The culture question

LAHORE:

No culture can flourish in isolation, Intezar Hussain, Asif Farrukhi, Khaled Ahmed and Fahimda Riaz agreed on Sunday.

They were speaking at the session Hamara Culture aur Bairuni Asrat at the Lahore Literary Festival.

Writer Intezar Hussain said steps should be taken to strengthen culture and avoid connecting it with religious sentiments. He said there were two problems Pakistan had failed to resolve, one was Kalabagh Dam and the other culture. Hussain criticised the ban on basant and firecrackers on Shab-i-Barat. He said fire-crackers in children’s hands were not atom bombs, that they should be bombed. He said basant had been celebrated by Muslims as a pleasurable cultural activity, but now political leaders had sadly banned it.

Asif Farrukhi said fear prevented people from differentiating between internal and external effects. He said such things needed to be considered in a broader perspective. He said some people considered even cricket obscene. He asked what at all was acceptable in the name of culture?

Khaled Ahmed said clarity of thought was needed, and external factors should not be blamed for things one did not understand.  Responding to a question on whether the cultures of the four provinces were separate, poet Fahmida Riaz said there were many differences but common thread ran throughout.

She regretted that the establishment had made culture its toy.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2014.