Master Singer of Pakistan: Baba Shafqat (Pakistani Religious Musician)

Abstract

There are still people in Baba Shafqat’s family who are sorry he didn’t become a movie star. He is an old man now, but when he was young, he was handsome, and he still has a splendid voice. The Indian movie industry began as early as Hollywood, and itinerant theater troops had traveled among Indian cities long before that. Young Indians and Pakistanis dream of the glamorous life of an actor. One of Baba Shafqat’s cousins had become a famous screenwriter in the fledgling Pakistani film industry. When he came back to their hometown of Gujrat—secretly, since his father had kicked him out of the house for the disgrace his career had brought on the family—Shafqat and the other boys of the household would hang on his wild tales of the movies and act out his scripts among themselves. Right from his school days, Shafqat acted in stage plays and began getting invitations to act in the movies and perform on the radio. There is still a publicity photo in his house showing a handsome young man in the self-conscious attitude of a 1940s movie star. In the end he bowed to family pressure and gave up his budding acting career to become a religious leader, like so many of his ancestors. He is still a performer though, and leads a group of young men who sing in praise of the martyrs of Shi‘ism.