The days of a thriving Pak Tea House and the intellectual discourse Lahore was known for may have long gone. Since the early 1940s to 2000, the cafe was bustling with literary and artistic activity with the literati using the space for dialogue on subjects it felt needed to be talked about or could not be spoken on publicly. But since then, the room for such spaces shrank and the culture of the likeminded people sitting together over steaming cups of tea faded away.

Fast forward to a decade and Lahore started witnessing hints of conferences or seminars taking on anything from art, culture or language to name a few subjects. Then came the era of literary festivals what they began to be known as across the world.

Artist and educator Salima Hashmi, who has also been organising the annual Faiz International Festival for around three years now, thinks the idea of literary festivals per se has been adopted from the West where such events have been held for years.

“Here, the sudden eruption of such festivals came from Jaipur in India. The trend of Urdu conferences, symposium or workshops that weren’t really festivals has been here for years, usually organised by universities. But now they’ve certainly become a trend (as public events). From Sri Lanka to south India to Jaipur and now Pakistan, it has suddenly taken over.”

Razi Ahmed founded the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) in 2012 as a pioneering event in the city to promote books, art, culture, music and much more over the course of a few days. For him, English fiction from Pakistan during the past decade saw an incredible increase in number of books coming out, which captured the imagination of readers internationally too.

“Pakistani writers have been nominated for the Booker Prize and won other laurels. These positive factors have made literature as exciting as contemporary art and music. And it was a just matter of time before Lahore, a literary city, had a platform to celebrate and share the written word collectively. We have bolstered the popularity of Pakistani writers on their home turf and introduced many foreign authors whose books, otherwise, weren’t available to Pakistani readers,” Razi explains.

A year before the LLF provided a space to adults to sit and talk culture and literature, Baela Raza Jamil of Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi founded the Children’s Literature Festival (CLF) along with Ameena Saiyid of the Oxford University Press. Baela says she was provoked by low level of learning among the children.

“We wanted to let this be a form of learning away from books. There was a crisis of learning, everybody was performing poorly. We wanted to offset this challenge and take children away from their punishing routines, and encourage them that there is no wrong or right and they could voice their thoughts without fear of punishment,” she explained.

The founders of these literary festivals in the provincial capital felt the need to provide such open spaces to the masses to at least kickstart discourse on topics that were hot news across the country, yet were not being spoken about for various reasons.

“In Pakistan that goes through horrible acts of trauma and tragedy, I call these festivals learning and healing festivals. We really need them. They are a counter-narrative to all that’s happening. We look at our festival as a real equaliser across the country that is participated in by all kinds of schools and school systems and schoolchildren. Every festival has special children, gypsies, and the affluent. It creates a sense of empowerment for children. We have had 45 festivals across the country since 2011 from Swat to Gwadar to Mithi,” states Ms Baela of the CLF.

But not all of these literary events are just restricted to giving an insight into the latest literature from around the world; they also provide a platform to, mostly, informed people to come face to face with their favourite writers, musicians or actors. Ms Salima believes these festivals in their current form are not just events dedicated solely to promotion of literature.

“There are two aspects to these festivals: they are a source of entertainment, and are also helping sell books. Publishers support these literary festivals to keep interest in books alive; they bring authors close to the audience, which doesn’t happen by just reading a book. Earlier, people were just content reading books. But it has now become razzle-dazzle like inviting Sharmila Tagore or Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar being a mainstay at Jaipur Literature Festival. Now every town wants it own literature fest world over.”

Over the years, these literary events have both been hailed and criticised with equal measure. While their contribution to the purpose they started out to achieve could not be denied, they have faced flak for being elitist or exclusive. But Ms Baela is satisfied with her literary festival for children and does not feel it caters to the elite only, and has even brought several children closer to books. She says: “There’s a lot that comes out of these festivals, eg prison poetry and looking at Heer from different angles are some of the things my festival has been able to introduce to children. It’s therapy for a country and a means of opening up society. We have been successful in doing that. We even let people bring their own lunch. It is inclusive for children. If we are in Sindh, we invite Sindhis mostly to focus on their language and literature more. Over the years, the LLF has added Urdu sessions while the CLF’s Urdu strand gets stronger every year.”

The LLF, the most talked-about out of all festivals of Lahore, has faced criticism every year over its alleged exclusion of local and regional languages besides being an event for the who’s who of the country.

Responding to the criticism and some negative feedback that the LLF gets from certain quarters, Mr Razi says: “It’s always good to hear constructive and thoughtful criticism as we constantly strive to make the programme broad-based and rich. The LLF is a cultural bridge-building initiative to expose our youth to the wider world of ideas and literature. With around half of our speakers coming from abroad, English becomes, by default, the most accessible and subscribed to language. That should not mask the fact that we had, for instance, 10 sessions in Urdu in 2016 despite cutting the event by a day and having relocated to a hotel upon government directives. Eminent Urdu, Punjabi, and Seraiki speakers at the LLF over the past five years have included best of the best. We are proud to have had such an eclectic and vibrant mix of speakers, musicians, and artists from across Pakistan, and as we grow as an institution, the pool will only become richer,”

Similarly, the Faiz International Festival has drawn its share of negative press for being commercial and repetitive. Ms Salima contends that the primary objective of the festival was never just promotion of literature but everything that her father, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, believed in.

“We feel cultural activities are as much a right of people as right to education, food and housing. But it isn’t state priority, so we just give the people an idea to fight for their right. We want to tell them that this is their right and they should go demand it,” she elaborates on the scope of the festival she is a major part of.

So while these literary events are marching on with whatever resources they have and the kind of response they generate, we should be able to gauge the impact they have had, if any, on society or the masses whom they set out to cater. Ms Baela’s children festival has had much success, according to her, and she has bigger plans for the future.

“We should co-produce content, involve audience, interact with them. The audience should be able to take back something from a festival. We want to start young authors residencies, for young people producing, but not able to publish their writing. Then the Sindh Culture Department organised their own festival for children inspired by our idea. I believe if content is an open source then so should be learning. Some schools across the country have taken inspiration and organising such events themselves. So this is a success for us,” she adds.

Baela’s plans for the years ahead include developing curricula for schools out of the content created for the festivals and share it with education departments of all provinces and convince them to build on it.

“We need far more literature for adults as well as for children. There should be residencies for literature, workshops, content production. We need to encourage different kinds of literature, not just nationalist, but beyond that. Literature should not be restrictive. We should let people write about things normally not written about. There’s a culture of silence and it’s time to do away with it. We have departments of tourism, culture, education, higher education, archives and libraries. If they spare even a few billions of their budgets, it can make a difference. These festivals are the best thing Pakistan can export.”

The literary festivals could be great for promotion of literature. But it shouldn’t stop here. Society need to figure out many more ways to create a sense of ownership for literature among the general public.

Salima Hashmi feels the first and foremost task is to make people literate. “What we spend on doing this is pathetic; we’re way down. We need to have a literate population first. All our government, past and present, should be asked to spend taxpayers’ money on where it needs to be spent. Shahbaz Sharif should be taken to task over the Orange Line train. What’s more important: travelling fast or literacy? Our priorities are totally skewed everywhere. There is sheer corruption in education; look at the ghost schools, absentee teachers,” the veteran artist says when asked what more could be done to promote literature here.

While Mr Razi feels changes to curricula are vital as are libraries and TV shows. His suggestions for promotion of literature in Lahore besides the festivals include “introducing more Urdu, English and regional literature courses as part of core curricula in schools and colleges, opening up more modern libraries in every district, and have radio and television programmes, panel discussions and quiz shows on literature, poetry and the arts”. In his concluding remarks the founder of the LLF adds, “Humanities must be mainstreamed in state-shaped focused curricula through different means. We have to collectively reach out to the teeming youth of the country. Besides litfests, electronic media and school curriculum are critical to transforming mindsets of the parents to allow their children to purse literary paths and dream big”.

(The writer is a staff member)