A sombre KLF opens in 2021 amid Covid, Moin’s death

Structural shifts in world affairs highlighted during keynote address at 12th edition

KARACHI:

A minute’s silence over the demise of renowned playwright and dramatist, Haseena Moin, and a nostalgic throwback documentary reflecting on the event’s success from last year - when the pandemic hadn’t changed the world - marked the beginning of the 12^th Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) on Friday.

The event is being streamed online this year, in light of the third Covid-19 wave in the country.

Literary world’s loss

“It is a great tragedy for the entire literary community and the country at large for having lost such a great literary mind [Haseena Moin] who transformed television over the past several decades,” said Oxford University Press managing director Arshad Saeed Husain, paying tribute to the writer who passed away on Friday morning in his opening remarks.

‘Show must go on’

Husain continued such that it seemed like only yesterday when the KLF 2020 was inaugurated and there was an air of festivity and celebration, reflecting on the pre-pandemic life and how the third wave pushed the organisers to go virtual this year.

“Rather than postponing or cancelling the KLF, we decided to go completely digital. We felt that the show must go on,” he said.

Launched with the theme “Imagining New Frontiers,” the two-and-a-half day event will feature more than a hundred and fifty speakers from twelve countries. The festival, however, will have just two parallel sessions instead of featuring four to five, in a shift from its usual conduct.

“The pandemic has made us acutely aware that things in the future will simply not be the same. There are new realities that we must face. We need new approaches, new ideas and new goals,” Husain said. He further spoke about the pressing issue of education and ensuring its flexibility with a new and evolved curriculum to ease the transition for students and teachers to “the new normal”, where digital learning was becoming central.

Bank of Punjab president Zafar Masud also spoke on the occasion.

“Festivals like the KLF provide opportunities to form the much needed social cohesion and solidarity. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the digital version of Karachi Literature Festival will put Pakistan on the world map as a country rich in culture and creativity where there is a free exchange of ideas and thoughts,” he said.

Read: Remembering Haseena Moin: Heartfelt tributes pour in for late playwright

“We will imagine and then deliver together the new frontiers to the greater good of our nation.”

Getz Pharma managing director Khalid Mahmood, highlighting the importance of initiatives like the KLF, said a nation without performing arts, culture and poetry was like a body without a soul. “One of our key aims is to support the cultural heritage of this country which is very rapidly eroding,” he underscored.

Britain’s Deputy High Commissioner in Karachi Mike Nithavrianakis said, “When we think of the KLF, our minds immediately connect with all thebest things about Karachi. It’s an opportunity to hear firsthand from an eclectic and diverse range of people about an extraordinary breadth of subjects, from the international and geopolitical to the most local, human interest stories,” he said, also reminiscing about the vibrant atmosphere of several thousand people coming together to the festival before the coronavirus.

Three literary prizes were also given on the occasion.

Future frontiers, Pakistan and the pandemic

In his keynote speech, academic and author Vali Nasr highlighted changes and structural shifts in world affairs over the last couple of years, concerning dominant forces, global integration and the balance of power between states. He said the period of Western institutions dominating global politics and global economics has ended and “now we are entering a period where the United States (US) and China see each other as adversaries.”

“…regions of the world have arenas of competition and it will ultimately come to our region. The economic relationships that facilitated the integration of China and the US have also changed,” he continued.

Global movements against globalisation have emerged and economic nationalism has gained precedence, Nasr said, all the while emphasising that Pakistan had a major strategic partnership with China, and a long-running relationship, despite ups and downs, with the US. And this rivalry, he added, presents economic opportunities and challenges.

Nasr said the pandemic had further changed things, creating new kinds of relationships between countries while also severing ties in some situations.

He said the pandemic, in particular, was a major challenge to developing countries because of the nature of their economies. “So the shape of the post-pandemic global economic order is something very important,” he underscored.

Speaking about the ongoing technological change in defining future frontiers, the academic said, “In the past four to five years, we have seen new frontiers open up that didn’t exist before.”

“Some of these are particularly difficult challenges in the strategic area, such as the question of cyber security.

It’s becoming an issue that countries are more likely to use to fight one another...to impact elections or bring down infrastructure,” he said, adding that how this technological change is going to meet the “fractious world of post pandemic” will be interesting to see. He added the way vaccines had been produced effectively was also a technological frontier that had been crossed.