THERE was a time when poets, writers, intellectuals, artists, were capable of unsettling kings and rulers. Their words carried moral authority because they spoke not for personal gain but for society. Literature was not merely imagination; it questioned injustice, challenged tyranny, and inspired people to think beyond individual interests. Their narratives joined the struggle for truth, justice, and prosperity. Their loyalty was to principles rather than privileges, and their voices endured long after the powerful disappeared.
However, priorities changed. We have gradually liberated ourselves from the collective voice and surrendered to individualism. Our concerns are confined within success, recognition, and comfort. We move around a limited gyre, as W. B. Yeats expressed: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.” This distance symbolizes separation from the values that guided intellectual lives.
Today, we often listen to people only for the sake of answering, not to understand their grief, pain, and agony. As a result, our personalities remain unattractive because of contradictions between our writings and actions. We write about humanity but practice indifference. We preach honesty but remain silent when honesty demands courage. Such contradictions weaken literature’s strength. Likewise, relationships are increasingly built on personal interests rather than mutual respect or shared values. We close the doors of criticism for those who benefit us, while becoming excessively critical of those from whom we expect nothing. This selective morality has deeply influenced today’s Pakistani literary arena. Many who claim to uphold criticism appear more interested in awards, shields, and recognition than honesty. Constructive criticism, once the backbone of literary progress, has become a calculated exercise shaped by personal ambitions.
History has taught them a lesson. They know that if their voices echoed with the courage as Habib Jalib, they might be isolated, disowned, or deprived of opportunities. Consequently, many prefer the comfort of acceptance over the burden of truth. They choose to dine with the bourgeoisie while claiming to write for the proletarian class. Such contradictions expose a gap between literary ideals and practice. Readers can distinguish between genuine conviction and manufactured narratives. Declining reading culture is not merely the result of technology or changing lifestyles; it is also the consequence of an environment that values recognition over responsibility, conformity over courage, and personal advancement over collective truth.
To conclude, literature has always terrified kings and rulers because power can imprison a writer, exile an intellectual, or take a life, but it cannot extinguish an idea once it has entered people’s minds. A writer may perish, yet writing survives. Words travel across generations, preserved in memory and rediscovered whenever society searches for truth. I hope our age, too, can produce voices with the courage and moral clarity of Neruda and Darwish, for exile cannot silence the song of a people, nor can censorship erase a nation’s collective memory. Such voices remind us that literature belongs not to the powerful but to those who continue to dream of justice despite oppression.
—The writer is a Research Officer.
