Sindh Education Minister Dr Hamida Khuhro inaugurated the book fair, which will be open for public on Thursday at 10am.
To mark the inauguration, the organizers of the fair — Pakistan Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association — held a ceremony wherein noted historian and scholar from India, Dr Romila Thapar, an emeritus professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, spoke on the pre-independence period of the Indian history.
Among others, the Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan, Shev Shankar Menon, senior academicians and education officials of the city and provincial governments also attended the ceremony.
Dr Romila Thapar said that when liberated India inherited a long list of historians, who attempted to perioditize the history after 1819 in three main phases, focussing mainly on monolithic communities like Hindu, Muslim and British. An attempt was made to establish that the history before the creation of India was all about a static society, lacking social mobility, she added, saying that historian mostly acted as supporters to the colonial regime.
However, after 1947 nationalist historians did present a counter view of colonial history writers and gave to understand that no age or era could be glorified or characterized on the basis of religion. They tried to focus on civilization, social and cultural trends, ecology and environment, she added. She mentioned that the basis for division of subcontinent in 1947 was religion, while in the creation of Bangladesh language remained the key factor. It was not known yet what could be the basis for any future division in the sub-continent in the next 50 years, she remarked.
She said that in India history was written in different languages, which had become history of states now. She urged the historian to ensure that history was not distorted or manipulated and whenever such things took place they should speak up and go for a critical enquiry of the development.
Sindh Education Minister Hamida Khuhro commended Dr Thapar for her lecture and noted that historians should not be intimidated by constraints expediencies of time and hunt only for their integrity.
She said that the book fair on such a large scale was being held after a long time. “City is returning to its cultural identity,” she said and observed that such a fair helped create book reading habits among people, particularly among youth.
Earlier in her welcome address, the book-fair committee convener, Ameena Saiyid, said that as many as 50 publishers from Pakistan, 23 from India, two from the UK and one from the USA had set up stalls, which were surely to attract students. “In view of the response from publishers and encouragement shown by the government, I can say that the exhibition is going to be an annual feature in the city,” she remarked.
PPBA Chairman Aziz Khalid also spoke and thanked the government and Pakistan ambassador in India for facilitating the participants of the book fair.