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| 06/07/2004 |
| CULTURAL IDENTITY OF LAHORE (Part 2) |
Paper on CULTURAL IDENTITY OF LAHORE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR PUNJAB for the Seminar on policy for the Preservation and Promotion of Culture, organised by the Department of Information, Culture and Youth Affairs Department, Government of the Punjab in collaboration with UNESCO, Lahore, 6 July 2004.(Part 2)
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| [Contd from Part 1] |
| The second is to pay respect to Culture. Everything is worth respect. Every tradition, every performer, every work of art, every monument, every stone deserves respect– for each of them contains an element of the divine in its inspiration and in its creation. |
| The third is to Perform. Addicted as we have become receiving Culture off the screen – whether cinema, video or computer screen - we need to rediscover the art of performing. How many of you have performed in plays after you left school? How many of you have memorised a poem that you have admired? How many of you play any sort of musical instrument? How many of you can distinguish between ragas, or tell a symphony from a concerto or an oratario? |
| The fourth is to participate. Culture needs participation if it is to flourish. It is not enough to read about it or to hear a replay on a cassette. Culture is a living organism and requires constant personal attention – by all of us, not just some of us. |
| We are fortunate that Lahore is still a cultural capital, which offers a gamut of cultural options. In that sense, Lahore remains a unique synthesis of power and patronage, art and artistry, architecture and monumentalism, religion and Sufism, a contract between princes and their public. |
| What we modernists need to caution ourselves is a tendency towards Cultural Imperialism. It is very easy, almost natural to make that mistake, for imperialism is on our genes. For centuries, Lahoris have been either an imperial power or close to it or representing it. All the architectural remains we admire are essentially legacies of an inperial past. |
| The times have changed, and we must change with them. It is now an age of Cultural Populism. The top down direction of patronage has been replaced by a bottom up approach of public endeavour. Pop music has its place at a par with classical music; modern art has its place with miniature painting, Defence Housing Society and Allama Iqbal Town are as important as the Fort and the Badshahi masjid. For each of these traditions will outlive us. |
| What will a future generation of Punjabis and Lahoris see us as, a century from now? If they were to use one word to describe us, it would be as spendthrifts, nouveau riche who possessed the power of money but lacked the sense to use it properly. |
| I believe that every effort made, such as this seminar intends to do, to force a recognition of the urgent need to remember who we were, who we are and who we want to be will be an invaluable contribution in itself to the cause. |
| In conclusion I would like to remind of us that here in the air conditioned comfort of the Pearl Continental that Culture is not the prerogative of princes. It is the patrimony of the public, held in trust, added to and augmented, and then passed from our generation to the next. |
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| 06 July 2004 |
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| All Speeches |
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