LAHORE: The 38th All Pakistan Allama Muhammad Iqbal Bilingual Declamation contest began at the Government College University (GCU) on Monday.

According to GCU Debating Society President Haris Ali Virk, a large number of orators from different universities are contesting for the team trophy and best speaker awards at the two-day event spread over three sessions.

Virk said the declamation was not a political debate. “Here, no contemporary issue can escape the arguments of these best national orators who have come from all over Pakistan to GCU Lahore to express their thoughts,” he said.

The serious topics debated on the first day were: ‘It is not the Earth that needs us, but we who need the Earth’, ‘A civilisation is judged only in its decline’, ‘Power rests at ease where critics refuse to go’, and ‘Independence is when fools exchange White masters for Brown’.

In the humorous category, the participants spoke on ‘In the face of pain, there are no heroes’, ‘To oppose something is to maintain it’, ‘In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity’, and ‘We think too much and feel too little’.

In the Urdu category, the debaters punctuated their speeches with verses by poets Allama Iqbal, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib.

Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah congratulated the debating society for maintaining its tradition of oratory by picking up themes from contemporary issues. He further said that the best English speaker would be awarded the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Medal and a cash prize, while the best Urdu speaker would receive the Dr Majeed Nizami Medal.

Later, Prof Shah and South Africa’s University of Pretoria Mathematics Department Chairperson Prof Dr Roumen Anguelov singed a 22-point accord to launch joint research programmes and exchange expertise and academic documents.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2018