Students compete in Iqbal Day painting contest

Faiqa Saeed wins first prize among varsity students

RAWALPINDI:

The Punjab Arts Council (PAC) Rawalpindi hosted a painting competition on the occasion of Iqbal Day under the theme ‘Mojza-e-Fun’ (miracle of art) which saw participation from the students of the Rawalpindi Women University, Fatima Jinnah University, Iqra University, University of Wah and the Arts Council participated.

Faiqa Saeed was declared the winner, with Ayesha Aslam bagging the second prize. Nimra Zia was the second runner up while Umm Ayman was the third runner up. Samiha Khaliq curated the exhibition.

PAC’s Waqar Ahmed along with Naheed Manzoor were the chief guests and distributed the prizes among the winners.

Manzoor talked about the role of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who is Pakistan’s national poet and was a widely-respected thinker and a philosopher.

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The guest noted that Iqbal through his poetry exhorted the young generation to be open-minded, eloquent and kind. Allama Iqbal said that the high role of the youth is key to deal with the current challenges faced by the Islamic world and they should play their primary role in taking the nation to new heights, Manzoor continued.

Ahmed said the study of the personality and art of the poet of the East requires intellectual thought. Iqbal's intellectual assets and poems are a common message for every age and class, but the center of his thought and philosophy is the youth, he added.

Others talked about Iqbal’s contribution to the poetic linguistics of Urdu. They noted that he was equally capable of ghazal and nazm, but it was nazm (long poetry) that gave him the identity of a philosophical poet in the subcontinent and the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2023.