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Picturing Pakistan's Past: The Beatles, Booze And Bikinis

EagleEyes

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Pakistan today is a conservative, Islamic country, but it was a far different place in its younger days.

In the 1960s and '70s, Pakistan's elite, many of them educated in the West, could publicly indulge in more liberal acts, including drinking alcohol. Pakistan was also part of the "hippie trail," from Turkey to India, which young Westerners traveled.

Once a major stop on the backpacking route, Western tourists don't exist in the Peshawar that I have come to know through my visits to family in the northwest corner of Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

If my parents saw "hippies" around hashish shops on their city's streets, they never mentioned them to me. The only Western women I've come by in Peshawar are in ads for talcum powder or maxi pads — their bodies often draped in an ominous shroud of black paint. Turns out this experience is common among millennials in Pakistan.

"Most of the stories about a more open and liberal Pakistan have come down to the young, post-'80s generations of Pakistan from their parents as oral anecdotes," Nadeem F. Paracha tells me in an e-mail. "But since most young Pakistanis have only known a more troubled and repressed Pakistan, they were incapable of picturing it."

Paracha, a columnist for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, spent two years scouring newspaper libraries and the personal photo collections of family, friends and acquaintances for images that reveal a more open society. The pictures he found make Pakistan's past seem like a completely foreign place.

What caused this great divide? Paracha offers one explanation: "We as a people and state began to crumble inwards."

According to Paracha, beginning in the 1970s, a deep suspicion of foreign powers and minority faiths began to set in that gave way to a more subtle, Islamic version of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.

From the images Paracha collected, it's clear that a lot has changed for Pakistanis in the past few decades.

In a four-part Web series called Also Pakistan, Paracha includes a newspaper clipping that describes how The Beatles' Paul McCartney was engulfed in a frenzy of fans at an airport bar in Karachi.

In today's Pakistan, alcohol is officially banned except by permit for non-Muslims, and it's hard to imagine that any global music sensation would pass through the country if he could avoid it.

While the pendulum might not swing back anytime soon, Paracha says presenting these photos has sparked optimism among young Pakistanis.

"It has given them a sense of pride, and more so, hope," he tells me, "that if Pakistan had deep roots in things like religious extremism, military rule and corruption, there was still an important part of the country's history that radiated a more confident, progressive, tolerant and joyous Pakistan."

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Western tourists smoke hashish on the roof of a hotel in Peshawar in 1972. Pakistan was an important destination along the "hippie trail," a popular route for Western backpackers that ran across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, usually ending in Nepal.

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Then-first lady Jacqueline Kennedy visited Pakistan in 1962. Here she is seen riding in a convertible with the then-ruler of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, through throngs of people in Karachi




Rakhshanda Khattak, shown here in 1972, was one of Pakistan's leading fashion models in the 1970s, before quitting and leaving the country in 1979.

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A 1963 clipping from Pakistan's Morning News describes how Pakistani pop fans gate-crashed their way into a bar at the Karachi Airport where The Beatles were having a drink. The band had arrived in Karachi en route to Hong Kong.


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The 1975 film Dulhan Aik Raat Ki (A Bride for One Night) was "for adults only." Such racy features were popular among middle-class Pakistanis in the early 1970s.

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A German tourist stands outside a hashish shop in 1976. Shops selling hashish sprang up in northwestern Pakistan when young Western tourists began to pour in from Afghanistan in the late 1960s.



The women on the cover of the May 1972 issue of Pakistan's The Herald look like they could be in Miami or Athens. The magazine initially focused on the changing fashion and social trends of urban Pakistani youth.

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Pakistani cricket batsman Sadiq Muhammad (left) and former Pakistani cricket captain Mushtaq Muhammad share a beer in Sydney in 1977. Later that year, alcohol would become illegal for Muslims in Pakistan.


Picturing Pakistan's Past: The Beatles, Booze And Bikinis : The Picture Show : NPR
 
60s/70s was much at ease .


please praise us the current youth of Pakistan in current period for putting a fight in such a difficult time.

Anyone/ women included working in 60s/70s with such liberal envirnoment should NOT be a big deal as compared to today where we are faced with 200000000000000% obsticles.
 
So what? Pakistan has changed, every nation changes, best Pakistan and its people make an effort to modernize that is all that matters now. Though the article is an interesting read NPR always have interesting content.
 
Political Islam has destroyed everything. Back in those days people in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan didn't knew what Shia or Sunni was.

Not 'political Islam' per se but the 'politicization of Islam' as a tool for dictators to use & abuse ! I could live with Pakistan as a State with Shariah Law or other 'collective' aspects of Islamic traditions were it to manifest itself through a proper, transparent democratic process ! What I can't live with is one man's Islam being shoved down the throat of nearly 200 million people with the help of religious nut-jobs (read Mullahs) who've literally torched the very fabric of our society !
 
So we essentially swung from one extreme to another ! What happened to the 'moderate' Pakistan ? :what:

They thought it was a phase and would pass... we just raised a whole generation in chaos and lost that track completely.. all we can do at the moment is to look through the fat glass dividing us from the world. They stopped coming and soon they will restrict us from leaving. That's when that moderate will have his back against the wall.. only then can we count on his violent outburst and pray he finds the right track.
 
Sometimes; all it takes is one man to change an entire generation... Pakistan needs an Honest solid leader with good foresight... within 5 years everything will normalize, the growth rate will come back to the normal, all the violence will halt. Moderate Pakistani led; society and economy has huge growth potential.
 
In some ways Pakistan of the yesteryear was a far more liberal place. Karachi use to have its Bars and Nightclubs like "Lido" and the "Oasis" and their "Burlesque " shows.

In other ways, the college environment is a lot more liberal today than the good old days. In the 60's and early 70's the college students were still a lot more segregated by gender. There was very little " Dating" openly. Today the Boyfriends/Girlfriends hang out openly in Karachi Colleges and that makes an old geyser like me green with envy. :D
 
In some ways Pakistan of the yesteryear was a far more liberal place. Karachi use to have its Bars and Nightclubs like "Lido" and the "Oasis" and their "Burlesque " shows.

In other ways, the college environment is a lot more liberal today than the good old days. In the 60's and early 70's the college students were still a lot more segregated by gender. There was very little " Dating" openly. Today the Boyfriends/Girlfriends hang out openlyin Karachi Colleges and that makes an old geyser like me green with envy. :D

You sir are a very naughty boy ! :D

I wonder what Mrs.Sage would think were she to read this ! :rofl:
 
Not 'political Islam' per se but the 'politicization of Islam' as a tool for dictators to use & abuse ! I could live with Pakistan as a State with Shariah Law or other 'collective' aspects of Islamic traditions were it to manifest itself through a proper, transparent democratic process ! What I can't live with is one man's Islam being shoved down the throat of nearly 200 million people with the help of religious nut-jobs (read Mullahs) who've literally torched the very fabric of our society !

I agree with you 100% here
We need a democratic Islamic nation that is not run by one man or one school of thought or anything like that.
If one group is trying to force it's versions of things on the people, the people should simply be able to vote them out.
 
Their is no question of moderation those things which are not allowed in Islam will be never allowed and will have to stop either on their own or Muslims will make sure they stop those evils sooner or later for that they make take law in their own hands but they will eventually stand up against all un Islamic things
 
I dont know if it fits in the context of pakistan, but from what I have seen about right wing nationalist/ religious nut who impose their views on the society, the only way to curtail their power is to ensure, religion stays at home and doesn't enter any institutions.
 
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