The performance is a re-enactment of a speech given by the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, at independence in 1971. After the return of democracy to Pakistan in 2007 Tahir began developing an idea to recite seminal speeches made by politicians throughout Pakistan’s history. Politicians’ speeches represent a projection of power, history and contemporaneity that are intended to arouse, impress and direct the political masses.
The speech is a key element of the politicians’ public persona, which Tahir orally replicates in the form of performance. Exposing and examining the rhetorics and poetics of national bureaucracy, his re-enactments are a means to analyse established historical narratives of Pakistan, and to reflect on its turbulent political condition now.