Amn Mela: United left front sought to defeat extremism

Activist says Left’s rise in Europe is a good omen, hopes for a similar feat in Pakistan.

LAHORE:

Awami Workers’ Party general secretary Farooq Tariq on Sunday called for a united front of working people to fight religious extremism.

He was speaking at the concluding day of the Faiz Amn Mela at an open air theatre in Lawrence Gardens.

Tariq referred to the victory of leftist political parties in Europe and said that the recent defeat of the conservative Bhartiya Janata Party at the hands of a new middle-class political outfit in Delhi elections was a good omen. He hoped that a similar feat would soon be performed by leftist parties in Pakistan.

Earlier, a 500-strong audience watched the performance of Waris Shah’s Heer. It included dance and live singing. The crowd cheered the performers with a round of applause when Heer rejected Qazi’s directive that Ranjha belonged to a low-caste and therefore was not a good match for her. “God did not divide humans in castes. Men created these divisions for of their own interests,” she had said.

In her introduction to the play, director Huma Safdar said  Waris Shah advocated freedom of expression in his works. “He did not preach a particular ideology or way of life. Instead, he would usually present various sides of an argument and leave it up to the readers to interpret the message on their own,” she said.

Safdar said the argument between Heer and the Qazi was an example of Shah’s liking for presenting both sides of an argument rather than enforcing a particular viewpoint on his readers.

Besides theatre performance, the second day of the Faiz Aman Mela featured a poetry recitation session and musical performances.

The poetry recital brought together 18 Urdu and Punjabi poets. Some of them presented poems written in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack in Peshawar. Baba Najmi, Arif Shah Porona and Shafiq Ahmed Shafiq were particularly popular amongst the crowd.

Taimur Rehman of the Laal Band and Jawad Ahmed later sang Faiz and Habib Jalib’s poetry.

Faiz’s daughter Salima Hashmi lamented the loss of life in the Peshawar attack and requested the gathering to remember the victims in their prayers.

The crowd included workers of the People’s Mazdoor Kisan Party and the Awami Workers’ Party.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2015.