Daily Times

KARACHI: The three-day 2nd Sindh Literature Festival, aiming to promote the language, art, culture and literary talent of the province, started on Friday and continued to thrall its audience.

Sindh Culture Minister Syed Sardar Shah, expressing his views at the inaugural session, said such festivals were enormous in the present geopolitical scenario as culture is an effective tool to combat militancy and extremism.

“Such events are exceedingly needed to save and promote our culture”, said the minister.

Shah put forth a proposal to change Karachi’s name to its historical original name of Kalachi as names of many cities in India, including Mumbai, had been changed.

“Should we not propose a resolution to be passed to change Karachi’s name to the one it was historically called?” he asked. He also said there will be a national conference organised in January at Makli, a world heritage site.

Noorul Huda Shah, Jahangir Siddiqui, Fatima Hasan and Aijaz Mangi also spoke at the inaugural session.

The first day of the conference concluded with a music show.

The second day of the festival – including seventeen sessions on literature, culture, archaeology, history, education and arts – saw participation of a number of art and literature enthusiasts.

Three books were launched on the 2nd day of the festival and three would be launched on the last day.

The speakers stressed need of such platforms and appreciated the talents of Sindh and the efforts of the team behind the organization of the three-day festival.

The speakers emphasised the need to learn to read and write Sindhi language in order to understand Bhittai’s poetry.

There was a career counselling session for youngsters as well that saw participants partake enthusiastically.

In a session titled ‘Kya Media ko aesa hi hona chahye’ senior journalist Hamid Mir emphasised the need to make journalism without boundaries stating that the media had many “no go” areas and that “some issues” were out of bounds for discussions.

An informative session, talk with Amar Jaleel, captivated a number of audience members.

A ‘mushairo’, presided by Ahmed Solangi, where the chief guest was Akash Ansari, enthralled the audience with Sindhi poetry.

The 2nd day of the festival closed with performances by legendary performers Manjhi Faqeer, Ustad Abdul Ghafoor Soomro and Mazhar Hussain.

The festival is scheduled to close today.

Published in Daily Times, October 29^th 2017.