LAHORE, Feb 23: Writers and intellectuals participating in a discussion on the International Day of Mother Languages at the Academy of Letters here on Friday stressed the need for protection and promotion of mother tongues for protecting nations of the world from cultural uniformity and domination of a single international language.

At the discussion held with Prof Ashiq Raheel in the chair, Qazi Javed, Farkhanda Lodhi, Prof Ghulam Rasool Azad, Mushtaq Kanwal, Iqbal Qaiser and Islam Shah said globalisation was resulting in aggressive promotion of English and suppression of regional and national languages around the world.

English was no doubt a great language, but other languages had also a right to exist.

They said promotion of Punjabi was necessary as it was spoken by over 100 million people living in all parts of the world and had a great literary and cultural heritage.

It had been used by great sufi poets for giving their message of peace, humanitarianism and moderation. Punjabi was the 12th largest language of the world and promotion of Punjabi culture could help counter fundamentalism and bigotry.