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Bombs, fear and “Mamma Mia!”

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Bombs, fear and “Mamma Mia!”

By Sonya Fatah — Special to GlobalPost

Published: October 30, 2009 06:45 ET

KARACHI, Pakistan — On large billboards across Karachi, three smiling faces that would seem more at home on Broadway stare out at passers-by. The trio is better known to theater-goers half a world away as Donna and the Dynamos, from the musical, “Mamma Mia!” Now, a small but savvy Pakistani audience is itself swinging to a “best of” selection of Abba songs and local performers are bowing to standing ovations.

The musical’s 15-day run was short by American standards, but packed the Karachi Arts Council auditorium to capacity — 425 people — every show. And while many schools and universities across the country remain closed in the aftermath of a series of attacks — one on an educational institution in Islamabad on Oct. 20 that killed six — fear of being targeted by terrorists didn’t stop some 7,000 Karachiites from turning out.

During the 11 years of authoritarian rule by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, between 1977 and 1988, the arts in Pakistan suffered debilitating blow after blow. But the country underwent a cultural revival of sorts under Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who oversaw the establishment of the National Academy for Performing Arts in 2005. Now, a new generation of Pakistanis, governed by civilians but faced with the seemingly ever-present threat of terrorist (mainly Taliban) attack, appears unwilling to have a rare outlet for social and cultural expression taken away.

“At a very basic level, its family-style entertainment,” said Nida Butt, the director, whose company, Made for Stage Productions, staged the show. “It’s escapism. You forget about your problems, you make people happy.”

Butt, 28, also directed the musical “Chicago” last year, a show that ran a total of 32 nights, first in Karachi and then in Lahore — two of Pakistan’s biggest, wealthiest and most cosmopolitan centers. She’s already thinking about a third musical and planning to tour “Mamma Mia!” outside of Karachi.

Butt hopes that providing a space for musicals and theater will encourage the birth of a homegrown commercial theater industry: “I had to fly to another country to see my first musical on West End. I was 25 years old! A lot of young people have come and watched this. I hope that maybe this makes them think that they can be actors, singers and dancers and that can be their profession.”

Setting that example is 29-year-old Kiran Choudhry, who plays the lead role of Donna Sheridan. Educated as a lawyer and a graduate of Oxford University who started singing early under the tutelage of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, an internationally acclaimed vocalist and a star in the complex domain of eastern classical music. In 2006, after taking voice lessons from VoxBox in London, Choudhry ditched her job and her career as a corporate lawyer and returned to Pakistan to pursue her true passion: singing. She is now the lead singer of her band, Caramel, despite her father’s wish that she would one day become the president of Pakistan.

In “Mamma Mia!,” Choudhry captivated audiences with her vocal range and adaptation of the lead role.

A theater industry by Western standards may be a long way off, but Made for Stage productions, which focuses on commercial, entertaining theater, is working hard to increase its visibility. Its chief sponsorship for “Mamma Mia!” came from McDonald’s.

During Zia’s time, the only performing arts that were allowed were folk dance and music. Many Pakistani artists were either silenced or went into exile. It’s only in recent years that an effort has been made to make up for lost time.

The National Academy for Performing Arts, Karachi’s main theater academy, largely focuses on more serious performances than “Mamma Mia!” Its latest work was an Urdu language translation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull.”

Even if the scale and scope of “Mamma Mia!” was larger, Karachi, a city of anywhere between 9 and 15 million residents (depending whose statistics you believe), a performance in English priced at 1,500 rupees (about $20) can hardly be called a mainstream success.

To the audiences that poured in to watch “Mamma Mia!” every night for 15 nights, that seemed largely irrelevant. A happy humming cacophony of Abba tunes could be distinctly heard in the Karachi sky.

Even the city on alert with Tehrik-e-Taliban setting off bombs in public spaces across the country, didn’t dampen spirits.

Changing the mood in Pakistan — that is partly what drove Butt and her team as they staged “Mamma Mia!”

“Given all this negativity that is reigning supreme in our country, we need pockets of vibrant life and joy,” Choudhry said. “On one level it destroys that negativity, it breaks its hold … I’ve absolutely no issues if the Taliban are around the corner. It makes me want to get on stage even more and shake it out.”

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Christians of India under attack

Monday, January 26th, 2009

The spate of violence against a religious minority tears at the secular fabric of India
By Sonya Fatah – GlobalPost

January 26, 2009

NEW DELHI – Inside the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, an oil painting of Jesus at the Last Supper looked down upon the congregation as a priest led some 200 in prayer.
The Mass here was underway and the hymns in Hindi wafted up among the high vaulting arches, but this air of peace and tranquility inside the cathedral contrasted sharply with the ominous feeling that has descended over India’s minority Christian community in recent months.
Throughout the fall, scores of Christians were killed in India, thousands made homeless, their churches destroyed. Hindu extremists are suspected in many of the attacks.
What’s more, the violence, which started in the eastern state of Orissa in late August, didn’t stop there. Instead, it spread to Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and even Goa, a state better known for its rave parties, hippie ghettos and coastal seafood fare.
Christians form only 2.3 percent of India’s population. But given the country’s size, its Christian population – 24 million according to the 2001 Indian census – is hardly small.
For years, Christians coexisted peacefully with India’s 82 percent Hindu majority, but the growth of fringe fundamentalism has begun to tear at India’s largely secular fabric.
Of late, Christian missionary work and terror attacks blamed on Muslim extremists have fueled anger among splinter Hindu extremist groups, whose self-professed goal is to fully convert India into a nation for Hindus.
Over a cup of tea recently, Catholic Archbishop Vincent Michael Concessao puzzled over the escalating scale of attacks carried out by the Sangh Parivar. The Sangh Parivar is an umbrella group that comprises several right-wing organizations, including its more acceptable political face, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“There is fear about what will happen, even in places with strong Christian communities like Mangalore,” Concessao said.
In October, churches and congregations in Mangalore, a southern Indian city, were systematically attacked for the first time.
“Mangalore is the sort of place that has never had this trouble either in the recent past or going way back,” said Rhoda D’sa, who retired from the Reserve Bank of India and now teaches in Bangalore. “We share a common language and a common culture — we’ve been neighbors — and we were never aware of a feeling of alienation,” D’sa added.
Religious violence isn’t new to India, which still carries scars from the 1947 partition that created India and Pakistan. A million people died in primarily Hindu-Muslim violence.
For most of the past 61 years, however, secularism has been India’s predominant belief. It’s only recently that Hindu right-wing parties have grown in strength. Their mission: to rescue Hinduism from the evangelical forces of Christianity and what they perceive as the perils of Islam.
Targeted Christian attacks began this year after a right-wing Hindu leader was murdered Aug. 23 in Kandhamal. Hindu militant outfits blamed Christians and took revenge.
Kandhamal is a sort of battleground for faith wars. A majority of its population is tribal. India’s original inhabitants, who historically followed localized nature-based rituals, number roughly 84 million. Hindu and Christian groups have undertaken serious missionary efforts to bring them into their fold.
Conservative Hindu groups have been pushing for a ban on conversion and the eradication of cow slaughter. Cows are sacred in Hinduism and their slaughter is outlawed in most Indian states. Several states have also passed anti-conversion laws.
Many Hindus are opposed to Christian missionary work — they lambast it as insensitive to the Hindu religion. In some cases extreme Christian groups have been disrespectful to Hinduism, although judging by published accounts such events seem relatively rare.
“So much money comes into (Orissa) for (Christian) missionary efforts” from overseas, said Tathagata Sathpathy, a minister of Parliament. “These guys offered dalits better chances by offering them jobs, free education, and other benefits that any poor community needs. That’s one reason why there have been mass conversions to Christianity.”
Most Indian Christians, roughly 70 percent, are from India’s dalit community, previously known as “untouchables” in India’s caste hierarchy. Conversions to Christianity occurred over centuries. Recently, however, Hindu militant groups have begun forcing groups of Christians to re-convert to Hinduism, spreading terror in rural Christian communities.
Babu Kumar Nayak, a 16-year-old Christian from Kandhamal, watched his home burn in September before walking 350 kilometers to safety.
“Those who attacked us were my classmates,” Nayak said. “Some of them I have known all my life. I was watching, as they were singing: ‘Hindu, Hindu, brothers all/We won’t keep the Christians among us/No other faith will be allowed to spread/If it does, we will burn it down.’”
This kind of hostility, many Christians say, used to be rare.
“The country had never known the power of the vote of religion, and that vote was capitalized when the BJP played the Hindu card and came to power in 1998,” said Maxwell Perreira, former joint commissioner of police in New Delhi.
To fight the rising trend of communalism, many Christians hope that Indians will exercise their preference for secularism in the general elections early next year.
“We have not done enough to gather the secular forces in the country,” mused Concessao, the archbishop. “It’s the lay man who needs to be at the forefront of this movement.”

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