Pak’s tribute to the God of Pop



Music and musicians have often been under attack in Pakistan. Their detractors earlier were right-wing religio-political outfits. The offensive now is led by the likes of Tehreek-e-Taliban and other hotheads who even consider as un-Islamic the “moving picture” as it appears on television. But Michael Jackson’s death was big news in that country. The print media, like in India, went overboard in reporting the pop icon’s fairytale rise and his tragic end, music channels ran retrospectives, cybercitizens downloaded his famous numbers, music shops did brisk business selling his CDs and DVDs and the Sindh assembly observed a minute’s silence in his memory.

Ali Haider

Ali Haider

As portrayed in director Shoaib Mansoor’s critically acclaimed Khuda ke Liye, Pakistani musicians, be they popular bands or ghazal singers, live dangerously in the country where extremism has moved from the fringes to the core. Maybe not in football fields or under proscenium arches. But local bands play— at private functions, in clubs and in charity concerts such as those recently held in Lahore and Islamabad for people displaced by military action in Swat and other parts of Pakistan’s North West. If concerts are difficult to come by, they cut CDs, sell videos and do live performances for a popular series “Coke Studio” titled after the soft-drink major.

The music channels, the bands and the singers who belted out titillating stuff were safer under Pervez Musharraf. He let them proliferate to buttress his self-image of a ‘benign’ dictator. I remember having once bumped into Abrar-ul-Haq in a Lahore-Islamabad flight.

Junaid Jamshed

Junaid Jamshed

The young singer—whose hot number Aasey tey jana billo dey ghar got him on the wrong side of the mullahs and their conservative middle class supporters— had high praise for the general. “He accepted my request and danced to my tunes to inject life in a concert I was doing in the northern areas,” he recalled. Abrar still performs but some of his contemporaries like Ali Haider (whose Purani jeans aur guitar is an all-time great) have grown beards and turned religious in a real life version of Khuda key liye. Even Junaid Jamshed. of top-of-the-line pop group Vital Signs now limits his singing to songs that praise God. As an active member of

the Tablighi Jamaat (a preachers’ group devoted to the spread of Islam), he focuses on his religion and its pious personalities — a bit along the lines of former Cat Stevens now known as Yusuf Islam.

Pakistan’s tribute to Wacko Jacko is worth a tribute itself.

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  • http://www.hindustantimes.com Sujata Anandan

    Great read, Vinod. Pakistanis do need to loosen up a bit and more voices need to be raised by them against the assualt on their own freedoms…

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    vinod Reply:

    Thanx Sujata. It’s always a pleasure hearing from you. I agree the Pakistanis need to fight for their rights. Perhaps they will at some stage when things are better. Remember their fight for an independent judiciary?

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  • http://Hindustantimes M.Shahid Kamal

    I agree we desi take life too seriously. While living in USA I have two Pakistani TV channels subscribed and two Indian t.v channels but don’t know of any Indian who subscribes to Pakistani channels whose programs are no less entertaining than Indian channels.I wounder If Pakistani t.v channels are available in India and how many people watch them. The view of Pakistan will be much more positive if Indians watch Pakistani channels as well and by the way a one minute silence was observed in Sindh provincial assembly on Micheal Jackson’s death news. Shahid Kamal

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    vinod Reply:

    I agree with you Kamal Sahib that we must permit each other’s channels. I have mentioned in my blog that the Sindfh Assembly observed a minute’s silence for Michael Jackson.

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  • vijay kumar

    Dear Vinodji,

    It was heartenting to hear that Pakistanis are willing to hear music which does not praise Allah and Islamic values all the time.

    Now music is about romance and dance and well being. Praising the Lord can be a bit boring if done repeatedly:)

    Maybe they should listen to Kishore Kumar and sing out Yoodleyiiii everytime a talibani or a tablighi comes near ….

    And Maybe they should sing a A R Rehman song, when someone tells them music is HIndu/ Christian and Un Islamic…..

    C,mon music can surely make Pakistanis into normal human beings and actually convert them from moronic suicide bombers, they have become:)

    SO let’s say beat it… and celeberate Jackson’s music rather than mourning his death

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  • meena

    Could it be because he had become a Muslim?

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    Rajeev Reply:

    Exactly.

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  • http://twitter.com/malla_m Makhan lal malla

    The people of Indian origin living in England or any other country must take note of the reasons which led some MPs of the House of Commons to debate Kashmir in the British parliament.The debate was prompted by constuency concerns of some MPs according to the report bublished here.Pakistan is trying hard to keep kashmir issue alive through various agencies such as Justice Foundation Kashmir centre which is linked to Fai and ISI.The people of Indian origin must rise to the occasion and counter the false propaganda against India in foreign countries.This will be a great service to the land of their forefathers.

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  • Abu Ahmed

    Good – as long as the USA is in our neighborhood, we must keep up this dignified, state-to-state talks. No need to be cowed down by China, as maintaining of peace is in everybody’s interest, not just of India & Indians.

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  • Anonymous

    When I say the new Chief of Air Staff, N. A. K. Browne, is a CIA-RAW man, I mean he literally sits at CIA-supplied terminals to participate in crimes against India. More than a thousand Indian Air Force aircraft have crashed since 1970, the vast majority of the crashes caused by microwaves from U. S. satellites which can hack into and operate any digital equipment. In his first week in office as Chief of Air Staff, Browne caused two Indian Air Force fighter planes to crash with microwaves from satellites, to give a boost to his bid to buy worse than worthless foreign aircraft for several tens of billions of dollars of which he will get a hefty cut along with the Defence Minister and the Italian woman who gets the largest cut. The Sukhoi crash on Dec. 13 ‘11 and the grounding of the Sukhoi fleet has been caused 2 days ahead of the purchase decision as the purchase was made impossible by my opposition to it. See IndianAirForcePilotsMurderDOTblogspotDOTcom . //I said on October 11 ‘11 ( GaddafiCrimeDOTblogspotDOTcom ) that the ’suicide’ of the chief test pilot Baldev Singh was murder, to facilitate the claim of the fraudulent ‘delay’ in inducting the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft, being used to justify the worse than worthless purchase abroad. India builds Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft from raw materials; why do you need to buy fighter aircraft from abroad? [At this, A. K. Antony said on November 23 '11 that the Sukhoi-30 MKI assembly line can only make 16 aircraft per year. Why couldn't you set up another assembly line? As soon as I asked this question, the report in Deccan Herald was changed by RAW to eliminate the reference to assembly line limitation and a reference to a Sukhoi-30MKI crash in April '09 -- its first ever -- was inserted instead, having him say that the Indian Air Force will continue to use the Sukhoi-30MKI despite the crash along with the new aircraft to be bought from abroad and the Light Combat aircraft. The Sukhoi crash on Dec. 13 '11 has been caused 2 days ahead of the purchase decision as the purchase was made impossible by my opposition to it.] N. A. K. Browne, A. K. Antony and the Italian woman should be booked for the murder of Baldev Singh along with the head of RAW. All former heads of RAW should be booked for the murders of hundreds of Indian Air Force pilots. //Integrated Circuit chips made in the United States are required to provide for access to the United States National Security Agency so it can monitor and take control of their operations at will. Components and electronic equipment from the United States should be absolutely “haram”; far from lamenting ‘technology denial’, equipment from the United States should be rejected even if it is offered on a platter and free of charge as I have said. India’s bought-up Defence, Atomic Energy, Space and other officials deliberately close their eyes to this threat. This also applies to U. S.- made civilian aircraft, for example. There are two hundred thousand Indian engineers and scientists working in Research & Development for foreign companies in India but instead of putting its money in Research & Development ( in my letter dated January 5, 2004 to the press — see my blog — I had suggested one million Research & Development workers in India in government-sponsored projects), India’s CIA-RAW government buys foreign equipment in all fields to keep India poor, weak and enslaved. India’s government lends hundreds of billions of dollars to the U. S. government in exchange for worthless U. S. paper but seeks foreign investment and World Bank loans for projects in India, giving ownership and control of India to India’s enemies, despite the unlimited capital available to India by simply printing the money; see ‘How India’s Economy Can Grow 30% Per Year Or More’ in my blog; as is described there, the United States has been applying my proposal about money by stealth and now also openly but Manmohan Singh refuses to do so because this bugger — a CIA appointee — does what serves the United States’, not India’s, interests. //When Atal Behari Vajpayee was prime minister, he had once gone to Bombay and spoken to the stock exchange about applying my proposal about money to India’s economy, after which he had to abort his flight back to Delhi for fear his plane will crash. The murders of several politicians by air crash have been accomplished by microwaves from satellites. A recent example was the murder of the Andhra Pradesh chief minister by air crash. In my blog I have described how Indira Gandhi when prime minister in 1980 went to her kitchen with the then U. S. Vice President and former CIA Director, George Herbert Walker Bush, to arrange for the murder by air crash of her son Sanjay Gandhi who had taken to slapping her in the presence of others under my influence and the then CIA Director, Frank Carlucci, publicly claimed credit for that air crash via a letter that appeared in National Review. //In a press release dated January 10, 2011 I said: Stealth or no-stealth, 5th generation or 4th generation, fighter aircraft are as obsolete for India’s defence as bows and arrows. They can be used against neighbors such as Pakistan and China but the United States is EVERYBODY’S neighbor. It has already invaded and occupied Afghanistan, a part of traditional India and will expand its occupation to the rest of the subcontinent. I am India’s expert in strategic defence, the father of India’s strategic program including the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program and the world’s greatest scientist (my biography is in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World, 2011 and earlier editions). The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan means the coast-to-coast destruction of the U.S. by India; see my blog titled ‘Nuclear Supremacy for India Over U.S.’, which can be found by a Yahoo search with the title, for what India needs to do. Russia and other white countries are U.S. allies. These are the enemies to destroy. All other enemies will be taken care of automatically. Conventional arms are worthless for destroying the United States. Nuclear arms to destroy the United States with a FIRST STRIKE — this is the key — are cheap and easy to produce with technology India already has. All the money earmarked for fighter aircraft etc., and more, must be pumped into research, development and production of missiles able to deliver India’s nuclear warheads — in the thousands — to the continental United States. India’s missile scientists & engineers should have tested such missiles to their full range decades ago — everything else, including short and intermediate range missiles and missile defence, is secondary and tertiary — but have not done that because of prohibitions by India’s C.I.A.-controlled governments. This must be done on a war footing; the first step is to destroy RAW through which the C.I.A. rules India; see my blog. Producing such weapons in the thousands and very quickly is important. This means that the vast majority of them must be land-based, including road and rail-mobile, missiles rather than submarine-based which take a long time to produce.

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  • Anonymous

    Who paid Hindustan Times to retain the likes of Menon to write for it on very imortant issues such as what ought to be our foreign policy vis a vis China? And how much?

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  • Anonymous

    Oops ,I meant ‘important’. in my earlier comment..

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  • Probhat Sukla

    One of Bengal’s premier satirist once wrote about the difference between Indian Brains and Western Brains. In that essay, he wrote that Indian brains are very “fine” compared to the Western Brains which are “thick”. From this article I find that Shiv Shanker’s brain is so “fine” that none, including the crafty Chinese fails to divine that.

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  • Anonymous

    this is very sensible advice

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  • Syd Ram

    Unlikely. I think the method of even compiling a selection committee should be revamped. After, all everything is to be earned on merit and not given to them because they played cricket earlier.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/rsikd Rasik Girey

    very well i agree with dis blogger

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Banti-Saha/1582395793 Banti Saha

    i was thinking it too.let make kohli captain

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  • http://twitter.com/authorspeak BS Murthy

    Given his behavioural pattern Down Under,
    isn’t it a scary idea to have Kohli as skipper?

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  • vishal

    dhoni should not be blamed for it he cant go and bat for the whole playing 11 alone.its the batsman fault not dhoni .

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  • Probhat Sukla

    I fully agree with the author. Present day parents are responsible for the production of pansies from the school system. They fill their childrens’ pockets with cash, and teach them to behave impudently with good and strict teachers. Very soon India will be producing totally ignorant high-school graduates like the North American school system. Incidentally, in my opinion co-ed schools are also responsible for the low standards. Boys and girls should only have co-ed classes at the University level, when they are much more mature.

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6T7JL6TUN22UAD7NSR774A44PQ Anonymous

    I do not agree to this. I’ve seen how we Indians behave meekly because of our upbringing. Our education system does not allow pupils to think of their own mind but to prepare them for rat race. How much innovation do we have in India? How many people think out of box to bring something on world stage? How many patents do we file? I do not think canning pupils brings discipline but fear. I was never canned but I still love my teachers. We need to let the children develop their own mind so that they can be different than us. We need to guide them with our experience but let them play with fire till then do not endanger themselves or others around it. The current anti corruption wave has lot of youngsters in it. This is only because this young generation has not followed us keeping heads down. @Abu lets stick to point.

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  • Vishal Kale

    Great point, Arnab. However, there is one additional consideration. There is a very material difference between now and 20 years ago: the social norms were different, the pressures on students and teachers’ alike were different, parents approach was different. This problem is more of a social problem than one relating to schools. Take me, for example: I would be very, very, very angry if corporal punishment was used on my child – I would definitely consider punitive action like complaining to the principle etc. But I am perfectly ok with other disciplinary measures being adopted. You have to understand that not every child reacts the same way, you have to understand the child and consider how will this punishment effect the behaviour we want to change? This requires parents and teachers as equal participants! Unfortunately, there is little parent – teacher interaction. And whatever little there interaction happens focuses on academics!

    Parents and Teachers alike do not understand that marks – especially in Nursery – 7/8th classes – are not the determinants of success. You should be focusing on the child’s behaviour, social interaction, participation, habits, fundamental understanding of the topic. But in place of this we place inordinate emphasis on marks, and neglect the first warning signals of problematic behaviour! This way, you can catch bad behaviour before they become a habit. What is required is proper training for teachers and re-invigoration of the system to reflect modern realities

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  • Abu Ahmed

    The Madrasa teaches theology, Quran, Science, Maths & English whereas the Shakhas teach how to kill Muslims thats the big difference, amongst several others, between a Madrasa and a RSS Shakha.
    You are hurt, for which I am sorry. Fact is the RSS is spreading militancy all over the country through their Shakhas and it is reflected in minor and major incidents of intolerance occurring everywhere.

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  • http://twitter.com/tlverma T L Verma

    ” Ibtdai Ishq hai rota hai kiya , aage aage dekhiye hota hai kiya “. This is just the beginning. Many such exposures should be there if we see the past trend of the year.

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7XVK6BRUJHTBJCDMA6YSIFBUBE Suresh BV Bharadwaj

    Vladimir Putin, VS Acharya, BS Yeddyurappa, Sir Sheshadri Iyer’s Grand Son Ravindra & Sir Mokshagundam Vishveshwarayya’s Grand Son DK Ravi are/were victims of USA Remote Body Area Networks. How does one remotely read, diagnose, monitor, manipulate, massage & prescribe medicines to people? The USA has explicitly stated that it will monitor, manipulate, body read & control & mind read & control every human being: ordinary tourist, international student, foreign employee, religious leader, journalist, doctor, lawyer, military leader, politician, dramatist, film maker, actor, musician, business person, embassy personnel, ambassador, MLA, MLC, MP, Minister, President, Prime Minister, King, Queen, Prince, Princess or the Emperor for 25 years from the day a foreigner enters USA or leaves USA & that it will monitor foreigners for 25 years whether they are in USA or in other countries. Who works for BANS: patient, doctor, psychiatrist, nano & bio technologists, neuro scientist, linguist, translator, mercenary, clinical psychologist, Bromenn Medical Hospital, State Farm Insurance, Illinois State University, RFID, radio frequency identifier expert, audio, video & image contained air capturing expert, body scanner, body sensor, one-ten thousandth size miniature camera stealthily attached to blood particle, body reader, body massaging massager, body harming molester, body romancing rapist, Robo prostitute, mind reader, mind controller, USA Global Positioning Satellite handler, remote body area network worker, remote mind reading network specialist; remote body monitoring, massaging, manipulating, harming, hurting, pulling, caressing, lengthening, shortening, thickening, thinning, molesting & raping expert; mind & brain reading, brain waves capturing, analyzing, mind, brain & body controlling; 24-hours talking, speaking, singing, crying, shouting, screaming, suggesting, threatening, reminding, reciting, echoing, barking & chanting savage, ruthless, sadistic, perverse, cruel, inhuman, people’s human rights snatching, and 24-hours deliberately torturing & 24-hours a day, 7- days a week, 365 days a year, 10-years a decade sleep depriving professional working for the most barbaric, inhuman, demonic & criminal Remote Body Area Networks (BANs – its functioning is explained in the Harvard Business Review of Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA), Body & Mind Reader Networks – Body Mind & Brain Control Networks of the Non-Aryan, Anti-Indian, Anti-Chinese, Anti-Japanese, Anti-Asian, Anti-Aramaic Speaking Israeli Nationalist Freedom Fighter Jewish Rabbi Joshua Jesus Christ, Anti-Native Red Indian American, Anti-New Zealand Native Maori, Anti-Australian Australoid Native Aboriginal Indian & Non-Aryan European American, European, Italian, Roman, German, Belgian, Dutch, Indian Children Abducting Norwegian, AB Bofors Defense Corruption Commission Paying Gun Swedish, Spanish, Swiss, Portuguese, French, Welsh, Scot, Irish & English people. Jai Hind! OM!

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