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Vishav Bharti
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 19
“What is Basant?” four-year-old Beas asked her grandfather on Tuesday, when the news came that Basant would be celebrated in Lahore after a gap of 12 years.
Lahore-based acclaimed writer Iqbal Qaiser suddenly felt short of words to answer his granddaughter.
“One can’t explain Lahore’s Basant. The colourful sky can only be felt, seen and imbibed. What a pity that a complete generation has grown up without witnessing this. That is the harm fundamentalists have brought to our country,” says Qaiser, known for his work on religious heritage of the minorities in Pakistan.
Lahore skies will be dotted with kites once again as the Pakistan’s Punjab Province Government on Tuesday announced to celebrate Basant in February next year.
On the pretext of “endangered public safety”, Pakistan’s Supreme Court had banned the celebration of Basant in 2005. In 2007, the local government lifted the ban but it was reimposed soon.
Though the fundamentalist groups didn’t take much time to knock the doors of High Court to get the festival banned again, the news sent a wave of celebration among Lahoris. “If Basant is not celebrated in Lahore, where will it be then?” asks Qaiser.
“After Afghan war, fundamentalists gained currency and they were hell bent upon destroying the culture and heritage by labelling things non-Islamic,” he says.
The ban on Basant, he says, had not only harmed culture but had also destroyed livelihood of a large population of craftsmen, shopkeepers and traders, who were involved in making kites and strings.
Lahore-based writer Laaleen Sukhera says while growing up in Lahore, she sensed a bit of madness in the air during Basant. “As a Lahori, I’m absolutely delighted and am looking forward to the festival once again.” She says the lifting of the ban meant that more of her friends would be visiting Lahore from the subcontinent for Basant.
Haroon Khalid, Lahore-based author of “Walking with Nanak” once wrote, “The festival was just too important to be abandoned; it was essential to being a Lahori. It was also celebrated in other cities around Punjab, but there was nothing like Lahore’s Basant. Karachi had its sea, Islamabad had its mountains, Lahore had its Basant.”
Leaf from history
Zubair Ahmad, a Lahore-based Punjabi writer and co-editor of BaraMah, says Basant in Lahore is linked with Madho Lal Hussain, a 16th century poet whose Urs is observed at the end of March. Lal Hussain was a Sufi poet who fell in love with a Hindu boy, Madho. Basant is celebrated in the memory of the poet and his friendship.
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