LAHORE: An event held at a local hotel invited four prominent personalities, Intizar Hussain, Dr Arifa Syeda, Raza Kazim and Salima Hashmi, as a part of Independence Day celebrations. They all spoke on what Aug 14 meant to them.

Setting the tone of the event, Salima Hashmi went down the memory lane, recounting her personal experiences of August 14 at different stages of her childhood. Once when her family was in Srinagar, she said, special clothes were being stitched to celebrate the day, the joy of which was marred by news of emerging violence in the area. Her father, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, was advised to leave.

She remembered that once reading her father’s bitter sweet poetry while he was in exile in Beirut, she saw the yearning he had to go back home was reflected in the way he gazed wistfully from his balcony smoking quietly. Once back home, she asked him, “How do you feel?” he immediately said, “Wonderful”.

“The country is 68-year-old and a lot of time has passed,” she concluded, “But there are a lot things that must be achieved and we must go on.”

Punctuated with wit and irony, Dr Arifa Syeda’s articulate talk captivated the audience.

“It’s tragic that a small section of society has hijacked the larger populace bit the more tragic part is that the larger section has let itself be hijacked,” she said, lamenting that politics had been tainted and the administration was involved in sycophancy while the law had bowed down to those in power.

Ms Syeda said culture patronised ideas and dreams. “But culture is not only speaking a little bit of Urdu with English words to show how ‘educated’ we are. I have nothing against languages. In fact, they should change over time but culture and civilisation stem from a far deeper concept and that is tolerance.”

She said a shift of attitude was needed in a country like Pakistan where intolerance reigned in most areas, especially religious thought. Many people wanted to associate themselves more with Saudi Arabia rather than Pakistan’s own South Asian context.

Raza Kazim spoke on the lack of democracy in the country.

“Democracy does not mean merely holding elections. It means ridding a system of slavery and fascism. Pakistan has not seen democracy till today. It does not mean freedom but the use and expression of that freedom.”

Intizar Hussain talked about the progressive writers’ movement before the Partition, saying that was a writers movement based on ideas and the ideas also gave birth to lobbies. The ideas were also uprooted and displaced along the people after the Partition. Stories such as Saadat Hasan Manto’s ‘Khol Do’ became controversial and they were labeled as anti-Pakistan because they spoke of the reality of the Partition.

Many outspoken magazines and publications were shut down and while there was no state crackdown on Manto’s ‘Siyah Hashiye’, some writers took a very severe point of view against it, especially Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. This was followed by criticism of Krishan Chander’s ‘Peshawer Express’ that denoted that if at one railway station the Muslims were killed, the Hindus faced the same at the next station.

Unfortunately, he said, most of Pakistan’s great literary works were collected and published by Indian historians and if one wanted to see Pakistani writers’ perspectives on the Partition, one would have to ask India for it. All this while Pakistan stood by silently disregarding its own treasury of poets and authors, he said, adding that the writers were so powerful and influential that they were indeed a threat to the successive hard line, insecure governments as well as the Ulema.

“If we have been unable to even protect and keep these writings safe, then what have we done for Pakistan?” he asked at the end.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2015

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