LAHORE: The Seraiki celebrities made it to the Lahore Literary Festival on the first day of its third edition. And they were happy to make their point in front of a Lahore audience.

“When we say we’re slave to the Takht-i-Lahore, we mean the system, not the people of Lahore,” said prominent Seraiki poet Ashiq Buzdar at a session titled “Reflection on Seraiki Literature”. The session was moderated by Nukhbah Langah, an FCC professor, and attended by Rana Mehboob, journalist and intellectual, and the poet and teacher Riffat Abbas

Mr Buzdar explained the literary colours of Seraiki calling it a language cut out for literature. He said the language spoken by more than 60 million people had its powerful genres like ‘dohra, mahiya, kafi, seh harfi and folk songs’ beside ghazal, nazm, azad nazm and musaddas. He said it was ironic that a language with 5,000-year-old history, and which had up to 150,000 words and more than 5,000 proverbs was still struggling for official recognition.

He said that, focusing on the last few centuries, Seraiki has been fighting and resisting oppression since 1818, after the fall of Multan to the Sikhs. Since then, Punjabi was imposed on the entire region. The oppression bred resistance among the Seraiki people, though only in literature, which has helped the people sustain their identity.

Riffat Abbas challenged the narrative of Seraiki folklore and classic literature asking the writers to revisit it. He said the classic literature encouraged the persecution of women.

“Every story begins or ends with focus on the plight of women,” he said, citing popular folklore of Heer Ranjha and Sohni Mahiwal.

“The FIR of the murder of Heer has yet to be registered as she was forced to die,” he said, adding Sohni’s murder was an honour killing, which came to be celebrated by the following generations.

“Why these folklore end in a woman’s death and why we don’t analyse the cruel traditions, allowing man’s honour still lurking within everyone of us?” he said.

Abbas also challenged the exploitation of the Seraiki culture by the state, mulla and powerful elite. He said Seraiki had survived invaders and now there was a renewed onslaught to radicalise the Seraiki culture. He said Seraiki civilisation was thousands years old than Arabic but now mulla wanted to Islamise the Seraiki culture.

Rana Mehboob highlighted the importance of regional languages, saying a language with deep roots will survive. He said Latin American writers had won Nobel prizes for their writing in Spanish while their native languages have died. Seraiki is still alive because of the resistance put up by those who speak it and the culture and the writers it nurtures. He said Seraiki was unfairly dubbed as a dialect of Punjabi. To differentiate between a dialect and a language, he said, he said a language had an army and navy while a dialect did not.

As Seraiki lacks power in establishment, it would be treated as a dialect, he said.

“Unless, there is a separate province for Seraiki people, they should be ready for the worst,” he concluded.

At the end, Ashiq Buzdar recited his famous poem ‘Qaidi Takht Lahore de’ while Riffat presented one of his poems.

At the Alhamra same stage some time later, it was Punjabi’s turn to speak up, and speak out with force. The session was entitled ‘Punjabi language as people’s narrative’, moderated by well-known intellectual Mushtaq Soofi. Renowned writers Ahmed Saleem, Saeed Bhutta and Iqbal Qaiser were the panelists.

Mushatq Soofi opened the session saying a language was used for official correspondence and communication between the people. So far Punjabi concerned, it was never recognised as the official language but the state used it to preach its narrative for its vested interests. He said if the state put Punjabi on its priority, the very next day, people would find Urdu Bazaar full of Punjabi books and the bureaucrats would beat each other to draft official correspondence in beautiful Punjabi.

Ahmed Saleem traced heroes in people’s narrative and state narrative. He said state narrative would portray Ahmad Shah Abdali, Mahmood Ghaznvai and other invaders as heroes while people’s heroes were Dulla Bhatti, Waris Shah’s Heer, Bhagat Singh and Ahmed Khan Kharal. He said the other main feature of people’s heroes was that they would be labeled by the state as villain and lawless robbers. The state would also portray an image of Punjabis as people who welcomed all invaders.

Saeed Bhutta spoke on folklores which were transferred from one generation to another word of mouth. He said the battle between Raja Porus and Alexander the Great and the story of Dara Shikho and Aurungzeb were passed on from one to another orally. He said in India the oral history was being documented and meerasis were a great treasure of oral history.

Iqbal Qaiser traced the Punjab’s history through riddles, proverbs and idioms. He said the Punjabi saying ‘Rajia didh Farsi bole’ showed how Persian was patronised during the Mughal and Raj eras.

Despite Punjabi’s rich treasure of literature and values, state was not doing the right things to protect and promote it, he said.

Published in Dawn February 21th , 2015

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