THIS year’s Lahore Literary Festival survived due to the organisers’ extraordinary resolve to hold it and the healthy response from a sizeable number of intrepid lovers of literature. But it was touch and go till the last moment, and has left quite a few serious questions in the minds of the people.

The fare at the truncated festival was extremely rich and covered a wide area of creative writing, the contemporary arts, and issues in debate in literature, politics and media. It was also possible to find time to honour Pakistan’s two legendary heroes, Abdus Sattar Edhi, who died last year, and Dr Adib Rizvi. The proceedings have been covered fairly well in the media, and it is not necessary to add to complimentary notices.

A heavy price had to be paid for cutting down the festival’s duration from three days to one. This meant, among other things, that indigenous literature and writers, already poorly represented at such events, were almost completely squeezed out of the programme, making the festival more of a rich elite’s pastime than it should be or is intended by the organisers to be. A considerable number of people did sit through the various sessions, but a larger number stayed away out of fear of a terrorist strike.

The worst sufferers were children who constitute a significant part of the festival clientele. The grown-ups have various reasons for pursuing their love of letters, the most important being the desire to stay abreast of trends in world literature. For children, introduction to literature marks the beginning of their quest for knowledge beyond the narrow confines of school/college curricula, and the first steps towards developing a sound reading habit.

Were all the losses caused by the enforced curtailment of the LLF really unavoidable?

Another large group of people who lost the opportunity to benefit from the festival were the book lovers belonging to the many towns in Punjab who can afford to travel to Lahore.

In the same category were members of the diplomatic corps who found it convenient in the past to drive down from Islamabad, see a bit of Pakistan, and contribute something to the city’s revenue.

Were all these losses caused by the enforced curtailment of the festival really unavoidable?

The LLF organisers have no complaint against the Punjab government and indeed appear overly keen to express their gratitude to them. However, there is a widespread impression that the promotion of literature and the arts does not fit in with the government’s development-security syndrome. There should be some way of convincing the authorities that literature and the arts are as vital to society’s survival as healthy lungs are to the human body. They are much needed in peacetime and doubly so in periods of conflict as they are the best antidote to anxiety and distress caused by wars and terrorism.

Besides, all forward-looking nations value the contribution that writers, poets and artists can make to defeating the demons of violence. The British initiatives in this field during the Second World War raised the documentary film to unprecedented glory. The films Frank Capra made to support the US war effort are recognised as classics to this day. Whatever one may think of the 1965 war, the defence forces cannot forget the contribution made to their fighting morale by poets from Jamiluddin Aali to Sufi Tabassum and melody-makers from Shahnaz (of Dhaka) to Noorjahan.

Thus, the state will gain a lot by encouraging cultural activities, especially those related to literature and the arts, as part of the war against terrorism, and thus keep the people’s thought processes alive and uncluttered by fear or defeatism.

Nobody denies the seriousness of the terrorist threat that the state and the people face, but the situation has been aggravated by two flaws in the official response. The first is a tendency on the part of the state to abdicate its duty to protect the people, their normal activities, and their culture and heritage, and tell everybody to fend for himself. To some extent, the concept of a shared or joint responsibility is valid, but the state must do its bit to protect all categories of citizens and their legitimate endeavours. The government is already earning a bad name by looking after only ministers and their favourites.

The second and more serious issue is the tendency to close down institutions or abandon normal work on the grounds that security cannot be guaranteed. How many universities, cinema houses, gatherings called by the Academy of Letters, book fairs held in Lahore and Karachi or horse races will be closed down because the state does not have the means or the will to provide security? This policy amounts to playing into the hands of the terrorists. Disruption of normal life and creation of a climate of fear are rewards the terrorists cherish the most. The merit of Nacta’s advice against publicising security threats is obvious.

While all precautions should be taken to save lives and bravado must be fully eschewed, one must not forget the dictum that sometimes it is necessary to die for saving life. There is much to be learnt not only from Sheema Kermani’s answer to Shahbaz Qalandar’s call but also from the faqirs in his service who lost no time before heralding the shrine’s return to the ways of love.

Tailpiece: Many people in Lahore appear to have been shocked at what two Chinese scholars said about CPEC and the Kashmir issue at an international conference, ‘Kashmir in Focus: Avoiding Conflict and Quest for Peace’, recently held at the Punjab University. The Chinese speakers apparently surprised the audience by saying that the benefits of CPEC should be available to India too. Secondly, they advised the states in the region to strengthen economic cooperation between themselves after putting their disputes on the back burner — a clear warning that China’s policies should be understood in terms of its own leaders’ observations and not through their Pakistani translators.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2017