Day 2 Pakistan Literature Festival

Public intellectuals are closely connected to people, they go to the people, live among them, learn from them, work with them and start with what the people know but the question is, do we have public intellectuals? Jaffar Ahmad, the moderator of the session on ‘Tradition of Public Intellectuals’ on the 2nd day of Pakistan Literature Festival at Alhamra, defined a public intellectual while Nasir Abbas Nayyar questioned the very existence of a public intellectual here. “There isn’t any public intellectual in Pakistan,” said Nasir Abbas Nayyer. “Where are the likes of Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Edward Said? We have academic experts, professional experts—experts in their respective fields,” he said.

“There are three ways to control society. There are traditional and organic intellectuals. The traditional were Hakim, Arif, Danish, Allama and Mulla. Sufis were revolutionaries who spoke the language of the masses. Earlier, it was the age of kings where defiance was punished with death. You disagree, you die. That was politics of death. Then came punishment to discipline humans and now there is effort to influence minds. The powerful establish an empire over opinion. Those who can speak to the common man are missing. Those who are not creating new knowledge are no intellectuals, they are at best following somebody else. The truth is we need people who have big vision,” Nasir Abbas Nayyar concluded.

Iftikhar Arif said Sibte Hasan’s books are read in Balochistan like nothing else. We come to know about people’s issues by getting close to them. A people’s movement cannot ignore people. He wondered if our premiers other than ZAB had read books. He said Sufi poets were connected with the land and its people. He called for promoting creativity in educational institutions. “Public intellectual is already defined but the society defines success as financial success,” he said.

Osama Siddiq said the more we compartmentalise people the more we are disconnected. He is himself a lawyer and a novelist. He said columnists are influencing people. “There are many people doing good. We need to be brave—get to know modern social media, read science. There is immense knowledge available on Internet. Make use of that, he said.”

Osama took a very optimistic position. He said law is an empowering language. Books are there but not being marketed. “We are ideologically in an impoverished world,” he said.

Ghazi Salahuddin lamented while there are 40,000 students at Karachi University, hardly forty join a protest for a cause. It is important to understand power of intellect. He noticed there wasn’t any newspaper stall close to the university and stressed students must have access to newspapers. “There is need of a sense of commitment to community. There is no public library in Karachi while Brazil’s President Lula has promised to replace guns with books.”