KARACHI, Feb 15: The vice-chancellor of the University of Karachi, Dr Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui, on Thursday said the Pakistani society significantly needed professionals with perspective based on the betterment of the humanity and any professional who had no proficiency in literature, culture and intellectualism could be reckoned nothing else but a robot.

“We are living in the age where professionalism is considered to be the ultimate merit, which is not bad but if professionalism is practised in conformity with intellectualism and cultural know-how, it will serve the society much better,” Dr Siddiqui said in his keynote speech at the launching ceremony of four books published by the Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Chair of the University of Karachi here at a local hotel.

The four books, which were launched on the occasion were: The religious and intellectual environment during Bhitai’s age written by Dr Anis Fatima Soomro, Latif Ji Boli (Bhitai’s language) written by Jeem Ain Munghani, Spiritualism in Shah Latif’s Poetry by Munawwar Arbab Halo and the Urdu translation of eminent short storywriter late Jamal Abro, Pishu Pasha. Mumtaz Solangi, a student of KU’s Urdu department, translated late Abro’s short stories.

Dr Pirzada said that the KU’s departments relating to linguistics and literature had great responsibility on their shoulders for the survival of culture, language and literature.

“Literature, culture, intellectualism and languages are the essential ingredients of every society and we have to do everything to resist the threats to their survival,” he said.

Dr Pirzada lauded the efforts of the Latif Chair and said it had published some 32 books besides scores of periodicals since its establishment.

He said the Sindh Conference held last year had now become a regular biennial feature and asked the Sindhi department and the Latif Chair to start their preparations for the second episode of the conference next year at the international level.

Eminent intellectual Mohammad Ibrahim Joyo said that secularism was not atheism but it was a thought that promoted humanity and equality internationally.

He said that Bhitai advocated secularism through his poetry quite evidently and asked the intellectuals to highlight that aspect of Shah Latif’s poetry.

Mehtab Akbar Rashdi, provincial secretary for inter-provincial coordination department, spoke on the book of the translation of Bhitai’s spiritual poetry and said that verbal translation had served little to convey the Sufi master’s message as strongly to his readers of English as it was in its original form.

Prof Sehar Imdad of the Sindh University read his paper on Jamal Abro’s fiction and said the writer had created characters which could be found everywhere in Sindh.

Prof Saleem Memon of the Sindhi department of the KU, Prof Tahira Nighat of the Urdu department and Fehmida Hussain, director of the Latif Chair and poet Imdad Hussaini and critic Aftab Abro also spoke on the occasion.