13th Urdu Conference goes online while auditorium guests maintain distance

Do we expect an author to only act as a thinker and reformer who is bound to enlighten their readers and bring about change in society? Don’t we realise that by limiting literature’s scope to intellectual enlightenment we have deprived ourselves of having literature as a source of entertainment?

“In our school days we never read the novel ‘War and Peace’ to change society,” said poet and critic Yasmeen Hameed as she read out her paper ‘Adab, Adeeb aur Qari’ (Literature, Author and Reader) at the inaugural ceremony of the 13th International Urdu Conference at the Arts Council of Pakistan in Karachi on Thursday.

“Neither did we read the works of Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto nor the poetry of Iqbal, Faiz and Nasir Kazmi with a wish to transform society,” said Yasmeen, who is also an educator and researcher.

To address the old debate on the definition of literature and its purpose and utility, she had incorporated in her paper a survey she conducted this year to investigate what common people thought of literature. “I don’t know what prior knowledge the randomly selected people in my survey have had on literature,” she explained in her online talk from Lahore.

She shared with the audience the survey participants’ answers to her questions: what literature was for them, what they had expected from literature and if literature had had any influence on their lives and societies.

Interestingly, she said, the expectations of the survey’s participants for the authors were not so different from what literary critic Muhammad Hasan Askari had penned down in an article back in 1948. In Askari’s viewpoint, she added, an author has four responsibilities: to fight against ignorance, to uphold national unity, to spread political awareness and to safeguard the freedom for an individual. “The question is,” she continued, “is it justified to have similar expectations from all writers?”

Yasmeen invited researchers and authors to ponder over how in the last 50 to 60 years literature has gradually lost its role in entertaining readers. “The content that entertains a person silently shapes their personality,” she remarked.

Literary flair

In the second half of her paper, Yasmeen touched on the debate on writing styles in literature. Discussing how critics distinguished between the artistic expression and the language of communication in literature, she observed that Urdu Nazm in the last eight years had adopted the latter style. “Poems that tell a story are well received by the audiences and, hence, are more popular.”

She, however, regretted that a common reader was yet to recognise the new genres introduced in Urdu Nazm, and that most people only enjoyed ghazal. She urged the audience to inculcate in children the habit of pleasure reading from an early stage of life so they could appreciate the new genres as well.

In a veiled criticism of literary giants, including Askari and Saleem Ahmed, who wrote essays on ‘The Death of Urdu Literature’ and ‘The Reasons Behind the Downfall of Literature’ between 1951 and 1955, she said it was the time when poets like Faiz and Noon Meem Rashid had published their works, Meeraji had passed away in 1949, Manto was alive, Intizar Husain had started writing and Nasir Kazmi was also composing poetry.

To drive her point home, she read out a quote from a book, titled ‘Jadeed Shaura Urdu’ (Modern Urdu Poets) and published in 1969 in four volumes, whose writer had blasted Rashid’s poetry as depressing and hadn’t even included Majeed Amjad among the 112 poets featured.

“Now it is well established that Noon Meem Rashid and Majeed Amjad can’t be ignored if a list of five top poets after Iqbal is compiled,” she said, and advised critics and readers not to look at a literary era so closely because “it only depicts a blurry picture”.

‘Khusro ki paheli’

Earlier, in his online talk from India, Gopi Chand Narang had discussed how Urdu has historically flourished despite constant efforts to undermine it in India.

Repeatedly quoting a stanza — ‘Urdu hai mera naam, main Khusro ki paheli’ (Urdu is my name and I’m the riddle of Khusro) — he said Urdu is a mysterious language that hasn’t belonged to a particular place since its birth.

He said India’s film and drama industry could not survive without Urdu. “But again, the mystery with Urdu is that what’s written in Urdu comes out as Hindi [on official documents],” he quipped.

Shamim Hanafi also addressed the ceremony in his online talk from India. Another online talk was delivered by poet Iftikhar Arif, who stressed that Pakistani authors were producing quality literature that could be proudly compared with literature being produced globally.

Present on the stage were Dr Huma Mir, Syed Sardar Ali Shah, Zehra Nigah, Dr Peerzada Qasim, Haseena Moeen, Shah Muhammad Mari, Zahida Hina, Noorul Huda Shah, Yousuf Khushk, Prof Sahar Ansari, Qudsia Akbar and Ahmed Shah. The programme had started with the recitation of the Holy Quran and Naat by Qari Hamid Mehmood Qadri.

Only selected guests were allowed to attend the programme in person in the auditorium, with strict observation of social distance and the wearing of masks. The four-day conference, which will end on Sunday, is going live online.