Let’s celebrate our festivals together, says Pak writer

Sarbjit Dhaliwal

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 6

Pakistan’s celebrated writer Ahmed Salim, who was put behind bars in 1971 for criticising the Pakistani establishment’s Army operation in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), today said Punjabis should jointly celebrate festivals associated with folk heroes, Sufi saints, eminent writers and legendary persons such as Shaheed Bhagat Singh.

When Salim was sent to jail in Pakistan, Punjabi revolutionary poet Pash had written a poem “Ahmad Salim De Na” that became a big hit in those days.

Talking to The Tribune, author of about 100 books and many research papers, Ahmed Salim said politics could not create wedge in the common literary, cultural and social heritage of Punjabs on both sides of the border. The literature and culture was a great binding force between them, he said. “In 1996, I wrote a letter to the mother of Shaheed Bhagat Singh telling her that like Bhagat Singh, I am also her son. Her response to the letter is still alive in my memory,” said Salim. She wrote back, “Yes, you are my son, you are a man of literature and the literature you produce binds us.”

Salim was just 21 when he started getting published in Punjabi magazines such as Preetlari and Nagmani. “I am now 71 and associated with Indian Punjab for 50 years through my writings”, he said.

Salim said in Pakistan’s Punjab, Gurmukhi script is taught to students at MA level. Salim, a great supporter of peace between India and Pakistan, said there should be free flow of Punjabi books between the two countries.