‘Heightened security can marginalise working people’

Novelist Bilal Tanveer says fiction can enable study of violent conflicts not possible in the media.


Amel Ghani February 21, 2015
Gayer said the changing physical infrastructure of cities involving heightened security measures was a response to the threat of terrorism. PHOTO: APP

LAHORE:


Security arrangements meant to protect public places in cities mostly end up exacerbating marginalisation of the economic lower classes, novelist Bilal Tanveer said on Saturday.


He said the idea that cities should permanently control public access by putting up check posts at their entrances was borrowed from the military doctrines pertaining to wars.

He was speaking at the Metropolis and Violence session on the second day of the Lahore Literary Festival.

Moderator Ali Raza, a Pakistani artist based in the United States, asked Tanveer about the role of arts in understanding violence. He responded that fiction provided a good medium to explore individuals’ experience of violent instances. He said such explorations were not possible in the commercial media. “Art lets you stop and revisit a story, which is not possible otherwise,” he said.

French Academic Laurent Gayer, novelist Mahesh Rao, and author Yasmin El Rashidi were the other panelists.

Gayer said the changing physical infrastructure of cities involving heightened security measures was a response to the threat of terrorism. However, he said, these arrangements were also a cause of fear amongst the residents and threatened diversity in cities.

He said modern cities had developed as sites that were to be immune from international wars.

However, he added, this was changing more recently with the emergence of non-state actors.

Indian novelist Mahesh Rao said compared to some of the big cities in the region Mysore was quite peaceful. However, he said if the pursuit of economic growth by the Indian state continued unabated the city might not stay peaceful for very long. He said a majority of the residents had been excluded from the government-funded construction and development schemes. “These schemes are leading to loss of livelihoods as well as disruption of kinship structures,” he said.

Yasmin El Rashidi, who has recently authored The Battle for Egypt: Dispatches from Egypt, spoke about the visual representations of the recent uprisings in Egypt.

She said the media coverage of the uprisings had mostly prioritised social media activists rather than the protesters on roads and public squares.

She said a large number of observers had come to Egypt since the uprisings to document the unfolding events.  However, she said, it would take a while for anyone to come up with an insightful account of the uprisings.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22nd, 2015.

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