WE, THE MAD DREAMERS
–
AJEET COUR
Meeting of creative minds is always a
miraculous experience. Throughout the history of civilization, it is the written
word that has endured. It is creative thought and its expression that has
overpowered and transcended Time and Space, because Word is the Universe.
This historical, first-ever SAARC Writers
Conference is witnessing the dawn of a new era of creative dialogue between
creative writers of the seven South Asian countries which will definitely usher
in Culture of Peace in the region.
As for myself, I am a mad person. Instead of
sitting quietly and writing my novels and short stories, I get concerned, rather
entangled in some of the cultural, social, creative, even non-creative
environmental and heritage issues, because there is a whole vast ocean of them
crying out for compassionate attention. I get madly, passionately,
overwhelmingly involved and try in my own small way to deal with these concerns.
Our Academy of Fine Arts and Literature was
born twenty-six years ago out of such concerns and beliefs, and out of this
junoon was born the idea of this SAARC Writers Conference.
Way back in early 1975 I started giving shape
to this cultural institution, the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, though it
was launched in my mind and my thoughts much earlier.
I sought and got the comradeship and help of
fellow writers like Khushwant Singh, my painter daughter Arpana Caur,
journalists, academicians, women activists, painters, performing artists. And
Academy of Fine Arts and Literature gradually took shape, blossomed, did useful
and creative work in the field of visual and performing arts, encouraging
literary gatherings and translations of classics from one language to the other,
promoting modern art forms and traditional crafts, imparting creative education
in different forms of visual and performing arts, promoting literary and
cultural activities, and also initiating the process, perhaps historically
significant process of introducing the poor and the downtrodden to visual and
performing arts, literature and theatre.
In its aesthetically designed building –
incidentally it was designed by a non-architect novice like me, and built brick
by brick over a period of twelve very long years, without any help from the
Government, from any foreign or Indian funding agency, from any corporate house
– at 4/6, Siri Fort Institutional Area, the Academy has two large Art Galleries
which are free for upcoming and talented artists, a free Library and Reading
Room, an Amphitheate for plays and poetry symposia, a literary Research Centre,
a Bharatanatayam Hall, a Kathak Hall, space and infrastructure for Painting,
Art, Pottery and Sculpture classes, a Conference Hall for literary gatherings,
Music Concerts, Plays, Dance Performances, Seminars and Discussion Group
Meetings, Mushairas and other important cultural events, infrastructure for
Aesthetic Awareness courses, a hall for Yoga and Pranayam classes, a hall for
Theatre Rehearsal, and a Women’s Empowerment Centre, particularly for the young
girls who have never been to school, who are cleaning utensils in the posh
neighbourhood and playing small mothers to their younger siblings. We give them
non-formal education and teach vocational skills.
Our work in providing skill-oriented informal
basic education to the women living in marginalised urban villages and the slums
has been one of our key achievements. Hundreds of jhuggi-basti girls have in the
last 26 years benefited from this programme, getting not only education,
vocational skills and general awareness but also dignified employment in most of
the cases. They are also encouraged to actively participate in the Theatre
groups, Bharartanatyam and Painting classes, and all the other cultural
activities going on in the building. All this has been achieved without asking
for and getting any grant from any funding agency here or abroad. One of the
major thrust areas of our Academy is to take art and literature out from the
age-old confines of the elite, to the most neglected sections of society by
promoting awareness about visual and performing arts and literature among
individuals and groups, especially women living in the slums and jhuggi bastis.
I honestly believe that history is being created in our Academy, and I hope
other cultural institutions will also join in, because that is how ‘movements’
are built up. You start walking alone, like-minded visionaries keep joining in,
and it becomes a caravan.
Our Academy is the only cultural institution
in Delhi which is an open house for all creative people. We also provide
beautiful rehearsal space to individuals and groups free of charge.
Our Environment and Historical Heritage
Awareness programmes include not only young students but also ordinary citizens
and the people living in the sprawling slums of Delhi.
We keep fighting ideological battles with the
authorities too for preservation of environment and historical heritage of
Delhi, for improving the living conditions of marginalized sections of society,
the fringe people, so that they can live in dignity.
All our well-wishers, friends, helpers, all
right-minded people keep the effort alive. Because it is only the genuine
concerns of mad people like me and my friends in our Academy, and the efforts
they make to give concrete shape to these ideological concerns, that make human
life less meaningless. No doubt life is a tale of sound and fury told by an
idiot, but it suddenly starts acquiring significance if lived for creative,
compassionate and meaningful causes.
And thus we continue to dream of a better
world.
As a part of that dream the SAARC Writers
Conference was also conceived.
Actually we launched a regular monthly
literary gathering called ‘Dialogue’ about 25 years back. On the last Saturdays
of every month we meet, now in our new building since the last 4 years, for an
informal interaction between poets, fiction writers, translators and literary
scholars.
The idea of SAARC was born in these literary
gatherings.
We are living in very difficult and very cruel
times. The present ethos is turbulent, marked by a death-wish, chaotic,
neurotic, fragmentary, grotesque. Ironic paradoxes are here to confuse us. The
great tolling bells resound with a hollow, metallic sound, the sound of a
spiritual void, like a drill plumbing the emptiness at the core of man’s being.
This emptiness reveals a strange marshy blackness, as potent and treacherous as
the black sun. The crisis of our times is one where man and nature, man and
society, man and religion, man and cosmos, man and man are thrown in jeopardy.
Our problems, and I mean the problems of all
seven sister SAARC countries, are the same because we share the same histories,
same memories, same struggles, same deprivations, same hunger, same clouds, same
monsoons, same urge for a better life. We are a little sparrow’s flight away
from each other.
In a new world where distances have been
rendered obsolete by technological advances, chasms of misunderstandings need to
be bridged. It is the writers and poets and other creative minds of our region
who can usher this key change. We are the mad dreamers, the visionaries, We are
mad but we make miracles happen. Our Academy is one such miracle, and the
launching of the creative dialogue among writers of the SAARC Region another.
Our times, even though they be full of
opportunity and hope, are also fraught with tension and changing values.
What does it take to be a writer in this era
of globalization and of declining values and of a super-market mentality that
has us all in its thrall ! How can the innate sensitivity of artistes and
writers be nurtured, protected and be given the rein of freedom to glide, to
mull, to think and to create, to quench our deepest and our every thirst !
We the writers of South Asia are read less
here because less people are literate. We are less known because fewer people in
our region have disposable incomes to buy our books. Writers from the first
world can harness new technological devices like the internet to reach out, but
we here in South Asia cannot enjoy their scale of reach.
Moreover, our region is a region of conflict,
of want, of fear and of desperation. Caste and religion, creed and polity, and
all other possible fissiparous tendencies have divided our spirit, have diluted
our sense of nation and region, and we are from all social indicators the
poorest of the poor in the whole world, except perhaps for sub-Saharan Africa.
It is in such an environment that we, the
writers of South Asia, have to weave our dreams, share our dreams, and sell our
dreams. And in this we get little assistance from governments, political
structures, bureaucracy, and other established webs of patronage.
And now globalization is forcing us to give up
our souls and to write ‘feel-good’ literature that supports the growing dream of
a modern industrialized and prosperous society. But the reality is that this
dream is limited to the top creamy layer of society. The large underbelly of our
region is marginalized, pulverized and impoverished. Must not our literature
reflect our true reality ?
It is against this panorama that this
Conference of Writers from the SAARC Region has been convened.
In the nest three days we will share our
dreams, unveil our pain and anguish, and celebrate the warmth of our
neighbourliness, and respect for differences. Through all these deliberations we
will lay the foundations for the culture of peace in our region.
That is why UNESCO has adopted this SAARC
Writers Conference as a ‘flagship event’ of 2000, the International Year for the
Culture of Peace.
The UN General Assembly has defined ‘culture
of peace’ as a set of values, attitudes, traditions, modes of behaviour and way
of life based on respect for life, ending of violence and promotion and practice
of non-violence through education, dialogue and cooperation, full respect for
and promotion of all human rights and fundamental freedoms; commitment to
peaceful settlement of conflicts; respect for and promotion of the right to
development; respect for and promotion of equal rights of and opportunities for
women and men; respect for and promotion of the rights of everyone to freedom of
expression, opinion and information, and adherence to the principles of freedom,
justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation, pluralism, cultural
diversity, dialogue and understanding at all levels of society and among
nations. Culture of peace implies a global effort to change how people think and
act in order to promote peace. Peace, as we now understand, is no longer the
exclusive business of governments and international organizations. It is more
than the absence of war and violence. It is our values and attitudes in our
communities, our families, our schools. Peace must be cultivated and learned
and, above all, put into practice. To make peace, we must act to transform the
conflicts of everyday life into cooperation to make the world a better place to
live in.
What better force can there be than we, the
writers and intellectuals of our region, striving to usher in the Culture of
Peace in our part of the world ?
During this Conference writers will share
information and experiences about the developments in languages, literatures and
writings in their respective countries. They will explore features of common
heritage, as also age-old historical and cultural links, and find a way of
setting up a machinery for regular exchange of views on creative writing and to
work for peace in the region.
This Writers Conference will also consider a
programme of continuous flow of writers and literature, particularly
contemporary writings, from one country to the other. This will be achieved
through literary networking in the Region, writer-exchange programmes, visits of
writers to the neighbouring countries for dialogue with writers, university
students, young aspiring writers and translators, writers-in-residence
programmes, and interactions with creative writing faculties in universities.
Anthologies of outstanding contemporary writings from the SAARC Region will be
initiated, planned, translated and published every year as a continuous process
of ongoing cultural dialogue.
This conference will conclude with our
President Mr. Khushwant Singh proposing the ‘New Delhi Declaration by Writers of
the SAARC Region’, which will be discussed and adopted by democratic process.
And we will pledge to be fearless in our togetherness and brimming with creative
dreams and compassionate concerns, endeavouring for a peaceful world.
If this Conference is a success, that success
belongs to all the members of our Academy and all my colleagues. If any
shortfalls are felt, I take the blame upon myself alone.
Inaugural Address in the First SAARC Writers
Conference in New Delhi on 28-30 April, 2000
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