Scholars and students came together to talk about the relationship between culture and politics in South Asia at the seminar, 'Performative Communication', co-organized by South Asian University and Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.
The two-day seminar saw participants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
The forum discussed the approach to look at our modern culture with the legacies and it was an attempt to correct and re-correct the understanding between people and the culture.
Jalal Khan who is studying in South Asian University was an active participant in the event.
He feels exchanging ideas and knowledge through this seminar will help to know each other's culture and develop better understanding for the South Asian countries.
"This seminar is very important for us because it is culture and performance of South Asia countries. So our country is culturally attached with South Asia like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Culturally these countries have similar culture and norms all these. So from last two days we are attending this seminar and it is very informative, lectures by different professors from the SAARC countries. India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan. So it gives map of different cultures of the south", said Jalal Khan, an Afghani student pursuing Masters in Computer Applications, South Asian University.
The cultural growth in Afghanistan has been limited due to decades of war and now Afghan people are trying to connect with other countries on a broader spectrum.
"In Afghanistan we see that emergence of different kind of cultural groups which are giving all kind of political messages and those political messages are very important so this seminar trying to bring together those political messages. We remember a group of young musicians in Afghanistan they had award ceremony which was titled after Jalauddin Rumi, a Persian poet and they won that award in their songs they criticize Islamist in their songs in which women are subjected to all kind of sexual violence. So these are the new developments happening in our surroundings and we need to take into account some of those kinds of things. We also see all kinds of traditional performances that give fair idea of South Asia", said Prof Deb Pathak, Convener of the seminar.
Nepal has a set of challenges as the country is still in the process of drafting new constitution.
"We see India in terms of, we see at one level modern state operating and we have to learn so many things from India because India have been doing very well in using the modern mechanization of that state", said Professor Shiva, Center for English, Tribhuvan University.
Prof Sanjay Uprety feels that for a healthy democracy it is important to take into account all kind of critical cultural narratives and performances emerging from social domain and not necessarily from political domain.
"This seminar basically centers around performance. Performance is a very broad term like theatrically performance that theater is a performance but there is political procession that is also political performance. So when you look at rituals, cultural ritual is a performance. Then we look at different aspects of performance which allows understanding the culture better and how identities are formed in that culture", said Prof. Sanjay Uprety, Central dept of English, Tribuwan Univerty, Nepal.
South Asia has its cultural narratives and they are very powerful narratives and have to be given fair attention by political leadership.
