WRITERS from Saarc countries gathered last week in Lahore and discussed the writers’ position and role in today’s nuclearized and globalized world that we are fated to live in. It was the 10th Saarc writers’ conference. Living in a feministic age, it is in the fitness of things that the conference was headed by Ajeet Kaur of India and in Pakistan, Kishwar Naheed took charge and organized it in a befitting manner.
Ajeet Kaur speaks in a grand way, making writers feel that they are a force to be reckoned with in the affairs of the world. Even a writer known for his humbleness feels puffed up while listening to her. So, while addressing the august gathering of writers and intellectuals here, she liked to imagine them as “an oasis in wild and scorching deserts, where warring tribes can come and take rest. They have to deposit their weapons with the chieftain who usually lives in the middle of the oasis in a white tent.”
Ajeet Kaur says that “there is no embargo on dreams.” So she goes on dreaming with the good news that the warring tribes of India and Pakistan have at last deposited their weapons in the white tent guarded by two women, Ajeet Kaur and Kishwar Naheed. But she is gracious enough about two more souls in her squad. “The chieftains are incidentally all women, Kishwar and me, and Fauzia and Zubaida Jalal.”
What a sweet dream! But there is no embargo on dreams, more so when a romantic female writer is lost in a dream. And dreams, so she dreamily thinks, have the miraculous power of coming true.
But Dr Namwar Singh was a dreamer in a different way. He found in the idea of Saarc an urge to restore the lost links this region enjoyed in times prior to colonial rule. He recalled the times when ideas travelled from distant lands and reached this region. He talked of the mystics, poets and thinkers of those times. He talked of Shankar Achariya and wondered how different he was from the petty Shankar Achariyas now found in India. And he talked of the sufis of those times, but refused to accept the word ‘soof’ as the origin of the term ‘sufi’. Instead, he guessed a linkage between sufis and the Greek Sophists.
Then he talked of sufi poets such as Bulleh Shah who refused to be categorized as a Muslim or a Hindu. In particular, he talked of a Seraiki poet born in Multan and told us that the dewan of this poet, now a stranger in his own land, has been unearthed in Rajasthan. In the unearthed manuscripts, his name has been mentioned as Adhman. But researchers found this to be a mutilation of Abdur Rahman. Their research tells that he flourished in times prior to Baba Farid. Now, his work has been published in Hindi and also translated into English.
Tabassum Kashmiri and a few others made some queries about this poet. Dr Namwar Singh promised to do some follow-up work.
Dr Namwar Singh has been a professor of English in the Jawahar Lal Nehru University and is known as a Hindi writer. But as he spoke here in his soft voice, it came as a pleasant surprise that he is equally well-versed in Urdu. His talk was really illuminating and so different from what we had been hearing from others.
Globalization found its best advocate in Dr Abid Husain who spoke fervently in its favour, just like one speaking heatedly in a student’s debate. But Abid Husain is more of a diplomat than a writer. On the other hand, Ashok Vajpai spoke softly and doubted if a writer could reconcile with what globalization stood for. Literature in our time is, according to him, a kind of Satyagrah, and that is what is expected from a writer when confronted with globalization. He observed: “It is said that there is no choice against globalization. I insist I have a choice. In our time, literature is a kind of spiritualism, a new rehabilitation of love. I will stick to it.”
According to him, it matters little whether writers are in a position to stop the plunder of globalization. What really matters is the will to resist it.
Limitation of space doesn’t allow me to report all that was said and discussed in the different sessions of the conference. What I think is more important is the fact that the conference gave us an opportunity to meet and exchange views with our contemporaries coming from all Saarc countries, more particularly from India. Of course, we have been meeting our Indian contemporaries even at times when there was much tension between the two countries. But it was so different to meet them and have a dialogue with them both formally and informally in a relaxed atmosphere. How pleasant in this changed atmosphere to have a get-together with Kamleshwar, Ashok Vajpai and Dr Namwar Singh, and to my old friend Shamim Hanafi, and Qazi Afzal Husain coming from the Aligarh University. They all seem possessed with new confidence and new hope. We are breathing fresh air laden with a fragrance never sensed before.
WRITERS from Saarc countries gathered last week in Lahore and discussed the writers’ position and role in today’s nuclearized and globalized world that we are fated to live in. It was the 10th Saarc writers’ conference. Living in a feministic age, it is in the fitness of things that the conference was headed by Ajeet Kaur of India and in Pakistan, Kishwar Naheed took charge and organized it in a befitting manner.
