COMING NEXT YEAR AN ART FESTIVAL IN LAHORE
SEEKING GUIDANCE OF WESTERN AND INDIAN SCHOLARS
All we have left are boot polishers and morons in Pakistan
The lady Leela Gandhi seems to be an exceptional person. A Professor at Brown University in USA, she has climbed the rungs of American intellectual corridors. Good luck to her. We wish her well in life. The blood of Mahatama Gandhi is in her veins, and she believes in the dogmas that:
“Reframing the way we think about some of the most consequential political events of the era, Leela Gandhi presents moral imperfectionism as the lost tradition of global democratic thought.”
I am a little confused about MORAL IMPERFECTIONISM, and would not know what that would mean. For me the source of my moral education is the HOLY QURAN and there is no confusion there. I am not confused about the TWO NATION THEORY and know what Allama Iqbal told us and what Quaid Azam did for us. I am not confused about our Islamic Aesthetics too. The artist M.A. Rahman Chughtai represented the ultimate aesthetic developments of the 20th century and Western critics have dubbed him in 1976 as the greatest Muslim painter of the 20th century. In all ways he was the FATHER OF PAKISTANI ART and his role in development of aesthetics in Pakistan can not be denied by anyone.
The interesting part is that the Festival is scheduled at Alhamra Lahore. Many people may forget that Alhamra is a place of which the artist M.A., Rahman Chughtai is the FOUNDING FATHER. The idea behind the Art Council was his, the name Alhamra given by him and it was inaugurated with a show of Chughtai Art by Governor General Khawaja Nazimuddin in 1949. But no one will take the name of Chughtai there. Pakistani pseudo critics and scholars shudder at his name for he represents PAKISTAN and PAKISTANI ART. The ideological context is too great, it makes the enemy quiver with pain.
I love Art Festivals. It is good that Art Festivals should happen but festivals should not come with predetermined agendas to derail us from our Ideology. Patronize all kinds of Art in Pakistan. Everything. When you hold ART GIMMICKRY better than our own traditions and develoments in Art, then it is a an agency of ideological change. This change is only imagined in the media. The Ideology of Pakistan cannot be derailed in any way.
I am in no mood to get personal. We should respect everyone, and I do. But an incident is present in the history of our Quaid e Azam and Mahatama Gandhi, which can be remembered and it is there in books as well as on the internet. The incident is:
One day M.K. Gandhi was busy in his Prarthana in his Shivgram Ashram when a snake entered the Ashram. M.K. Gandhi kept himself busy with his Prarthana. The snake took a round of the hut and quietly went away. The Hindu newspapers unduly publicized the event attributing it to Mr. Gandhi’s miracle. A correspondent came to Quaid and asked his comments over the incident. He very seriously heard the whole story and remarked “yes professional etiquette.”
Welcome Leela Gandhi to Lahore! We await with love and respects. Hear point of views of all, and not merely sycophants who await to polish your shoes.
Very charming lady with no knowledge of spirit of Lahore