KARACHI: “Pakistan and India don’t just share history, we share things such as cuisine and art, too. As Pakistan’s foreign minister, with my counterparts such as Yashwant Sinha, Natwar Singh and their current President Pranab Mukherjee this helped a lot in bringing us together,” said Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri during a panel discussion at the School of Tomorrow’s two-day International Education and Cultural Festival ‘The End of Education’ organised by Beaconhouse School Systems that opened at a local hotel here on Saturday.

The panel discussing ‘Politicising art and popular culture across borders’ also had well-known theatre personality Khalid Ahmad, dean of the School of Visual Arts and Design Rashid Rana and stand-up artist Sanjay Rajoura from India as the other panellists with author Hussain M. Naqvi as the moderator.

“Art and creativity is the unifier. Our Faiz and Iqbal are celebrated poets in India. One of that country’s popular anthems is ‘Sare jahan se achha’, penned by Allama Iqbal. Our similar cultures can help us build bridges. Peace between India and Pakistan is in the national interest of Pakistan,” Mr Kasuri further said.

Khalid Ahmad said: “Regardless of our political situations, Lata is loved here just like Mehdi Hasan was loved there. But this exchange and coming together of the two people is seen as a threat by the politicians of both sides.”

Mr Kasuri then pointed out that the Indian government and its actions had really jolted civil society in India over the past five months and the things being said about it along with the returning of civil awards by artists there meant there was still hope.

Another panel discussion took up the issue of ‘Educating for peace: schooling in an age of conflict’. Economist and educationist Dr Ishrat Hussain during the first panel discussion said that as a society or a nation people needed to decide if they wanted to look outwards and accept the differences or if they wanted to be inward-looking while being hostile to the rest of the world.

Head of Professional Dev­elopment Qualifications, Cambridge International Examinations Dr Paul Beedle said that there was diversity within the schools just like there was diversity in the world. “It is for the teacher to develop perspectives with sensitivity. Sharing backgrounds and then finding similarities in the different cultures you come from is a good way to create ways to understand each other better and break down boundaries,” he said.

Another panel discussed ‘Should children under 13 be on Facebook?’ Moderator Fawad Chaudhry started the debate about what to do in an age where children being digital natives are surrounded by technology while we as digital migrants helplessly watch them.

Several useful suggestions were made by panellist Badar Khushnood, a parent, such as making your email the notification email account of your child’s Facebook account to keep an eye on him or her.

“But monitoring our children’s activities on the Internet would mean giving up our own lives while arming ourselves with guns to protect them and installing cameras and CCTVs,” said other panellist Mehnaz Akber Aziz, a mother.

Throughout the day there were several other interesting panel discussion about environment, media, digital technologies, geopolitics, etc, along with talks, interactive workshops, displays, etc.

The conference/festival concludes on Sunday.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2015