LAHORE: The World Punjabi Congress (WPC) has decided to hold after Eid protests across the province against ‘anti-Punjabi and anti-Pakistani languages stance’ of the provincial and federal governments.

A national conference on Punjabi would also be held next month to discuss the future course of action in the wake of rejection by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice of a bill aimed at granting status of national language to all the regional languages.

“Representatives and scholars of all other national languages will also take part in the one-day conference,” said WPC Chairman Fakhar Zaman and other office-bearers. Mr Zaman said PML-N, PPP and PTI had clearly mentioned in their election manifestos all people’s languages would be granted status of national languages.

However, NA committee members from PML-N, PPP, PTI and JUI voted against the bill while MQM abstained from voting. Moved by Marvi Memon, the bill was supported by only one member of the committee, Sardar Amjad Farooq Khosa, said Mr Zaman and added that these political parties had done a `shameful act’ by blocking the grant of national language status to the languages spoken by the people of Pakistan.

“Urdu is a link language and lingua franca in addition to its national language status. We do not accept the linguistic hegemony of one language because in our opinion all languages of Pakistan have equal status. The protagonist of hegemonic status of one language is bereft of historical, sociological, cultural and political dimensions of the importance of languages of the masses in the polity of a nation. The people of Pakistan have been misled by slogan-mongers and chauvinists who have always stood against languages of the people,” said the WPC chairman.

Mr Zaman said that recently a senior officer of the law ministry had the cheek to simplify the separation of East Pakistan because Urdu was not declared the only language of Pakistan.

“This is the most foolish argument generally advanced by ignorant bureaucrats, politicians and some narrow-minded, self-styled intellectuals, columnists and journalists. On the contrary, it’s a historical fact that had both Urdu and Bengali been declared national languages, there would not have been a break-up of Pakistan,” he said.

Mr Zaman said that the bureaucracy, politicians and the government had been avowedly anti-Punjabi.

“To them slogan of Punjabiat is to govern the smaller provinces and they are shamelessly alienated from Punjabi language and Punjabi culture. The Punjab government has not declared Punjabi as a subject at the primary level, more than 10,000 MA Punjabi degree holders are unemployed and despite our efforts no importance has been given to establishment of the first-ever Punjabi University in Lahore,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2014