"I was told 'We are inviting you' and since there was a mushaira, I assumed they wanted me to come and recite my poems. "We took a considered decision in the light of the prevailing atmosphere in the country to not have any Pakistani participation. "This festival is about bringing people together and we did not want that to be taken away by some incident. He said all those invited as guests from Pakistan had twice been told verbally they would be here only as guests. Naheed alone accepted while the others, including folklorist and Urdu thesaurus editor Musharraf Ali Farooqi and Oxford University Press managing editor Ameena Saiyid, stayed away.

Source: The Telegraph February 20, 2017 21:37 UTC