LAHORE: Dr Osama Siddique and Musharaf Ali Farooqi have launched a real project along scientific lines to revive the fantasy treasure trove of the Indo-Pak subcontinent’s fiction, Tilsum-i-Hoshruba.

At a Faiz Festival 2022 session on Sunday, both shared the details of the project.

“But who wants to read the fantasy fictions, which are often the tales of a beautiful princess, ugly witches, and shrewd ghosts in the age of technology and science?” asked Dr Siddiqu.

Farooqi replied that in fact, fantasy imagination led to scientific inventions. Before the Wright brothers successfully experimented airplanes in 1912, Dastaango (tale-tellers) in the subcontinent had imagined an urrhan khatola centuries ago.

Dastaan writing and dasatangoi have been the proud invention of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent and at one time, they were the biggest export of the region to the whole world.

“Dastaan Ameer-i-Hamza is the biggest dastaan of the world compiled in a book form, to which we must be proud of,” said Farooqi.

The project Hoshruba will publish the landmark tale in 24 volumes on non-commercial lines. They said they have hired the right people for the history-preserving project to make it happen and appealed to the public to join the line of intending buyers. The biggest financiers of this classic fiction’s revival are buyers and a few selected investors.

“Tilsam-i-Hoshruba is all about social setting and cultural values, and we must preserve it,” Siddique said.

INQALABI JOURNALISM: Journalism was once a revolutionary trade, which has now diminished to means of bread and butter for journalists. Panellists at a Faiz Festival 2022 session sat on Sunday to discuss the aspects of revolutionary journalism in Pakistan. Moderator Rabia Mahmood led the discussion with veteran editor and rights activist Hussain Naqi, social media practitioner and TV analyst Mehmal Sarfraz and Azad Kashmir-based journalist Haris Qadeer. At the very beginning of the discussion, Rabia admitted that the panel had only Hussain Naqi, who has been the face of revolutionary journalists.

Hussain Naqi took the stage, and narrating the anecdotes of his career which began in the 60s, established that though press and speech freedom has never been free in the South Asian region since Partition times, in the 60s, the state and non-actors suppressing the press were known and recognizable.

“The trouble with today’s journalism and journalists is that you never know who’s pulling the strings,” he said. He said the downfall of media could also be seen behind the lineup of media house owners, who invest in the business only to get protection from the FBR, police and local administrations.

Taking the discussion further, Mehmal said the entry of several actors in the media management had drawn several red lines, which were unknown to journalists.

“Tied with several modes of censorship in the mainstream media, now the journalists have started using alternative media to voice their dissent,” she said. She named several journalists who had to lose jobs for knowingly or unknowingly stepping on forbidden lines; now, most of them are doing journalism on social media. She said organised trolling was making it gradually difficult for citizen journalists, especially women, to claim their space in cyberspace.

Journalist Haris Qadeer said he was the living example of state censorship. His publication, Roznama Mujadila was closed down by the PML-N government in 2017 in the AJK for publishing a controversial survey report. He said the national media and local Kashmiri media had no access to information or freedom to publish dissenting voices. The same treatment was being given to the media in India-held Kashmir.

HALLAJ AND FAIZ: If you have read the work or about Al Hallaj, or Mansour Hallaj, you will probably know how his ideology and actions have influenced the poetry of Faiz. Sarosh Irfani with writer Dr Nauman ul Haq in a session traces Hallaj in Faiz’s poems at a session of the Faiz Festival 2022. Irfani said that 1,100 years on this day (March 6), Hallaj danced his ways to the gallows instead of shunning his views into submission in front of a despot khalifa in Baghdad. He was lashed and executed for religion. A few days ago, a suicide bomber also danced his ways to a mosque to kill worshippers (in Peshawar).

What’s wrong with people killing people in the name of religion?

Dr Haq read his selected works and then Faiz’s work to imply how Faiz’s poetic scheme, again and again, referred to Hallaj’s actions. He said the reference of zindan, raqs, pa be joolan, tegh-e-jafa, lab azad hen tere, and ‘saje tu kese saje mera qatal ka mela’ and several others were all tribute to Hallaj. At the request of the audience, he read out the work of Hallaj, translated into Urdu.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2022