Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: Activists supported them, the chief minister tweeted in their favour, but then a statement against them by the valley’s chief cleric ended it all.
Just over a month after its debut performance during a competition, Pragaash, Kashmir’s all-eve band has finally called it quits.
“Just tell everyone that we have quit,” Noma Bhatt, the band’s lead vocalist confirmed through a text message.
“We are no more a band.”
The girls were in the midst of a row, which erupted after activists reacted to reports that its members had quit following hate mails on their facebook page.
The band girls denied the reports then. But on Sunday, when the valley’s Mufti-e-Azam or the Chief Cleric, Basheeruddin AHmed asked them “to shun the path of deviation”, they perhaps thought enough was enough.
When Ms Bhatt last spoke to me she sounded confident and brave, but said her parents were worried. “Its no big deal, I can convince them. To quit playing music will never be an option,” she had told me, unaware of the ‘heat’ to follow.
Ranting
Pragaash’s performance – with Noma Nazir Bhatt as the vocalist, Aneeqa playing guitar and Farah on drums – at the competition in December had won the school girls a standing ovation, but no sooner did it happen than their page on Facebook was filled with hate comments and abuses.
Then started the ranting by online activists calling for action against the “hatemongers” who had made the abusive comments. Significantly, despite all this ordinary people on the ground didn’t know much about the whole issue, nobody discussed it.
But soon the state’s Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah soon tweeted saying he had asked the police to probe into the ‘threats’, a move which sought to end the uproar by the activists.
Abdullah’s intervention, however, took the row to a new level. Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani issued a statement condemning such activities as did Mufti Basheeruddin who assured that singing “was un-Islamic and not a contribution to the society”
Irony
The all-girl band was the first in Kashmir where a two-decade old bloody rebellion is waning and youngsters are taking to music. Many musical groups have come up in recent years, many among them choosing music and singing to vent their anger against new Delhi’s rule.
But this group symbolised change in the Muslim-majority region, outwardly conservative, but where young girls singing to an audience is disapproved of.
Ironically there have been many prominent female singers who were a rage among people during their time; Raj Begum for one. Even the union Health Minister’s wife, Shameema Azad, sang and is known to have performed at public functions.
“But the word ‘rock’ seems to have made all the difference,” says Tariq Andrabi, a shopkeeper in capital Srinagar.
“I think the word ‘rock band’ gave an idea to many that the west had taken over us Kashmiris,” Andrabi laughs.
Mess
The Mufti’s statement, what many believed was a ‘Fatwa’ or a religious decree did no go down well with all. Many questioned his timing asking why he chose silence when rock bands formed by boys sprang up in numbers.
“The grand-mufti has never come out with a statement when women perform traditional dancing like Rouf on government functions like Independence Day and Republic Day, or when radio and TV broadcast traditional songs. Why now?” a prayer leader of a downtown mosque told Hindustan Times.
Although the band quit only a day after Muftis statement, yet Ms Bhatt was hesitant to cite that as the sole reason for the decision. It was the whole “mess” perhaps.
She wanted me to tell people that the band quit because of the “prevailing situation”, but quickly added that it were better if no reason were given at all, fearful it could lead to another controversy.
“Just say we have quit,” she wrote.
