PESHAWAR: Writers pledged to continue their efforts for bringing about a positive change in the society as Peshawar Literature Festival concluded here on Sunday.

The pro vice-chancellor of University of Peshawar, Prof Zahid Anwar, Registrar Saifullah Khan, executive director of Dosti Welfare Organisation Asif Riaz and members of core committee including Saidulamin Ahsan, Aslam Mir, Altaf Qadir and Prof Hanif Rasool were present at the concluding ceremony of the festival.

The second edition of Peshawar Literature Festival (PLF) was arranged under the auspices of Dosti Welfare Organisation in collaboration with several other bodies. The festival concluded at Institute of Education and Research, UoP.

More than 8,000 visitors showed up at the festival to attend about 90 sessions. A talk on transgender persons, art of theatrics and bilingual poetry recitation sessions were also features of the festival.

Over 8,000 attend Peshawar Literature Festival

Guest speakers from other cities were given a trip to Peshawar heritage sties. The partners of the festival including NCHD, culture and tourism authority, archives and libraries, directorate of youth affairs, IM Sciences and UoP helped in the arrangement of the event.

Through panellist discussions, authors’ talks, book review debates and question-answer rounds, speakers arrived at the conclusion that such events would cast far-reaching impact on the minds of youth. All the sessions remained engaging and pregnant with enough scholastic stuff for the audience drawn from the entire province and down country.

Representatives of all languages of the province and segments of society turned up at the event and shared their views without any reservations. Looking through the crowded agenda of the event, the organisers had divided the venue into four halls to accommodate the participants so that no significant topic was missed out and all the guests and visitors found enough space and the required facilities to get heard properly.

Special session on children literature, bilingual poetry recitation and musical concert featured the event.

About 244 Student volunteers assisted the process of guiding and facilitating the swarm of guests, mostly university and college students, who were excited to find answers to their queries from the well-articulated writers and experts.

Prof Mohammad Rauf, the director of IER, said at the closing ceremony that the initiative proved more fruitful, comprehensive and disciplined as compared to last year’s event. He said that faculty members of several departments of UoP put in their sincere efforts to make the festival a success.

Panellists at a discussion titled ‘interconnections between psychology and literature’ spoke at length and termed literature a reflection of human feelings and emotions depending on the means of production and social evolution at a particular period.

Shedding light on the link between psychology and literature, the panel comprising Dr Mian Iftikhar Hussain and Dr Hamdard Yousafzai said that literature evolved down the ages shaping up collective psyche.

They said that during colonial era, literature was filled with pessimism while in the socialist revolutionary period of former USSR, literature was pregnant with optimistic ideas and thoughts.

Dr Mian Iftikhar Hussain said that literature was another name of giving names to feelings, emotions encompassing joys, sorrows, aggression, and hatred. He said that literati vent those feelings and emotions in different forms of measured words and images namely poetry, prose, fiction and romance.

He said that according to Sigmund Freud, psychological structure of human personality comprised superego, ego and ID, the unconscious mind that covered 70 per cent of personality which acted on pressure principle and wanted gratification of basic human instincts regardless of the superego being lashed at by means of religion, cultural norms, values and restrictions.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2023