KARACHI: Speakers at a session titled ‘Sindh speaks’ at the Karachi Literature Festival on Saturday discussed the reasons that affected Sindh’s resolute fiction and poetry, which, in the past, had been a vanguard in the struggle for the rights of Sindh and its people.

“There is enough noise, yet Sindh is silent,” said intellectual and activist Amar Sindhu, who moderated the KLF session.

The panellists said that in the past decades when Sindh was effectively silent, many found that deafening. The people of Sindh had been politically aware since the inception of Pakistan but they remained silent when the historical boundaries of the province were dissolved into the infamous One Unit.

“People remained silent at first but it was fiction and poetry of Sindh that gave them voice and finally Sindh’s poets and fiction writers caused popular uprising against One Unit during Gen Ayub Khan’s military rule,” said Ms Sindhu.

Similar role was played by Sindh’s writers and poets during Gen Ziaul Haq’s military rule, especially during the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in 1983 and then in 1986, said the panellists.

“There was a time when Sindh’s silence [was] clearly conveyed to the rest. But now there is enough clamour yet Sindh is silent,” said a panellist.

The speakers said that Sindh’s poetry of resistance had played a huge role in creating awareness about the issues of the province during the hard times of military rule.

But now, they agreed, “poets soliloquise, instead of speaking to people.”

Panellists, including writers Zaffar Junejo and Akash Ansari, poet Ahmed Solangi, and singer Saif Samejo, referred to a famous book of historian Mubarak Ali, Sindh — khamoshi ki awaz.

Ahmed Solangi said Sindh’s poetry was still resilient; however, the circumstances and situations had changed radically compared to what they had been decades earlier.

The panellists spoke on phenomenal poets like Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Shaikh Ayaz — both resisted the establishment and oppression of their times.

They said Sindhi society was changing with rapid urbanisation. However, one panellist said Sindhi poetry would lose its vigour without the rural setting that had been its traditional strength.

Mr Junejo said Sindhi novel, despite the fact that several popular novels had already been written by Ali Baba and other mainstream writers, was not harmonised with international standards. The genre, he said, was though not as popular as short fiction, it was still being written quite frequently.

Saif Samejo said there was cultural revival in Sindh where urban and rural cultures were fluid. He said music had virtually replaced poetry and fiction nowadays.

“Now artists are conversing with Sindh like poets and writers had been doing in the past.”

Noorul Huda Shah, who presided over the session, said the noise, which had plagued Sindh, had actually affected the whole country. “People have not yet forged unity with each other, and until they do so that noise will not allow them to listen to each other clearly,” she said.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2017