The second Peshawar Literature Festival (PLF) took place on February 21-25 at the Institute of Education and Research (IER), University of Peshawar. As with the first edition last year, PLF 2023 brought together literati, linguists, scholars and the youth to share their viewpoints on a wide range of cultural, social and political issues.

Organised under the auspices of the Dosti Welfare Organisation, in collaboration with the Directorate of Youth Affairs, the Culture and Tourism Authority (C&TA), the Global Education Campaign (GEC) and the Institute of Management Sciences (IMSciences), the festival’s objective this year was to explore the strength of storytelling that can reconnect us to our roots, with a new thread of thought.

It was quite apparent that the organisers had learned much from their previous year’s experience, as this year’s agenda was much more expansive and included sessions on transgendered persons, children’s literature, linguistic diversity, resistance, music and theatre. Comparatively younger speakers and panellists were chosen to speak on burning issues, allowing the larger audience to better relate to the content being debated.

Opening the five-day long fest, director IER Professor Muhammad Rauf remarked, “We have a strong tradition of linguistic and cultural diversity. We are here to find ways and means of how to reconnect broken threads. Delegates from [across Pakistan] and from the north and south of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have come to share their part of this amazing story and its link to the future.”

The second Peshawar Literature Festival thematically focused on the power of storytelling to build a more inclusive society

Reiterating the sentiment, Professor Noorul Amin Yousafzai said it was imperative that youngsters come up with innovative ways and means to reconnect with the past, to a time when people of different ethnic identities lived in harmony, peace and mutual respect.

Around 50 lively sessions were held to showcase authors, launch books and enjoy poetry. With storytelling being a key theme of the fest, Professor Zubair Hasrat and Saidul Amin Kheshgi pointed out that the art of telling a story was a most significant factor in keeping people aware of their creative strengths. They were also of the opinion that most parents had let go of the golden tradition of telling their children stories of our local mythical heroes. As a result, such tales were of no relevance any more to a generation addicted to social media.

Picking up the thread, Prof Noorul Amin Yousafzai said it was deeply unfortunate that the tradition of the bedtime story was all but lost. It was, the professor believed, a tradition our grandparents employed to instil in us the spirit of peaceful coexistence, a sense of pluralism and a suspension of disbelief that let us transcend magical worlds where humanism, piety and selfless sacrifice reign supreme.

Researcher Gul Arbab, an expert on children’s literature, pointed out that our children are being brainwashed with alien topics, while parents and other stakeholders are indifferent to how these young, malleable minds are being gradually conditioned to stop thinking critically. “We don’t have authors to write stories for our children, to own our culture and lifestyle with a global approach,” she said.

At the panel ‘Neemzad’, rights activist and author Hayat Roghani pointed out that gender was a social construct and such categorisations should be made to provide “special” people with more care and facilities. He stated, “I have based my book Khazunak [Transgendered Persons] on original stories and have come to the conclusion that transgender persons should be allowed to live with dignity, freedom of choice and inclusivity.”

Mahi Gul, a transgender graduate of the University of Karachi, said that all the trans community wants is social justice and recognition of their gender. She added that society should “accept us with all human shortcomings” and further said, “We want nothing, in fact, but acceptance in the society. Let us live in our own way.”

Shedding light on the link between psychology and literature, the panel comprising psychiatrists Dr Mian Iftikhar Hussain and Dr Hamdard Yousafzai, who is also a writer of fiction, pointed out that literature’s evolution over the ages has shaped our collective psyche. According to Dr Hussain, literature is another name given to our feelings and emotions, and literati are those who are able to vent those feelings and emotions of joy, sorrow and aggression through poetry and prose.

The two psychiatrists took a deeper look at the subject to discuss how and why, during the colonial era, our writings were filled with pessimism, whereas in the socialist revolutionary period inspired by the former USSR, our literature was awash with optimistic ideas and promising thoughts.

On the topic of colonialism, Professor Gulzar Jalal Yousafzai said subjugated communities all over the world were represented by European writers in both literary and non-literary works as either the white man’s paradise, or his grave. Thus, the controlled states and people became a place of mystery, physical discomfort, darkness and disease for the colonisers.

In a panel debate on promoting peace, nationalist leader and rights activist Afrasiab Khattak said that the masses were no longer ready to believe in a structured theory of terrorism. He argued that it was absurd that the dwellers of the soil where the Gandhara civilisation had, for centuries, dispersed the seeds of everlasting peace, should grow into the towering plants of violence and hatred they are painted as today.

Professor Samiuddin Arman, meanwhile, said that, even if one looked through the entire inventory of classical and pre-Partition literature, one would be hard pressed to come across even a single incidence of departing Sikh and Hindu communities being plundered in KP because Bacha Khan’s philosophy of non-violence had taught the more dominant communities to let the minorities leave with grace.

At another session, scholars and experts discussed literary contributions coming from restive Waziristan. “Poets and writers from Waziristan have contributed to Pashto literature and young scholars are busy exploring it their own way,” stated Haider Dawar in his discourse on the 15th century writer Bayazid Ansari, who penned Khairul Bayaan, considered the first book to come out of Waziristan.

On the festival’s concluding day, noted scholar Aslam Mir said all we need today is to pick up the broken pieces of our lost stories and build a peace narrative that will keep us united and resilient, and push us to resist terror and violence in all its manifestations. Such efforts, if strengthened by the stakeholders, will definitely bring us closer to a place where all ethnicities and groups can defy divisions and rifts to evolve into a more cohesive society.

The writer is a Peshawar-based contributor on Pashto literature and culture.
He tweets @Shinwari_9

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 5th, 2023