After petitions filed by Justice (retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed and a former chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the Supreme Court has directed Pemra to formulate policy guidelines against ‘vulgarity’ shown on TV channels. According to a law already in force, TV channels are barred from telecasting any obscene material, but it does not define obscenity.
The Pemra chairman has insisted defensively that “no definition for obscenity or vulgarity exists in the Constitution, the Pakistan Penal Code or Pemra laws”. One Pemra official thinks a reference to parliament will have to be made, too, but at the present juncture, it appears that the Court might present the legislature with a pious fait accompli.
Defining vulgarity or fahashi is an intellectual exercise. In Pakistan, any clash of intellect with ideology is to be feared because the former will be predictably defeated by the latter. And any reference to ideology is bound to hand the field over to the currently powerful clergy by reason of their direct or indirect nexus with the Taliban,
which has already taken steps to extirpate vulgarity from various parts of the country. This is not the first time that an intellectually impoverished Pakistan has confronted the problem of vulgarity on TV. In 2003, under the rule of a ‘permissive’ general, a debate took place on the subject that mainly focused on the ‘obscenity’ of Indian movies.
The debate petered out mercifully amid confusion and anger because soon the national mind was exhausted getting itself around the word fahashi in a literalist environment that favours Islamic tradition at the cost of local culture.
