Dangerous Stakhanovite Tendencies



I forgot to mention something last week which was one of the most moving things I have seen on TV for a long time. It was Dan Cruickshank visiting Afghanistan earlier this year to see what had happened to the various wonders of Afghan culture over the last few years. I thought at first that it was a bit premature to concentrate on a few statues and paintings while a whole people were still suffering from every kind of privation. However, after a few minutes it became clear that Afghan popular culture had recovered remarkably well at least in the capital - Kabul Koffee Kulture ( Probably tea but I do like alliteration) is alive, thriving and rather attractive in a backpacker / adventurer sort of way. What was really moving was the extent of the efforts made by ordinary Afghans to safeguard treasures from the Taliban drive to remove all references to cultures other than their own limited version of history. Dan first visited, the Afghan National Gallery where the curator had risked his life to save the paintings. He had covered up all images of living beings which were banned as Iconography. The water colour has now been carefully removed to reveal the images. In Kabul Museum, many beautiful statues, Buddhas and other wonderful things had been smashed. He held in his hand half of the face from one of the smaller statues and it was heart-breaking; even more so later when he bargained for a copy of the Museum handbook in a small roadside bookshop and found a black and white photo of the very statue he had just been holding.

Any worries that this programme was inappropriate in the face of so much suffering were dispelled by the comments of a local "Commander" who made a speech which seemed genuine even through the translator. The main theme was that stealing the past of a country was one of the worst things you can do. It's evil to steal national treasures to sell them, but it its worse to destroy them simply to remove references to them. It is re-inventing the past like 1984 or more nearly analogous Napoleon's re-working of the "commandments " in "Animal Farm".

The final point was won by the Angels. The crew travelled over dangerous territory to visit the Bamiyan Buddhas ( I couldn't bring myself to put in any pictures of the Buddhas being blown up.) The giant spaces left by the Statues are powerful in themselves. They speak far more of religious Tolerance than the original images ever could. I have never been able to find a use for "the sound of one hand clapping" until now. That space describes the people who created it by their destruction ("Hate leads to suffering") just as the Buddhas themselves defined the people who created them. Good wins by either the presence of the Buddhas because they are images of peace and enlightenment or by their absence because this condemns their destruction. Excuse the mixed mythology but Siva wins every time.