Faiz International Festival: Nation suffering from identity crisis: Yousuf Salahuddin

LAHORE: Yousuf Salahuddin, a maternal grandson of Allama Iqbal, said the nation was suffering from loss of identity because we don’t make any effort in knowing about things that were our own.

He expressed these views at a discussion session on Iqbal and Faiz, at the third and last day of Faiz International Festival which concluded at the Alhamra Arts Centre on Sunday. The festival held more than 45 discussion sessions over the weekend and around 25 art, music and theatre performances.

“While efforts should be made in coming years to make films on personalities like Faiz and Iqbal, our syllabus is not very conducive in learning about our heroes and their philosophies, as the textbooks go through different changes with every new government,” Salahuddin remarked.

“I have tried a number of times to raise the issue of wrong history being taught to our youngsters. We have done great injustice to Iqbal’s work, by misinterpreting it,” he said.

Salahudin said the lower middle class was still close to Urdu. “Our over-westernised class has gone far away from Urdu literature.”

“We have to create an environment where, events like this Faiz Mela become a norm and in order to mainstream the literature, such events should take place more frequently,” he said.





According to Salahuddin, the need of the hour is to redirect ourselves and re-create the environment where reading Urdu literature becomes a norm rather than exception only to be included in Urdu textbooks.

Speaking of Iqbal’s relationship with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Salahuddin said Iqbal put a lot of hope in Faiz and if he was alive today, he would have certainly been very proud of Faiz’s work.

Speaking about lack of any substantial films or TV dramas made on the two poets, actor Adeel Hashmi, said that it will take a lot of years from now on to create characters that are larger than life.

“The onus is on the younger generation to work for their mother language, instead of being spoon-fed. The social media tech savvy generation, should read Urdu literature,” he said.

At another discussion session titled “70 years of TV and performing arts” dramatist Asghar Nadeem Syed said the political elite should have identified the diversity of castes and languages of Pakistani people, but from the very beginning, the needs associated with literature were not fulfilled and no performing arts institutes or academies were established.

Syed said film making was a medium of global importance and has deep rooted links with literature, while the world took benefits from classics, we drove away our literary stalwarts.

“In India, the Nehru government established dedicated organisations for literature, performing arts drama and films, but on the contrary in Pakistan, where film industry was at its pubescent stage did not even welcome Manto. Instead he was penalised for his work with lawsuits,” he remarked.



According to Syed, Quratul Ain Hyder, the writer of Aag ka Darya, a very famous novel, was another such example, who had to go back to India.

“She had to leave because society never became conducive for flourishing literature and arts,” Syed said.

According to Syed, Faiz also had to bear with five years of struggle, and opposition due to similar environment.

Syed said given this background we need to revisit and retrace our history and realise that if we don't have a film industry today, there is a history and reasons to it.

“There is a misconception that we once had a golden period of film industry, there was none because we never have let it (film industry) work the way it should have,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2017.