“The different communities that exist within Pakistan are unhappy because their issues are being ignored and no one is trying to uplift their culture”
SOPHIA KHAN: What prompted you to widen the scope of the ACP?
MOHAMMAD AHMED SHAH: Although I have been associated with the Arts Council since 1999, it was not until 2008 that I was elected as the president. When I first joined the Arts Council, there was just an old building and an amphitheatre. The gates were bolted shut at five o’clock sharp, and you could not even get a decent cup of tea. Fast forward to today, and we have multiple buildings, performance spaces, studios, a library and an art gallery. Before I took over, there was an absence of innovative arts programming that targeted young people and I began by launching a series of festivals, including the Aalmi Urdu Conference, International Music Festival, Youth Festival and Pakistan Theatre Festival.
SK: What steps did you have to take to transform the ACP?
MAS: In the beginning, I was heavily reliant on the kindness and generosity of my friends and peers. Often our foreign speakers would stay at Karachi University’s guesthouses or at the homes of my scholar friends. Many guests would even buy their own travel tickets, as we had no funding. In fact, we had zero resources. I would often set up the chairs for an event myself and put them away at the end. I built my network mainly by meeting new people and bonding with them over a cup of tea. My ambition is to spread cultural programming far and wide across Pakistan. Our culture is thousands of years old and if we do not preserve it, we will lose our connection to it.
SK: What attracted you to the ACP in the first place?
MAS: Ever since my university days, I have dreamt of bridging the gaps in our society. As part of the Karachi Press Club, my friends and I organised events around Shaukat Siddiqui, Jaun Elia and Majrooh Sultanpuri at our own expense. We thought of it as cultural activism, but I realised that in order to execute these events on a large scale, an institution was necessary. SK: What sparked the idea for the World Culture Festival? MAS: A few years ago, I attended the Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi. This experience eventually led me to announce our own festival at the ACP. I envisioned a platform where all cultures are represented and everyone has the chance to tell their stories – from Rwanda to Kosovo and from the US to Palestine.
SK: How did you go about planning the World Culture Festival?
MAS: Last year when ACP organised the Pakistan Theatre Festival, we invited several artists from abroad through embassy contacts and seven foreign groups ended up attending. However, many others wrote to me after the festival, expressing their interest in joining, and this prompted me to send invitations to every country I could think of for the World Culture Festival. The Government of Sindh has generously allotted permanent funding for the ACP and this has enabled us to organise festivals of this scale and calibre.
SK: How will you measure the success of this festival?
MAS: The festival itself is a miracle. No one in Pakistan could have ever imagined an event like this one. The festival has broken the record for the longest-running cultural festival in the world and will most likely be recorded in the Guinness World Records.
SK: How did you manage to instil an appreciation for Pakistan’s cultural heritage among young people?
MAS: A total of 41 countries took part in the World Culture Festival. More importantly, folk instrumentalists from India and Pakistan performed together. I was careful to include the upbeat music young people enjoy so that even if they came just to see Abdul Hannan and Maanu perform, they would also have the opportunity to listen to a traditional flautist and perhaps a sitar nawaz. That is how you hook them. I am trying to establish a chain of appreciation for our traditional arts, an endeavour that has been neglected for far too long.
SK: How do you approach the realisation of your goals?
MAS: My process has always involved bringing together all kinds of people, from labour associations and trade unions to activists and artists. When the Urdu Conference gained mass popularity, I decided to make a fundamental change and added sessions that included Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi, Saraiki and Pashto. The different communities that exist within Pakistan are unhappy because their issues are being ignored and no one is trying to uplift their culture. I decided to counter this by gathering intellectuals, writers, scholars and artists from all over Pakistan and sowing the seeds for progressive discourse and dialogue.
SK: Have you faced any resistance?
MAS: When I assumed responsibility as the president, ethnic and sectarian violence was the norm, but this did not deter me from my goal of building this institution. Extremism is the disease of our society, and naturally, we have faced resistance because of the work we do. Whenever there was a play or a performance the authorities did not approve of, we would receive threats, but we stood firm and in some cases, employed passive resistance because we did not want to back down.
SK: How do you develop and refine your ideas from initial concepts to actionable plans?
MAS: There is a verse by Noon Meem Rashid, ‘Ai ishq-e-azal-gir o abad-tab mere bhi hain kuch khwab’ that I often find myself returning to. When an idea enters my head, I begin to brew it immediately. And like magic, files spring open in my mind and I work out all the different variables. Before working out the details more generally, I focus on the more minute aspects. I tend to take a solitary walk every day for 50 minutes and use that time to think things through and conceptualise my plans. Once I am done, most of my ideas are well thought through and very doable.
SK: What does cultural diplomacy mean to you?
MAS: I want to be a facilitator of cultural diplomacy. Hollywood is nothing more than a propaganda machine for the US, as is Bollywood for India. I have approached many senior government officials about sending cultural icons like Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan abroad to exhibit Pakistan’s cultural capital, but to no avail. I grew tired of submitting extensive proposals about how Pakistan can initiate cultural programming around the world to uplift our culture and repair our global image. I still believe the only way forward is through blending commerce with cultural diplomacy.
SK: What hopes do you hold for the future regarding cultural programming?
MAS: The universe is vast and abundant, as is my vision. I want greater harmony between all the people of Pakistan and the world. I am a vocal proponent of pro-people history and learning from anthropology. Governments all over the world need to get their priorities in order. I am ready to work with our government to realise my vision. I just want to make my country better. Scores of people from my generation are fleeing the country; everyone in my children’s generation is doing the same. We need to start now to prevent this issue from becoming worse.
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