14 March 2004	Sunday	22 Muharram 1425

LAHORE, March 13: The love-peace theme dominated the second day discussion of the 10th Saarc Writers Conference at the Alhamra Arts Centre on Saturday.

The opening session provided to the audience a reprieve from the tedium of wordy protestations as they expressed their feelings in prose and poetry.

Unique to the presentation at the conference was the use of different languages to convey the message.

Literary luminaries from the seven Saarc countries reflected on the ground realities of this region and how people had expressed those in various genres of literature. Believing that the only thing common among these nations was poverty, they underscored the need to make concerted efforts to fight it.

The other topics included discrimination against women, cause of partition and power tussle.

Dilating upon the need for proactive study of history for a writer, keynote speaker Dr Namwar Singh of India said the history of South Asia was full of complexities as well as some commonalities. "If you want to know the history of Pakistan, you have to flip through the pages of Indian history and vice versa."

All these countries, he said, shared common problems and ambitions.

Tracing the history, Dr Singh, a noted literary critic and professor emeritus at an Indian university, said love and harmony were not new concepts for the South Asian countries.

"Mystic poets were the first to wield their pen to delineate beauty and divine love in the language of common people."

However, he said, the writers of today had their own version of history. "There is also a constant change in language, which was bound to grow. A truth of today cannot be expressed in the language of yore."

Towards the end, compere Ms Neelam Husain urged them to generally strive for peace instead of waiting for politicians and governments to provide them some opportunity.