playwrights-from-pakistan

"A ground-breaking writer, whose works have lost none of their freshness, humour or heart"

"What is happening with the Talibanization is really frightening [in the FATA and NWFP] – it’s scary because the brunt seems to fall on the women. When people talk of religion they often think in terms of “a woman shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that.” It’s not only Islam or in Islamic countries – in America the issue becomes the “woman doesn’t have right over her body,” etc. And in Pakistan, we go through a cycle of hope and despair. Right now we are in a place where we don’t know where we are headed…"

"My world is compressed. Warris Road, lined with rain gutters, lies between Queens Road and Jail Road: both wide, clean, orderly, streets at the affluent fringes of Lahore."

"One of the finest responses made to the horror of the division of the subcontinent."

"Bapsi Sidhwa's voice - comic, serious, subtle, always sprightly, is an important one to hear."

"One of the great comic novels of the 20th century"

"Sidhwa's triumph lies in creating characters so rich in hilarious and accurate detail, so alive and active, that long after one has closed the book, they continue to perform their extraordinary and wonderful feats before our eyes."

"The Parsi community has been on the brink of extinction ever since I can remember, but it seems to be holding its own and still flourishing in Mumbai, Karachi, and recently in America and Britain. Of course, Parsi youth are marrying outside the community and many of the children born to these marriages are not accepted as Parsi, but this too is changing. I think this dodo bird of world religions will continue to exist -- at least I hope so!"

"You cannot write a non-political book anywhere in the world. Because politics colours each character’s way of thinking, way of relating to other people and so on. You see, each time there has been a regime change in Pakistan, I have felt myself changing. During the time of Bhutto, the women around us felt very energised. I was joining women’s committees, we were doing progressive things. And when Zia came, we sort of wilted and all the energy just drained away from us. Then Benazir came, and we all felt different. So it influenced us, as people, as characters. It influences how men look at us. You see? So the dynamics between people change. It’s all related to politics, to culture, to your environment. It all influences you."

"There is no comparison between what Partition was to what today is. Partition was a time of too much chaos. I am the only old woman in this room who remembers that time. I was seven or eight. And I remember the roar of the mob from a distance. I couldn’t make out the words. But later, I was able to decipher the “Hare Hare Maha Dev”, the “Allahu Akbar” and the “Sat Siriye Kaal”. Even back then, I could understand that they are killing each other. I knew it was evil. And there was no comparison to what’s happening today."

"Basically where you come from in your writing is what you have experienced yourself, have internally absorbed as part of your adventure of life and I think that’s the best you can do… is writing about things that you know intimately."

"Writer’s narratives are woven into the fabric of life and history – it makes people aware of where they stand in relation to each other and the rest of the world. The word, as we understand it, may mutate, but it will always count."

"Globalization has its advantages. To be translated and read in several countries is immensely satisfying; after all a writer - this writer at least - is driven by the impulse to communicate. Conversely, globalization exposes one to wonderful writers from diverse cultures."

"[about the Partition of India] The roar of the mobs appeared to be a constant in my life; even as a 7 year old I knew it was an evil that threatened our lives. I couldn’t make out the words although I vaguely realized they were shouting religious slogans as they set fire to houses and harmed people. The memory of smoke and fire and fear and the sudden appearance of hoards of bedraggled refugees in my neighborhood are still vivid."

"Bapsi Sidhwa has blossomed into Pakistan's best writer of fiction in English...Cracking India deserves to be ranked as amongst the most authentic and best on the partition of India.""

"There are many Urdu poets and writers in Pakistan, but Amjad Islam Amjad is a famous one as he significantly written several essays, columns but his main focus was poems and poetry. کبھی رقص شام بہار میں اسے دیکھتے"

"This is the biggest tragedy, and however much we express our anguish, it does not diminish. If you want to know about the state of the Pakistan-India relationship, you must find out how long it takes for you to get an Indian or a Pakistani visa. If the relationship is good, visas are immediately issued; if not, then it takes days or months. This is the litmus test that people have devised. The visa office is the best barometer. This is absolutely wrong. I think people should meet each other. We have to accept the reality, whether we like it or not. The truth is that there are two separate nations. Personal likes and dislikes are a different thing. If we accept this, then we will be able to proceed. I am an eternal optimist. I feel — and it is my conviction — that because of people-to-people contacts and because of international pressure we will be forced to draw closer."

"Critics have done injustice to poets by labelling them as revolutionary, spiritual, philosophical, psychological or orthodox, Amjad Islam observed. To me there are only two types of poets – good poets and bad ones."

"We have an insane horde in Pakistan. These are strange people, who celebrate their own ruin."

"India's population is over one billion and Pakistan's population is 18 crore. In the event of a nuclear war, even if you inflict four times more casualties on India, there would be more than 20 crore people living in India. But, by then Pakistan will be finished."

"We have a bevy of uneducated people here in Pakistan. They don't know what is [an] atom bomb."

"It can be seriously contented if he possessed wisdom of the highest order. If he had, he would not have sought to weaken Islam and the Muslim community of the Subcontinent. At least he would have refrained from interfering with the established principals of Islam. Even Vincent Smith, who narrates Akbar’s aberrations from Islam with relish, concludes that ‘the whole scheme was the outcome of ridiculous vanity, a monstrous growth of unrestrained autocracy...’ How can it then be asserted that Akbar possessed wisdom in the highest degree?"

"They established their khanaqahs and shrines at places (i.e., temples) which already had a reputation for sanctity before Islam."

"Islam does not distinguish between the religious and profane. There being no ecclesia, its counterpart the saeculum becomes redundant. In a sense Islam is a secular religion, because it has no church."

"The Quran has always held the central position in Islamic thinking. Indeed it holds a position even higher that that of the Prophet, because the Prophet was as much bound by its injunctions as any believer."

"The status and the function of the Ulema in the Muslim community have seldom been properly understood by non-Muslims scholars. Superficial observers have thought that the Ulema correspond to priests without a church; hence, they consider the presence of priesthood in Islam inevitable. The Ulema are venerated for their learning and piety, hence also they are taken to be priests."

"And the achievement of that goal depends on the success we achieve in this land of India in establishing and maintaining a polity in accordance with our ideals. That depends on our will to live, which depends on our willingness to die."

"Hitler was not wrong when he identified the democracies with international Jewry, because high finance and big business which are the backbone of social organization in the democracies are very much in the hands of the Jews; and because finance is the real master of bourgeoisie democracy, the Jews are very much in control."

"Islam cannot leave certain spheres of life strictly to the individual, any action which is likely to prejudice the healthy growth of Muslim society will have to be severely prohibited. We do not believe in unrestricted freedom to bring about a lowering of human standards, of spiritual values of allegiance to our common idealism. Anything which brings in germs of decay and degeneration in our physical, moral or spiritual life will have to be ruthlessly curbed and steps will have to be taken that loose talk and loose thinking are not allowed to exist. This does not mean censorship but an enlightened and sympathetic censorship with an appeal to the highest tribunal in the land."

"Interestingly enough an academic conflict is going on between those who do not wish to tamper with facts (Mohammad Habib, S.S.A. Rizvi) and those who are determined to give a benign face to Islam (I.H. Qureshi, Mohammad Mujeeb, Ashgahar Ali Engineer)."

"His approach is strongly communalistic... He is proud of the political achievements of Muslims in medieval India and believes that they more than satisfied modern ideas of tolerance, benevolence and efficiency... (He) treats the Delhi Sultanate as a welfare state, the Muslim community in medieval India as a nation, and the Sultans of Delhi as Muslims both in a religious and political sense."

"A debt-ridden farmer contemplating suicide in Maharashtra and a mother who abandons her children in Karachi because she can't feed them: this is what we have achieved in our mutual desire to teach each other a lesson."