Glimpses of LLF 2015

Keep­ing up with the tra­di­tion of bring­ing togeth­er renowned nation­al and inter­na­tion­al writ­ers in fields of lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, art, pol­i­tics and cul­ture, Lahore Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val 2015 was a feast for read­ers of diverse inter­ests. The 3rd annu­al Fes­ti­val attract­ed thou­sands of peo­ple from all back­grounds. Here are brief excerpts from some of the ses­sions select­ed for Laaltain’s read­ers.

Need to De-legitimize Colonial Stereotypes

Indi­an his­to­ri­an Romi­la Tha­par said in her keynote speech that his­to­ry of the Sub-con­ti­nent is being used in the region to politi­cise the present. She high­light­ed the need to rein­ves­ti­gate his­to­ry stress­ing that our con­cern should be inten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion of colo­nial stereo­types that colo­nial schol­ars set as a tool to rule over the Sub-con­ti­nent. More­over his­to­ry is not a fan­ta­sy and should not be inter­pret­ed so.

War of Survival instead of Proxy War

Rashed Rehman in a ses­sion regard­ing Pak-US rela­tions said that Amer­i­ca should under­stand that Pak­istan is not fight­ing a proxy war but a war of sur­vival. He empha­sized that Afghanistan’s future is inti­mate­ly linked with Pak­istan, with the region, and the wider world.

Khak-e-jaan kya uree, gard he gard hai

In a ses­sion titled Urdu Poet­ry Trans­la­tions in Oth­er Lan­guages, a book Tish­na­gi of an Indi­an poet Minu Bak­shi was dis­cussed by Navid Shahzad. Minu, by reli­gious denom­i­na­tion a Sikh, has love for Urdu poet­ry. Navid Shahzad read excerpts from her book.

She also recit­ed her poem on 1984 riots against Sikh com­mu­ni­ty in India.

Future of TV News: Journalism or Mirch Masala

Pakistan’s evolv­ing media is grap­pling with sev­er­al prob­lems. The 3G & 4G inter­net on mobile and social media are going to be a new pub­lic force that will help keep­ing a check on these enter­pris­ers.
Jour­nal­ist Muneeze Jahangir said that she is hope­ful from emerg­ing trends in the media in the era of tech­nol­o­gy that they would help improve the qual­i­ty of the con­tent.

Edi­tor Pak­istan Today Arif Niza­mi crit­i­cized the elec­tron­ic media for its sen­sa­tion­al­ism. He opined that Pak­istani media does not seem to have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing social reforms.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Express news group Fahd Hus­sain shared his views on how the cul­ture of mirch masala is chang­ing due to the devel­op­ing taste of the audi­ence. The qual­i­ty of the con­tent is ulti­mate­ly deter­mined by the view­ers.

Afghan Media own­er Saad Mohseni believed that mobile inter­net would solve the issue of trans­paren­cy in rat­ing.

Women have the power of ‘Choice’

In the con­clud­ing ses­sion of LLF, a book Fifty Shades of Fem­i­nism was dis­cussed by Muneeza Sham­sie, Rachel Holmes, Shob­haa De, Yas­mine El Rashi­di and Nelo­far Bakht­yar.
Women have the pow­er of ‘Choice’, Indi­an Jour­nal­ist Shob­ha De said:

Yas­min shared the views that woman dis-empow­ers her­self by the choic­es she makes.

Rachel com­piled all the sto­ries of women in 50 Shades of fem­i­nism. She gave a sub­ver­sive call to action in fol­low­ing words:

Graphic Journalism: Power of the Cartoon

Graph­ic jour­nal­ism can explain any sto­ry in a lim­it­ed space and time rather than arti­cles. Com­ic has uni­ver­sal audi­ence with­out any lan­guage bar­ri­ers. The ses­sion titled The Incred­i­ble World of Com­ic Jour­nal­ism includ­ed Amer­i­can com­ic jour­nal­ist Joe Sac­co, Lebanese-Amer­i­can writer and painter Rabih Alamed­dine, and Pak­istani edi­to­r­i­al car­toon­ist Sabir Nazar.

“In mod­ern worlds pub­lish­ers are more inter­est­ed in graph­ic pub­li­ca­tions because of pub­lic demand”, Joe said, while adding, “In the US com­ic jour­nal­ism is flour­ish­ing because peo­ple like graph­ics instead of read­ing long text. Oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion medi­um has great strength but com­ic is like a film that grabs read­ers atten­tion quick­ly. It is chal­lenge to devel­op some­thing that read­er can under­stand and appre­ci­ate as you want. While draw­ing I imag­ine my sto­ries myself so my comics are self-cen­sored.”

Sabir expressed his views about graph­ic jour­nal­ism, “In Pak­istan edi­to­r­i­al graph­ics equal­ly get read­ers’ atten­tion and appre­ci­a­tion. Some peo­ple are more inclined to visu­als than read­ing. Draw­ing needs no intro­duc­tion as the arti­cles. While draw­ing for edi­to­r­i­al or comics I do not have read­er in my mind.”

Rabih said, “While mak­ing car­toon, I look at it, if I feel it punch­ing in my stom­ach or hit me that means it is good and it will be a visu­al inter­ac­tion. Graph­ic jour­nal­ist should not cross the bound­aries that hurt some­one. For me comics are insid­i­ous, always make pos­si­ble what we can­not do in real life.” While answer­ing a ques­tion about free­dom of expres­sion and blas­phe­mous car­toons, he said, “One of the things we always for­get is if we allow vio­lence we would have no reli­gion. Almost every sin­gle reli­gion is against vio­lence for stat­ing one’s opin­ion. Whether it was Moses, Jesus, or Muham­mad, if they had kept qui­et because peo­ple will be offend­ed we would not have reli­gion.”