KARACHI: The four-day 7th International Urdu Conference on Sunday evening ended with the passing of a resolution presented by Arts Council secretary Ahmed Shah that Urdu and other national languages be given due importance to create a national character and develop national integrity; to provide Urdu institutions such as the Muqtadara with persons who could lead them; to introduce a hassle-free process of exchange of books between India and Pakistan as part of the efforts to defuse tensions between the two countries.

Poet Iftikhar Arif in his keynote address lauded the efforts of the organisers and urged them to keep up with the good work.

The day started with a session on the naatia adab. Prof Sahar Ansari said naatia literature enriched the literary world. Poet Iftikhar Arif said the amount of naatia collections published after partition was much greater than those published before independence.

Three papers were read out in the second session dedicated to Shibli Nomani and Maulana Hali. Farasat Rizvi said Shibli was instrumental in helping Muslims of the subcontinent overcome their political and social shortcomings. He termed his work ‘Shaerul Ajam’ a significant achievement in tracing the history of Persian poetry.

Dr Nomanul Haq spoke on Hali and highlighted the ambiguities that existed in his body of work. In that regard he pointed out the three facets of his personality: Hali the critic, Hali the ghazal writer, and Hali the biographer. He argued that in his criticism Hali defined writing couplets as anything that sounded good and had the ability to affect or impress the reader. He didn’t believe in the traditional qafia-radeef metrical patterns and debated against the concept of the beloved (mahboob). But when he himself wrote ghazals, he seemed to flout his own assertions.

Dr Haq narrated an interesting incident from the poet’s life. He said his parents got him married at a very young age. When he was 17-year-old he left his home and walked all the way to Delhi from Panipat, covering a distance of 53 miles. His family didn’t have a clue for more than a year as to where he was. In Delhi he educated himself by learning Persian and Arabic.

Qazi Afzaal Husain said reading both Hali and Shibli’s books gave the indication that they were influenced by Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’.

The next session, presided over by Kamal Ahmed Rizvi, was on Urdu plays.

Writer Hasina Moin said the reason for the decline in the quality of plays and playwriting was that in the past trained and educated people used to teach and do drama.

Actor Talat Husain echoed the sentiment by suggesting that more than anything else he learnt a great deal about the art of drama by spending time at Radio Pakistan with the likes of Salim Ahmed and Qamar Jamil.

Writer Asghar Nadim Syed shared a few anecdotes and then told the audience that in other parts of the world television was considered like a family member. Therefore, programming was done keeping the family factor in mind.

Writer Noorul Huda Shah said debating the issue we tended to ignore society which was on the decline. The only thing that remained was dreams (the dream of buying a mobile phone, a car etc) which was why a maid in a household identified with contemporary plays when in a story a well-to-do woman was beaten by her husband or a well-off man became morally corrupt.

The last session of the conference was on ‘peace in the region’.

Indian poet Obaid Siddiqui said he had lived a good part of his life in England and had seen the issue or Northern Ireland resolve amicably. In our part of the world we needed to speak the truth.

Writer Masood Ashar said there were vested interests on both sides of the divide, and while a good number of people wanted peace, there were also groups on either side which did not want that.

Iftikhar Arif touched upon the fact that one needed to look at the ‘international establishments’ and not just blame our own powers that be. This made Masood Ashar say that we shouldn’t always be blaming the United States for everything and start looking at ourselves. To which Iftikhar Arif drew his attention towards the situation in the Middle East.

Noorul Huda Shah argued that we had become extremists in every which way. This was countered by managing director of Oxford University Press Ameena Saiyid, who said we hadn’t become extremists because the political parties that got the most number of votes in general elections didn’t have an extremist outlook on life. She also talked about the common factors between India and Pakistan (artists, writers etc).

Before the concluding session, Zia Mohyeddin recited Urdu nazms and read out excerpts from Urdu prose, which were thoroughly enjoyed by the audience.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2014