A festival that made people think
Pakistan
The festival illuminated the intellectual acuity of the participants.
By Shafaq Iqbal Farooqi
LAHORE – A good number of people attended the two-day literary festival ‘Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest’ at the Alhamra Arts Council. The event concluded in the city on Sunday.
The festival of ideas was mainly organised by the University of Central Punjab (UCP), which illuminated the intellectual acuity of the participants on topics such as challenging truth, Jinnah’s role in the history, effects of development projects on the environment, arts, education, politics and social issues. Leading lights shared their thoughts on an array of themes.
In the first session titled “Challenging Truth” addressed by Mohsin Hamid and Dr Wasim Anwar, the language question in Pakistan, truth in the contemporary world, novels and writing style of Hamid were discussed. The novelist said his book ‘Discontent and Other Civilisations’ was an outcome of discontent and the things that annoyed a person and took one back to structures that one belonged to a particular group of people whether Punjabi, Muslims, Pakistani or certain political parties.
On challenging truth, he said truth was something that needed to be contested and, in Pakistan also, "we have to do that". Talking about his relationship with his characters, he said: “When I am writing a character, man, woman, young or old, I’m trying to be that person. In doing that, you are the actor playing that character and also the playwright. When you read fiction you are allowing other people to exist inside you.”
In the second session, a book “Jinnah’s role in development and history” was launched, having Dr Ishtiaq Ahmad and Barrister Asad Rahim Khan who discussed the contents of the book. The session was moderated by lawyer Salman Akram Raja.
On the second day, the first session was on the topic of ‘Pakistan Political Economy’ in which former interior minister Miftah Ismail and S. Akbar Zaidi shared their thoughts on country’s economic condition.
The session, titled “New Media: Democratization vs Disinformation,” was moderated by Raza Rumi in which the panelists discussed the new media and digital sources of information in the era of post-truth and the ways to deal with it. Journalist Benazir Shah, while pointing out the trends, said journalists had been targeted on social media that was very dangerous and damaging to their credibility. Syed Muzammil Shah pointed out "overproduction" and fake news on social media, saying there s the dissemination of information at the mass level that had been happening since the times of the Romans.
As a solution to the issues, Ms Shah stressed the need for more media literacy and said people needed to differentiate between journalists, reporters and opinion makers. Mehmal Sarfraz said there were laws such as Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) that were being used to control social media but not to reform it. She called for better defamation laws, especially for digital media.
Moreover, a session was also held on ‘50 years of Pakistan’s Constitution’ in which law expert Mariam Khan, Feisal Naqvi and Abid Saqi were among the panelists who discussed the ongoing amendments to the country’s legislations.
ThinkFest 2023, in general, was an immense success as it disseminated ideas through lively discussions on diverse topics and helped expand the horizon of the literary minds.
