The Progressive Writer's Association, since its rejuvenation after Multan Conference in April 2007, with octogenarian Hameed Akhtar as its Secretary General and Rahat Saeed as his Deputy, thought it prudent to forge close alliance with Sindhi Adab Sangat, also a progressive writer's body in Sindh.
The effort has paid rich dividends in cementing the ties between the writers of two languages. The PWA and Sindhi Adabi Sangat decided to come closer and stage four seminars on the impact of Progressive Movement on Urdu and Sindhi Poetry, Fiction, Society and Criticism. The seminar on poetry was conducted at Umer Kot, the seminar on fiction was held in Larkana; the seminar on Society in Karachi and the last seminar was conducted in Hyderabad.
It was really heartening that the seminar enjoyed the participation of important writers of both languages. I believe that the progressive writers had a good opportunity to know the state of progressive literature in Sindhi's major languages from one another. Such events are planned in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as well.
There should be no reason to admit that the Progressive Movement has lacked ideological coherence and stability for sometime. One reason, which comes to my mind is that the votaries of progressive thought stand segmented in numerous social groups and each group thinks it better to focus on the interest areas of its subgroups. For example different women groups, minorities' rights groups, under-privileged sections and ethnic linguist groups have been ventilating their views but not from a monolithic progressive platform. This diversification has given the impression that the progressives have not been speaking from one platform and hence they are weak. Infact the opposite is true. If we take all the voices under one canopy then it is not stagnation but energetic pursuit of progressive ideas from multiple platforms.
I believe that a wise soul has put it simply as the growing sight of an orchestra rather than that of the solo performance. For example if we take the seminars of UN Conventions on myriad of Human Rights then HRCP and Amnesty International reports could be taken as the organised forms for the ventilation of progressive stands.
I attended the Hyderabad seminar of PWA and Sindhi Adab on Criticism and presided over it along with Dr Fehmida Hussain, Chairperson of the Sindhi Language Authority. I won't hesitate to reflect on the quality of the papers read at this seminar. I think that most of the papers lacked scholarship and depth. Some of our junior writers appear to be taking their 'job' as a publicity-catching opportunity. They are just 'surveying' and not analysing what makes the progressive literature a world apart approach from the textual or metaphysical way of appreciating contemporary literature. They have not paid due attention to the works of 'High Modernism' of the last three decades ie particularly the works of Edward Said or Terry Eagleton. They are not conscious of the threats of post-modernist critics who are bent upon driving out the space for ideology, historical viewpoint, struggle for a more humane and just society in the whimsical notion that these 'issues' were a 'subject' lying outside the pale of sociological investigation. What a strange way of rationalising tyrannical misdeeds against humanity!
The progressive critics should not take the critical insights of the 30s as the be all and end-all of their intellectual armoury. Now the 'idiom' of attack on progressive ideals has altogether changed. One needs to refute, Dreida, Foucault and Lyotard's complex formulations. Indeed they are quite taxing and don't offer short-cuts for their refutation. They are questioning Marx, Engels and all that is socialist thought's quest for the 'ideal' society.
The writers of the third world, it appears, are growing steadily conscious of the thought of all those post-modernist philosophers who 'want' to use the textual studies to drive out any purposive meaning for social reconstruction to assuage the underprivileged humanity.
I believe that the PWA and Sindhi Adbai Sangat have to play a pro-active role to arrest the intellectual 'slides' of 'textual' studies of literature and social sciences. The need of the hour is delve deep into the basics of the post-modernist thought and read the challenges it is posing to the voices of reason and continuous evolution of human thought for a better world.
Hameed Akhtar's Biography The biography of Hameed Akhtar, the Secretary General of the revamped PWA, has been published by the publisher's Book Home, Mozang, Lahore. Written by Ahmed Saleem, a writer having a flair for producing books, this book is a good read. Hameed Akhtar's biography is a little off-beat. It is more on the pattern of a journal's exclusive section, covering different aspects of the writer's life. It is not a chronologically stage-by-stage evolution of the personality from childhood to the present era.
For example in the chapter on Hameed Akhtar's career as a progressive writer the readers miss the latest feather in his cap - the Secretary - Generalship of the Pakistan PWA since 2007, which makes him occupy a very important position having Sajjad Zaheer and Ahmed Nadeem Qasim as his worthy predecessors.
May be Hameed Akhtar didn't know what an important phase in his career was going un-discussed. It sounds strange as much of the vigour injected in the PWA has been engineered by his team.
While I welcome the book and think it a good book to be on a discriminating reader's shelf I hope that the next edition of the book will address this lapse, which has made it a book finalised a decade before. The Book Home has published so far a great number of books - particularly of the progressive thinking and has earned a good name as a prominent publishing house.