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Sunday, September 21, 2008

13. Mustansar Husain Tarar, the disciple of Mir

In the elections of 1988, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif emerged as the two major leaders. Each of them got two turns but failed to complete either. In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf took over and his program of "enlightened moderation" remained the hallmark till 2006. On the cultural front, the personality who may be regarded as “the consensus figure” was Mustansar Hussain Tarar, whose travelogues kept inspiring a new zeal among Pakistanis for exploring the geographical beauty of their country. These twenty years were also marked with the emergence of independent channels on television and a popularity of ambitious television productions – again an area in which Tarar was among the most prominent names as a screenwriter, actor and anchorperson.

Similarities between Mir Taqi Mir and Tarar may be unsuspected but they can hardly be overlooked. To name just one: the basic ethos of Mir's poetry was the disintegration of a civilization, which is also the theme of Tarar's work (represented by the motif of a dying river in his novels).

You can read an interview of Mustansar Husain Tarar on my website or find out more about him on Wikipedia.

Next: Pakistan, a disciple of Shah Waliullah?

1 comment:

  1. Greetings,

    Thank you for this post.

    I want to learn more about this interesting figure in Pakistan's history. I very much like how he apparently had much television popularity among children.

    All good wishes,

    robert

    ReplyDelete