Re: Bulleh Shah and Punjab University
I was also surprised to know this and was like WTH they banned Bulleh Shah :smack:
Here is more details and restrictions / atrocities about Punjabi poets and literature that prevailed in Punjab University during Zia regime :smack2:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/soc.culture.indian/3-AYxPFpCSE
The Department of Punjabi at the Punjab University The demand for opening the Punjabi department at the university became stronger. Apart from the old champions of Punjabi like Faqir Mohammad Faqir, even people otherwise associated with Urdu like Dr Waheed Qureshi, voiced this demand on 5 August 1969. General Bakhtiar Rana, a member of the Punjabi Adabi League, also made the same demand and numerous small organizations lent their voices to it. The Punjabi Adabi Sangat, for instance, gave several statements in the press demanding M.A in Punjabi (Muzawat 24 August 1970). [See Punjab University did not have Punjabi Department for more than 20 years after Independence]
Faqir Mohammad Faqir’s role in the establishment of the master’s degree at the Punjab University has acquired legendary overtones.
Junaid Akrarn, his biographer, says that he met Alauddin Siddiqui, the Vice Chancellor of the University, and persuaded him not to oppose the idea. Finding the Vice Chancellor willing he met members of the Academic Council and other decisionmaking bodies and won their approval (Akram 1992: 56). The popular legend has it that he lay down in the office of the Vice Chancellor saying that he would live on the floor unless the M.A was instituted. The Vice Chancellor, completely dismayed by these unorthodox tactics, made the required promises to persuade Faqir to lift the siege. According to Syed Akhtar Jafri, who has written a critical appreciation of Faqir’s life and works, he was helped by Abdul Majeed Bhatti and Rauf Shaikh who visited the opponents of Punjabi and persuaded them by all means orthodox and unorthodox (Jafri 1991: 37). In any case in 1970 the M.A Punjabi classes began at the Oriental College, Punjab University, Lahore.
Faqir Mohammad Faqir’s jubilation knew no bounds. According to a witness, Arshad Meer, he celebrated this great advance in the status of Punjabi at Gujranwala. The Vice Chancellor, Waheed Qureshi, Mian Mohammad Shafi and other notables attended. Faqir paid homage to the Vice Chancellor in verse and the activists of the Punjabi movement felt that their dream had come true.
The first members of the faculty in the Punjabi Department were people who lacked formal degrees in the language but were known for having written in it. Among others were Alauddin Siddiqui, the Vice Chancellor, himself; Ashfaq Abroad, the noted Urdu dramatist and short story writer; Khizar Tameemi, Sharif Kunjahi and Qayyurn Nazar (Akram 1992: 56). **In the beginning, under the influence of Dr. Waheed Qureshi, right wing views dominated. Even Bulleh Shah was not taught because of his allegedly ‘heretical’ views (Saleern. Int. 1999).
**
Punjabi was also taught at the masters level in the Shah Hussain College in Lahore in the early seventies. Ahmed Saleern, one of the lecturers in the early years, said that all lecturers were volunteers in that college and the students took the university examination as private candidates (Saleem. Int. 1999). In 1973 Najam Hussain Syed, a well known intellectual whose book on Punjabi literature Recurrent Patterns in Punjabi Poetry (1986) is still a milestone in the field, was invited to chair the new department. Najarn, himself a creative writer of somewhat left-of-the centre orientation, made a comprehensive curriculum for the M.A which did not exclude leftist, identity-conscious, Punjabi literature (Syed. Int. 1999). His colleagues were AsifKhan, SharifKunjahi and Abbas Jalalpuri. All of them were part time lecturers and Najam himself was on deputation from government service. Najam and his colleagues, being liberal in views, included the socio-economic background in which literary texts are created as part of the curriculum. They even taught Gunnukhi, though it was not part of the approved curriculum, so as to enable students to study Punjabi literature from India.
**The teaching of Gunnukhi was especially suspect in the eyes of their right-wing opponents because they thought Indian Punjabi literature would dilute the ideological orientation of sudents. Later, when Zia ul Haq took over, all institutions had to move towards the right because the regime was not only centrist, like all previous regimes, but legitimized itself so emphatically in the name of Islam that it became paranoid even about trivialities (Khan, Asif. Int. 1999). Thus, according to Khalid Humayun, lecturer at the Department of Punjabi, some lines of Anwar Masood’s humorous poem’ Aj Ki Pakaye?’ (What shall we cook today?) were expunged because they referred to Pakistan’s friendship with the U .S.A (Humayun 1986: 231 ).
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**Shahbaz Malik, who became the chairman of the Punjabi Department during Zia ul Haq’s days, was known for his rightist views. It wasduring his tenure that most of the changes mentioned above, such as the exclusion of identityconscious, political or Sikh literature, took place. Complaints against the department kept corning (Sajjan 30 September 1989), but Shahbaz Malik continued to head it (see his interview in Chowdhry 1991).
Khalid Humayun complained that so absurd was the ideological witch-hunting at this period that theses on Ustad Daman and the folk songs of the Punjab were accused of subverting the ideology of Pakistan -the former because Daman had criticised martial law; the latter because popular values were contrary to those which the state supported (Humayun 1990. Also Humayun. Int. 1999). :smack2: folk songs could be dangerous to Pakistan’s identifty
In an interview Afzal Randhawa, a prominent writer of Punjabi, also accuses the Punjab University authorities of being selective allegedly for both personal and ideological reasons, about the texts to be taught to students (Randhawa 1990:15). **
