[IMC Bombay] a report from Karachi on Arundhati Roy, Shekhar Gupta, N Ram and others

[seher - latif]

I witnessed something similar on MOnday at Crossword at the launch 
of the latest edition of GALLERIE, the theme being "Seeking 
Harmony."
The panelists included Kalpana Sharma from the Hindu, Rohena Gera 
and Mr. Stalin who has been carrying out relief work in 
Gujarat..he had some startling facts to share.
Before the seeting degenerated into a personal promo (Dollie 
Thakore was quite something in action!), there was this very 
heartening little speech by two 12 year olds who had visited 
America for a school project to interact with kids of varied 
nationalities.The girl said it all when she described how she made 
her "best friends" there who were Pakistanis, "they are just like 
us," she declared! So the impact people-to-people exchange is 
capable of is huge and long-lasting and the earlier it happens the 
deeper the effect. It is essential as it really helps us look 
beyond the stereotype manufactured for us by our politicians(on 
both sides), fundementalists and the media.
Regards,
Seher Latif

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002 Vickram Crishna wrote :
>A friend sent this from Karachi... thought it might be of 
>interest to this group:
>
>
>There were 2,000 people who turned out - all the intelligentsia, 
>the Who's Who of Karachi, anyone who was anyone was there and 
>each one of them greeting each other with those pretentious 
>kisses and a "hello darling ... haven't seen you in zonks" type 
>of language.
>
>They were all there to see Arundhati Roy and to get her to 
>autograph "The God of Small Things" which was of course available 
>at a counter outside.
>
>They had issued far more invitations than they should have 
>because some people (the young ones) had to sit on the floor and 
>on the stage. Some people actually stood throughout the 
>proceedings.
>
>Apart from Arundhati, there were two other visitors from India - 
>Shekhar who is Editor in Chief of the Indian Express and Ram from 
>The Hindu. The Pakistani speakers included Najam Sethi who is 
>Publisher of The Friday Times and The Daily News (a new paper 
>that has just been launched), a politician, an ex ambassador and 
>foreign secretary and the publisher of the dawn group of 
>newspapers.
>
>The audience was very welcoming and enthusiastic, very responsive 
>to the speakers and laughed mostly at the right junctures during 
>the speeches.
>
>What was mostly said was how the people's of the two countries 
>actually got along very well together and wanted peace but that 
>the governments were concentrating on Kashmir which they wouldn't 
>solve anyway because they needed to pull it out of a hat each 
>time they needed to distract their citizens from internal 
>problems.
>
>It was suggested that there should be more people-to-people 
>contact, cultural exchanges, trade exchanges, family visits, just 
>general the coming together of people so that we can better 
>understand each other and begin to begin to focus on our 
>similarities rather than our differences.
>
>The road and bus service and flights should be renewed right 
>away. All of the Indian visitors had to go on some convoluted 
>route within India and then via Dubai to get here instead of just 
>the hop, skip and jump from Delhi. Shekhar thought that since we 
>were all extremely interested in conspiracy theories, his theory 
>was that this was a conspiracy hatched by Emirates Airlines.
>
>The consensus was that India was an imperfect democracy and 
>Pakistan an imperfect dictatorship and that we should both try to 
>leave it to each other to handle our extreme elements within our 
>own countries, and concentrate on learning to work with each 
>other on improving relations.
>
>Although Ram and Shekhar were quite honest in their comments 
>about both governments and their role in keeping the people's of 
>the two countries apart, it was Arundhati who spared no-one in 
>her sweet, unassuming tone. She said that any Indian who didn't 
>support the nuclear bomb or the increase in armaments was made to 
>feel that  he or she was anti-national, anti-patriotic. She said 
>"I love India but when i was made to feel this I declared myself 
>an independent citizen of the world."
>
>She said that she and other people in India who were generally 
>fighting other wars within the country - the war against poverty, 
>against illiteracy, against unemployment, against so many 
>injustices connected to religion, ethnicity, caste, social 
>status, illness, etc etc etc resented it when their government 
>declared war or fired a nuclear device because it took them away 
> from these necessary struggles to now put up a fight for peace. 
>She read out parts of that article she wrote on The Death of 
>Imagination. People listened to it in silence and gave her a 
>standing ovation when she finished. Everyone fell in love with 
>her. I thought that there were 2000 people there, but I am told 
>it was more like 3000.
>
>-- Vickram
>
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