Burka Avenger: ‘Malala is Not the Inspiration’

Tar­teel Rao

Bur­ka Avenger is an ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion series that is both enter­tain­ing and full of learn­ing espe­cial­ly for the chil­dren. The orig­i­nal idea behind the series came from the pop star Haroon for an Iphone game called “Bur­ka Revenge”, and lat­er a deci­sion was tak­en to make it into an ani­mat­ed series. The direc­tor of the show, Uzair Zaheer Khan along with the help of Haroon and Art Direc­tor, Yousaf Ejaz Khan made it a go and start­ed to exe­cute this fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept. In the music part of the show, artists such as Ali Azmat, Ali Zafar, Josh, and Haroon him­self have fea­tured mak­ing it a big­ger attrac­tion.

It is is actu­al­ly the sto­ry of three young kids and a school teacher, liv­ing in an imag­i­nary land of Hal­wa­pur, who fight against the evils pro­duced by a Baba Ban­dook and his con­fed­er­ates. The excit­ing thing in the series is the trans­for­ma­tion of an ordi­nary school teacher into the Bur­ka Avenger or what they call ‘The Lady in Black’. So the first super­hero of Pak­istan and a much need­ed one hap­pens to be a woman in veil.

One of the fore­most things that come into the mind of a view­er is resem­blance of the sto­ry with that of Malala Yousafzai. On the face of it, the con­cept has been inspired from the famous inci­dents of Tal­iban takeover of Swat and the resis­tance sym­bol­ized by Malala Yousafzai. But Mr. Adi Abdurab, the script writer of Bur­ka Avenger, has refut­ed this per­cep­tion. Speak­ing in an exclu­sive inter­view with The Laal­tain, he said: “There seems to be this pre­sump­tion in the pub­lic eye that we have tak­en inspi­ra­tion from the Malala inci­dent, where­as truth is that we had this idea back in April of 2012, long before Malala was shot by Tal­iban. Our script was ready in May 2012 and ani­ma­tion had start­ed back then, an episode nor­mal­ly takes between 4 and 6 weeks to com­plete, so to say this has been inspired by Malala is wild­ly inac­cu­rate”.

Still the script has an uncan­ny sem­blance with the sit­u­a­tion in Swat. And the fact that Malala was a nation­al hero long before she was shot by the Tal­iban stands to raise ques­tions against the offi­cial state­ment of the pro­duc­ers of Bur­ka Avenger. The pol­i­cy of dis­so­ci­a­tion from Malala is iron­ic and could have been adopt­ed to avoid any con­tro­ver­sy because Malala has been a sub­ject of crit­i­cism from right wing sec­tions of the soci­ety.

Bur­ka Avenger, being the first top qual­i­ty ani­mat­ed series of Pak­istan is get­ting much pop­u­lar­i­ty world­wide but it has also earned its crit­ics. The use of ‘bur­ka’ by the pro­tag­o­nist is the pri­ma­ry sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy. In defence of the sup­pos­ed­ly con­tro­ver­sial use of ‘bur­ka’, Adi Abdurab says, “No, I do not think there is any kind of issue to our work as the Bur­ka Avenger is an alter ego of Jiya, a mild-man­nered school teacher. Her choice to wear a bur­ka is to pro­mote the idea that women are free to wear what­ev­er they please. Here, the bur­ka as a super­hero cos­tume rep­re­sents free­dom of choice, not oppres­sion; this is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that has led to some neg­a­tive feed­back, but most of those who hear us out usu­al­ly ends up becom­ing our biggest sup­port­ers.”

In response to whether Bur­ka Avenger focus­es sole­ly on women’s edu­ca­tion as its mes­sage, Adi added: “The series is designed to be free of social, reli­gious, eth­nic and cul­tur­al bias. It pro­motes ris­ing above inter­nal dis­agree­ments, becom­ing bet­ter human beings and grow­ing togeth­er as one nation. The vil­lains of the series, the evil magi­cian Baba Ban­dook and the cor­rupt Politi­cian Vadero Pajero rep­re­sent all evils in our soci­ety, not just acts of select­ed groups. In our com­ing episodes, we will be rais­ing issues like Child labour, run­ning away from home, load shed­ding, keep­ing our envi­ron­ment clean, help­ing friends out, etc. The aim is to help cre­ate a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty in chil­dren and we felt that edu­ca­tion is the best place to start”.

With the rep­u­ta­tion of being Pakistan’s first top lev­el ani­mat­ed series, there are huge expec­ta­tions from Bur­ka Avenger. The show has cov­ered the inter­nal domes­tic prob­lems of Pak­istan in a very intel­li­gent way, it has cast­ed the vil­lain and a super­hero that the peo­ple of Pak­istan can eas­i­ly relate to. The ani­ma­tion and music of the show has been wide­ly con­sid­ered to be of top qual­i­ty and the mar­ket­ing depart­ment has done its job in a very decent man­ner as well. The suc­cess of Bur­ka Avenger still remains to be seen but the symp­toms of Bur­ka Avenger to be a big hit seems to be present already. Although, the effects and suc­cess of this show can­not be mea­sured at this time, but the con­cept, ini­tia­tive and fact that Bur­ka Avenger is the pio­neer show of its sort in Pak­istan has to be appre­ci­at­ed.

Tar­teel Rao is a stu­dent of M. Phil. Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and the author of ‘Of Errors and I’ a nov­el.