themes in the art and drag performances of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto / Faluda Islam

 Artist and memory activist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr. created a drag persona to address issues of Islamophobia and homophobia in the world. Drag is ​​a performance

of gender that parody gender norms could shatter the illusion that there are only two genders – man and woman – and lead to a proliferation of genders; or rather to a recognition of, and ability to speak about, the already existing great diversity of genders, sexualities, bodies and pleasures (Evans and Williams, 2013).

 

In an interview, Zulfikar, also known as Zulfi, discussed his drag persona “Faluda Islam”: “She is a zombie, she was resurrected through Wi-Fi technology and the way she died was in the future queer revolution,” Zulfi explained. “She’s sort of an oracle… she’s able to give an insight into [the] past, present and future” (Burke, 2018). Faluda disrupts the binaries of organic-machine, male-female, even life-death with each performance as a queer Muslim icon.

Zulfikar Jr. is named after his late ancestor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was a prominent politician and leader of the People’s Party in Pakistan. In a way that subverts heteronormative expectations of Zulfi, he bravely entered the international art world with pieces that address his cultural background and extended the limits of the name in creating a drag persona. Zulfi recalled his father, Murtaza Bhutto’s assasination, when discussing this persona, and the themes he wishes to explore: “I talk about injustice, who gets the right to live or die, who is the decider of that,” says Zulfi. “War comes up, aspects of martyrdom come up, Islamophobia comes up.” (Burke, 2018) In my understanding, he is addressing the existential weight of being born a male in a Shi’a family and the expectations of martyrdom of such a gender identity. This responsibility was heightened during the Iran-Iraq war that started in the late 1980s when mostly Shi’a men as well as children in Iran fought their enemy combatants in Iraq.

Zulfi explained his ideas in an interview with Reconstructed Mag in May, 2020:

Why are we forced to make our children and families martyrs? What are the forces against us that make us go into these spaces that end in death? The drag character Faluda Islam questions this. The character is my attempt to look at revolution through a high femme lens (Bhutto, 2020).

 

Digitisation allows for “humans to mobilise memories that cut across the individual and the collective, the institutional and the corporate, the local and the global in ways that disrupt conventional binaries of the public and private, of the body and other” (Reading, 2016). Faluda exists digitally and in performances, disrupting the idea that a “man” protects “his women.” Faluda’s martyrdom and reincarnation as a Zombie may have been for all queer individuals, rather than for prolonging a heterosexual mode of reprdocution. Faluda as a Zombie, in Zulfi’s intention, also remembers the anti-imperialist slave rebellions in Haiti, where Zombies were an esoteric instrument to defeat the white settler-enslavers.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Zulfi’s other conventional artworks likewise explore the Shi’a Muslim’s conundrum of remembering assaults in Islamic history through lamenting the past, while other events celebrate masculinity as strength. As an artist, Zulfi highlights the inherent queerness of such an identity, despite the state’s priority to limit the identity as straight and one-dimensional. In critiquing the national imagery of a strong man, Zulfi said in an interview, in the context of his textile artwork series “Mussalman Muscleman”: “What for me is masculinity? It's softness” (Bhutto, 2017). In his works of a fictitious queer rebellion, he uses imageries of “brown and black body by creating glamorous queered future guerrilla fighters who do not fit neatly into categories of gender, race, faith, threat or desirable subject.” The works sought “to challenge the shifting borders between terrorist and freedom fighter as seen and named by the Anglo-Saxon world” (Bhutto, 2019). Memory, gender and technology are the themes explored by Bhutto’s works and the tools which allow him to express his ideas to a largely heteronormative public.

 

 

 

One of his exhibits

In “Future Faithful: Islamic Experiments in Space Exploration and Posthumanism” in 2021 at the Bass & Reiner gallery in San Francisco, U.S., Zulfi's artworks incorporate imagery of the calf as a reference to the second chapter in the Holy Quran, “The Heifer.”

 

 

“mustaq-bel 2,” 2019. By Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Zulfi’s artworks reference traditional architecture and mythology. The calf has appeared prior as a sacrificial motif in Abrahamic traditions. This metaphoric practice has been substituted by the sheep or lamb in some ritual instances out of respect for others who found the sacrifice of the cow offensive, such as in India and Pakistan. In Sher Shah, Pakistan, a Shi’a saint’s shrine has been used by pious locals both as a shrine for fulfilling human prayers and a cow sanctuary, which demonstrates the power of cultural syncretism in the subcontinent (Khalid, 2016).  The popular press and general population in South Asia interpret spaces like shrines (dargah) as examples of tolerance, since both Hindus and Muslims participate in worship and place requests to the saint of the shrine. They burn incense (loban) and consequently experience therapeutic convulsions against evil spirits that possess them (haziri) (Bellamy, 2011). Sometimes they are places of refuge and sources of cures to illnesses and evil spirits, while other times they are Gedächtnisraum (memory spaces). The usages of these spaces have been altered by modernity, as witnessed by the declining numbers of cows at the Sher Shah shrine.

The textile works by Zulfi were “created to honor real and imagined queer guerrilla fighters from Shiite Muslim traditions of martyr and saint veneration” (Bass & Reiner, 2021). More than just remembering a scar from a millennium-old feud, Muharram rituals as well as Zulfi’s artworks both symbolize a rejection of illegitimate state authority, which many Shi‘as also regard as a key feature of their faith (Freitag, 1989). In Zulfi’s praxis, he is directly addressing wealth inequality of the present.

The evolution of Muharram rituals in South Asia from a religious ritual to an “urban ritual” can be observed from the level of urban negotiation among the multi religious participants (Nejad, 2015). The processions are not limited to one sect or codified in one practice and often have multiple meanings. Different communities establish their own tazia, (also spelled as ta‘ziyah and ta‘ziyeh) which symbolically represents martyrs’ tombs, and carry it to the area that symbolizes the battlefield of Karbala. Zulfi’s work of “Mercy 258 رحیم ۲۵۸” paid tribute to such a practice; his symbolic Karbala was the art gallery of his exhibition.

 

 

 

Mercy 258 رحیم ۲۵۸. by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Screen print on muslin, chiffon and raw silk, inkjet print on silk, various trimming and plastic sequins. 2020, 148 x 28 in

 

In conclusion, this essay has explored the drag persona Faluda Islam, along with other works by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to demonstrate the potency of memory in his artwork. As an activist addressing Islamophobia and homophobia, Zulfi uses both embodied performances, audiovisual recordings, as well as hand sewn textiles in his ongoing works. Memory both informs the work and energizes the viewers who share part of the knowledge systems and geographies as Zulfikar’s upbringing. The drag zombie Faluda Islam interrogated on the idea that gender is a learned memory that is hard to alter or evolve; rather, the gender practices may or may not survive a future apocalypse. Memory is both the medium and the message.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bass & Reiner. 2021. Future Faithful — Bass & Reiner. [online] Available at: <https://bassandreiner.com/zulfi> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Bellamy, C., 2011. The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place. University of California Press. 33.

 

Bhutto, Z., 2020. Live Interview with Reconstructed Mag.

 

—----------., 2019. [online] Praxis Center. Available at: <https://kzoo.edu/praxis/artists/zulfikar-ali-bhutto/> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

—----------. 2017. [online] The Tumeric Project. Available at: <youtube.com/watch?v=bc8VtrHA8QE> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Burke, S., 2018. Meet Faluda Islam, the Muslim Drag Queen From the Future. [online] Vice.com. Available at: <https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xjbgb/muslim-drag-queen-faluda-islam-zulfikar-ali-bhutto-queerly-beloved> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Evans, M. and Williams, C., 2013. Gender. Routledge.

 

Freitag, S., 1989. Collective Action and Community. Berkeley: University of California Press. 251.

 

Khalid, H., 2016. The changing fate of a Muslim shrine where cows are sacred. [online] The Caravan. Available at: <https://caravanmagazine.in/lede/thinning-the-herd> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Nejad, R. M. 2015. "Urban Margins, A Refuge For Muharram Processions In Bombay: Towards An Idea Of Cultural Resilience". Südasien-Chronik 5. 341.

 

Reading, A. 2016. Gender and Memory in the Globital Age. Palgrave MacMillan.

News on Bombay Sweepers Strike, 1948

Transcribed from the The Bombay Chronicle, located at the Maharashtra State Archives

 

1948 July 1^st 

The Central Strike Commitee met at the Union Office at Arthur Road, reviewed the situation in light of the Labour Minister’s assurance, but after an hour long debate came to the conclusion that it could not reverse the decision already taken by the General Body. On the other hand, the Committee immediately set about the work of the initiation and conduct of the strike. Leaflets printed in Marathi and Gujarati, were dispatched to the various colonies where conservancy workers dwell. Union circles felt that the strike would be more or less complete as far as the city was concerned while they said that the notices may not reach all the workers living in the suburbs.

The sweepers’ strike is likely to put the citizens as well as the Municipality in a tight corner. It will be remebered that Bombay sweepers precipitated a strike in April 1946, a day after the Congress Ministry assumed office. The strike lasted a week and brought substantial benefits to the workers.

WHAT DEMANDS COST

A spokesman of the Municipality said it would be financially impossible for the Municipality to bear the cost of the demands (put forward by the annual conference of the Presidency Sweepers’ Union). Namely,

A) basic bay of Rs. 40 rising by 1 rupee increments to Rs. 50.

B) Dearness allowance of the same scale as for industrial workers, and

C) increase in house allowance from Rs. 6 to Rs. 15 would involve the Municipality in an additional expenditure of half a crore or rupees.

 

LABOUR COMISSIONERS APPEAL

Fervent appeal of the Labour Commissioner to the Bombay Government on Wednesday night:

“The Union representatives and advisers fully consented to the offer of adjudication made by the Government. The assurance of speedy disposal of adjudication proceedings has also been given.

...

It is necessary to remind you that the city’s conservancy services are essential services involving the health and well-being of millions of people. The strike, if it is staged, would be illegal under the Industrial Disputes Act. It is besides covered by the provisions of the Public Security Measures Act and other Acts and the persons participating in the strike would be liable to the penalty of imprisonment prescribed in the law.

...

The workers are bound, moreover, to forfeit public sympathy as the public would be the victims of the consequences of dislocation of the public utility service that has such direct bearing on the health and freedom from disease of the city’s population. You would therefore be well-advised not to take resort to the extreme step of strike.”

 

1948 July 2^nd

New Turn in City Sweepers’ Strike

This was the climax to a day of hectic activity both on the part of the strikers as well as the Government and Municipal Authorities.

Nearly 6000 workers mostly from the Conservancy Department joined in the strike. A few workers from the other departments also threw in their lot with the strikers.

Mr. B. R. Patel, Municipal Commissioner informed a representative of this paper that notices would be issued on the strikers calling upon them to join duty by 1-30 p.m. (Bombay Time) today (Friday). If they fail to do so their salary for the month of May will be withheld.

STRIKE TO END TODAY

There appears to be a distinct possibility of the strike terminating today, because the Central Strike Committee of the Bombay Presidency Sweepers’ Union which met in the evening passed a lengthy resolution in which they expressed their ‘resolve’ not to oppose the adjudication machinery set up by the Government.

...

The Committee further asserted that it had no political affiliations whatsoever, that the scavengers were fighting for a purely economic issue and requested the Government not to exercise force to make the workers accept the adjudication.

...

 

SEARCH FOR SUBSTITUTES

Possibility of recruiting sweepers from the refugee population --residing in Kalyan, Powai, Mulund and other places...

“The city has to do its own scavenging and not look on idly, until conditions become intolerable.” said Mr. Guzarilal Nanda in an interview on the strike situation.

“I am prepared to take the lead, if sufficient response is forthcoming from the public to form volunteer squads to meet the situation.” said Mr. B. R. Patel, Municipal Commissioner, as he emerged from a conference with the Ministers of Labour and Local Self-Government at the Secretariat.

Arrests and Processions

Following the arrest of 18 workers by the Delisle road Police, nearly 400 women marched in a procession from Arthur Road, where they went on a sit down strike demanding the release of their arrested comrades. Later in the day, however, they dispersed.

400 workers of the Kurla Municipality also joined the strike.

All the drivers of the 116 Municipal lorries took out their vehicles but nothing could be done as the “loaders” were absent. In certain cases the loaders utilised the occasion for a joy ride, got into the lorries and were seen holidaying gleefully in the trundling lorries.

Although the strike was initially sponsored by the Bombay Presideny Sweepers’ Union, large groups from the Municipal Kamgar Sangh also joined the strike. The Municipal Muzdoor and Municipal Workers’ Union and three other minor unions of their sympathy and support to the strikers.

Volunteers of various Unions went about on cycles in the localities inhabited by sweepers and distributed handbills calling them to stand together.

OTHERS JOIN

Mr. Danjbhai Jogadia, told a reporter of this paper: “Workers are very peaceful but police lorries are going about in the city accompanied by Municipal Head Supervisers, supervisers and the Labour officer. When the supervisers point out any person as a striker, he is arrested by the police.”

Mr. S. H. Jhabwala, adviser to the union said that the police were catching strikers by the scruff of the neck and dragging them to work. Government, he said, was unnecessarily interfering between the workers and the Municipality. He asserted that there was no intimidation but only a voluntary suspension of work.

 

FIGHTING FOR BREAD

He said that he did not object to the police intervening if there is violence, but when the workers were fighting for their bread, the police should keep off.

Early in the day the Municipal Commissioner went to the Secretariat for a series of conferences. After an hour and half’s discussion with Mr. Nanda the Labour Minister, he said that it was the duty of every citizen to organise volunteer corps in the various localities to keep the homes and streets clean. Otherwise a serious threat to the health of the city would develop.

 

NANDA MEETS PRESSMEN

Mr. Nanda told pressmen that the Government had left no stone unturned to avert the strike. He was even willing to appoint a special adjudicator to go into the demands of the workers immediately. It was unfortunate that the workers ignored the written assurances given to this effect by him. He assured that the Government will give all possible assistance to the Corporation. He also promised full protection to those workers who choose to come to work.

 

GARBAGE PILES UP

Meanwhile a rapid tour of the city discloses, that while the main streets are comparatively free from dirty thanks to the downpour of last night, the garbage heaps inside compounds have begun to accumulate. Similarly in the markets and by-lanes garbage has begun to pile up.

Bhuleshwar, Fanaswadi, Dongri and Kamatipura are the most affected areas.

 

85 ARRESTED

The total number of persons arrested on various charges of intimidation and violence till evening was 85.

The largest number of arrests were made by the Dongri police being as many as 45. It was to protest against the arrest of these persons and to demand their release that nearly a thousand persons staged a demonstration in front of the Dongri police station. It is stated that demonstration seen because violent and the crowd began to pelt stones at the police. A Deputy Inspector, a sub-Inspector and a constable were injured before the police decided to open fire and disperse the crowd. Ten rounds were fired in all. Five persons were injured and one of them--a woman--died on the way to hospital.

The Police Commissioner has banned all meetings for a period of a week.

 

GOVERNMENT PRESS NOTE

A Press Note issued in connection with the sweepers’ demonstrations says:

At 3-45 p.m. today (Thursday), a crowd of 500 to 1000 sweepers, including women, approached the Dongri police station from the direction of Noorbaug with the obvious intention of storming the police station and releasing 45 persons who had been arrested earlier in the day. Two officers outside the police station met the crowd at the gate and dispersed it with a ‘lathi’ charge. The crowd was chased back as far as Noorbaug, but there it reformed itself and started stoning the police.

... The situation is now quiet.

 

Saturday, JULY 3^rd

SWEEPERS’ STRIKE CALLED OFF

Union Decision Follows Minister’s assurance.

ARRESTED WORKERS TO BE SET FREE: ARBITRATION WILL BE HONOURED

Bombay, Friday: The Bombay sweepers’ strike was called off at 7 p.m. this evening after the Sweepers’ Union and the Corporation-sponsored “Informal Committee” reached an understanding on the main points at issue.

All the arrived strikers are to be set free on Saturday according to an assurance given by Mr. Gulzarilal Nanda, Labour Minister, to Mr. S. H. Jhabwalla, adviser to the Sweepers’ Union, both of whom conferred informally as the crucial talks between the Union and the Corporation Committee were going on in the Municipal building.

All items in which the 12-point demand of the Union which involves Municipal finance are to be referred to adjudication which will start on July 7, while a definite understanding favouring the sweepers was arrived at on the other issues of privilege leave, provident fund, medical aid and the re-employment of hitherto age-barred sweepers.

UNION GENERAL BODY MEETS

The General Body meeting of the Sweepers’ Union, which was given up due to a police ban, was enabled to be held when certain members of the Corporation “Informal Committee”, which met at 3-30 p.m., asked the Municipal Commissioner to contact the Police Commissioner to grant a special permit for the Union meeting. Agreement was reached that no strings should be attached to the permit, though previously it was stated police were willing to allow the sweepers to meet, if they could give an assurance they would go back to work. Mr. K. N. Kajrolkar, a member of the Bombay Leg. Assembly, who was in the police headquarters, hastened to the Arthur Road Office of the Sweepers’ Union with the permit, followed soon by members of the “Informal Committee” and Mr. Jhabwalla. About 700 strikers attended the meeting which surprisingly enough registered even initially an atmosphere of great cordiality and calm.

 The meeting was addressed by Mr. Ganapati Shankar Desai, chairman of the Municipal Standing Committee, Messrs. M. Harris, G. G. Mehta, Naushir Bharucha, Jhabwallam and Dhanjibhai Jogadia, General Secretary of the Union, all of whom counselled the strikers to accept adjudication and resume work.  ....

CALL TO END STRIKE

Declaring that the “strike has slackened and the situation is delicate,” Mr. Jogodia said that it was best in the interests of the strikers that they should accept adjudication and call off the strike with honor and dignity. He explained the meaning of the agreement reached between the Union and the Corporation Committee.

ARRESTED STRIKERS TO BE RELEASED

Mr. S. H. Jhabwalla informed the meeting that Mr. Gulzarlal Nanda, Labour Minister, had assured him that all the arrested strikers would be release on Saturday after they resumed work. ...

VOTING

It was decided to take a vote and when the 700 strikers present were asked by Mr.  Jhabwalla to demonstrate by a show of hands their attitude, only 12 persons were found to be in favour of continuing the strike. The vast majority supported the call to resume from tomorrow and expressed willingness to have the dispute referred to adjudication.

AWARD WILL BE HONOURED

Mr. Naushir C. Bharucha, Independent member of the corporation, said that the Municipality would without fail implement the adjudicator’s award and “prevent injustice being done to the sweepers”.

...

“If the Corporation has no money, we will go and beg if necessary. But under all circumstances the right thing will be done by the sweepers,” said Mr. Ganapathi Shankar Desai, Chairman of the Municipal Standing Committee, while Mr. M. Harris and Mr. G. G. Mehta, of the Socialist Party, called on the sweepers to close up their ranks.

 

Armed Police Guard Coroner’s Court

BOMBAY Friday, June 17, 2022

Sten-gun-bearing police constables guarded the Coroner’s Court as scores of Municipal sweepers, dwelling in Walpakhadi chawls, poured into the Court premises to see the body of Bhani Jethi, the 70-year-old woman who was hit by a stray bullet and killed as a result of firing.

After formal identification and recording of medical evidence as to the cause of death, the body was taken in a police lorry to the cremation ground at Worli. Mr. H. P. Patel, advocate, appearing on behalf of the relatives of the deceased objected to the police plea that the body be taken in a police lorry. He asked that it should be handed over to the grandson of the deceased to be cremated according to Hindu custom after being taken in a procession.

The Coroner ordered that the body should be handed over to the grandson who was present in court, but said that he had no jurisdiction to decide the the question of how it should be carried to the cremation ground.

It was later arranged that the body should be taken in a police lorry accompanied by the relatives of the deceased.

It is stated that the woman was hit by a stray bullet in the corridor of her chawl. It seems she was coming down from her room on the first floor to the ground floor for a bath. She heard a gun shot and found Sonabai Jiwa, a 13 year old girl, shot in the arm. She moved towards the spot when another bullet hit her and she collapsed. She died on the way to hospital. The other girl, 8-year-old Kallu Kala was also hit by a bullet was a resident of the chawl. The fourth injured person, Natu Govind (17), who was wounded in the thigh, was a loyal worker who happened to be in the road standing away from the main body of procession.

“SHE WAS DEMONSTRATING VIOLENTLY”

A press note issued by the director of Publicity, Bombay, says: “A report has appeared in the Press quoting the General Secretary of the Girni Camgar Union as saying that the woman who died as a result of the police firing on a violent mob of sweepers on Thursday, was hit by a bullet when she was standing on the verandah of a building nearby. This report is baseless, as a matter of fact the woman was one of the mob whuch moved on to the police station, and she was demonstrating violently before the police station all day till the firing took place.”

 

 

 

JULY 5^th Monday

Enquiry Into Shooting  of Sweeper Woman Demanded

Mr. M. R. Dandavate, Secretary of the Socialist Party says in course of statement: -- The Police firing on the Municipal sweepers on strike on 1^st July, 1948, as a result of which one old woman was killed and three others were injured is most deplorable. The Government version of the incident given in the Press Note is not at all convincing. The incident needs to an independent investigation and the Socialist Party demands ,that an     independent judicial inquiry should be held.

 

JULY 6^th Tuesday

Sweepers’ Union Hurls “Bombshell”

Bombay, Monday

The Bombay Presidency Sweepers Union was hurled a “bombshell” at what was regarded by many as an informal agreement between the Bombay Municipality and that body, by which the Union would press only five items for adjudication, leaving the rest to amicable mutual settlement. The statement presented to the Industrial Tribunal Government of Bombay, by the Union this morning, does not comprise only five demands entailing additional finances, but all the 13 original demands put forth by the Union.

The 13 demands which now form the subject matter are:

1) Basic pay at 40-1-50.

2) Dearness Allowance at the rates paid to Textile Workers,

3) House Rent at Rs. 15 per person,

4) Retirement on only physical ground

5) 15 percent additional staff

6) Sunday and Public Holidays to be half holidays

7) Leave accumulation for three months,

8) Provident Funds and Gratuity,

9) Cheap Grain Shops,

10) Medical Dispensaries in Sweeper localities

11) Increase of about 20,000 staff commensurate with increased population,

12) Opportunities for defence when charged with any offence or breach, and

13) The total abolishment of fines.

 

...

 

JULY 7^th 

City Harijan Leader passes away

Bombay July 6, (U. P. I.):

Mr. Khodidas Somehand, a Harijan leader and ex-President of Bhangi Kamgar Mahajan died tonight in the Nair Hospital due to some severe stomach trouble.

E. Bengal M. L. A. resigns

Calcutta July 6, (API): Mr. P. R. Thakur has resigned his membership of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly as he considers it “useless to continue to be a member of this legislature under present circumstances”.

Rebirth of Black Life, Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean

 It is noteworthy that certain names like Ghulam (slave in Farsi) or Abida (female slave in Arabic) have been used by prominent cultural figures in South Asia as part of spiritual practice  when one becomes even unaware of their station in their devotion to their idea of God, this identification eventually should help them as well as others transcend categories of slave and Non-slave. Thus spiritual Islam can ideally overcome the otherwise problematic dichotomy of human slaves and human non slaves.