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rather than their politics. The artist has chosen to speak in a new voice on the current international situation which perhaps requires a passionate engagement that is not suited to her style. She has come a long way from intimate dialogue to political rhetoric. The difference 
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While Zarina owed the individuality of her earlier work to her home and upbringing in Aligarh, her lastest politically correct woodcuts seem to be indebted to New York. The mandala of memories has given way to cartography, a scientific tool of European imperialism, transforming autobiography into geography.


[[image with description:"Dividing Line", 2001. Woodcut with Urdu text]]

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between the two can be illustrated with the help of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's "Jaag Utha Africa" which he wrote to do his bit as a Marxist. In his non-political poems and ghazals, which incidentally are not without politics of the kind found in Urdu love poetry, he spoke in a mnemonic style, recalling the idiom and felicities of the classic ghazal form. One wonders if Zarina has finally left Aligarh and settled 
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permanently in New York. While she owed the individuality of her earlier work to her home and upbringing in Aligarh, her lastest politically correct woodcuts seem to be indebted to New York. The mandala of memories has given way to cartography, a scientific tool of European imperialism, transforming autobiography into geography. Zarina's maps remind us that the imperial game is still not over. On the contrary, it is being played under all sorts of euphemisms by powers bent on running the world on their own whims and fancies.
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The politics of Zarina's maps may have had greater resonance in New York than they did in Karachi. This is not to say that we do not sympathtise with the people of Grozny, Sarajevo, Beirut or Ahmedabad. After all, when Gandhi's ashram refused shelter to the beleaguered Muslims of Ahmedabad, the mazaar complex of the grandson and great grandson of well-known sufi Jahanian Jahangasht served as their safe haven. However, maps are public documents that do not engage personal sympathy. Zarina could not have mapped Aligarh and invited us to enter an intimate space saturated with nostalgia. Instead, she used occult signs and symbols. In the inhuman, brutal world we live in today, the ufaw or horizon is devoid of celestial suggestiveness as it opens into the same panorama of tragedy and bleakness. Zarina's New York is its own horizon, an unreal place represented by two parallel beams of light that illuminate the dakrness. Sebrenica is a graveyard and the Radcliff line dividing the Subcontinent is an eschatological entrapment. There is more hope in a line, however, than a blocked horizon. The woodcut titled "Dividing Line" is similar to Zarina's earlier work inasmuch as it stirs memories of the Subcontinent's partition. Moreover, the line that has separated people who once shared a history and a common culture can also become a pledge of love akin to a rakhi bandhan if the present thaw between India and Pakistan continues. We understand that it is up to the United States to decide how close the two should come by overcoming their differences. However, that too is nothing new. Historically, people belonging to different faiths and cultures coexisted peacefully under the system of sulah-e-kul in the Subcontinent. This harmony was subverted by the British and forsaken by the Indians in the name of nationalism. During the struggle for freedom, Iqbal raised his voice in protest to claim the whole world as his watan or homeland by declaring "Cheen-o Arab hamara, Hindustan hamaral Muslim hain hum, watan hai sara jahan hamara." The poet preached pan-Islamism and hoped for the revival of the fictitious ummah when the Muslim world was being reshaped by European imperial powers. The world has not changed since then and nor have the villains. Even so, the contrast between the poet and the artist could not be more graphic. The Wagnerian resonance of Iqbal's poetry was full of resolution, even if misguided. Shorn of political music and fanfare, Zarina's maps do not do much except to state, without comment, a fact of her life.
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