Literature as the key?

The sec­ond Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val in Islam­abad fea­tured more than 122 speak­ers in about 70 dif­fer­ent ses­sions deal­ing with all kinds of top­ics rang­ing from cul­ture, art, Pak­istani and South-Asian lit­er­a­ture, pol­i­tics and media. Var­i­ous ses­sions and dis­cus­sions span­ning over three days empha­sized on var­i­ous cul­tur­al ways of expres­sion and resis­tance as a key in the coun­ter­ing ris­ing intol­er­ance and extrem­ism with­in Pak­istan.

On the whole, the gath­er­ing of those renowned lib­er­al Pak­ista­nis who con­tribute with their work to the cul­tur­al under­stand­ing and the diver­si­ty of opin­ions was real­ly impres­sive and inter­est­ing. Espe­cial­ly the ses­sions focus­ing on the top­ic of gen­der and gen­der equal­i­ty empha­sized the prob­lems and dis­crim­i­na­tion women are fac­ing in coun­tries like Pak­istan, India and Afghanistan. The author and human rights activist Fer­yal Ali Gauhar was one of the most impres­sive per­sons dur­ing the fes­ti­val, touch­ing the audi­ence on the one side by her emo­tion­al read­ings and on the oth­er side by illus­trat­ing the dis­crim­i­na­tion of women in the soci­ety live­ly and thought­ful. All par­tic­i­pants of those gen­der ses­sions appeared to agree on the fact that the inequal­i­ty between men and women has been on the rise in recent years and there­fore new approach­es are need­ed in order to achieve gen­der equal­i­ty. The need to increase the role of men in gen­der move­ments was also brought to the table. Anoth­er inter­est­ing approach was high­light­ed by the book launch of ‘Lan­guage Gen­der and Pow­er’ by Shahid Sid­diqui. His book deals with the crit­i­cal reflec­tion of social­ly con­struct­ed gen­der roles in the lan­guage. Despite my per­son­al lack of knowl­edge regard­ing Urdu and oth­er lan­guages spo­ken in Pak­istan, I’m aware of the fact that it is a nec­es­sary but chal­leng­ing task to amend gen­der con­cepts root­ed in the lan­guage.

On a crit­i­cal note, how­ev­er, the group of speak­ers as well as the audi­ence was some­what homo­ge­neous. There­fore, both par­ties most­ly agreed on the par­tic­u­lar top­ics. This ‘preach­ing to the con­vert­ed’ atmos­phere casts doubts on how an event like this can pro­mote tol­er­ance and demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues in Pak­istan if only a cer­tain class of peo­ple becomes part of it. So despite the fact that the Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val was open for every­one and free of charge, secu­ri­ty aspects might have pre­vent­ed the orga­niz­ers, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press with the sup­port of the Ital­ian Embassy, to pro­mote the event in diverse social class­es of soci­ety. The invi­ta­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion of mem­bers of reli­gious, right-wing and cen­trist groups might have increased pub­lic inter­est in the event and cre­at­ed more dis­cus­sions and argu­ments between the speak­ers and the audi­ence. Instead of hav­ing a mono­logue the event could become a dia­logue between the dif­fer­ent soci­etal view­points, how­ev­er, not with­out the risk of giv­ing more space to the already dom­i­nant dis­course of right-wing. For exam­ple the book launch­es of Shab­bar Zaidi’s ‘Pak­istan: Not a failed State’ and ‘What’s Wrong with Pak­istan’ by Babar Ayaz could have been more con­tro­ver­sial than the con­tin­u­ous affir­ma­tion of both authors about their friend­ship.

Over­all lit­er­a­ture and oth­er forms of cul­tur­al expres­sion sure­ly have a pos­i­tive impact in coun­ter­ing the ‘rad­i­cal demo­graph­ic shift’ in Pak­istan which occurred dur­ing the last years. While look­ing back on the his­to­ry of the Sub­con­ti­nent and of Pak­istan, the coun­try can def­i­nite­ly be proud of its cul­tur­al diver­si­ty despite its cur­rent inter­pre­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion. Espe­cial­ly while not lack­ing pride regard­ing its own past, the pop­u­la­tion in Pak­istan should be open-mind­ed regard­ing their mul­ti­cul­tur­al her­itage in order to real­ize that all humans around the globe face the same basic prob­lems regard­less of their val­ue sys­tem or moral views. By pro­mot­ing lit­er­a­ture and art the sec­ond Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val in Islam­abad tried to con­tribute to the soci­etal change but it was most­ly a great overview for lib­er­al Pak­ista­nis about the cur­rent art and cul­ture scene of Pak­istan.