Critical exchanges are one of the key ways to refine literary works. Most artists prefer sharing their works with close friends and associates, whose competency and sincerity they trust. However, larger organisations and gatherings undoubtedly are still important for critical appraisals. Such gatherings are instrumental in setting literary trends in society, and for this reason, it is demoralising to see the situation faced by literary circles in Lahore.

Pak Tea House is now closed, and the writers associated with it are scattered all over the city. This has exacerbated with the expansion of city which poses further logistic limitations. As a result, different 'cultural bubbles' are created as pockets of socialising with those close to each other. Gathering of Halqa Arbab-e-Zauq has shifted to 'Chaupal' -- a low profile, isolated, cramped room in Nasir Bagh, bereft of any facilities whatsoever. It cannot be overstressed that a proper, respectable place with a reasonable infrastructure should be made available to our men of letters.

Let's relive an evening of the Pak Tea House. On a Sunday evening, only a couple of years ago, we would enter the Tea House to find it already full, humming with voices crisscrossing each other. The central table was occupied by a proud, aloof group of established senior writers discussing something that one can only overhear, not participate or intervene. Small groups of friends occupied the tables along the walls, while in the rear corner, we would find a thick gathering of highly serious youngsters involved in an animated discussion. Names like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wordsworth, Mohammed Hassan Askari, Firaq, Faiz, Nadim, Meeraji and Rashed could be heard all over the place.

Outside the tea house, the railing on the foot path was occupied by the more casuals of the lot. At 7 p.m. or so, the crowd would start drifting upstairs where Halqa's weekly meeting was about to begin. Except for the central table, the entire ground floor gave a desolate look. 'Ijlas' would begin with a recitation of ghazal by a notable poet. The discussion would then take off with approving remarks and a few admirers went as far as equating a couplet with Ghalib's ghazal.

The attendance would reach a hundred head count. An intelligent poet suddenly raised his hand seeking a permission to speak. He dismissed the ghazal as ordinary and documented his argument with logic and reason. There followed a silence of few seconds and then the other participants who saw a point in the objection raised began talking and the whole atmosphere turned diametrically opposed to the earlier one. The ghazal was followed by a piece of fiction. The participants contemplated and registered their comments with a fearless ease. After the criticism everyone turned to tea and became the same old men. That's how 'Halqa' had been running for over half a century.

There are more than a dozen such organisations in the city where the new entrants and senior writers come to both learn and teach. This oral tradition of literary criticism is important for grooming new work into a serious literary enterprise. Aside from their role in such literary activities, such gatherings are instrumental in promoting a healthy culture in society at large.

There are, however, dangers associated to oral activities as well, particularly for those who are articulate and present the argument coherently and impressively. They use these 'oral' gatherings to gain immediate applause and recognition, and indeed, they often do well while speaking, but at their own expense. They forget that at the end of the day, it is the written word which lasts and not the spoken one. Many exceptionally gifted critics fall prey to this 'Majlisi Tanqid' phenomenon and fail to produce anything substantial during their lifetimes.

I vividly recall Muzaffar Ali Syed sitting in the tea-house debating heatedly over a cup of tea virtually every aspect of literature while others sat submissively. He seemed absolutely pleased with himself. His contemporaries would bear me out that he had an exceptional critical acumen. However, his literary output amounts to just one book, 'Tanqid ke Azaadi'.

Nasir Kazmi was another such figure. Although he stuck to his task as a ghazal poet, he was an oral critic too. His ideas always carried weight. We find his essays here and there and glimpse what he could have possibly achieved. Sajjad Baqir Rizvi, another contemporary of Muzaffar Ali Syed and Nasir Kazmi, was a similar case. He expended his energies at two venues -- Pak Tea House and the Urdu Department, Punjab University. His legacy is his students, some of whom are creative writers and critics. He was, however, more prolific than his counterparts with five books of criticism to his credit, which are replete with intelligent and relevant commentary on different literary issues; but having said this, he could have easily done much more had he not succumbed to the phenomenon of 'Majlisi Tanqid'.

Recently, Siraj Munir has emerged as yet another such talent gone to waste. A slim, bearded, pleasant young man with sharp wit took over the literary gatherings as a tide. He died very young but he was so well-read and clear in his ideas that he could have done wonders in contemporary criticism. Sadly, he is now scattered far between in a few scattered articles only -- representing a fraction of what he was capable of writing.

Currently we can spot a few more examples, Mohammad Khalid, a student of Rizvi, is one of them. A man with vision and tremendous knowledge, he dominates any discussion he participates in, but is averse to actual writing and confines himself to few book prefaces only. Hussain Majruh is yet another example of a visionary poet and critic but he also remains contented with his participation in 'Majlisi tanqid' only.

"We are all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put down a few words." That is what Henry Miller writes in 'Nexus'. These friends of ours, surely, are active dreamers but instead of penning down in words, they prefer pronouncing their dreams, which, last only as long as all things verbal.

Denizens of

Alien Worlds:

A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarization in Pakistan

By Tariq Rahman

Oxford University Press, 2005

Pp. 210 Price Rs. 325

Tariq Rahman is our Noam Chomsky, a linguist with a social conscience who must be credited for keeping the scholarly scene alive in our part of the world.

The book looks for explanations of creation and persistence of inequality in the process of delivering education to our children and youth. Polarisation, the book suggests, is the inevitable outcome of the social differentiation produced by inequality and the trichotomy of English medium, Urdu medium and madrasa system schools that create denizens which are aliens to each others' worlds.

A limited survey of the three types of educational institutions was carried out to ascertain the prevalence of attributes such as tolerance and militancy among students of these institutions. However, the nature of the survey seems to be that of an opinion poll, and even though it is not simplistic, its results remain intuitive, indicating English medium schools as the most tolerant and least militant, followed by the Urdu medium schools and then madrasas.

Education has traditionally been known as a great equaliser, and its importance of was not lost on our pioneers. Within three months of independence, while the country was baffled by the enormity of the problems arising from the partition, the first professional conference was organised on education. However, the author observes that "this was certainly not the best of times to think of education" I believe the problem was with the thinking, not timing. The author correctly notes, it was in this conference that the alchemy of Islam and Urdu was discovered to steamroll ethnicity through education. Ostensibly devised for building a new nation, the formula, in effect, provided the core values to build a centralised state structure. Under a system which sent the elite to English medium schools and masses to Urdu medium schools, the state allocated relatively more resources to the former to ensure a steady flow into its elite officer cadres. Madrasas remained isolated in this scheme of things, as had happened earlier during the British rule. In essence, the colonial system was reproduced with the trappings of an independent state.

Interestingly, those laying the foundations of our education system at the conference paid no heed to the secularisation message sent by the founder of the state. However, over here, the author fails to note Jinnah's views on universal, compulsory and free primary education for boys and girls, which were expressed in his speeches on Gokhle's primary education bill. The author could also have benefited from another one of his famous speeches where he chides the British for their bias towards an elitist public school system and asks them to learn a thing or two from the Americans. I have no problem with the idea that the educational opportunities should be the same for all citizens, but to equate this with the elimination English may prove to be a retrogressive step and requires a more careful consideration.

It needs to be said that there is a critical survey of literature in the field and also a useful analysis of official documents and five year plans on education. However, the book does not survey the literature on inequality. Not surprisingly, therefore, it does not ask the question why inequality is important in development.

An unchanging reality of inequality means that there are groups in the society who are neither able to change their lot nor are empowered to do so. This shows the prevalence of unequal opportunities created and perpetrated by institutions that reflect unequal distribution of power and wealth.

The book compares the inequality statistics from years 2001 and 2005 and shows a upward trend in inequality. It shows that the top 10 per cent of the population has increased its share in the economic pie, while the bottom 30 per cent has gone further down in their shares, while those in between have managed to protect their existing shares. Hence, the gains of the top are entirely at the expense of the ones at the bottom. This is not merely an affront to the sense of fairness in a civilized society but, and more importantly, it is a direct result of bad economic policies which fail to recognize inequality as an important issue.

A study carried out for Ecuador shows that unequal wealth and education of parents makes no difference to the cognitive performance of the youngest children. These differences, however, come into play as the children grow older. The majority in the sample fell behind irredeemably as children approached their sixth year of age. Again, the book could add value to our understanding of inequality by looking at the literature on social diversity and polarization. 'Ethno-linguistic fractionalization' is a measure attributed to a Russian scholar in the sixties. Even the practitioners of the dismal science, economics, have ventured into the area. In an article in Econometrica in 1994, Esteban and Ray demonstrated that a country with a population distribution of 49,49,2 per cent is likely to be more polarized and conflict-ridden than a country with a distribution of 33, 33, 34 per cent. Failing economic prospects of many African countries are better understood in these perspectives.

A word about letters
By Kazy Javed
Remembering Sheikh Ayaz

If reverence for the 18th century sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was not an impediment, I would rate Sheikh Ayaz as the greatest poet Sindh has ever produced. The soul of Sindh, the dreams of her haris and the enthusiasm of her youth have found a wonderful expression in his poetry. If you want to know the people and culture of Sindh you cannot bypass the personality and poetry of Sheikh Ayaz who paid a heavy price, including imprisonment four times, for giving voice to his people and land.

Born in the last days of March, 1923 in Shikarpur which was the cultural hub of Sindh in the pre partition days. Sheikh Ayaz started his literary career as a bilingual writer: He wrote both in Urdu and Sindhi languages and penned poetry as well as fiction. His first collection of short stories was published by Mohan Punjabi in 1947 under the title 'Sufaid wahshies'. This Urdu book was followed by his collection of Urdu poetry in 1954. Titled 'Boe-e-Gul, Nala-e-Dil', it was published by Afaq Siddiqui who himself is a noted writer and has done more than any other Pakistani writer to minimise the distance between Urdu and Sindhi languages and literature.

These two books established Sheikh Ayaz as a creative writer. However, he did not take much time to realise that a poet should represent his people and culture and that sort of representation is possible only in the language of the people. After this realisation he did translate Shah Bhittai's poetry into Urdu but composed poetry only in his mother tongue. An eminent Sindhi intellectual Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo whose friendship I greatly cherish, played an important role in persuading Sheikh Ayaz to give preference to his mother tongue.

He enjoyed the peak of his popularity during the third quarter of the past century. In 1976 he became the Vice-Chancellor Sindh University. It is generally believed that the offer in this respect came from the then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who also made the poet to accept it. Anyhow, this step of his was not approved by many of his friends and majority of the Sindhi nationalists. They turned against him.

I got an opportunity to make acquaintance with the great poet in 1977 when he played host to a session of the Pakistan Philosophical Congress at his university. I again met him at his ancestral home in Sukkur in the early 1990s and found him depressed and marooned.

Sheikh Ayaz died in Karachi in the last week of 1997. Death, it seems, has restored him respect and popularity among the people to a great extent. His 84th birth anniversary was recently celebrated at Sukkur, Hyderabad and Karachi. Shah Abdul Latif University of Khairpur, where Sheikh Ayaz Chair was established in 1998, held a national conference to pay tribute to him. A number of writers, poets and researchers who have conducted research and written books on the poetry and personality of Sheikh Ayaz were awarded shields at the conference. They included Dr. Veengas Ayaz, Qazi Mazhar Hayat, Taj Joyo, Latif Noorani, Hameeda Qazi, Zainab Abro, Najma Bibi, Mazhar Jamil, Agha Saleem, Khawaja Saleem, Dr. Hidayat, Dr. Abdul Jabbar Junejo, Dr. Anwar Figar Hakro, Dr. Malik Nadeem, and Dr. Khurshid Abbasi.

The participants of the Sheikh Ayaz National Conference were informed by Professor AR Malik, vice-chancellor of the host university, that efforts were being made to upgrade the Sheikh Ayaz Chair to an institute to encourage and provide more facilities for research on the life and work of the great poet.

Grand Mushaira

Some of our best-known literary dukes have been inhabiting Lahore's Model Town. Their list is quite impressive as it carries big names like Hafeez Jullundhri, Faiz Sahib, Munir Niazi, Ashfaque Ahmad, Bano Qudsia, Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Abdullah Malik, Hamid Akhtar and Dr. Mohammad Baqir. The Central Park of this upper middle class colony is now emerging as a new centre of cultural and literary activities in Lahore. The Pakistan Academy of Letters and the Forum for Human Development have been jointly organising weekly lectures there for the past three and a half years. These lectures are arranged on various subjects like current affairs, economy, philosophy, religion, history and literature and are delivered by eminent persons who have a name in their fields.

To mark the Pakistan Day and the World Poetry Day, the local chapter of the Academy of Letters arranged a mushaira at the park where more than 60 poets presented their ghazals and nazms. The event was presided over by Amjad Islam Amjad.

Dr. Massarrat Abid has transformed the Pakistan Study Centre into the academic hub of the Punjab University by organising many conferences, seminars and other academic events. The latest event organised by her was a seminar on Sufism where Dr. Jamal Malik, an eminent scholar and Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the German University of Erfurt was the main speaker. Presenting a paper on 'Sufism in the West', he expressed the opinion that Sufism has the intellectual as well as cultural potential to replace what is now usually labelled as political Islam.

Conducting the proceedings of the seminar Dr. S. Qalb-i-Abid, who heads the university's department of history, highlighted the importance of sufi traditions in Islam and pointed out that the Muslim immigrants in the west have mostly been committed to their religious and social values.

Punjabi books

Suchet Kitab Ghar has been silently serving Punjabi language and literature for many years. It brings out the Punjabi monthly 'Panchem' which is rated by many critics as the best Punjabi literary journal published from our part of the Punjab. The journal usually carries articles based on research and in-depth analysis.

Suchet Kitab Ghar also publishes Punjabi language books. Its latest offering has come but in the form of two collections of the selected short stories of Kulwant Singh Virk and Santokh Singh Dhir who are eminent Indian writers. Both the books are titled 'Mairian Saras Kahanian'. Originally published in Gurmukhi script, the stories have been transcribed into Shahmukhi by Maqsood Saqib.