ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Mother Languages Literature Festival 2023 came to a close after three days of packed sessions and activities celebrating the cultural and linguistic diversity of Pakistan.

The festival, held at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA), brought together researchers from the field as well as practitioners who are on the frontline trying to bolster indigenous and mother languages and experts and policymakers to share their experiences.

Arranged by the Indus Cultural Forum, a volunteer organisation, the festival was supported by the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, the National Heritage and Culture Division of the federal government, culture departments of the governments of Sindh and Balochistan, the Friedrich Nauman Foundation (FNF), Forum for Language Initiatives, Idar Brae Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT), Sindhi Language Authority, ECO Science Foundation and the Society for Alternative Media and Research.

Indus Cultural Forum Chairperson Prof Dr Manzoor Hussain Soomro commended the dedication of the volunteers who had successfully organised the festival over the past eight years.

The final day of the festival began with a screening of Expedition Indus 2022, a documentary by the Friedrich Nauman Foundation (FNF).

FNF country director Birgit Lamm introduced the documentary, which segued into a session exploring the Indus River as a confluence of economy, language and culture.

Munawar Hassan, a senior member of the ICF, said the linguistic diversity was the greatest strength of Pakistan, which should be a cause to bring people together and not divide them.

Saad Hayat Tamman, National Coordinator Living Indus, Ministry of Climate Change, said: “Our work is titled Living Indus and we are trying to help the residents of the Indus understand that Indus is a living entity. We have over the past few decades – before the creation of Pakistan – been looking at the quantity of water in the Indus but we have not looked at the ecology of the basin.”

“We must realise that Indus is not in Pakistan, actually Pakistan is in Indus. The second part of it is the climate change part – for the world climate change is a greenhouse gas emission, de-carbonisation problem – but for Pakistan climate is a water problem,” he added.

A session on education policy highlighted that the many national education policies over years had seen an ebb and flow of importance of local languages in the curriculum.

In yet another session, Dr Ismatullah Shah, author of Rang-i-Farid which translates selected poetry from Dewan-i-Farid, the anthology of Khawaja Farid into Urdu, shared insights into the life of the Sufi saint and read excerpts from the book.

The diverse festival celebrated the works of nine prominent writers of different indigenous languages who received Lifetime Achievement awards, launched over 80 books in more than 20 languages of Pakistan, and was a beautiful compilation of recitation of poetry, storytelling and discussions accompanied by musical and theatrical performances and an exhibition of paintings by Mushtaq Ali Lashari.

Tariq Rehman from Gilgit-Baltistan said: “We have gathered at the PNCA to promote our language and culture in this very pleasant venue. We have compiled our language and culture, that we have learnt from our fathers, in a book which we are able to share with visitors. With festivals and platforms like this, people will, I hope, become interested in other languages as well.”

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2023