A joint Indo-Pak peace festival — under the aegis of South Asia Foundation — was recently organised in Amritsar and Preet Nagar. As part of the event, Rafi Peer Theatre Group of Lahore presented a Punjabi play, Akhian Waleo. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed reports

WE sat under the stars and watched the play Akhian Waleo. The venue was an open-air theatre at Preet Nagar, 25 km from Amritsar. The play was in Punjabi, and the artistes were from Rafi Peer Theatre Group of Lahore, Pakistan. People from nearby villages had turned out in large numbers. It was rare that a theatre company, and that, too, from Pakistan came to perform in their pind (village). It was a political spoof that centred around three blind youth, sitting on a bench, and a boulder lying on the road, which had become the stumbling point for all passersby.

The three friends mused over accidents in which people with eyes invariably fell over the stone. From an inanimate nuisance on the road, the stone became the bone of contention for passersby, representing every segment of society. From the far right Mullah party to the Awami demagogues, everyone jumped in the fray to fight over who would lift the offending stone. People kept falling on their faces, breaking limbs and bashing each other, while the blind men watched the human circus.

The event I am talking about is South Asia Foundation’s peace festival, which was organised in October, 2009, in Amritsar with artistes from Pakistan and India. SAF is the brainchild of Madanjeet Singh, UNESCO goodwill ambassador, who has devoted his life and considerable fortune to his dream of forming a rainbow coalition of eight countries of South Asia — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. My association with SAF goes back to its inception in 2000, when IK Gujral was the chairman of the SAF, India chapter.

The SAF peace festival ran in two venues — Amritsar and Preet Nagar. Madanjeet Singh calls Preet Nagar his spiritual home. Gurbaksh Singh established this place in the 1930s. He dreamt of an artistes’ utopia in the heart of Punjab, a township that was at equidistance between Amritsar and Lahore, a place where artistes, poets, writers, philosophers would live together and create a better society. Here Gurbaksh Singh, together with his son Navtej, started the famous Punjabi magazine, Preet-Lari, creating and encapsulating the life literature.

Writers from Punjab and elsewhere flowed through Preet Nagar. Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi, Hafiz Jalandhari, Upendra Nath Ashq, Kartar Singh Duggal, Balwant Gargi, Mohan Singh, Amrita Pritam, the list goes on. The Partition faded Preet Nagar’s glory as fewer people came through. Then Uma Gurbaksh Singh and her brother Hridaipal Singh met Madanjeet Singh. Together they dreamt of reviving it as the hub of art and theatre.

While this was one lari in the festival of peace, there were others. There was Saanj, the joint venture of the two peoples from the two Punjabs — on the Indian side Manveen Sandhu, and on the Pakistan side Faizaan Peerzada. Manveen Sandhu ran Springdales School, which began as a tiny seven-girl school set up by her mother-in-law, Devinder Pal Sandhu, in 1934, which has grown into a centre of excellence with over 5,000 students. The Peerzada family is world renowned for the Rafi Peer Theatre in Pakistan; its first international theatre festival took place in 1996 and brought together over 175 delegates from all over the world.

It was a spectacular event in Lahore. It has been now an ongoing event despite threats and coercion from extremists. Punarjyot, the Centre for Preservation and Promotion of the Heritage of Punjab run by Manveen and Shivinder Singh Sandhu, was the overarching strand. Then there were three other supporting bodies outside Punjab — NAPA (National Academy for Performing Arts, Pakistan), NSD (National School of Drama) and ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations).

The rich fare was presented before an audience from rural Punjab. On the second day, two dholias from Pakistan, Goonga Sain (dumb master) and Mitthu Sain (parrot master), struck their drums. Goonga is deaf and mute and plays to facial gestures from his brother. Then came Baba Chand, the descendant of Guru Nanak’s disciple Bhai Mardana. A frail old man in white lungi, a white safa placed on his head, voice flowing like the panj dariyas of Punjab. He sang the famous shabad — Awwal Allah noor upaya qudrat de sab bande; Ek hi noor se sab hi upje; Kaun bhaley kaun mandey. The audience was in a trance.

And finally, there was Sain Zahoor, singing Bulle Shah, his voice scaling the heights of mountains. Dressed in a heavy sequined glittering chogha, his fingers, arms, neck and chest covered with glittering jewels, he held in his hand the most decorated ektara in the world. He sang about direct union with God, which has nothing to do with ritualistic religion. "It’s between my God and me. I am a rustic. I know Punjabi and nothing but Punjabi. So all you big people from cities, please join me in praying for the children of the Sandhus (both Manveer and Surinder were killed in a tragic accident last year)." We all raised our hands in prayer.

Images of SAF 2009 were haunting. Madanjeet standing before a village audience, saying: "I only hope I will live long enough to see my dream fulfilled — a borderless South Asia and a common currency for South Asia." Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal sitting besides me for almost three hours, listening silently to the music flow, with Usman and Faizaan Peerzada, artistes par excellence, and emblems of courage in the vortex of violence, reciting their poetry and presenting their actors.

It was the youth of Amritsar, mostly students of Springdales School and BBA DAV College for Women, Amritsar, who gave us reason to hope even as tensions arose on both sides of the border. Pakistan ordered the schools to be closed, in the wake of the attack on the Islamic University of Islamabad. As a consequence, the children’s painting event, which was to be a highlight of the festival, had to be cancelled. This was the idea of Salima Hashmi, chairperson of SAF Pakistan. Two hundred children from each side of the border would paint a long canvas each on the theme of peace. The two pieces would then be joined by velcro and become the backdrop for the festival. There must have been many disappointed girls and boys on both sides, when the announcement was made.

(Dr Syeda Saiyidain Hameed is a writer, Member of the Planning Commission, Government of India,
and Vice Chairperson of South Asia Foundation, India, chapter)

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