145;Only artistic interactions between the countries can promote peace146;

Hashmi, a renowned painter who is, incidentally, poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz8217;s daughter, feels this vacuum needs to be filled with some significant work. She was in the Capital to speak at the closing seminar of the year-long event, 8216;Partition: The Long Shadow8217;, convened by Zubaan Books and Heinrich Boll Foundation at the India Habitat Centre.

8220;I asked my father often why he wrote only one poem on Partition. All he could reply was that the event was too big to cope with. There isn8217;t any good film either, except for Garm Hawa. No civilisation in the world has documented gory events well. Perhaps it is a human tendency to brush painful thoughts away from the mind,8221; says Hashmi who has taught at the National College of Art, Lahore, for over three decades and also served as its principal.

With Faiz and Alys who was a journalist and human rights activist as parents, being jailed is inheritance for her. A human rights and peace activist, she was jailed last year when Pervez Musharraf imposed Emergency. 8220;Around 50 of us were in a meeting at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The police came and asked me to follow them, to which I refused. They lifted my chair and took me to the police van,8221; she recalls amid peals of laughter. 8220;Jail jaana to humaara khandaani kaam hai being jailed is family practice,8221; she adds.

Perhaps these nerves of steel propelled her to articulate the idea of promoting peace through visual art at the seminar on

Saturday.

8220;Only artistic interactions amongst different sections of the subcontinent can promote peace. They will have to dispute the state8217;s agenda and subvert it through communication,8221; she observes.

But to achieve that tall order, shouldn8217;t art renounce its elitist status and be taken out of the drawing rooms of the rich?

8220;The media has to play a role here. It has to instil curiosity in the minds of the grassroot people,8221; she says. Pakistani artists like Farida Batool, for instance, have attempted that. Batool took young artists on the streets of Karachi and helped them paint the walls with mehndi, something which is easily available to the common man. 8220;Today, video installations are a very vociferous medium. They capture so much in one frame. That will address terror, which is the single largest concern of the subcontinent,8221; she feels.

Hashmi is thankful to the Indian art market for welcoming Pakistani artists to India generously. 8220;When I came to India for work in 1986, people questioned if there was any art in Pakistan at all. Today, you see so many Pakistani artists displaying their works here. This has become possible only through dialogue,8221; she says.

Dialogue between the two nations saw the light of day in Musharraf8217;s regime. What difference does Hashmi feel between his regime and the current vis-agrave;-vis art in Pakistan? 8220;The atmosphere now is certainly more open but the government still doesn8217;t have a policy on art, nor a minister for art and culture. They are so consumed with immediate issues like economy and terror. But people are addressing different facets of terror and peace in Pakistan, for instance issues arising out of mindless violence. I am hoping some young filmmakers will wake up soon,8221; she says.

Hashmi, an author of two acclaimed books on art, is now a facilitator and mentor for young Pakistani artists. Her two art galleries in Islamabad and Lahore display works of the upcoming artists who according to her, 8220;do impressive work, but still don8217;t sell well8221;.