THATTA: Senator Sassui Palijo on Wednesday expressed confidence that the bill pertaining to the granting of national status to the country’s four indigenous languages — Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi and Pashto — would soon get through the parliament.

Dr Mohammad Ali Manjhi, Sadiq Lakho, Sooraj Sujawali, Mehboob Brohi, Ramzan Memon, Allah Juryo Burfat, Iqbal Khuwaja and others also expressed their views at the seminar where the senator was speaking.

The seminar was held at the Thatta Gymkhana Hall, Makli, on the eve of International Mother Language Day. It was jointly organised by the Sindhi Adabi Sangat (SAS) and Thatta chapter of the Organisation for Heritage and Culture Development (OHCD).

Senator Sassui Palijo, speaking as the chief guest, pointed out that the bill had already been passed by the Senate’s relevant steering committee and it was ready to be tabled in parliament for approval.

She said that history was witness to the fact that depriving nations of their legitimate right to an identity based on mother tongue had become a cause of irreparable losses and even emergence of new territorial boundaries in the world.

The other speakers noted that even the British rulers of the subcontinent had acknowledged its linguistic entities’ right to give their respective languages due status within their areas in order to shun a sense of deprivation among them.

She pointed out that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) described mother tongue of a nation as the “indigenous language”.

Ms Palijo told the audience that a consensus of parliamentarians had already been evolved before the bill was finalised by the steering committee in 2016.

She commended the efforts made by veteran intellectual late Ibrahim Joyo, Dr Ghulam Ali Allana, Dr Habibullah Siddiqui, Dr Fahmida Hussain, Dr Mohammad Ali Manjhi and other language experts from Sindh in preparing the bill.

The Senator hoped that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and its coalition partners in the federal government would extend their full cooperation in ensuring the passage of the bill in parliament so that the right to identity of all federating units could be restored.

In this respect, Dr Manjhi recalled that Governor of Bombay Sir George Clerk vide a document dated April 24, 1848 had made the Sindhi language a medium of official communication.

The then Bom­bay government, he added, accordingly issued a circular requiring government officials of the region to attain proficiency in this language.

The Constitution, he said, provided that locals should be given the right to speak, read and write in their own mother tongue.

The participants urged the federal government to ensure enactment of the bill into law in order to recognise the four languages as “national languages”.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2019