, and art. Engaging with the local people and participating in these events can enrich your experience and provide insight into the traditions of the Hunza Valley.

Tips for Visiting

Best Time to Visit: The ideal time to explore Baltit Fort is from April to October, when the weather is pleasant, and the landscape is lush and vibrant.
Getting There: The fort is easily accessible from Karimabad, the main town in Hunza. You can either hike up the hill or take a short drive.
Guided Tours: Consider hiring a local guide who can provide in-depth knowledge about the fort’s history and significance.

Conclusion

Baltit Fort is more than just an ancient structure; it is a symbol of the enduring spirit of the Hunza Valley. Its historical significance, architectural beauty, and stunning natural surroundings make it a must-visit destination for travelers exploring Pakistan. Whether you’re a history buff, a photography enthusiast, or simply seeking to connect with nature, a visit to Baltit Fort will leave you with lasting memories and a deeper appreciation for this enchanting region. So pack your bags and embark on a journey to this extraordinary fort—you won’t be disappointed!

About Author

Zeeshan Alam

The writer is a co-founder of Grey Matter Ventures. He works as an account manager, helping to build strong client relationships. In his free time, he enjoys freelance work and graphic design. He is also passionate about social work and spends time helping his community.

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Arts, Culture & Heritage

Altit Fort Hunza: A Must-Visit Destination in Pakistan

Published

4 months ago

October 7, 2024

Zeeshan Alam

Altit Fort Hunza is a hidden gem in the heart of the Hunza Valley, Pakistan. This ancient fortress, dating back to the 11th century, offers a captivating blend of history, architecture, and natural beauty.

This is an ancient fort in the Altit town in the Hunza valley in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan. It was originally home to the hereditary rulers of the Hunza state who carried the title of ‘Mir‘, although they moved to the somewhat younger Baltit fort nearby three centuries later. The Fort and in particular the Shikari tower is around 1100 years old, which makes it the oldest monument in the Gilgit–Baltistan. The fort has received the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2011.

Why visit Altit Fort Hunza?

Historical Significance: As one of the oldest surviving monuments in the Hunza Valley, Altit Fort provides a glimpse into the region’s rich past.
Architectural Marvel: The fort’s intricate woodwork, carved balconies, and beautiful murals are a testament to the craftsmanship of its builders.
Panoramic Views: Perched on a hilltop, Altit Fort offers breathtaking vistas of the Hunza Valley and surrounding mountains.
Cultural Experience: The fort serves as a museum, showcasing artifacts and traditions of the Hunza people.
UNESCO World Heritage Site: Its recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site highlights its cultural and historical importance.

Tips for Visiting:

Best Time to Visit: Spring (March-May) and autumn (September-November) offer the most pleasant weather for visiting.

How to Get There: You can reach Altit Fort by trekking from Karimabad or hiring a taxi.

Entrance Fee: There is a small entrance fee to enter the fort.

Things to Do: Explore the fort’s chambers, visit the museum, and enjoy the panoramic views.

Don’t Forget: Bring a camera to capture the stunning scenery and architecture.

Here are some additional photos:

This fort is a must-visit destination for anyone traveling to Pakistan. Its historical significance, architectural beauty, and cultural richness make it a truly unforgettable experience.