LET US BE HEARD …

- AJEET COUR

If you follow the sun, follow your instinct of mere survival, and flow the way the river flows, then life can be spent quite easily, without complexities and without complications.

But, if you start looking through the lies and hypocrisies of the chaotic world order in which you live ; and have a third eye which all creative people have, and feel justifiably horrified, with the stark inequalities between human beings, with the constant tensions among the neighbouring countries, with the world order where just one country is the ultimate bully, where the great chess-game is being played across the Pacific to the Persian Gulf, revolving around energy flows, capital flows, control of sea routes and access to markets, you have just two choices : to keep silent, or to stand up and be counted.

For all creative people the second option is the only option.

That is why in September 1987 I organized the first-ever Indian Pakistani Writers Conference in New Delhi to gather together creative writers and intellectuals who can express their collective opinions and collective protests frankly and fearlessly, for more sane, more peaceful neighbourly relations. Writers and intellectuals who can stand up and be counted.

Because wars are only won by governments. People always lose them.

Indian-Pakistani Writers Conference was followed by number of such interactions with writers of Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka.

It was like a crusade, undertaken by a mad dreamer !

I wanted to consolidate the voice of writers and intellectuals and creative people to give voice to the voiceless millions who want peace. To say no to calls for destruction and war because writers negate all intentions of war with their very act of creation. They create because they want to make the world a better place to live in. They create because they believe in a better future for mankind. They create because they know they are a part of the great civilisational process which must go on getting richer with greater philosophical insights, with more meaningful creativity, with greater harmony among human beings and their environment, with greater skills for a better life in harmonious coexistence with fellow human beings, fellow creatures, plants and trees, clouds and stars, little squirrels and rabbits, everything !

Everything that enriches human life on this planet !

Writers believe that those parts of history which are painful should be forgotten, forgiven, reconciled, because life has to go on, acquiring harmonious dimensions and expanding visions and hearts and souls !

Writers believe that there is yet beauty in this brutal, savage, damaged, distorted world of ours.

Those first pebbles flung in the stagnant pond of cultural relations with the creative fraternity of the neighbouring countries, gradually matured in bringing together the writers from all over the SAARC region.

So far ELEVEN MAJOR SAARC WRITERS CONFERENCES have been organized, and the TWELFTH is going to be a SAARC Fiction Writers Conference in Aligarh Muslim University, from March 20-24, 2005.

We are also planning to have a SAARC Writers Conference in October 2005, revolving around and exploring the Theme of ‘Sufism and Bhakti Movement as the Great Civilisational Linkages in the SAARC Region, particularly in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh’.

All the Big Bullies of the world cannot dictate the destinies of mankind because we writers will keep raising our united voice against a world being constantly terrorized, increasingly globalized, torn asunder by fundamentalism and terrorism, dominated by unipolar politics, marginalizing plurality and diverse cultures.

Yes, if you insist, there is a ‘clash a civilisations’. We the civilised South Asian and Middle Eastern and Asian countries, with our civilisations dating back to thousands and thousands of years, are indeed in clash with less civilised, hardly 500 year old nations. We the inheritors of ancient civilisations like Mohanjodaro and Harappa, of Babylonian and Mesopotanian civilisations, are in clash with the pseudo-civilised Imperialists and their ‘holier than thou, because we are ‘mightier than thou’ policies. Their history has soaked enough blood of others, mostly ours. Colonialism, slavery, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, chemical and nuclear weapons ! They have plundered whole nations and civilizations !

We the writers have not only to stand up against all evil designs, we also have to comprehend the horrible fallout in our own countries which is giving rise to a new sense of nationalism, a dangerous road leading to fascism. Trying to assert our self esteem, while keeping our eye on the nod of approval from the Big Bullies, we are becoming less tolerant. Burning and banning books, destroying museums, smashing sculptures, blackening the faces of writers, and even physically assaulting those who do not conform to a particular view of nationalism, destroying and burning of paintings, setting fire to art galleries, hacking the writers who tell a difficult and uneasy truth, censoring films with a different message !

‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ is no longer a question. It tolls for you and me ! For creative writers and all creative people who have their own truth to tell. The creative people who do not follow the course of the sun and the course of the flowing water.

We swim against the current. And we have the courage of our convictions.

And we are here to strengthen a bondage among like-minded creative writers and intellectuals, resolving to stand up as one body, with our firm belief in peace and tranquility, resolving to recognise our real enemies and raise our voice whenever our right to assert and articulate truth is threatened anywhere.

We are here to raise a collective voice of protest to denounce all nuclear weapons anywhere in the world. We don’t want our earth to jump up in horror, or a whole mountain turned to white ash. There is absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel.

 

要是你觉得炖汤比较麻烦粉嫩公主,也可以将野葛根研碎成粉末以后煮粥服用,具体的做法是先把栗米泡一个晚上丰胸方法,第二天将其取出来,跟葛根粉等等搅拌均匀丰胸效果,然后熬煮成粥即可,这种粥的口感是比较软滑而且很清香的丰胸食物,服用它能够让人的身体变得更健康。