GIVEN the topic — enforced disappearances in Balochistan — the seminar planned at the Karachi University on Wednesday was unlikely to be a tame affair.
But as it turned out, tired old tactics of suppressing dissent ensured more sound and fury, a bigger audience and greater publicity than it would have garnered otherwise.
Until it actually happened, no one could be certain whether the event, featuring Mama Qadeer, Farzana Majeed and Mohammed Ali Talpur as speakers, would even take place.
The university administration had informed the organisers on Tuesday that they would not give permission for it to be held.
On the day itself, the door to the arts auditorium — the originally intended venue — remained locked, and many of those not working or studying onsite who wanted to attend had to resort to creative tactics to get around security personnel hampering their access to the campus. In the end, defiance won the day and the seminar, now more in the nature of a protest meeting, went ahead.
While one would have to laud the tenacity of the organisers and the participants in insisting on their right to free expression, it says much about how repressive our society has become that the administration of a major seat of learning in the country shied away from hosting a discussion on a topic of national importance.
Academic institutions have a duty to encourage debate even on ‘controversial’ issues, rather than toe the official line — although one could well ask, if there is such a thing as an ‘official line’, does it not imply that critical thinking itself is controversial?
At the same time, it must be acknowledged that KU being a public institution had some valid concerns, and had it chosen to, the administration could have resorted to harsher measures, courtesy the Rangers personnel hovering in the background, to disperse the gathering.
But that would have meant compounding the error that began with the cancellation of a similar talk at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. It is fortunate that saner counsel prevailed.
