Written by: Zeba Hyder and Dr. Dushka H. Saiyid
Posted on: April 27, 2018 | 
| 中文
Madeeha Gauhar
Madeeha Gauhar was a force of nature: lively and feisty, with a passion for theatre. Even as a child, she fought against injustice and put up a fight, whether it was a taxi driver overcharging or an authoritarian teacher being unreasonable. A friend recalls how at the age of eight, Madeeha dressed her up in a Hawaiian costume and they came out in the living room and performed before their mothers and their friends.
She grew up in Lahore of the ‘60s and ‘70s, a peaceful, culturally rich and diverse city. Her own family background was interesting: a Pushtoon father who had served in the Pakistan army, and a left-wing sari clad mother from South Africa with South Asian roots. The parents had met in London where the mother, Khadijah Gauhar, was studying at the famed Fabian institution, the London School of Economics and Political Science. She hailed from Cape Town, and was a left-wing intellectual in her own right, and Madeeha seems to have inherited her mother’s radicalism. Khadijah Gauhar had worked as the Assistant Editor of the Afro-Asian Book Club, and later for Punjab Times and the English weekly Punjab Punch, and wrote extensively on the issues of apartheid and women. She spent the last years of her life working in Baltistan on maternity and child health, while living in extreme conditions.
Madeeha’s passion for the theater was evident since her student days. She was the President of the Dramatic Clubs both at Kinnaird (KC) and Government Colleges. When the teacher in charge of dramatics at KC refused to stage Lorca’s House of Bernarda Alba to commemorate women’s year, Madeeha staged an all students’ production behind the theatre, while the college play was being performed inside the theater. While still at college, she staged an anti-apartheid play, which was not a college play, and performed it at various venues in Lahore and Islamabad.
Zia ul Haq’s seizure of power in 1977 pushed Pakistan back into a medieval and obscurantist direction. Resistance came from different sections of the society, but the Women’s Action Forum emerged to oppose legislation that was reducing women to the status of a second-class citizen and she was closely associated with that movement. Madeeha who was by now acting in Pakistan Television plays, refused to accept the censorship that now prevailed in the government controlled channel and enrolled in the Master’s program of the Government College. If the House of Bernarda Alba had been about the suffocation and oppression of women, Sartre’s play, Men Without Shadows, was about the resistance during the Vichy government. The parallels between Marshall Petain and General Zia ul Haq were obvious. Not surprisingly, the college administration locked them out of the auditorium, but they broke the locks and still managed to stage the play. Madeeha’s weapon of resistance was the theater.
One of the first plays performed by Ajoka Theater, which she founded in 1984, was Jaloos by the Bengali playwright Badal Sircar. Not surprisingly, he was an anti-establishment playwright from Calcutta during the Naxalite movement of the ‘70s, and had acquired fame for his street theater. Jaloos was performed in the lawn of her mother’s house in Lahore, and drew a large audience. However, the agencies were quick to start harassing them for performing in the Cantonment area.
She got a British Council scholarship and left for London for Master’s in Theater Studies from the University of London. She met Shahid Nadeem, who was living in exile there since 1979, having gotten into trouble with the authorities over union activity in the PTV. He wrote the first play for Ajoka, Barri (Acquittal), about four women, who are in prison on various charges, from blasphemy to Hadood. It acquired an iconic status both in Pakistan and India, and was turned into a television serial called Neelay Hath.
When Zia ul Haq’s plane crashed in 1988, Shahid Nadeem was able to return to Pakistan, and Madeeha tied the knot with her soulmate. It became a dream team, with original scripts by Shahid Nadeem and direction by Madeeha Gauhar, addressing such social issues as acid burning of women or the working conditions of brick kiln workers through community theatre. They revived the tales of such anti-establishment figures from our history as Dara, Bhagat Singh and Bulha, and then there were lighter and hugely popular plays like Burqavaganza. Dara was adapted by the National Theatre of London and performed to great acclaim there. They were a popular theater group in India and performed many times there also. These themes examined and then pilloried patriarchy, religious obscurantism and other forms of exploitation.
At a time when NGOs have become synonymous with moneymaking, Ajoka despite its international standing was always struggling for funds. Madeeha laughingly told a friend that how a relative had borrowed her car, and then returned it saying it was embarrassing to be seen driving it. Her warmth and humanity was shown by how she took care of Ms. Shamim Anwar, right up to the time that she passed away. Ms. Anwar was a brilliant history teacher of Kinnaird who had fallen on bad times after retirement.
In a society that fosters obeisance to authority, absurd levels of conformity and crass materialism, she in tandem with Shahid Nadeem, showed us the importance of resistance and the counter narrative through the powerful medium of theater.
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