Fitting the bill: commissioned theatre projects on human rights in Pakistan: the work of Karachi-based theatre group Tehrik e Niswan

Abstract

Theatre practitioners in Pakistan's southern city Karachi have seen a recent surge of interest in the past two decades by donor agencies from the Western world to fund theatre companies and employ various forms of theatre for development to service their agendas and areas of interest within their target communities. This trend may have lent a structure to the practice but it has also brought its own share of problems. Whereas the patronage of donor agencies has facilitated the spread of community theatre, it has also gradually defined the transformation of some theatre groups from their politically motivated ideologies to more reformist agendas. This paper examines this phenomenon through the practice of one of Karachi's oldest theatre groups, the Tehrik e Niswan (The Women's Movement), and its recent engagement with community theatre projects within its practice through two recent British Council commissioned projects on forced marriages (2004) and honour killings (2004–06). It also observes the role of Western donor agencies in creating the organisational structure for theatre companies, consequently determining the issues that are taken to remote audiences, thus contributing to the gradual change in practice of political theatre in Pakistan.

Notes

1. The project was funded by the UK's Department for International Development and managed by the British Council.

2. Dual nationality is not a phenomenon particular to the UK and Pakistan. SACH has dealt with similar cases of women who hold dual nationalities of Pakistani and Norwegian and are settled in the cities of Sialkot and Kharan.

3. In 2004, a single bench of the Sindh High Court banned all trials conducted under the Jirga system throughout Sindh and held all those violating the law to be charged under the contempt of court law. Justice Rehmat Hussain Jaffery, in his landmark judgement, said that while under the West Pakistan Criminal Law (amendment) Act 1963, Jirga trials were permissible, the law had now been repealed and the Jirga system was unlawful and illegal, and against the provisions of the constitution of Pakistan (DAWN, 2004). In defiance of this, another news report proves the dismissal of the word of law where a Jirga in Upper Dir issued a verdict in favour of honour killings and warned of dire consequences to those who would report against them. A member of the Jirga quoted: ‘We stick to our verdict that honour killing is permissible and those who commit it will not be liable to any punishment. We will not allow the aggrieved party to report the case to the police or file the case before a court. We will kill those who will violate the Jirga verdict’. The Senior Superintendent of Police in Upper Dir said that the Jirga's verdict was illegal and all cases on honour killings would be registered and those found guilty would be punished according to the law (Jan, 2006).