Has August 14 come early this year? I could have sworn that we were in May, but if you were to watch that channel from antiquity called Pakistan Television, you would think Independence Day, or even Defence Day, is just around the corner. Pfft.
PTV is a thing of my childhood: when a father and daughter on screen would refrain from hugging, and if it ever did necessitate embracing each other, the father would merely pat his daughter on her bowed head, over her dupatta. Of course there was Moin Akhtar and Bushra Ansari, Anwar Maqsood’s bomb of a combination, to keep things real. I now realise that had they not been there, my childhood memories would forever have been scarred by that phrase meray aziz humwatnon. Dictatorship was an abstraction for my generation that was growing up in the 1980s, it became a reality by the time I went to college.
It was because of PTV that I fell in love with the Pakistan Air Force: every September 7, my father would take me to PAF Base Masroor to visit the air show, sit in the cockpit of an F-16, and buy memorabilia. For my fifth birthday, I remember my father taking me to Bohri Bazaar. I wanted to dress up as an air force pilot at my birthday party. It was raining that day in Karachi, and while we got to Saddar from Jamshed Road in a rickshaw, our return was my initiation into travelling by a Karachi bus – 8A to be precise. I was an air force pilot that night, and I loved it.
Fast forward two decades, and that love for the armed forces is but a fleeting sentiment. Back in my childhood, I remembered almost each dialogue of Sunehray Din and Alpha Bravo Charlie – that glory, that pride associated with the Pakistan Army that made many of us men want to join the armed forces. By the end of college, some of us realised that much of it was a sham.
Our great benefactor, General Pervez Musharraf, bestowed licences to operate electronic channels to quite a few media moguls. The subtext in any agreement was that “national interest” will not be compromised. By the end of his tenure, though, it was in our “national interest” to restore the judiciary and rule of law – only that PTV, till the very end, defined national interest as Musharraf’s interest.
PTV or private channels, “national interest” continues to be defined by GHQ and its perpetuation into the masses is left to the ISPR and ISI. No wonder then that Musharraf’s institutional corruption is not classified as anti-Pakistan, nor is the injustice and violence meted out to the landless peasants of Okara and Khanewal during his tenure.
Of course the historical and systematic extermination of Sindhi and Baloch nationalists, as well as the attack on Pakhtun cultural values in the name of strategic depth and assets are steered clear of. Most Punjabis aren’t even aware of the antagonism created against them as a function of the establishment oppressing the smaller nations. My country’s foundations are already weak, but the establishment’s strategy of brushing substantive issues under the carpet is in fact against the interests of my country. But switch to PTV, and ay putr hutaan te naen vikday.
Last Saturday, I was forced to switch to PTV after a customary power outage. Not to my horror was the elegant Farieha Pervez singing a rendition of a patriotic song. The images superimposed were those of the armed forces helping citizens out during last year’s monsoon floods. These images are for the consumption of the ordinary citizen, especially those who have little access to cable television and are reliant on PTV for their information. Most of them would show gratitude to the armed forces, rather than view their task as one in national interest. Few would know that they charged a handsome fee for their services – crippling an already penniless civilian government that was begging the world for aid. My concern is for them, for they are easy prey of the picture painted by the powers-that-be. PTV fooled many of us in our childhood, it continues to do so to the rural and semi-rural populace.
Once the dust settles on this Osama bin Laden fiasco – and it will sooner than later – those of us in the media consistently asking uncomfortable questions from our establishment are likely to be in peril. With the might of the great PTV in the bag, and anchors on private channels available on speed dial, creation of enemies is much easier to achieve. Working journalists, though, are too poor to run campaigns to extol our virtues of patriotism. I want to love the Pakistan Army again, but by god, I will only love them after they subject themselves to civilian control and begin some introspection. Because, sab se pehlay Pakistan.
I can see the gags coming but I will continue to say this: Pakistan Television, like our syllabi, is still slave to our masters. Independence, pfft.
The author is Deputy City Editor, Pakistan Today, Karachi.