Khudi Festival of Ideas: Learning for a Way Forward

M. Fahad Ur Rehman

Recent­ly I got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend Khudi’s annu­al Fes­ti­val of Ideas in Lahore. Khu­di is a pro­gres­sive youth orga­ni­za­tion work­ing for coun­ter­ing extrem­ist mind­set and for rais­ing aware­ness about democ­ra­cy. I had been fol­low­ing this orga­ni­za­tion on social media over the past few years and I grew to admire the remark­able work they are doing. Khu­di works on var­i­ous themes rang­ing from peace build­ing, rights of minori­ties, gen­der issues and civic and polit­i­cal edu­ca­tion. This time I applied for the annu­al Fes­ti­val of Ideas and was luck­i­ly select­ed among lim­it­ed num­ber of del­e­gates from across the coun­try.

I occa­sioned a remark­able hos­pi­tal­i­ty upon my arrival and the orga­niz­ers cor­dial­ly wel­comed the par­tic­i­pants. In the mat­ter of few min­utes I start­ed feel­ing like a part of the event whole­heart­ed­ly. The devel­op­ments of the first day of the three-day event clear­ly indi­cat­ed that I was among a very well orga­nized com­mu­ni­ty and a team of devot­ed folks who were work­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly for the bet­ter ser­vice and man­age­ment of every activ­i­ty.

The ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion start­ed with a lec­ture of a lead­ing intel­lec­tu­al and pub­lic fig­ure Mr Javed Jab­bar, who deliv­ered a beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed lec­ture on the idea of Pak­istan and the issues that we are con­fronting in the con­tem­po­rary age. Mr Jab­bar spoke in detail about our iden­ti­ty cri­sis and ways to face the chal­lenges posed by it. By the end of this inter­ac­tive lec­ture fol­lowed by very inter­est­ing ques­tions & answers ses­sion, I had real­ized that the event is not going to betray any of the high ideals and antic­i­pa­tion which it por­trayed; a 10 out of 10 from my side. After that we had a bril­liant Mushaira, a ses­sion of poet­ry, fea­tur­ing young zeal­ous poets express­ing their inner feel­ings through their splen­did vers­es on roman­tic themes. As the Mushaira moved for­ward and vet­er­an poets took the stage, I was fas­ci­nat­ed to see that the notion of roman­ti­cism of the young poets was replaced by grave issues of life, suf­fer­ing, death and the exis­ten­tial quests.

Fol­low­ing the din­ner, rich cul­tur­al and musi­cal per­for­mances were in line. These per­for­mances por­trayed bright and vibrant cul­tur­al diver­si­ty of the nation with many par­tic­i­pants don­ning their tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al dress­es. In the midst of all this, we got to lis­ten to a phe­nom­e­nal voice amongst us; a visu­al­ly impaired gen­tle­man show­ing the tal­ent of his divine­ly gift­ed majes­tic vocal cords. The notion “when nature deprives you in one area and bless­es you with so much more in oth­er” was proven true by this tal­ent­ed gen­tle­man. He was the star of night steal­ing the show from the rest and attract­ing the huge crowd towards his pas­sion­ate rhymes and beats. Every­one was singing and danc­ing to his voice, a scene of pro­fun­di­ty was expe­ri­enced by the onlook­ers.

The cul­tur­al night end­ed with pas­sion­ate danc­ing, rep­re­sent­ing major eth­nic­i­ties of Pak­istan includ­ing Pun­jabi, Baloch, Pash­toon, Chi­trali, Gilgit Baltistani, and Sind­hi. The beau­ti­ful sight was excep­tion­al in its own accord giv­ing a mes­sage of coex­is­tence and peace where almost all the cul­tures of the land par­tic­i­pat­ed in the spe­cif­ic dance item with their brethren. Pash­toons danc­ing on the beat of Pun­jabi Bhangra music, Baloch danc­ing with Pash­toons in Attan, Sind­his and Pun­jabis danc­ing togeth­er and in the end the stage was full of every col­or and stripe of the beau­ti­ful plu­ral­i­ty of the nation. If it was on my wish I would have stayed in this euphor­ic envi­ron­ment for­ev­er and just for­get all the wor­ries and ago­nies that we are fac­ing in the con­tem­po­rary Pak­istan.

The sec­ond day was also a huge suc­cess start­ing from the main theme of con­flict res­o­lu­tion with some lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als from the coun­try in which some were those who had lost their loved ones to the grue­some mil­i­tan­cy; Tahir Wadood Malik, an ex-army offi­cer who had lost his wife and then the high­ly famous politi­cian from Khy­ber-Pakhtoonkhwa, Mian Iftikhar Huss­ian, who shared per­son­al sto­ries dur­ing his party’s rule in the province. The most emo­tion­al and inspir­ing part of his speech was when he shared his per­son­al tragedy; the loss of his only son to the ter­ror­ists. This was a moment when many among the audi­ence had tears in their eyes. Despite of all the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing his par­ty, all the alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and bad gov­er­nance, I expe­ri­enced that every­one was huge­ly affect­ed by his sto­ry and their sac­ri­fices for the land to ward-off the ter­ror­ists.

After­wards Mekaal Hasan, the renowned musi­cian gave a frank talk on the ways music can play an effec­tive role in com­bat­ing the social evils and mil­i­tan­cy. This ses­sion was ani­mat­ed by his band’s beau­ti­ful­ly com­posed video songs. Lat­er on, for their self-com­posed unique Nation­al Anthem theme, every­one stood up to pay love, respect and homage to the moth­er­land which was yet again a sight that will remain in the mem­o­ry for many days to come. The ecsta­t­ic envi­ron­ment cre­at­ed by their clas­si­cal music was indeed a spec­ta­cle to enjoy.

The the­ater per­for­mance of the night was some­thing which daz­zled all the audi­ence. Those who took it on a lighter note in the begin­ning includ­ing me, with the pas­sage of time, grew more inter­est­ed and became able to con­nect the dots of the con­tex­tu­al rel­e­vance of dra­ma with con­tem­po­rary Pak­istan. The views of most of the audi­ence seemed that nowhere in the coun­try had they seen such a mas­ter­piece and gem of a stage dra­ma. The theme was based on big­otry, gen­der inequal­i­ty, and intol­er­ance that run deep in our male chau­vin­is­tic soci­ety.

Third day again start­ed with a crit­i­cal and in-depth pan­el dis­cus­sion about the role of edu­ca­tion in uplift­ing a soci­ety and the loop­holes and dis­crep­an­cies that are found in our edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum, most of which is based on out­dat­ed and state-spon­sored dis­tort­ed facts.

The last dis­cus­sion was about the posi­tion of Pak­istan on the glob­al stage which high­light­ed issues and prob­lems that we con­front inter­na­tion­al­ly. The pan­elists shared the hopes and fears per­tain­ing to top­ic and it end­ed in the same man­ner with a crit­i­cal ques­tion answer ses­sion. Final­ly, every­one paid a huge round of applause for the bril­liant team of orga­niz­ers, who worked for a mul­ti­tude of days, to make Khu­di Fes­tivial of ‘Ideas’ a real­i­ty. I would say despite of the fact that the whole audi­to­ri­um was buzzing with the sound of the clap­ping they still deserved a lot more for their match­less efforts. I want­ed the event go on, but then every­thing has to have an end­ing and so it end­ed with the final lunch and cer­tifi­cate dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny.

It was my first expe­ri­ence with Khu­di and I would, with­out any doubt, rate this Fes­ti­val as the best ever event I have attend­ed. The way it insti­gat­ed crit­i­cal think­ing, new ideas and par­a­digms for future think­ing is sim­ply out­stand­ing. Fur­ther­more the most cru­cial and sig­nif­i­cant aspect was its plu­ral­i­ty. I have nev­er had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act so well with my Baloch and Sind­hi brethren. Know­ing their views and the issues con­fronting their parts of the coun­try was a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence.

I would say that we need more events like this on reg­u­lar basis in order to aware youth about new ideas and new ways of think­ing. It is through such events that we can con­tribute towards a more respon­si­ble, vig­i­lant, and crit­i­cal-mind­ed cit­i­zen­ry and make Pak­istan a more peace­ful, tol­er­ant and pros­per­ous place. And where no one is dis­crim­i­nat­ed on the basis of caste, creed, gen­der, race, reli­gion, polit­i­cal incli­na­tions or any oth­er affil­i­a­tion, and where the val­ue of human dig­ni­ty based on uni­ver­sal­i­ty pre­vails.

M. Fahad Ur Rehman is a free­lance writer and a teacher belong­ing to Peshawar. He is also a stu­dent of Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at SZABIST Islam­abad.