Hmm a bit of a typo in this article it was the PML(Q), government and the Faujis who launched this attack on English Lit, and not the MMA.
10 July 2003 07:23
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=16957
Some of the great works of English literature could be scrapped from the syllabus of one of Pakistan’s leading universities because of what professors fear is a rising tide of Muslim fundamentalism.
A review of books studied in the English courses at Punjab University in Lahore singled out several texts, including Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as containing offensive sexual connotations which were deemed “vulgar”.
Academics from the English department have fiercely resisted the proposed culling of the syllabus and warn of other moves to curtail liberal and critical opinion in favour of Islamist thinking. “Ordinary, professional liberals feel that there is no space for us in our own town now,” said a senior academic. “I feel increasingly that Lahore is polarised and the threshold of tolerance is falling.”
The review appears to have been triggered by complaints made about the syllabus by the wife of a retired army general. She criticised the inclusion of two poems, including one by WH Auden, which she said promoted Jews, and a poem by Vikram Seth, who she said was too pro-Indian. She also said the poems of Adrienne Rich were unsuitable for study because she is a lesbian. “We have been tolerant for too long,” the general’s wife said in a meeting with academics from the department.
President’s wife
She reportedly passed her criticisms on to the wife of General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, who asked the retired army officers who run the university to take up the case.
The review of books on the English literature undergraduate and masters syllabus was conducted by Shahbaz Arif, a lecturer in English, who in an interview staunchly defended his proposal to rule out dozens of texts studied around the world. He said the books he had singled out used “vulgar words” and left students who came from conservative backgrounds and had poor spoken English “shy” and “embarrassed”.
“Limitations should be there, it is required,” said Dr Arif, adding that he himself was westernised, citing his PhD in linguistics from Essex University. “The majority of students come from a background where literature is not available. Sex is a taboo. It is very difficult to teach these things in the classroom. We have to be very careful in the selection of texts.”
But an internal memo drawn up by Arif and seen by the Guardian reveals the startling nature of his criticisms. He begins a section about books on the masters syllabus by saying: “Almost every second text in the syllabus contains direct/indirect references of vulgarity and sexuality.” He highlights Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “All characters sexually astray: men homosexuals; females lesbians/promiscuous; Brett Ashley nymphomaniac and so on.” The list includes Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, about which Dr Arif says: “The title of the book itself shows vulgarity.”
He then highlights a book of John Donne’s poetry, saying: “Almost every poem has the connotation of sex where the poet wants to take every lady to bed for sexual pleasure.” Other books are criticised for scenes involving alcohol.
Perhaps the most bizarre criticism is of a Sean O’Casey play, The End of the Beginning. Dr Arif makes no specific comment on the text but quotes several passages in which the apparently objectionable phrases are underlined. They include the phrase: “When the song ended, Darry cocks his ear and listens.” Dr Arif has underlined the word “cocks”.
Arif said his proposals would go before the next meeting of the university’s board of studies, which has the final say on the syllabus. Many on the board say his suggestions will be shot down immediately. Professors in the English department, who have now been ordered not to speak to the press, have been incensed by the proposals.
“This is something that has been working gradually and slowly over time. This is cashing in on the fundamentalists,” one academic said. “You are not going to stop talking just because the human anatomy is being discussed,” said another professor. “We have to teach our students that there is a whole world out there.”
Lahore, Pakistan’s pulsing cultural heart, is the city where the country’s largest and most ideologically rigorous Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has its headquarters.
In the wake of a surprisingly strong performance at elections last October, Pakistan’s religious right has become increasingly assertive. In Peshawar, religious parties control the provincial parliament and have voted to impose sharia law. In Lahore, advertising billboards depicting women have been painted over and western soft drinks have been banned from sale in the university.
Professors have spent hours in fierce arguments beating off an attempt, endorsed by the religious parties, to drop English as a compulsory subject at undergraduate level.
Masood ul-Haq, a retired army colonel and the university’s registrar, said no books on the syllabus would change. The row was simply a “tussle” between Arif and others in the English department, and Arif had been moved to another department. “We are proud to be Muslim but we are broad-minded Muslims,” Col ul-Haq said. “There is nothing known as fundamentalism in this university and nothing known as fundamentalism in Islam.”
The offending texts
Extracts of texts with “references of vulgarity and sexuality” include:
Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown
“He tore at my underclothes and pressed down on me with all his strength. But this was not me and Hari. Entering me he made me cry out. And then it was us.”
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
“What if Brett did sleep with you? She’s slept with lots of better people than you.”
(Lecturer Shahbaz Arif writes: “All characters sexually astray: men homosexuals; females lesbians/promiscuous; Brett Ashley nymphomaniac and so on.”)
Tomas (sic) Hardy, Tess of the D’Urber Villes (sic)
“To Tess’s horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of her gown – which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she was only too glad to be free of – till she had bared her plump neck, shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their possession of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country girl.”
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
“I must confess no Object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous Breast, which I cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious Reader an idea of its Bulk, Shape and Colour. It stood prominent six Foot, and could not be less than sixteen in Circumference. The Nipple was about half the Bigness of my Head, and the Hew both of that and the Dug so varified with Spots, Pimples and Freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous.”
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
(Dr Arif writes: “The title of the book itself shows vulgarity.”)
John Donne, Love Poems and Divine Poems in Metaphysical Poetry
"Enter these armes, for since thou thoughtst it best,
Not to dreame all my dreame, let’s act the rest."
(Dr Arif writes: “Almost every poem has the connotation of sex where the poet wants to take every lady to bed for sexual pleasure.”)
Sean O’Casey, The End of the Beginning
“I’ve seen you, when you thought I slumbered 'n slept with nothing at all on you, doing your physical jerks in front of the looking-glass.”
“When the song ended, Darry cocks his ear and listens.”
Edmond See, An Old Friend
“They gave me five or six cherry brandies during each performance. It took the place of a meal because alcohol is nourishing and it warms you.” - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
