New Yorkers came in large numbers on Saturday to the day-long, second edition, of Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) that displayed Pakistan’s intellectual, cultural, historical and creative aspects of life.
A number of distinguished speakers present at the occasion emphasised Lahore’s standing as Pakistan’s cultural hub.
In a special segment, the Mughal emperor Jahangir’s fascination for the city was also discussed.
“I am delighted to join you to welcome Lahore for the second time to the Asia Society and to this city that never sleeps. Just like New York, Lahore does not either,” Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi, said at the start of the festival which continued late into the night.
“As the cultural capital of Pakistan, Lahore has led our national engagement with modernity, as a purveyor of ideas, innovation, and enterprise. But it has also been a jealous guardian of our rich traditions and cultural heritage,” she told the audience.
“In a world beset with turmoil and strife, the “soft power” of culture can also serve as the most powerful bulwark against the walls of hatred, division and xenophobia. It is soft and not hard power that helps to create a sense of our shared destiny,” the Pakistani envoy said.
“It is an invaluable vehicle to build bridges, and take down walls, across civilizations and promote peace.”
LLF founder and CEO Razi Ahmed said that the festival aims to reclaim Lahore’s cultural significance and influence.
The festival, he said, was about celebrating the intellectual and creative vitality of this city, its cosmopolitan and syncretic past, its storied cultural contributions, as well as its place in global literary world today.
“Lahore has historically been the firmament of big ideas, a home to the arts since the Mughal empire”, he said.
Razi Ahmed thanked Ambassador Lodhi’s role in helping to bring LLF to New York, saying she was an asset of the Asia Society, New York, which co-hosts the event.
“Having played a modest role in bringing the LLF to New York, it is personally gratifying for me to see this labour of love, grow and take strength,” Ambassador Lodhi said.
“Our culture defines our humanity, gives life and soul to our identity and enriches our lives. It is a reflection on our ethos, values, and attitude towards life”.
During the course of discussions on ‘fake news’, moderated by Amna Nawaz of ABC News, a major US TV network, Ahmed Rashid, a prominent Pakistani author and journalist, Ambassador Robin Raphel, a former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia and Tom Freston, a former CEO of Viacom, said that they wish for the return of fact based reporting to journalism.
Both Ms. Raphel and Freston said that the media has become commercialized and there was not enough investigation to establish facts.
Leading artist Shazia Sikandar’s “Disruption as Rupture”, a video animation of her works won her great admiration from the crowd. A discussion on the video with Shazia and Ali Sethi, Pakistani writer and singer, respectively, and Dun Yun, a Pulitzer Prize composer who provided music to the video, was moderated by Rachel Cooper of Asia Society.
Famed singer Tahira sang some of her popular kafis, ghazals and folk songs much to the crowd’s pleasure.
Art historian F.S. Aijazuddin and the Curator of Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Navina Najat Haidar discussed Lahore’s contribution to art, culture and music and focused, mainly on emperor Jahangir’s love for art.
Author Basharat Peer, Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Saskia Sassen, co-chair of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, discussed ‘Populism and the Global Rise of Strongmen’, in a segment moderated by Akbar Noman, Associate Professor, SPA, Columbia. They were of the view that weak institutions gave rise to populist leaders.
In a segment moderated by Dwight Garner, literary critic of the New York Times, spoke to leading Pakistani novelists Mohammed Hanif and Nadeem Aslam about the factors, and situations and events that led them to write their novels.
The festival was rounded off with a qawwali session in which Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers, enthralled the audience with their performance.
