Waiting for Godot

‘Waiting for Godot’ is an Irish play from 1953, written by Samuel Beckett. The National Academy of Performing Arts’, Karachi, has arranged to have it acted in Pakistan, under the direction of the otherwise respected Zia Mohyeddin and sponsorship of the Express Tribune. The play is on theater from the 21^st of November and will go on till the 8^th of December.

Pkkh needs to register its contention upon the staging of this and all such plays on the soil of Pakistan, that initiate anti-religion notions in the thought, raise the question between belief and disbelief, and pave the way for the acceptance of secularism in its takeoff and for a morally vacant atheistic society in its finale.

The play is a complete bashing of religion, God, and the inherent instinct humanity has for recognizing its Creator. This controversial play, first played in 1953, represents the laying down of the anti-religion, secular thought process in the western society. It initiates a common sense that the concept of God is a resultant of human impotence, that the prophets were ineffective liars, and humanity suffers because of its own absurdity… mainly because it is trapped in the concept that God will one day came to its saving.

In the play the character of ‘the boy’, who is (for a purpose) not even given a proper name, gives clear resemblance to a prophet, as his only part in the whole play is a repetition of the line/promise that ‘Godot is not coming to today, he will come tomorrow’. One of the main character Vladimir treats him with contempt and in a rush of anger, chases the boy away. Vladimir gets confused if the boy is the same or his brother and demands that he be recognized the next time they meet; thus creating a tragicomedy depicting that humanity has repeatedly been put in a delusion by prophets, who have made promises that have never been fulfilled and that in essence they deserved neither respect nor recognition by humanity.

The mere name Godot is painful, the writer has been recorded to have originally taken the meaning ‘boot’ (play was originally written in French) of the word Godot, but it has commonly been taken for God in the western societies where it has be played many times. The writer when faced with criticism over the name ‘Godot’ he chose for the play, deemed that if by Godot, he had meant God, he would have said God, and not Godot, adding ‘and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it’. The question is that if the writer merely meant a ‘boot’ by the word, would Estrogon and Vladimir be waiting for the ‘boot’ every day and would they be ready to commit suicide if the ‘boot’ did not arrive? The name ‘Godot’ also gives an instant notion of describing God with a ‘dot’, perhaps a dot of human thought and not a reality…

Therefore, for Pkkh it is not an issue of a mere play being staged by a few art-lovers, it is actually the war between belief and disbelief that is being invoked in the heart of a believing Muslim society, and the war cannot be let go without giving a decisive fight. For an overwhelming Muslim majority living in the Islamic ideological state of Pakistan, the question of belief has to be a most critical one. Do we believe on a God, who will one day appear upon us and judge our doings, has that God sent true prophets who brought to humanity the true Word and Promise, and whom deserve our deepest recognition and respect? Do we believe on the subjective calling of the inner person, that yearns for its Creator, and whose calling has many times been answered by the divine intervention of God by way of His prophets?

Or do we submit to the Objective reality only, the objective which is the hard-fact world of material and sensory data alone. Do we not believe, when we are believers, upon reality to be much broader, much more complex and much more connected then what the narrow window of sensory evidence has to offer?

We present a warning to the governing body over the Islamic state, to recognize the consensus of belief of the people; we accept a democracy that safeguards the beliefs and aspirations of the people and reject a democracy that fails to do so. And we despise a democratic government which claims the vote of the majority but propagates the worldview of a select elite connect with alien ideology.

We also present a warning to our unaware clergy of how they fail to address and defeat anti-religion activities that find ground within our neighborhoods and social circles. Lack of unity and foresight in our religious clergy may cost us our religion as a whole, and we may soon be left merely as a society of utilitarian materialism, void of any sense of good or bad, just like the western societies have ended themselves.

We also present a warning to the producers and funders of ‘Waiting for Godot’, that they cannot be cowardice slogan bearers of Atheism and Secular values under the sheepish guise of art-loving. If you are there to propagate freedom of thought i.e. freedom from norms sets by the divine Book and the Prophet’s Sunnah, then the civil society of Pakistan will stand firm in repelling you and ousting you from the soil, upon which, we believe we are the upholders of a thought process that is most sublime, most free and most scientific.