ONE more academic body is in trouble, which may lead to its extinction. There is said to be an official proposal that the Urdu Lughat Board should be amalgamated with the National Book Foundation. Academic circles in Pakistan have reacted strongly to this move. Writers and intellectuals in Karachi appear more disturbed and are loud in their protest.
This reminded me of the time when the Pakistan Book Council was amalgamated with the Foundation. The Pakistan Book Council was working normally. All of a sudden, there was a move that it should be amalgamated with the Book Foundation. And this was done. I have a feeling that after devouring the Pakistan Book Council, The Book Foundation has grown greedy. And greed is something which knows no bounds. It is being heard that the amalgamation of Urdu Lughat Board, too, will not satisfy it. The Urdu Science Board will be its next target.
The move is shocking in more ways than one. Firstly, the Urdu Lughat Board had come to stay as an esteemed learned body quite faithful to its programme of preparing an exhaustive Urdu dictionary. Established in 1957, it succeeded in winning the services of eminent scholars. First and foremost among them was Baba-i-Urdu Maulvi Abdul Haq, who headed it in its first phase and put it on a sound academic footing. In its next phase, it was headed by Josh Malihabadi. Jamiluddin Aali served the body for a long time. He was succeeded by Dr Farman Fatehpuri, who continues to be its head. He is admittedly a scholar most suited for the job.
The Board had chalked out a very ambitious programme of compiling an Urdu dictionary in a series of volumes. At the outset, it appeared to be a target hard to achieve. And seeing the ways our academic bodies work, it appeared harder. But the Urdu Lughat Board has been fortunate enough to have the services of scholars who worked with a spirit of devotion. And so we see that eighteen volumes have already been published and the nineteenth is in the pipeline.
Bringing out eighteen volumes of the Lughat, whose authenticity has not yet been challenged from any quarter, is no mean achievement. It rather deserves praise for it. On the basis of this record of work, the Board would have been justified in demanding more facilities, for instance, more funds and more freedom to work. But how unfortunate that what has happened is just the reverse of it. The move appears to be a conscious attempt to disrupt work and create hurdles in the completion of the proposed Lughat. If not so, how should we interpret this move? After all, there should be some reason for taking such a step. How will we justify the amalgamation of a body into another when it is performing well and has enough work to its credit?
One thing more. The Urdu Lughat Board is a learned body very different in nature from the National Book Foundation. What is common ground between the two? If there is no common ground how will they reconcile with each other? The discordance between the two will create conditions which will hardly be congenial for scholars to do their work. It is surprising that the movers of this proposal have not cared to have an understanding of the conditions a learned body requires for its scholars to work.
The move should, however, not be surprising for those who have witnessed the speedy deterioration and consequent closure of a number of cultural and academic bodies during the past decades. As said before in this column, these cultural and academic bodies had come into existence because of a certain awareness on the part of those who were at the helm of affairs during the early years of Pakistan. Among them were enlightened people who had an awareness that mere economic programmes were not enough for a nation eager to find an honourable place in the community of civilized nations and that a nation should have something worthwhile to show in the fields of culture, literature, and learnings. Because of this realization a number of cultural and academic bodies came into existence under state patronage. These bodies were expressive of our earnest desire to be acknowledged as a civilized nation with a rich cultural heritage.
The kind of politics we have been having and the kind of rulers we were fated to have in consequence of this politics was, to a large extent, responsible for the weakening of this awareness. The bodies and institutions working under state patronage could not have remained unaffected from this situation. They deteriorated in consequence. Those at the helm of affairs in their insensitiveness allowed them to deteriorate and in certain cases contributed to it. When pressed to take notice, they did so in a strange way. In certain cases they found a pretext in the deteriorating conditions to close them down or to amalgamate one with the other. But how ironic that at times they targeted even those bodies which were working quite well. The case of the Urdu Lughat Board provides a glaring example of such behaviour. The Board is performing its duties well. And yet those at the helm are, for reasons best known to them, intending to terminate its autonomous status and hand it over to the National Book Foundation. Perhaps they don’t quite understand the significance of work the Board is doing. Or maybe they are doing it for motives best known to them.
ONE more academic body is in trouble, which may lead to its extinction. There is said to be an official proposal that the Urdu Lughat Board should be amalgamated with the National Book Foundation. Academic circles in Pakistan have reacted strongly to this move. Writers and intellectuals in Karachi appear more disturbed and are loud in their protest.
