“A kite is a simple and harmless product”
interview
“A kite is a simple and harmless product”
— Advocate Khalid Zafar, a kite enthusiast and hobbyist whose fight for bringing the sport back has come a long way from being a matter of personal
interest to a feeling for the larger good of the affected community of workers who “know no other skills whatsoever”
By Usman Ghafoor
Circa 2005. Like most Lahoris, young Advocate Khalid Zafar was crushed by the news of the ban on Basant. Admittedly a “kite-flying freak” who had always enjoyed “the sport and not just the festival” (he insists) and who is also a collector of “some of the world’s most beautiful kites,” Zafar recalls being heartbroken and sorry. As an educated lawyer, he could understand the very nuances of the ban which had been imposed under Article 144 of the Constitution of Pakistan back then. “It was illegal, to begin with,” he declares, in an exclusive interview with TNS, at a time when the caretaker government of Punjab is mulling over lifting the ban. “Under the said Article, the ban could’ve been effective for a maximum of two days. But here, it continued for almost a year,” he remembers. Zafar came into the picture in 2009 when he started rallying people who had been affected by the ban. Soon he was propelled into litigation, initially at the call of a thread-maker who had been rendered jobless and, later, as he contacted Homenet Pakistan to provide him with the necessary official data on the number of home-based workers — mostly women — who had been out of work because of no kite-flying activity in and around Lahore. Unfortunately, the writ petition he had filed was dismissed, forcing him to take the case to the intra court appeal (ICA), as the matter was pending with the SC which had already taken suo moto notice of the slitting of a motorcyclist’s throat by the kite string. Today, as the decision to allow the Basant festival still awaits approval (at the time of going into press) and Homenet Pakistan is out in the streets, staging a “peaceful protest” in collaboration with a (unofficial) Facebook-prompted Kiteflying Association, to step up pressure on the government of Punjab, Khalid Zafar says he may have something to cheer about very soon. “I’ve sent a draft of recommendations to the caretaker CM, with regards to ensuring a foolproof and safe game in the streets. I am hoping this will work out well.” Clearly, his legal fight for bringing the sport back has come a long way from being a matter of personal interest to a feeling for the larger good of the affected community of workers who “know no other skills whatsoever; kite-making is all they’ve learnt and practised their entire lives. “No [kite-flying] sport or festival means they can go without a clue as to how they’ll be able to feed themselves.”Zafar is fighting for the manufacture of kites to be allowed without any need for licensing and without any bar. “A kite is a simple and harmless product, made of thread and bamboo; how can it take anyone’s life?”
Instead of placing a thoughtless, blanket ban on the sport, he proposes regulating the dor (or string): “The thickness of the string should be brought under control; it should be up to 28 counts minimum and nine spindles maximum. Besides, maanjha (or chemical string) should not be used. There should be a complete removal of this kind of dor from the market, so that no one will have it in the first place.” He also suggests amendments in the Motor Vehicle Ordinance 2007. “A special two-antenna setup should be enforced; the front antenna being that of steel and the other being round and made of plastic. ” Zafar regrets a lame response from the bureaucracy, the police as well as the city district government. “They continue to see it as a law-and-order issue and speak of threats from the LeJ etc, whereas actually they only mean to shirk any additional responsibilities such as enforcing the regulations, checking the violators etc.”
He also speaks of how, in the last CM’s regime, the police thrashed poor kite manufacturers in different incidents in the city. He is also not loath to deride media’s role in highlighting “the right issue. Stray incidents such as a child falling off from the rooftop of his house while chasing a kite or a motorcyclist on the road cutting his throat with a metallic dor in the air are projected big-time, but no one understands that this is only one aspect of the whole story. Nobody [in the media] saw that the fault lay in the making of the dor or the venue of the game. “There are recorded incidents where murders had been committed but they were made to appear as if those killed had slit their throats with the kite string. But did anyone talk about this? ”In the end, Khalid Zafar says his biggest achievement so far in this fight for the sport is the “compilation of data of home-based women workers from Jhang and Lahore. “In the long run, I hope we can have the law [of Motor Vehicle Ordinance] amended and develop a system of playing a safe game and also extend the law to cover the kite manufacturers and makers .”A proposal to reinstate the District Kiteflying Association has also been made.
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Khalid Zafar, the legal fighter.
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Basant may just be back for good. — Photos by Rahat Dar
link https://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2013-weekly/nos-07-04-2013/sh.htm
