PESHAWAR: Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English and African American Studies at Ohio University, United States, visited not only a gurdwara but also the University of Peshawar, a higher seat of learning, on a one-day visit to the provincial capital and talked to students of English Literature about identity issues and racial discrimination as two themes of modern times.

He read out Punjabi lines and its English translation from ‘The Circle of Illusion’ to stress the need for mending relations and breaking bread together for the people of different nationalities divided by a boundary that only had relevance and importance for politicians but not for common people with a common past.

Prof Amritjit highlighted the modern day themes and issues like barriers and identity issues, which the people from different origins and religions felt all over the world.

During discussion, he talked about identity and how in terms of it a person or a group of individuals was conceived and how a person if he or she was in minority was perceived since that was also his/her identity. The student of English Literature department asked him about identity issues of Pakhtuns and Sikhs also, who lived as a minority in Pakistan. Both were misrepresented by media, they opined.

Amritjit Singh visits Peshawar gurdwara, interacts with UoP students

Soon the scholarly lecture turned into a discussion about identity issues of Sikhs and Pakhtuns, who are often made fun of through jokes and anecdotes. It was due to their misrepresentation in media since they lack control to counter the narrative that has developed over the years. It was also termed as one aspect of distortion of an identity and somewhat racial discrimination.

Prof Amritjit’s research and teaching interests also included African American Studies, Modernism, especially the Harlem Renaissance, 20th century American and postcolonial fiction, Richard Wright, South Asian cultures and literatures, and migration studies.

He has been working on a documentary about the history of South Asians in North America with a focus on exploring inter-ethnic paradigms, especially in relation to the parallels between the patterns of internal migrations within the Americas and immigration to the US and Canada from Europe and Asia.

Being a series editor of the Mela (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas) from Rutgers University Press, Prof Amritjit gave everyday examples, including from his life in the US and visits to India, to discuss how sometimes simple interaction between the people of different nationalities can bring them so close that boundaries and ethic differences meant nothing.

Nasir Khattak, chairman of the English department at the University of Peshawar, said it was after a decade that somebody from abroad had come to the campus to deliver a lecture.

He said identity or self was an important subject as students learnt the text and we discussed it here but seeing someone from another country talk about it was of interest to the students.

“The themes that we looked at were also the themes that professors discussed in other universities. It brought us together and created proximity,” he said. Prof Amritjit, a personal friend of Prof Altaafullah Khan of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Peshawar, came to Pakistan to attend a conference being held in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2017