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South Asian Sufism, especially when expressed as Barelvism, was largely seen as “irrational” and “superstitious” by the modernist founders of Pakistan, and as “distorted Islam” and even “heretical” by the Islamists and the orthodox ulema.
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Yet, this genre’s emphasis on reflecting a more esoteric strand of the faith and its relationship with the region’s shrine culture made it difficult for it to be accepted as a viable urban indulgence. Unlike Eastern classical music, whose roots were largely pre-Islamic, qawwali was one music genre in the region whose origins and identity were almost entirely Muslim. More than the liberalism often exhibited by the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (d 1948), the state decided to utilise the writings and ideas of Iqbal to neutralise the versions of Islam being championed by radical Islamic outfits. During the commotion, the state and government had distributed pamphlets authored by the modernist Islamic scholar Khalifa Abdul Hakim, in which he tried to demonstrate that the famous Muslim poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (adopted as Pakistan’s “national poet”) was squarely opposed to the manner in which the Muslim clergy and ulema had practised and advocated Islam. In 1953, the state had crushed a violent anti-Ahmadiyya movement led by radical Deobandi and Islamist groups. The setting of its entry was rather dramatic. But during the period when the state was attempting to divorce the provincial and the so-called Hindu influences from folk music and South Asian classical music genres, and consequently bring them in line with the still-nascent ideas of Pakistani nationalism and Muslim identity, the qawwali began to be featured on Radio Pakistan. Qawwalis delivered in Urdu were rare, even though some attempts had been made in this context in India before Partition. Secondly, the genre wasn’t quite able to migrate to the mainstream from its core areas of origin, ie the Sufi shrines. Traditionally, they were mostly sung in Punjabi or Persian. Qawwalis were only rarely played on state-owned radio. The traditional Sufi devotional music genre, the qawwali, did not have any provincial or non-Muslim bent, but it too did not sit well with the state and government. In an attempt to address the issues of provincialism in the region’s folk music, and the Hindu origins of South Asian classical music genres, the state began a process of localising them in the context of Pakistani nationhood and the Muslim separatism that had led to the creation of Pakistan. There was also the view among Pakistan’s early nationalist ideologues that classical South Asian music genres were either entirely “Hindu” in nature or largely informed by Hindu rituals. In fact, provincialism based on ethnic considerations was seen as an existential threat by the state and a serious challenge to Pakistani federalism. Regional folk music (Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch, Pashtun and Bengali) was largely avoided because the state and government of Pakistan believed these might promote “provincialism”, which was greatly discouraged during that period.
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