LAHORE: Speakers at a 6th Faiz Festival session concurred that there’s a dire need to step up efforts to organise social democratic movements to bring about real change in the country.

“There is an urgency to change the neo-imperial system and it is possible only by transforming social democratic endeavours into a political party,” said Dr Taimur Rahman, an associate professor at LUMS, at the session “Reimagining the Left in a Post-Soviet World” at the Alhamra Arts Center.

The festival of ideas concluded on Sunday after having a lineup of thought-provoking sessions and activities.

Rashed Rahman moderated the session and briefly highlighted, what he said, various strands of socialism and dominance of Marxism as the voice of the Left towards the end of the 19th century. He also deplored the phenomenon of deindustrialization in Pakistan due to economic policies and compared it with Bangladesh which emerged as a “garment workshop of the world.”

Sharing a historical perspective with the audience, Dr Rahman stressed that it’s time the Left was reimagined to solve contradictions. Unlike Pakistan, he recalled, communist parties flourished in India and Nepal also had strife against monarchy in the post-Soviet times. It’s unfortunate, he said, that there was only IMF model here and the result was economic stagnation due to a lack of large-scale industry. “There are small industries but there is no big industry which can help improve national exports,” he said.

“The situation has led to constant struggle due to shrinking share in pie and the conundrum can be solved by coming up with creative ideas and forming a political party of the Left,” said Dr Rahman, who is also general secretary of Mazdoor Kissan Party of Pakistan.

Ramis Sohail, an advocate who speaks out for the cause of the downtrodden, put it this way: “There is a need to adapt rather than reimagine.” He said the Left was very much in a dominant position in countries such as Chile, Venezuela and Cuba. It’s democracy which needed to be reimagined as it’s in the hands of the oligarchs, he said.

Political activist Iqra Preet (a PhD in biochemistry) reminded the audience of what in her view were the capitalist system’s unfulfilled promises -- peace, market economy, globalization etc. “Wars show that peace is just a delusion. And then there is inequality and other issues,” she said. Some leaders in recent times had made a mockery of democracy, said Preet.

She sees solution to all these ills in the rise of socialism and a party which gains power through peaceful elections. “Social movements raise awareness but they are insufficient to bring about any meaningful change,” she said and expressed her optimism that “the Left will rise in the next 10 years”.

POETRY SESSION: Many people were interested in listening to panelists at a session on “Contemporary Trends in Pakistani Mother Languages Poetry” ably moderated by Mehtab Rashdi. What distinguished the panel was the fact that the speakers were from all provinces of the country.

Harris Khalique, Niaz Nadeem (Sindh), Rakhshanda Naveed (Punjab), Nazya Durrani (KP) and Saeed Tabassum (Balochistan) spoke about the histories of literary endeavours and common themes about which poets expressed their feelings. They dispelled the impression that poets in the languages other than Urdu had not covered a lot of ground in terms of themes.

It’s heartening to note that women are coming up with literary works at places where there’s an impression of restrictions on them. Social issues, human faults and foibles, elements of patriotism and a host of other contemporary themes are being covered in the mother languages.

“Poems in Sindhi on the ongoing war on Ukraine are coming up and the province is proud to have crowd-puller poets,” said a panelist.

Harris Khalique won applause from the audience for his perspective that, “all languages are national languages. All are equal. The only difference is that Urdu is a language of communication.”

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2022