Spearheaded by Karachi based Sonya Battla and the Director of the Lahore Museum, the event offers a stellar line up of speakers including Kamran Lashari, Salman Asif, Ustad Bashir Ahmed, Ammar Ali Jan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Syeda Arifa Zehra, Dr. Javaria Farooqui and Dr. Shabnam Syed Khan.
The Collective launched in 2022 seeks to advocate for the need to take ownership of identity through the process of decoloniality. In 2022, the Global Fashioning Assembly was an international 3-day live-on-zoom event from 21-23 October 2022, that followed the sun around the world. For the event, the Pakistan Collective for Decolonial Practices hosted an interdisciplinary seminar offering diverse perspectives on decolonising the curriculum featuring Dr. Pervez Hoodhbhoy, Zeb Bilal, Sonya Battla, Rohma Khan, Kohi Marri, Mehwish Abid and Pakeezah Zaidi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dFqaQaldg
"It’s actually a group effort. No individual can push so many people. I think we were all motivated to unravel our direction and trajectory which requires a historical analysis of how we arrived here. Decolonising is just one aspect," said Sonya Battla, founder of PCDP.
"Decoloniality is a process that is the result of colonialism. However we have as a society in Pakistan have become brown sahibs. And the awareness to not live like that but bring in more acceptability, inclusion and equality is the aim of the group. The more we talk about it with people who are also on this journey, the easier it is to find ways to ease the situation by combining our past and heritage and accepting it and moving forward with our awareness that we can do things our way now. That's where this group is and that is what I thought when I started it," added Battla.
While the collective has members who are working towards the same goal but in individual ways, there is a collective recognition to address how deep the colonisation is embedded with us.
"Most students in Pakistan enroll in English literary studies program with the clear understanding that English is the key to socio-economic success, people who know it are slaves of angreiz, and it involves a good deal of super haram content. To navigate the attraction and repulsion for this discipline, we need to explore ways of decolonizing the curriculum and pedagogical approaches of English literary studies," said Dr. Javaria Farooqui.
Details for the event are as follows: