January is the beginning of the annual pilgrimage to international literature and art festivals that keep writers and academics absorbed for at least six months, that is, if they accept invitations to lecture, sign books, and choose to be spoilt by festival hospitality. With festivals in Asia reflecting regional importance and cultural relevance, and drawing global curiosity — the well-attended ones happening in India, Myanmar, China, Indonesia and Sri Lanka — Pakistan, a lesser-known destination, has also invited international voices for the past five years.

To attend a festival is almost like taking free lessons at university that would otherwise be ticketed or inaccessible for ordinary audiences and students with little money. Writers, poets, comedians, historians, scientists, artists and filmmakers with the ability to provoke us to think have their chance to play lead protagonists at festivals where ideas inspire and enthral. Afterwards, either we continue reading, form new ideas and read some more, or forget those words that kept us alert, high on cappuccinos and biryani (to be found in large quantities at the Karachi Literature Festival).

From modest beginnings in March 2010, the Karachi Literature Festival’s (KLF) opportunities for success have grown enormously. From 5,000 to over 50,000 attendees in the first four years, it drew 70,000 last weekend, according to the founders, Ameena Saiyid and Asif Farrukhi. Pakistan’s best exchanged views with international authors, inspiring discussions personal, political and literary, with few fault-lines.

Despite increasing fear from extremist backlash, Karachi had much to celebrate this winter: Bilawal Bhutto’s Sindh Festival of the arts, film, music, fashion and entertainment, and the KLF where thousands of attendees and international participants stood in line eager for literary debate.

And while some talked of a ‘cultural coup,’ the Tehreek-i-Taliban’s three-member negotiating team was in Waziristan, under the watchful buzzing of circling drones, mulling over the country’s political future and advising the banned organisation’s shura on their 15-point draft agenda for the Pakistan government.

Not that the festival goers didn’t talk about growing extremism and security concerns, their country’s relationship with America and the end of the longest war in Afghanistan. The three-day Festival, which had free entry, had attendees walk in and out of sessions, listening, arguing, applauding, and picking their favourites. Political literature and regional politics drew the largest crowds. Though Pakistan isn’t on the list when it comes to unfettered freedoms, Pakistani journalist and author of the ever-popular A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif, doesn’t think of self-censorship or anything less than the truth when he writes about injustices and human rights. He could easily win a popularity poll at any Pakistani literary festival. He dares to say what he thinks: about extrajudicial killings in Balochistan and the alleged complicity of the state in the cases of missing persons, reminding us that as we engaged at the Festival, many grieved families were walking hundreds of miles in protest, demanding answers from the government.

That’s why Hanif draws huge crowds, including American Ambassador Richard Olson and biographer and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Rajmohan Gandhi, at the KLF, who both stood to listen as the seats were filled up.

As Pakistan’s culture and literary engagements remain under arrest from extremist forces, writers like Hanif make it possible to appreciate literary heroism in a city of dichotomies. Not without his trademark witty digs, he spoke with political consciousness, drawing laughter as he made little of the country’s descent into chaos and reminded of the legacy of mistakes that is Pakistan.

More than being only about books and author signings, this festival has successfully created spaces for free expression and open political debate — as has the newer and successful Lahore Literary Festival. With audiences encouraged to question and absorb original ideas and ways of thinking, this platform will not only devise avenues for greater cultural openness but formulate counter-narratives of hope, peace, freedom, human rights, education, literature, music and dance.

The problem, though, is that not all Pakistanis speak or read in the English language, in which many discussions took place. Few Pakistanis can afford books and with primary education not universally available, and poverty endemic, cultural freedoms are bound to be questioned and perceived as liberal, free-thinking pursuits.

In previous years, the Festival has faced criticism for being more political — Kashmir, Afghanistan, and India-Pakistan relations have headed discussions — than literary and for promoting English-language authors with small emphasis on local languages and translations. To their credit, the organisers have done much to address the latter with creative inclusions. Moreover, the representation of politics in fiction allows writers to comprehend contemporary times, explaining their versions of those events. Real events when fictionalised are often talked about in the context of the post-9/11 novel, also discussed last weekend. I was reminded of Dave Eggers, Amy Waldman, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, Mohsin Hamid and John Updike, but Waldman’s The Submission, written in 2011, has stayed with me. Maybe I saw the American-born Muslim architect Mohammad Khan, who wins a contest to build a memorial at Ground Zero, symbolise why secularism is imperative and how suspicion and paranoia of the other can become life destructive.

Originality in festival programming is simply not scanning what’s wrong with Pakistan and dissecting significant regional political changes, though audiences (including the smattering of non-Pakistani attendees) tend to be fixated on holding conversations around the country’s future, the failure of the state to provide education and respect human rights, and Pakistan’s mangled relationship with the US. When the regional narrative of urgent interest to everyone brought in US Ambassador Richard Olsen, he admittedly said that his country has learnt the lessons of 1989 and didn’t want 2014 to be like 1989. Politics in Pakistan is a strange beast; it wants to know what happens next door, whether Afghanistan or India.

Rajmohan Gandhi was the intellectual star, with hundreds of curious attendees listening to his assessment of the historical relationship between Pakistan and its neighbourly irritant, Afghanistan. “We are done with the politicians of India and Pakistan,” said Mr Gandhi. “If Pakistan and India want to see better ties, the people need to do more of what they are doing now. We need to meet, talk and be cordial.” Indian public discourse is skillful at more jingoistic sentiment than Pakistani audiences find comfortable, but Mr Gandhi spoke eloquently about how we make enemies when we become inhumane and distrusting of one another. Gandhi’s philosophy of a non-violent struggle against racial domination has symbolic resonance with oppressed people globally, his grandson reminded us.

Glaringly absent from the Festival was focus on the state of the Pakistani press and the recent battering that it has taken from extremist groups, rendering the power of the fourth estate (title for a session) even more relevant and under threat. Journalists in Fata (important to the debate on the freedom of the press) operate under threat from militant groups that demand control over content while the establishment belligerently enforces their own parameters when it comes to reporting in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Also nowhere was the story of the girl from Swat who stood up for education. Reports of a cancelled launch for I am Malala organised by the Bacha Khan Educational Foundation at the University of Peshawar last month is indicative of how liberal spaces are shrinking. A winner at the National Books Awards last year, this book is about the importance of education to remove intolerance and violence but we were too fearful to provide Malala Yousafzai’s cause a platform.

Yet, growing crowds is testimony that the festival initiators and their red-shirted volunteers have got it right, down to unending coffee and food, despite criticism that it needs rebirthing and greater global representation (I’m guessing Pakistan’s lack of security kept some authors away). And while celebrating books and ideas, thought needs to be given about taking books and writers to those who could never come to annual festivals for the educated minority in Pakistan.

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