The long shadows of frosty Indo-Pakistan relations looks to have engulfed the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) with Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) sponsoring air tickets of four Indian authors to attend the festival held between 10th-12th February. The four Indian authors, including well-known writer Urvashi Butalia, attended the festival in Pakistan. Interestingly, ICCR’s sponsorship of the authors comes weeks after Pakistan declined an invitation to attend South Asian Speakers’ Summit, which is being hosted by India on 18th-19th February in Indore. The summit is being organised by Indian Parliament and Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Downplaying the ICCR action, officials referred to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s remarks in Parliament last week that India wishes to have good neighbourly relations with Pakistan. “The governments of India and Pakistan remained in touch through bilateral diplomatic channels, including for addressing all urgent humanitarian and other matters concerning people-to-people ties,” Swaraj had said in Lok Sabha. She had also noted that the talks envisaged between Indo-Pak Foreign Secretaries to decide the modalities of the Composite Bilateral Dialogue, agreed during her visit to Islamabad in December 2015, could not take place due to the terrorist attack on Pathankot Air Base in January 2016 and other attacks last year emanating from Pakistan. Holding art, cultural exchanges and literature ransom to the widening political opinions is no remedy rather governments on both side of the border should work on encouraging such events in the face of whatever opposition and hurdles are there. If more-and-more peoples’ non-political contact and exchange takes place on both sides of the border easier it could be to inch towards the elusive peace the continent was searching for quite a long time. It is out of line, and wholly unrealistic, to counsel restraint. The implication is that India and Pakistan should both act differently so that an atmosphere of peace may be generated.
