Transcript of an audio interview with Professor Salima Hashmi (SH) conducted by AAA project researcher Samina Iqbal (SI) on 24 May 2017 at Hashmi’s residence in Lahore, Pakistan.

24 May 2017, Part 1

SI: So Mrs Hashmi, we'll start our third part of the interview and if we just reiterate a few of the things that we discussed in Part 2. So, you were in England from 1965 to…

SH: 1966 to 1969; just a few words about that. This was, of course, a very, very turbulent time worldwide. It was the height of the Vietnam War. It was the height of the anti-Vietnam war protests. And Shoaib and I were very much part of those in England. It was a time of Paris, May 1968; we had just been there in April. It was a time of Rudi Dutschke. It was a time of the reaction against; I suppose the working class reaction, against what they saw as a growth of unbridled neo imperialism. And in Pakistan, it was the time when the decade of development of Ayub Khan led to great protests against the military regime. So all in all this was a period in which one could sense something was happening because we were very much in the throes of…we brought out a magazine called The Pakistan Left Review. And that's where I wrote my first piece on Pakistani art.

SI: That was in England?

SH: Yes, in London. And it was, of course, a bare bones thing but we would meet with other Pakistanis very regularly and that is where we first really sensed that feeling of being marginalised which came to us from the East Pakistanis. And while we would argue that we felt that being marginalised was what was most the average Pakistani felt—whether it was West or East—but you could sense that there was a mood for separatism already.

SI: Between…?

SH: Between East and West. We were very friendly with a couple of very well know East Pakistani intellectuals who later actually played a big role in the movement for Bangladesh. But this was a period where we understood their feelings and the anger that was there; their sense of being controlled and exploited by the elite and the army in West Pakistan.

SI: So this is all very interesting happening in London. It's not like you were in Pakistan experiencing this. You were like in this…

SH: We were there. This was a time when Tariq Ali became a well-known leader. This was the time when we were; I suppose that the first interview we got was from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto at that time for The Pakistan Left Review. So you felt the sense that there were great political changes in the offing. I say this because when we came back in 1969…I had my baby…that was the time when I started teaching at NCA. So, on a personal level, it was more dormant. But on a national level what was happening was I'd taken students from NCA to Iran and to Afghanistan. We went on a long trip. And we didn't realise what was happening in the East wing of the country.

SI: So you're saying that it was more prominent while you were living in London.

SH: Yes, we were closer to it, because here you were very cut off. There was only one news channel, which was PTV, and Yahya Khan had come into power. That was while we were still in London. And the news was controlled and that was that. So we were not really aware of the extent of the opposition in East Pakistan. And it was after the 1971 elections— 1970 elections—when the People's Party swept to power over here and the Awami League swept to power over there, that you realised that there was going to be change. 1971 saw army action in Bangladesh—what was then East Pakistan. You saw the defeat of the Pakistani army. It was I think a very sobering moment to see the General handing over his sword to the Indian Army Chief. And there was deep depression naturally. Then there was the attempt in Pindi to hand over to another army general, which was then subverted actually by younger army officers who just said enough. Which was then, how Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto was invited to form the government.

What did it mean for a place like NCA? Well, during the time when this turmoil was going on and then straight after with the fall of Dhaka we did these huge paintings which were pasted on to billboards in Lahore. We went to Packages and we got these big rolls of paper from there and the students under the tutelage of Ahmed Khan, they made these very large works which were really supposed to be morale boosting for the people. And what little I remember of them, they were like eulogising the peasants', the students', and the workers' of Pakistan. They were all put up one night on very big billboards. Of course, they were not the size or the number of billboards you have today but they were strategic points in Lahore. So they were pasted on at night. The boys took ladders and so the next morning the people woke up and…And I remember we used to have a Volkswagen so I had put up a band at the back of it saying: ye mulk awam ka hai, kissi fauji jurnail ka nahin (this country belongs to the people, not to an army general). And we were given like looks, like, how are they doing this? But the mood was like that. There was great anger against the betrayal of the people.

SI: If I can interrupt you for a second, can you talk a little bit more about what kind of posters were these? Are these all visuals or are they slogans?

SH: No, no, they were all visuals but with one slogan.

SI: Okay and the slogan was?

SH: The slogans were different. I think one was jairha waye ohi khaye (The one who works gets to eat). They were very socialistic slogans. I wish I could remember then now. I'm sure some of the students who painted them would probably remember. People like Mahboob Ali, the designer and printmaker; he was very much in the forefront. They were third year students then. So then at the same time, with the coming of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government, one felt that NCA also was poised to change. And this was really because there was a move to bring the college under the Punjab University to affiliate it.

We as teachers felt a great reaction and so did the students. And we had a Teachers' Association and I was I think the Secretary. I went to see Hanif Ramay who was the Chief Minister of Punjab. We took a delegation. He, being an artist, couldn't understand why we were getting so het up about not wanting to go into Punjab University. We said ‘we don't want to go there for political reasons. So he said ‘Anna Molka Ahmed tau aap ki ammi ki dost hain (Anna Molka Ahmed is your mother's friend).’ So I said her philosophy and our philosophy is radically different. And then it was I think almost sheer chance because Hafeez Pirzada who was the Federal Minister of Education happened to be on the same train as Javed Najam who was coming from Karachi. And on the way, Javed Najam gave him this long lecture on the National College of Arts and its potential to be something very important for a popular government. So by the time the train arrived in Lahore, Hafeez Pirzada was sold on taking this college into the Federal government. And so then I think he sent for Shakir Ali, or whatever, the next thing we knew was that an ordinance was being promulgated and it was going to be shifted from Punjab into the Federal government with its own board of governors with the minister as the chairperson of the board. I think, probably no, it was secretary of ministry.

SI: So I'm sorry, I'm just going to interrupt you again. So Javed Najam was the…

SH: He was just a teacher in architecture.

SI: He was a teacher, okay.

SH: Yes, my old class fellow and who was teaching at NCA at the time. So he came, he got very enthused by our enthusiasm…Pirzada…and said ‘you know the sky is the limit. You'll do national projects and everything that you do; your output should be geared towards’…So the students in the thesis I remember, the Graphic Design thesis, everybody took up a different social problem. Somebody did a thesis on universal education; somebody else did it on the dignity of labour; there were all these sorts of…and they really did very magnificent work. Ahmed Khan was actually leading that whole sort of 'move.' And pretty soon we found that actually they'd started giving national projects. Like, they gave a project and I think it was, if I'm not mistaken it was funded by UNESCO. It was to design schools for the whole of Pakistan. So a study was conducted; a report was prepared. Groups of students…they’d divided up the whole country and each province was selected, each geographical region, which was geographically and climatically different from others, was selected.

We had made questionnaires and we had people, not only from NCA but I remember Humair Hashmi from the Psychology Department, he went with one group. So there was an architecture teacher with architecture students; there was design teacher with design students; there was a Fine Arts teacher…and they spread out across Pakistan and they filled these questionnaires and they collected data about the situation on the ground, which included social attitudes to education, political situations in various places, what kind of terrain it was, what kind of building types were already there, what expertise was available, and what people were eating and wearing and what language etc., and then the data was all brought back to NCA and with help, those questionnaires were analysed and slowly what started emerging was that various building types would be appropriate for various regions of Pakistan. And I don't think quite such work has been done since then.

SI: That's exactly what I was thinking.

SH: And this became a very important report. It gained prominence at various national and international conferences and seminars. And then they designed those building types. Very simple one-room buildings but using local materials and local methods and processes and keeping in mind mean temperature and rainfall etc., etc. At the same time, we were given a project to design uniforms for the whole of Pakistan and I was involved in that project. So it was across departments this kind of engagement. We looked at current uniforms; we looked again at the same data: climate, materials available etc., etc. And we made this report with photographs—we had the uniforms made. It ranged from militia to certain areas to thin cotton in other areas. Some places didn't need winter or summer— they could do with the same. Other places you needed dual…and so on. And this was quite a massive project again. The college was paid for it so there were earnings, but basically, it was spent on the people who were actually working. So students got stipends while they were doing that. Of course, travel was paid for. There were no computers then so it all had to be done manually.

SI: How long was the project? It seems like such a huge undertaking.

SH: I think the school's project took a year and a half and the uniforms project took about six months. Then, of course, came a fairly large, and in certain ways difficult thing, which was that Shah Khalid was going to visit Pakistan. So Bhutto decided that they would do the kind of public display that the Chinese are very good at, and the Koreans are very good at—where in the stadium you have those huge pictures which change which are actually made with books. You flick the pages and 1000 people do it, or 5000 people do it. You know the picture changes. This was a huge project. So the North Koreans were invited and the college was given this responsibility for training the children. We were given the responsibility for making the uniforms of all the children, the athletes…

SI: For that occasion?

SH: And the architecture department was given the task of building the stadium—almost physically building it. So this was a massive thing. It was done in a short time. The Koreans didn't believe that the stadium could be built. Khotay excavation kar rahay thay (donkeys were being used for the excavation). It was in Rawalpindi. And in the middle of all of this came the Ghazala Sana case in which certain people were accused of raping this girl. Teachers like Zahoor and Iqbal Hassan and Nayyar Dada etc. Of course, it was a political thing from infighting within the institution and because a lot of money was involved in the making of this project there were also jealousies to do with this.

SI: Was there anybody in charge of the project—somebody leading the project?

SH: Yes, it was Iqbal Hassan as the principal, and I think Ahmed Khan was from the design side; the architecture side it was Tanveer Hussain and Rehman Khan. Yes, I think that was it. Zahoor was only peripherally involved because Zahoor was being given another project, which was to make the monument outside Islamabad, which is still there—the crescent and the star made of stainless steel. So these people were taken into prison, and so I sort of stepped in and I was told that when we were making the presentation to Bhutto and he was going to come and see how progress was going … I felt that it was heavily political because there was no way that Zahoor ul Akhlaq was going to be raping anybody. And the date and the time was when I met him and Sheherazade in Murree.

SI: And this is the year 1976 or 1975? Shakir was already off from his principalship.

SH: Yes, he was gone, Shakir was gone. Shakir, in fact, had passed away by then.

SI: Oh, so probably 1976.

SH: This was…I suppose it must have been 1975 or 1976.

SI: 1976, yes. 1975 is when Shakir Ali passed away.

SH: Yes, so it must have been 1976.

SI: We'll confirm the dates.

SH: Everybody was terrified of Bhutto. So when he came to see the progress and he addressed Tanveer Hussain and he said ‘will this be done in time?’ So I just spoke up then and I said ‘only if the people who are the leaders of this are released’. So he looked at me, and I said that ‘you know this is a trumped up case.’ So he said ‘I’m coming to Lahore, I'm going to sort them out.’ Very quietly like in an undertone. I think they had already collected enough evidence of the conspiracy. I don't know how but they knew and therefore when they were brought to court for bail…bail was granted… Mahmood Ali Kasuri argued for them, he was their defense lawyer. And so they were released on bail. Before that bail had been denied to them one time. And then an inquiry was held, a very long inquiry. And it was found that Ijaz ul Hassan was involved and that…

SI: In the conspiracy against the group?

SH: Yes, against the group.

SI: So, where is this happening, when Bhutto is telling I'm coming to Lahore? It's not in NCA?

SH: No this was in…I think it was if I'm not mistaken in some official place in Islamabad. I can't remember the actual venue. I think it was where the whole model and everything was laid out.

SI: So this event was going to take place in Islamabad?

SH: In Islamabad, yes.

SI: So you had taken the kids on a performance there?

SH: Yes.

24 May 2017, Part 2

SI: So then you said that the inquiry was held and they had the proof, like people who were involved in this…

SH: Yes. I appeared before the inquiry committee. I am not privy to the evidence they collected or anything at all. All I have to look at is the judgement in the court by Maulvi Mushtaq, because this inquiry was a government inquiry. It was called a departmental inquiry, which was something quite different from the court. The court was conducting its own…and that was a criminal case of rape. So the judgement in that named people. The inquiry committee, I don’t know what it found, but as a result of it, Kamil Khan Mumtaz and Ijaz ul Hassan were asked to leave the college.

SI: So this is the college inquiry committee?

SH: This is the college inquiry committee; it was set up by the Ministry of Education. And many, many, many years later the Chairman of UGC (University Grants Commission), Captain Sani, he told me that he was heading that inquiry and he said ‘you appeared before me,’ which I didn't remember. He said ‘you appeared before me and I asked you so and so questions.’ I said ‘well I was so embarrassed and frightened; I don't remember who was asking me the questions.’ So he said ‘I was asking you the questions.’ Anyway, it was a very, very bad time. But prior to that, there was interesting times in terms of the art that was happening because there were changes going on. From the time that I had come back people like Khalid Iqbal had come back to…moved across from Punjab University to NCA. Colin David had moved across. It was a result of Anna Molka being furious for Colin marrying her daughter, so they were kind of chucked out of the department and they just walked across the road and got a job on this side. So the makeup of the department was different now. There was Khalid Iqbal who was the Head of the Department, and Colin and Saeed. Talat had got a job; earlier she'd been a student. So things had changed a lot.

SI: Talat Dabir?

SH: Yes. And the number of architecture students had gone up. The number of students generally had gone up. So it was a more robust institution in terms of its intake. It, of course, was still giving diplomas. But after its transfer into the Federal Government, its stature altered because it became clear that it was getting a kind of national recognition which it had not got before. It was very much a Punjab based arts and crafts school before that. So this gave it a different flavour. By that time students from other countries like Palestine had come in. You had students from Sudan, from Syria; these were the kind of places where you had students from. The student body had altered. And certainly having this kind of profile meant that on the diplomatic level also, because '76 we celebrated the centenary of Mayo School of Arts cum National College of Arts.

We had very, very grand celebration—a big exhibition, in which, before that, we had collected work from Mayo School Masters, traced families, tried to find out where the people had things in their family archives. And people lent drawings and so on. I often wondered what happened to that. A lot of stuff was returned but some of it was retained in the college and I don't know where it went. I was in charge of making the performance. So we did a history of NCA and Mayo School which was performed through dance, through music, through poetry, through storytelling, through mime, showing multimedia, showing film and so on, which was a fantastic success. There used to be a bargad ka darakht (a banyan tree) in the last courtyard and the bargad ka darakht is telling the story and describing. It was like talking about Mughal times, even we had a bit of sound and light going on. Then we talked about British times and we did a kind of farcical thing on Queen Victoria supposedly visiting and telling Bhai Ram Singh: maang kia maangta hai (ask, that which you desire). And we had put Queen Victoria in drag. And he said ‘jee Mayo school ka principal banadiyo (make me the principal of Mayo school); taadi mundri jehrhi hai odhay naal apna rumaal phara diyo (and give me your finger ring with your handkerchief).’ Shoaib wrote the script and Nayyara was a student then. Aur jab '47 ka zikar aya (when the subject of 1947 came up) she sang Amrita Pritam ka jo hai, you know the thing on Lakhan Teeyan Rondian (Millions of daughters) It was very, very beautiful. We had a girl who performed Kathak also at some stage of the performance and towards the end of it we had that you know now NCA has gone into the Federal Government so we have students from all over the country coming. And then we had Sindhi students dressed up coming in from the audience, we had the Palestinians coming performing on stage. It was such a hit.

I remember the Soviet ambassador was there and he just went bananas over that. We had a lot of ambassadors and it was a five-day festival I think, or four-day festival. We had Amanat Ali and Fateh Ali perform one night. We had Faiz Baloch from Balochistan. We had Munir Sarhadi from Frontier. So we had one day of just one night with folk. We had one day with Zia Mohyeddin and Naheed performing. And then we had the tableau two days running. One day of ghazal, I'm not sure who it was, I think it was Farida Khanum that we had for the ghazal night. But it was just fantastic and PTV was covering the whole thing so we got nationwide coverage. We had a convocation and the oldest old boy who was one-time principal, Chaudhry Mohammad Hussain, or whatever his name was, he was still alive and so he came and everybody stood up. He was the guest of honour that day. We had the inauguration of the founding stone of ab jo design department ki building jo hai na (the current building of the design department), the last one, that was laid by the President of Pakistan, Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry. So apart from Bhutto, we had each one of the…Raisani came who was Governor of Balochistan, Talpur came etc. So we had all the provinces, the Chief Ministers and the Governors came. It was really, really big the whole thing.

And it was after that that this whole Ghazala Sana case occurred. So it must have been '76 that that happened. Then there was that very well-known exhibition which has been talked about which was at the Lahore Museum. Which was about, I'd forgotten what the title was, museum main ho ga uska (there must be some information at the museum), in which Zahoor took part and Ijaz ul Hassan. Jis ke beech main 'My Lie' ki tasweer unhon ne utaarnay ki koshish ki thee (in the middle of which they tried to take down the painting My Lie).

SI: My Lie?

SH: Yes, My Lie, in which he's shown the American napalm bombing.

SI: That's Ijaz ul Hassan's painting?

SH: That's Ijaz ul Hassan's painting—that was taken down—and Zahoor's sculpture made of a rehri with pai lakri ke pai (a cart with wooden legs). B.A. Qureshi who was the Director of the museum said ‘what rubbish is this? The Americans are our friends; we can't afford to annoy them. Tau ye tasweer utaar do aur wo Zahoor ka kaam utaar do (So take down this painting and Zahoor’s work).’ So as usual mere sar wo sehra laga, ke main ne kaha ke ye exhibition main phir hum sub kuch utaardain (So as usual I took on the leadership role and I spoke up and said that we should take the entire exhibition down). So I marched off to Khalid Iqbal and I said ‘you have to take down your work. We all have to take down our work. We're not going to take part.’ So Khalid sahib who hated any kind of collective action was so cornered by me so he said okay, I suppose. So off he went to the Lahore Museum and we told B.A. Qureshi that we're going to take down…he was so furious and angry with me and he said, us waqt us ne kaha (that is when he said) the Americans are our friends and we can't afford to…So I said the Vietnamese are also our friends and we have diplomatic relations with North Vietnam. Anyway, he backed down and the exhibition went as wanted it to. He never forgave me after that. He went around telling the whole town, ‘that girl, who is Faiz's daughter’ bohat hee us ne bura bhalla kaha, pooray shehr main badnaam kia (he made a lot of negative comments about me and painted a bad image of me across town). But the work at that show was really interesting for its time because on the one hand it had certain political positions but on the other hand it terms of form and materials it was breaking new ground.

SI: I have a question here for you; what kind of people are coming and attending these exhibitions, because it seems they are all staged for bureaucratic purposes?

SH: Well for something like this our audience was what is known I suppose as Lahore's cultural elite. The civil society—we didn't call it at that time—but Lahore did have a very thriving tradition of people from colleges and teachers and…there was an intellectual life in Lahore. If there ever was a mushaira (a poetic symposium) you'd have thousands of people going. I think society was less stratified culturally than it is today. It is of course stratified in terms of the economic level but not stratified culturally. It was more homogenous in this way that you had a literate person who could have a paan ki dukaan (tobacco store). There was still that kind of a social milieu in Lahore. And they were the people who would show up.

SI: So, it's a mixed audience.

SH: Yes, it's a mixed audience.

SI: What is the city like at the time, what are the other happenings?

SH: Plays in colleges, in Alhamra; Government College Dramatic Club—GCDC—big event of the year; Kinnaird College drama—big event of the year; the music conference—a HUGE event of the year at the open-air theatre for five days—packed, people sitting until two or three o’clock in the morning. In fact, sometimes till fajr (the Morning Prayer). Azaan hoti thee tau music khatam hota tha (The music would go on until the call to prayer was made). A lot of concerts in the winter and films! The film going public in Lahore was phenomenal; English films, which mean American and British films, and desi films. Because…though after 1965 the import of Indian movies was finished, but still there was enough happening in the local filmmaking studios to keep so many thriving cinemas going in Lahore. And they were a lot of them.

SI: When you say that exhibition in the Lahore Museum in which Zahoor ul Ikhlaq is showing his wheel cart sculpture is groundbreaking because he's introducing new material and things like that happening…what is the response from the public? Do you still have the divide in the city? Like in the early decades of Pakistan, how we have…?

SH: It is the same. People going haw yeh kia hai (oh my, what is this?). It was easier to work with Ijaz ul Hassan's imagery because it was recognisable, it was political. And then you had people like Colin with his Op Art images. And Asif would be doing his still life etc. And I was doing my collage. So there was this fairly mix and by that time Moin Najmi had his gallery in Golf Road—even that had started. Alhamra in terms of its art gallery was not active.

SI: This is where I was heading; what galleries were there? Moin Najmi's gallery was there which was established in the early 1970s. And we have Alhamra.

SH: Yes, Alhamra's gallery was perfunctory—now and again.

SI: What else did we have in Lahore then?

SH: NCA sometimes. And that's why the Lahore Museum show was very important. It suddenly became an important venue—it didn’t show contemporary art. So this was an important show.

SI: So only three or four galleries?

SH: American Centre.

SI: They showed it but there wasn't really a 'gallery' there?

SH: There was a gallery there.

SI: Okay, so maybe three or four galleries. And you were very actively painting at that time. You were really pursuing your painting.

SH: No, I was not. I did paint but not painting so much. I did paint post '71. I did a series of paintings, which were a commentary on the war in Bangladesh, the civil war. It was a series called Sohni Dharti (O beautiful land!). I did about eight to ten paintings for that. When I came back I continued with my mixed media but basically Damar varnish glazes on canvas and on board. That continued for a while. But the Sohni Dharti was a direct response to that. And I think one of those paintings is in the National Gallery in Islamabad; one is here in Alhamra; one was destroyed in Karachi, and I don’t' where the rest have gone.

SI: So your focus was really on teaching and were you writing at that time?

SH: No.

SI: When did you start writing?

SH: I think I started really writing when we started Rohtas—this was in '81.

SI: 1981, Rohtas I in Islamabad?

SH: Yes.

SI: So you started out writing with intros and reviews.

SH: Yes, intros and reviews because nobody else was writing so I had to review it myself.

SI: I want to take you back to that first publication that you had in London in the 1960s— you said there was this Left Review Magazine. I think at one point you mentioned that it was a very limited publication.

SH: Three issues only.

SI: How many copies?

SH: Not more than a hundred.

SI: What kind of other things were you publishing in there?

SH: No, that's it; maiden venture.

SI: So nothing on art. It was more of a political nature?

SH: Yes, that was political.

SI: So coming back to the late 70s—a revolution is happening in Iran and…

SH: Yes, that and then our own 1977, 5th of July, which was like a big axe. And suddenly politics was everything. Suffocation was everything. It also became extremely dangerous to express your views; this pseudo-Islamic overlay over everything; orders coming every day whether it was in media. We were of course banned from television because don't forget that these were the years when we were most active on television.

SI: That's what I was going to say. And it seemed like not only NCA but in general, the air was that you had a lot of liberal views coming out, and liberal activities.

SH: Yes. After all, we started in 1971-1972 with Akar Bakar which was this programme for children, which really put all of my art education into it because we were doing everything to do with modern learning on television for children. And we were doing it with music, with poetry, with puppets. My students from NCA, whether it was Farooq Qaiser or Nadeem, then for the music we had Arshad Mahmood, we had Nayyara Noor, Shahid Toosi and then we introduced Irfan Khoosat and Samina Ahmed. There were always drawings in that and so on…so all of one’s creative input was really invested in performance. So first it was Akar Bakar֫—I think we did 26 programmes. We won the Japan prize for children’s television, the first international prize that PTV won.

SI: Such Gup?

SH: Then came Such Gup which was a kind of Akar Bakar for adults. We did that for six months. That was banned twice because…

SI: You would say a lot of things that you were not supposed to.

SH: Of course. Make fun of everybody; then came Taal Matol after that. Then for a short while, we did a programme on modern math which was called Aik Batta Teen. Then we took a break and then Shoaib started adapting plays. So we did Antigone and a whole lot of other plays—single play on television. Then came 1977 and that was the end of that. We were not allowed on television for eleven years. Kuch barho gaalian parhni shuroo huwi government ko ke woh kidhar gaye (insults started being hurled at the government asking where we had disappeared), so they asked us to do a non-political comedy programme. So Shoaib wrote the thing about an old car called Baleela and we recorded eight programmes. Only three ran and then they banned that. Because anybody could read politics into anything that we said.

And that was when we introduced Asif Raza Mir and Shahnaz Sheikh who was a student. So then for a while, we did do stage—we did Such Gup on stage. But we had to be careful because you had to get an NOC (No Objection Certificate). But then it did mean that I went back—firstly to photography. I travelled all over Pakistan with my camera and just took pictures of women and children; the most endangered and targeted species at that time. And then was when we started Rohtas in '81. That was when I met Pasha who had just come back from America and wanted to start something so we used his gallery. So then the curating began because the work that was being produced could not be shown anywhere. So this became the outlet for that.

SI: But it's still Zia's time.

SH: It is of course. Therefore, we had to be careful. But we still showed it because after all, it was not so public. But even then—we were being cussed and we said we’re not going to show calligraphy because that was officially sanctioned. We're not going to show landscape because that was officially sanctioned. So that was how we started—I remember Gulgee came with his work and we said we're not going to show it because it was calligraphy. He was very offended by that. But we showed, for example, Anwar Saeed's first show which was heavily political and the next morning that column appeared in The Muslim about the work—praising it but you could tell what it was about. So we dashed to the gallery and we took down the work and we just put up other stuff. Because the CID came and they looked very puzzled because there was nothing that was described in the paper. In fact, he said to me ‘Yeh tau nahin likha thaa. Mein ne kaha kabhi na yaqeen karain jo akhbar main likha ho sab bakwaas hoti hai. (This isn't what the paper wrote about. I said never believe what the newspapers write, it's all rubbish).’ And he agreed with me.

SI: I'm very curious about the word we use; 'sanctioned'. Like in Zia's time where landscapes were 'sanctioned'…was there a law or was it unspoken?

SH: No, there was no law. It's just that patronage was withdrawn and patronage was given.

SI: So the unspoken way of implementing it.

SH: Yes. And also saying that calligraphy is Islamic and it's abstract and being hammered at you all the time. If you look at the embassies of that time, they took down all the artwork that they had and you had Aslam Kamal's calligraphies suddenly all over the place. Every embassy would do this.

SI: And it sort of coincided with the international movement of calligraphy, like Iran was going through a similar phase at that time. And then in North Africa, things started to come out in terms of calligraphy as sort of the Islamic art.

SH: Yes. But here you see the thing is the traditional calligraphers, they would get a boost now and then, but it was the carpetbaggers who took advantage of it. So you had this, this dreadful guy who was doing awful work—something Farooqi—he was doing some really vulgar calligraphy, and everybody was doing calligraphy and Sadequain forgets all his figurative work and suddenly becomes a Quranic propagator. So it made you very cynical about the art form. Even though someone like Zahoor who had been trained or taught, he would wrinkle up his face at the ugliness of what was being done and then he would say look at the way they should be etc., and he'd say look at the way Shakir sahib has used it. At that time nobody told Shakir to do that, it was simply that he was interested in exploring it.

SI: The form of it.

SH: Yes, the form of it and the way of really…as a designer, he was kind of negotiating the idea of doing something that is very abstract but spiritual simply as a visual artist. So there was a very different way of approaching it. But this was grossly opportunistic and therefore one developed this kind of reaction to it.

SI: And what's happening in NCA at that time, after Zia comes in?

SH: Well after Zia came in the pressures on the institution were immense. The first pressure came of course from the Jamiat and the Jama'at deciding they would be poised to take over this institution, the only one that resisted them.

SI: Punjab University?

SH: Well, from everywhere; Punjab University especially because they were across the road. Interestingly one of our old students who told Ahmed Khan, he came and saw him and said my uncle is the head of the local sector of the Jama'at—I've forgotten what you call them. He was from Bahawalpur and he said that they had a meeting and they said this institution has to be taken over, and then they named about six or eight people who first have to be targeted. Of course, myself, Ahmed Khan, Zahoor, I think two or three other names were taken. And that if they are removed then the way is open. So they were especially looking to find ways and means and one day one of my students came to me and he said I want to talk to you. He was from Faisalabad. He said ‘please change the lock on your office door because there was a meeting yesterday and they're going to plant something in your room.’ So, of course, me being me, I said ‘they can do anything they want to.’ He said ‘nahi ma'am please change kar lain (no ma'am, please change it), it's dangerous.’ I didn't change the lock on my door but I became more careful. But the first thought for them was to get students admitted into the institution, which they tried. We pretty soon started realising it.

By that time the pressures on Iqbal Hassan the principal, were very, very intense and he almost became a heart patient as a result of those years—he did become a heart patient. Because they were battling to get in and there was the tension with the students—within the institution also, because we had an extreme Left there also. They couldn't do anything outside so they were getting ready for a fight inside. They did manage to enroll two or three students in the school who started creating problems. There was an attempt from Karachi especially because that was a stronghold of Jamiat, so Abbasi and I went ourselves for the interviews and so on. And we found …because you see they used to fail the entrance test because you had to be very good at drawing. So that was usually a good filter, but then they started having paid drawing lessons for the students wanting to get, which we found out.

And I still remember very vividly one boy whose sister worked for Nawa-i-Waqt in Karachi. He got through in the drawing test and his English was also okay. When he came to the interview when we started grilling him about—he was a student of Karachi University —so we said why do you want to switch from the university? And he just said no, I want to come to NCA. Then we asked ‘supposing you disagree with somebody or something, what do you do normally?’ He said something like ‘main apna pistol nikaal laita hoon (I draw my handgun)’—something like that. He blurted it and then he realised that he said totally the wrong thing. Then he said ‘mera matlab yeh nahi tha (no, that's not what I meant).’ But the thing was we noted there and then that he carries arms so he was disqualified immediately. But we had to be very, very vigilant at the entry level. Because a lot of their students or workers were older, so that was when the college decided to have an age limit, because that was another way they were going to get in. So you tried all kinds of ways of keeping certain elements out, but even then some of them got in and then there was a big fight when the Jamiat attacked the college and the principal's office and smashed the screens and…

SI: What year is this?

SH: By this time Abbasi had become the principal because Iqbal had stepped down because he couldn't take the pressure…1980 something.

SI: Early years of the 1980s.

SH: Yes. You'll have to check to see when Iqbal stepped down; it will be on the panel in the principal's office.

SI: And what about in terms of teaching? Did you have to make any changes pedagogically?

SH: We had to be very careful about the thesis exhibition because students were wanting to be political. And you had to persuade them to do it in a very subtle way. Like there was one girl who had done nudes and we didn't want her to show them, so we had to show them in one of the offices and it was not open to the public, only to the jury—that kind of thing. The first class that was graduating after Bhutto was hanged was Anwar Saeed's class and one of his paintings showed the High Court jis main daraarain saari parhi huwi theen (which had cracks all over). So somebody said this could be taken as contempt of court. We let it go but we were very worried. Afshar had done a male nude in that exhibition so again we were extremely worried as to how that would be taken. We were constantly on tenterhooks all the time. And then Colin David one day came to me and said I want to show you something and he opened this magazine and inside he had a piece of paper; he'd done a caricature of Zia-ul-Haq in which he'd made him look like Dracula. I froze when I saw that and I said don't show it around. He said I'm just showing it to a few close friends.

SI: It was just a drawing?

SH: It was a caricature—a drawing.

SI: Yes but it wasn't printed in the magazine?

SH: No, no question. Because printing presses by that time were under surveillance. They could not print anything without going through the censor. The press had to go through the censor. Many newspapers had a front page with one column missing—white—that was happening constantly. Zahoor did a drawing on Nawabpur case when this woman was paraded naked. This was the time when I really started painting again with a vengeance. Starting from 1980 onwards was my most prolific period.

SI: Of painting? Being an artist?

SH: Of painting, being an artist and using the female nude, using collage, using a lot of text—some text which had political possibilities.

SI: You also started doing printmaking.

SH: Yes. This was the time where I am doing this kind of stuff. It was interesting that while a whole lot of artists were doing calligraphy and landscape, there were some who were going this way. It was kind of a parallel.

SI: Totally opposite direction.

SH: Yes and mainly it was women actually who were involved in this. This was when we started comparing notes. When I went to Karachi I got a few women artists together. Started talking to them about doing this manifesto and how we needed to look at what we were doing. And it sort of ran parallel to the Women's Action Forum being set up; so all of that was going on at the same time. Shoaib was arrested and on the same day that my father was arrested thirty years before. The exact date, it was quite surrealistic. I was in Islamabad for an exhibition of women—the one I had done was a photographic exhibition.

SI: And the year is?

SH: 1981. My show was going to be put up by the Women's Ministry. They had sponsored it. I refused to have the show and came back without putting up the show. I had it later but I came back immediately. He was in jail for about three and a half months.

SI: Why was he arrested?

SH: Four hundred people were arrested that night—everybody from Habib Jalib to Mazhar Ali Khan to I.A. Rehman.

SI: For standing up against the government?

SH: This was in response to the hijacking of a PIA plane by al-Zulfiqar. Every writer, every well know journalist—Waris Mir, People's Party leaders, Raza Kazim, Dr Mubashar Hassan, Mehmood Ali Kasuri, you name it, everybody was in jail that night. About 400 people— even the actor Muhammad Ali. Wo actor Habib ko bhi utha ke lay gaye. Pata chala wo ghalati se lay gaye hain. Habib koi People's Party ka banda tha Gujranwala ka, us ko laina thae, tau is ko utha ke lay gaye. Khair is ko chorh diya phir. (They also took the actor Habib. It turned out that the man they were looking for was Habib from Gujranwala who was a member of the People's Party and they picked the actor up instead. Anyway, they let him go). But so on and so forth.

SI: So he was in jail for three and a half months.

SH: Yes and Meera was exactly the same age I was when my dad was arrested. It's so weird; history really does repeat itself in that way. But of course, this was less serious in the way that he was just a threat to public safety, not a traitor. And he was among the first lot to be released because again there were quite a few teachers who were arrested. I believe whoever the suwaar khana ya job bhi koi thaa governer ( Sawaar Khan or whoever was the governor at that time), I don't remember who the Governor was, they were looking at all the states of…I was told later that Afridi who was the commissioner he was saying can you guarantee public calm. And he said I can't while you have people like Shoaib Hashmi under arrest who are popular teachers. And so I can't guarantee…So that was one of the reasons why. And I think that day there were quite a few, 20 to 30 people, who were released.

It was a time of great anxiety but also great rebelliousness. You were in solidarity with not a lot of people but very, very firmly in solidarity. And it was in terms of writing, poetry, some art—not so much, lawyers' activism, women’s activism; it was in that sense a growing up period because we had never had such a savage government before. Tau jis ko kehta hain ke aap ko doodh ka doodh paani ka paani nazar ana shuroo ho gya tha (The truth had become evident). We were able to recognise who is willing to take the risk for what they believed to be right. They were tough and people suffered and people gave their lives. Surayya Shahida Jabeen, her…

24 May 2017, Part 3

SH: I think the thing to be remembered is the socio-political conditions at that time, what we were watching on television, the visual culture was being changed. For example, we were lucky that the chairman of our Board of Governors was Dr Muhammad Afzal who was in fact, a relative of Zia-ul-Haq, but a very enlightened man who had been in Saudi Arabia for a long time. He was an MBA and he was made the Minister of Education. But before that he was Chairman UGC, and because we had had one or two nasty chairmen before that who were very retrogressive and kaafi unhon ne kaha ke National College of Arts main behurmati hoti hai aur behudgi hoti hai (they would often say that activities at the National College of Arts were dishonourable and obscene etc.).

But Dr Afzal was a real welcome change—an enlightened man, a progressive man— surprisingly so considering the situation. Like once he told me that there was a file that had landed on his table saying that all sculpture should be banned from all the institutions. So he told me ‘main ne aisee wo file gum kee hai hai ke kabhi kissi ko nahi millay gee (I have kept that file in a place nobody will be able to find).’ So we had that kind of a person also; these key people in certain positions of power who were really the saving grace at that time and saved us at particular moments. But there were all kinds of other things like this movement started within the institution to remove people like us so therefore we found pamphlets going around. I had shown ‘Learning to See’ by John Berger and they said I showed obscene films to students. At that time Abbasi was not the principal, Iqbal was, and this guy, now he's a hot shot architect sucking up to me like anything, but he was the head of the Jamiat. He's the architect of Bab-e-Pakistan, this memorial to the refugee at Walton, and he took a recorder and went to provoke Abbasi in her office hoping that she would say something and he could use it against her.

SI: And the recording was…?

SH: He had it in his pocket and he produced it in front of the Board of Governors when he was hauled up because there was an inquiry and all these boys were called after the onslaught and the fights. So he was saying ‘ke jo sattar ka concept hai wo kia hai, aur yahan pe sab jo larkian hain yeh karti hain woh karti hain (what is the concept of purdah/veiling over here and how do all the girls conduct themselves here).’ Because I had actually asked my students to draw themselves because it was winter and we couldn't have the model for anatomy. Jo hum langot wali drawing kartay thyt kar nahin saktay thay (We were not able to have the live drawing class with the model in a loin cloth). So he went and said ‘Mrs Hashmi has asked the students to draw themselves which is shameless.’ I was also not stupid. I had told each student that please draw yourselves—you know, take your shirt off or whatever—but I don't want to put the work up, I want to see each student's work separate, so nobody will see anybody else's work. So that is the kind of way one negotiated between what was and whatever.

I used to teach History of Cultures and the book is a Marxist interpretation of history. So this student stood up when we were talking about evolution and he said ‘Quran main tu likha hai ke itnay hafton main ya itnay dinon main Allah ne dunya banayee aur aap keh rahi hain pata nahi kitne hazaron saal (The Quran says Allah created the world in so many days or weeks and you're saying that it took thousands of years).’ So you have to think on your feet and I said ‘wo tau insaan ka zehan yeh cheezain kehta hai, Allah ke liye tau yeh aik lamha bhi nahin hai (that's the perception of the human brain, but for God, it's not even a moment in time).’ So you had to be quick to give that repartee so that you could be safe.

I had a military intelligence guy sitting in my lecture and they came to Abbasi and they said ‘we want you to turn her out’ and she said ‘that whatever she does outside the college is not my concern. If she's done anything wrong inside the college then bring it to me.’ So I used to be watched by these characters. And they used to watch other people also. So you had to be tremendously careful about what you said. You could be baited, trapped at any time, which was not a very nice situation to be in. And for the students generally, it was very difficult because they felt that we were being the dictators. Hamara tau yeh tha ke survive kar jayen (Our aim was to just survive this) intact with the academic programme as intact as possible. That was the primary concern that that should not be changed. Magar extracurricular activities ke saath bohat problems hoti thee (But we had many problems with the extracurricular activities.) Aik aa gya tha notice ke larke larkian stage par ikathay nahi aa saktay, imagine NCA main aap ye keh dain (We got a notice placing a restriction on boys and girls appearing on stage together. Imagine imposing that in a place like NCA.)

SI: This is in Zia's time?

SH: Yes. So the rebellion that was taking place, we had to face it. They are not going to go on the streets and face it. I remember at one point they said you could sing but there will be no dancing on stage—now how do you explain a mime performance. I still remember telling Anwaar-ul-Haq to make sure your mime doesn't look like a dance move. He was so angry with me, ‘aap yeh keh rahi hain (You are asking this of me?)?’ Main ne kaha haan kyonke main yeh chah rahi hoon ke aap mujhe aglay saal nazar ayen - hum saaray yahan pe aglay saal nazar ayen (I said that's because I would like to see you here next year - I would like see us all here next year.) But it was very difficult to take the long-term view when you are young and full of fury. So those eleven years took their toll on the nerves, on one's behaviour, as it did change the entire nation. Where suddenly you found you were being told to fast. You had to fast; if you didn't fast you had to show a medical certificate and all the rest of it. Yeh sab cheezain jo theen woh aa gaye thay orders ke jee aap sab jo hain Head of the institutions should lead the prayer. (Orders were given to all heads of institutions to lead the prayers.) Abbasi tau aurat thee, wo bach gayee (Abbasi escaped this as she was a woman). But teachers were told they had to go for prayers and to tell our students all to go for prayers.

SI: And you did?

SH: Meri jo drawing class thee main ne kaha namaz ka time hai tau aap jayen (In my drawing class I told the students to go as it was the prayer time.) Then, I went to my office and when I came back everybody was still drawing. When I asked what was happening, one of the students said, ‘ma'am we have all decided that when the next government is in power, all those who went to pray will be whipped, so we are not going.’

Luckily we had the sense of humour at NCA with which you could survive. But once you had these penetrated people it became difficult and this is why there was a big argument when Qaiser, a very brilliant boy, had done some drawings and they said they were blasphemous. Some cartoons he had made—I don't know what it was. It was a big fight. They brought in reinforcements from Punjab University. Students were beaten up. Abbasi then filed a complaint, not in the police but the authorities. Luckily by that time the Governor was Jilani. He took a very dim view and they had a military trial overnight and they were expelled. One boy was sent to jail. Not from our students but from the Punjab University. The others were expelled. Poor Qaiser was a nice boy but we suspended him for a year, though our hearts bled. But we had to do it to both sides. And Musadiq lost his eyesight in one eye. He was beaten up by Jamiat—Musadiq Sanwal, he was a brilliant boy— a singer and poet. It was that bad.

And this was an institution which had a very different history to any other institution. Other places gave in without a fight—they just didn't resist. But I remember when Yasir was in Government College, the anti-Jamiat students decided to take a stand in the election. They made a Ravian's Front and they wanted him to head it. And Shoaib and I had a very difficult decision to make because he could have been killed. There were no holds barred with that lot. So Yasir said that if my parents agree then I'll stand for the election. This was the young Ravians League, the FA students. So eventually we said we have to give him permission. It was very tough. But he won hands down, but for those two years when he held that office, we were like…sara waqt guillotine hamaray gardan e hoti thee (there was always a guillotine swinging over our necks). Ye choti choti cheezain theen lekin us waqt bohat mushkil aur bohat paharh theen. (These were the little things but at that time they were huge hurdles.)

SI: Do you remember when Colin David's exhibition was taken down?

SH: It was not taken down, it was bashed. It was in his house.

SI: In his house? I thought it was at NCA Gallery.

SH: No, it was not a public place. It was his private studio where he put up the show. This was during Benazir's time. It was 1989.

SI: So things happened in Benazir's time.

SH: Yes, Zia-ul-Haq is alive and well, as we know. The culture we have now is exactly what originated in that time. Absolutely. Woh tau phalta phoolta raha hai itnay saal araam se, baad tak (It continued to flourish for years after.)

SI: So during this time there wasn't anything like this. So people were so careful they wouldn't even bring it to a point where their exhibitions were taken off or the artwork was shown openly in public?

SH: Sadequian's work was attacked. His paintings were burnt.

SI: Where?

SH: That was in the Punjab Council of Arts which was at that time in Freemasons' Hall in Charing Cross.

SI: Since you mentioned Sadequain I just wanted to bring you back here and maybe we can then wind up for this part. Can you talk a little bit about Sadequain? Because we have talked about everybody else but Sadequain is a figure who has just separated himself from the rest.

SH: Well, he was a kind of stand-alone figure—like Chughtai—because, unlike people like the others, who always became either part of institutions or part of groups, neither Sadequain nor Chughtai ever did that. Nor did they encourage any shagirds (apprentices). In his last years, Sadequian did have one; he had a nephew and then he had a shagird who worked on his mural, that I saw myself because by that time he was too weak. He believed in the sort of 'hero artist'. The stand-alone figure and when he was doing the Lahore…