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Even the pandemic has its upsides: allowing Indians to attend the Lahore Literary Festival this year
Jhumpa Lahiri has always grappled with loss over a piece of land. Born in London to Bengali parents and raised in the US, she has never had a fixed sense of homeland or belonging. “On the one hand, I am proud of it… I am better off not being able to wave the flag of any place, maybe it enables me to be curious of flags of other places… At the same time, there is a lack of that sense of a fixed point of origin that cannot be questioned or modified,” she said last month at the ninth iteration of the Lahore Literary Festival.
Hearing Lahiri speak on rootedness within the framework of manmade geography was especially moving because boundaries dissolved this year. As Indians, to get a glimpse of one of the biggest festivals on the other side of our border, is almost impossible. But in February, people from India and Pakistan were allowed to peek, enter, and stay in each other’s strife-splintered territories. Both the Lahore and Jaipur literary festivals went online, giving visa-free access to some of the most sparkling minds and conversations.
It wasn’t just about audience participation. Many citizens of the two countries have wanted more cultural exchange but cross-border invitations remained difficult to arrange. 2021 was different. With no Line of Control in the virtual world, Indian speakers travelled to Lahore, Pakistanis spoke in Jaipur.
At LLF, an impressive roster of Indian authors, including Rana Safvi, Amitav Ghosh, Farrukh Dhondy, Shrabani Basu, Sunita Kohli and others, was rolled out. The festival felt like a homage to the subcontinent’s syncretic past.
The LLF was keen to have Kavita Singh, art history professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, last year, but it became a possibility only now thanks to the gift of its digital avatar. Singh was in conversation with Pakistani art historian Salima Hashmi, who has led many peace initiatives between the two countries. Their session—“Decoding the Artistic Process: The making of miniatures in the Mughal courts”—addressed the shared cultural heritage. Similarly, the launch of Claire Chambers’ anthology Desi Delicacies marked the confluence and common histories of South Asian food.
In her keynote address, academic and historian Wendy Doniger spoke on the mythology of horses in Pakistan. Her lecture was peppered with many instances of harmony in the past. Hindu rituals and myths involved Arabian horses and/ or Muslim riders. “Despite or because of the political domination of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire, the Indian stories from this period generally depict both Arabian horses and Muslim riders in a favourable light... So many Hindus welcomed Muslims as the bearers of the gift of horses,” she said.
Equine interests or not, it might be worth bearing this thought going forward: unity lived in the region long before the sovereignty of borders fenced us in. ■