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| 14/02/2006 |
| THE ARTS OF THE PUNJAB, Punjabi University, Patiala |
F. S. Aijazuddin's closing remarks as Chairman at the Inaugural session of the Symposium on The Arts of the Punjab, Punjabi University, Patiala, 14th February 2006
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| Many years ago, in 1966, a young researcher working on the Pahari paintings in the Lahore Museum became aware of a beacon of increasing intensity, radiating from somewhere across the border. Fumbling in the darkness that surrounded him, he relied upon that far-off light to guide his studies, and like some moth attracted to a distant flame, he felt an irresistible urge to meet its source. Ten years later, that wish was granted. I - that student - was finally introduced to meet the source of my inspiration - Dr Brijen Goswamy. |
| We stood together on the same platform in the Los Angeles County Museum in September 1977, and again in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London during the inaugural lectures at the Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms exhibition in 1999. Today, almost a decade later, once again I find myself honoured to be on the same platform as my guru. It is an honour worth waiting for, despite such long years of abstinence. |
| Brijen on this side of your border, and I would like to feel that I on mine, represent the new reality that has emerged since the dissection of the Punjab in 1947. Then, we were both too young then to prevent it. Today, we are too old to reverse it. However, what we have tried to do in our separate ways is to adapt to it, and to search for areas of artistic commonality. We both know that reunification is no longer an option. Reconciliation through Art and Art-history is. And it is in that spirit of reunion that I welcomed your invitation to participate in this Symposium. |
| All of us in the Punjab - you on your side of Wagah border and we on ours - are in a sense Prometheans chained to the rock of Partition. Daily, we still endure the traumas of that division, even now, more than half a century later. Daily we are forced to admit that Geography, History, Culture, Language and Religion have become subordinate, mere handmaidens, to the Princes of Politics. |
| Looking back, I can see that you here suffered more than we did, for in 1947 those Punjabis who crossed from our side of the new border to yours were not immigrants to another country. They were in fact individuals and communities being forcibly displaced and made to relocate within the same province. The skeins of more than five thousand years of evolution in the Punjab were wantonly unraveled, and then expected to rearrange themselves afresh in a new pattern. |
| Had History a heart, it would not have separated the Punjab, dividing sacred monuments from their worshippers. It would not have left the sites associated with Guru Nanak-ji and other the Sikh gurus, behind in a country where the total number of Sikhs today would fit into a cricket stadium, with seats to spare. |
| Had History a heart, it would not taken the coloured thread out of a phulkari, removed the paint away from a Pahari painting, torn the folk-song from the tongue, made the past itself a thing of the past. |
| Had History a heart, it would not have taken the fertile seed that had germinated in the soil of the Punjab over thousands of years, split it and then replanted each half-seed to grow again in two separate fields. |
| But History, as we know to our cost, has no heart. It has only a memory, and that too a selective one. |
| I have been visiting the Punjab off and on since 1978. The last time I came to Patiala was in 1981. Whenever I have come, though, I have been impressed with both the extent and the speed of development that has taken place. And by that I do not mean only the Green Revolution or the impact of the Diaspora on Punjab's urban and cultural landscape. What continues to impress me is your intellectual growth, your respect for education, your reverence for knowledge. The number and quality of your universities are symbols of that upward thrust. |
| The second area of impact is the respect for democratic pluralism. I live in country that is 98% Muslim. It is like living in an all-boys' boarding school. All we see is each other. We are deprived of the tempering influence that pluralism - whether ethnic, religious or cultural pluralism - offers to contemporary modern societies. |
| Brijen has spoken this morning about Portraiture. Tomorrow morning, I shall be presenting a different set of portraits - not of people but of a city, the city of Lahore. But in a sense, we are dilating on the same theme, for are not cities simply the more durable face of its people? |
| I hope during the course of the next two days to learn more about various areas of research that occupies the next generation of Punjabi scholars on this side of the Punjab. On our side, there is a renaissance in Punjabiyat. The Punjab Government has established the Punjab Institute of Language, Art & Culture, which has just begun construction of its campus. The Fine Arts Dept of the University of the Punjab has produced a rich crop of artists such as Ghulam Rasul and Zulqernain Haider. The National College of Arts, although a national body, has a strong Lahori identity. It has a vibrant miniature painting department of which the most famous alumni is Shazia Sikandar. |
| I could continue in this comparative vein but my purpose this morning is not to extol what we are doing but to appreciate what you are achieving here. If we in Pakistan are lacking anything, it is neither the will nor the talent nor the drive for self-awareness. If we do lack anything, it is the luminous presence of scholars like Dr Brijen Goswamy, and those who went before him. |
| Like many of you, I was privileged to know and benefit from the erudition, support and affection of the late Dr Mohinder Singh Randhawa. Only a few days ago, I was sent a volume of his researches into Indian Paintings (1986). I was surprised and flattered to see included in it letters I had exchanged from Pakistan with Dr Randhawa in India and with Dr William Archer in the U.K. |
| In one of them, Bill Archer tells Dr Randhawa: "I have now agreed to call Aijaz, on the analogy of Sher Singh vis-à-vis Ranjit Singh, 'my accepted son'. But I think he feels that you are his 'accepted uncle'. His love and admiration for you knows no bounds." |
| I quote this not out any vanity but out of a sincere feeling of enrichment, for having been the beneficiary of their tutelage and their affection. What more could one ask of a pluralistic God than that a Muslim like me should have had a Sikh uncle in Dr Randhawa and a Hindu brother in Brijen Goswamy? |
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| 14 February 2006 |
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| All Speeches |
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