HYDERABAD: Intellectuals, writers and poets have declared noted scholar and translator, Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo a great critic and a man of letters of the 20th and 21st century and demanded his writings be made part of textbooks to enable the youth to benefit from them.

They were speaking at a conference on ‘Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo, a literary critic’ at the Shaikh Ayaz Auditorium in the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, on Wednesday.

“Rarely does it happen in our society that a great man deserving appreciation is paid tribute in his or her life. No sooner does one leave this world than the praise is heaped on his grave as of it takes death of a man to make everybody realise how great a person had been,” said former vice chancellor of Sindh University Mazharul Haq Siddiqui.

“But luckily, now it’s changing. A good tradition is taking root and we have begun to appreciate in their life those who have devoted their lives to a great cause. Mr Joyo is one of them,” he said.

He said that Joyo was the identity of Sindh and its future. The circumstances in which he had written a book titled “Save Sindh, Save the Continent” in 1928 persisted, unfortunately, till this day even after passage of almost a century.

MPA Mehtab Akbar Rashdi said that Joyo was the voice of an entire century. His books and writings showed that Sindh was his first and last love, she said.

She said that Joyo compared in a book two great poets of Sindhi and Urdu and wrote that Shaikh Ayaz was a poet of people while Faiz Ahmed Faiz was a poet of the elite literary class since the common man could relate to and understand Shaikh Ayaz but not to Faiz.

SU vice chancellor Dr Abida Taherani said a corner was set up in recognition of Mr Joyo’s services. Sindh University was a big platform where his literary services would reach many generations to come, she said.

Two books penned by Joyo were launched on the occasion. One was brought out by the Sindhology department named French Inqilab and another book Galhiyon Kitaban Joon was published by Pakistan Study Centre.

Sindhology chairman Dr Anwar Figar Hakro, Sindhi Lang­uage Authority’s former chairperson Dr Fehmida Huss­ain, inte­ll­ectual Zulfiqar Hale­poto, poet Adal Soomro and others also spoke at the conference.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2015

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