The eighth Galle Literary Festival, held in the historical Dutch fort on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, was an impressive gathering of creative minds from all kinds of backgrounds and nationalities. I have attended every one of the Galle festivals, and have spoken at one of them. I have found them to be highly stimulating, not just as intellectual exercises, but as an opportunity to meet and make friends.

Galle is an ancient port, first mentioned in Ptolemy’s world map in 125AD. There is a strong Muslim presence here, dating back to the earliest Islamic era when Arab traders sailed with trading goods to China, breaking journey in Galle. In fact, the fort has a conservative community of Muslims who claim descent from Arab traders. Ibn-e-Batuta stopped here on his travels.

Increasingly, European expatriates are buying houses from locals and refurbishing their interiors. As Galle Fort is a Unesco World Heritage Site, no high-rise construction is permitted, and the outer façades of structures must retain their original appearance. These rules have protected the simple elegance of the town, and made it a huge tourist attraction. But the Muslim community is resentful of foreigners and their lifestyle, even though tourism is vital to the local economy.

The ramparts are over four metres thick, and every morning and evening, locals and tourists take walks around them to catch the breeze and watch the sea crashing against the rocks below. During the festival, renowned architects conduct tours around the fort and to other historical sites, shedding light on their little known aspects.

The Portuguese, led by Lourenco de Almeida, first captured the port in 1505, and built a rough and ready fort using trees and palm leaves. The Dutch then took control of the area in 1640 and built the present fort, using it as a prison to lock up recalcitrant Sri Lankans who objected to their presence. Needless to say, conditions were brutal, and flogging, torture and hangings common. The British captured the fort from the Dutch in 1796, formally declared Sri Lanka a colony in 1815, and ruled it until 1948. Thus, Sri Lanka was under partial or complete foreign domination for some 450 years.

During the festival, the prime minister, Ranil Wickramsinghe, launched a new edition of a 19th century translation of an old Buddhist history of ancient Sri Lanka. There is a cell in his office that is charged with digging out and reprinting old texts. Ranil, as he is commonly known as, attended a literary dinner with his wife at a restaurant where I had booked without any knowledge that he would come. Frankly, I struggle with the idea of Nawaz Sharif attending a literary festival, or indeed, taking interest in the history of the Subcontinent.

Christina Lamb, the award-winning British foreign correspondent, read from her recent book, and talked about her early experience as a young reporter in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan where she attended Benazir Bhutto’s wedding. John Gimlette, a well-known travel-writer, spoke about his time on the road researching his recent book, Elephant Complex. Some of my Sri Lankan friends have questioned his credentials in writing about their country after spending only three months there. But I think he has helped me see aspects of the island that hadn’t occurred to me over the many years I have been coming here. Often, foreigners see things that have become routine and unremarkable to locals.

History was a thread running through the festival’s programme. Sadly, I missed Peter Frankopan’s talk about his best-selling The Silk Roads, an alternative history of the world from the Asian perspective. I had a Dawn deadline to meet, and so missed what friends said had been a sparkling talk. But I did go to Nayan Lahiri’s talk titled Finding Lost Cities — How the Indus Civilisation was discovered. She spoke about the early excavations at Mohenjo Daro, Harappa and other sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Initially, they were studied as separate archaeological sites without connecting them. It took a young Indian archaeologist to realise that the artefacts he was looking at had much in common.

Ms Lahiri, a noted historian, observed that at Partition, ancient treasures were divided between India and Pakistan according to an agreed formula. However, this meant physically splitting certain priceless ornaments into two parts. She pleaded for a more rational and sensitive approach towards cultural treasures, but admitted that for the governments of India and Pakistan, forging an agreement on our common heritage was very low down on their list of priorities.

Before last year’s Galle festival, I suggested to our high commissioner in Colombo that it would send a very positive signal to Sri Lankan’s cultural community if he were to attend a couple of sessions. As it is, there were no Pakistani writers invited to speak at the last two festivals, but by establishing links with the organisers, he might be able to persuade them to put Pakistani authors on the programme. Sadly, he couldn’t make time to come to Galle.

Few of our diplomats realise the importance of culture in establishing commonalities. They focus instead on interacting with politicians, journalists, businessmen and government functionaries. But often, serious power brokers are keenly interested in the arts, and see a similar interest in others as a sign of good education and taste. Unfortunately, very few of our diplomats, civil servants and politicians are very interested in the arts, and would find it difficult to conduct an informed conversation on the subject.

But then, decades of neglect of our heritage by successive governments, combined with poor teaching at our schools and colleges, have virtually erased culture from our horizon. As individuals and as a nation, we are poorer for this ignorance.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn January 23rd, 2017