KARACHI, July 7: Speakers at a seminar on Monday stated that Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai’s message should be spread widely so that people could follow his teachings of love and peace.

They were speaking at the Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Seminar 2003, which was organized by the Karachi University’s Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Chair.

The vice chancellor of the university Dr Zafar Saeed Saifee, Dr Ghulam Ali Allana, Dr Fahmida Hussain, Prof Saleem Memon, Taj Joyo, Aftab Abro, Kamal Jamro, besides others, spoke at the seminar the proceedings of which were conducted by Yasir Qazi.

Dr Saifee in his speech said more research work needed to be undertaken on Shah Latif’s poetry so that his message could be understood and then spread widely among the people. He suggested that Shah Latif’s poetry be translated in other languages so that his message could be taken to the people of other countries and religions.

He said the Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Chair established by Karachi University was carrying out a lot of qualitative as well as quantitative research, owing to which many research papers had been written and published and new findings had become available.

The vice chancellor announced that soon a chair in the name of Prof Annemarie Schimmel would be established with the help of the German government at Karachi University. Dr Schimmel had undertaken research on Shah Latif, he said, and more research work would be carried out on him under the Dr Schimmel Chair.

Dr Saifee, whose speech was punctuated with verses of Hafiz and Shakespeare, said Shah Latif was not only a leading poet of Sindh but of the entire subcontinent.

A leading linguist and researcher Dr Ghulam Ali Allana, in his well-researched paper, said Shah Latif had enriched the Sindhi language by coining new words, reusing the words that had been phased out due to non-use and by using novel phrases.

He said that though during his period Persian was the official language and the poets used to get patronage and favours from the rulers by saying verses in Persian, Shah Latif chose the Sindhi language as his medium because he wanted to spread his message among the masses.

Dr Allana said he was not suggesting that Shah Latif hated Persian. In fact he always carried a copy of Maulana Roomi’s masnavi and had written many verses in Persian himself. But Shah Latif preferred to use Sindhi, which was spoken and understood by the masses, said Dr Allana.

He said Shah Latif had travelled extensively in Sindh and its adjoining areas and had learnt a lot about the common people, their customs, trades and folk stories and after getting all this information had coined new words and phrases that were used by various characters in his poetry, thereby enriching the Sindhi language in the process.

He said that though Sindhi language had been in existence since centuries, but the way Shah Latif enriched it he could be termed the architect of the Sindhi language. He was of the view that Sindhi as a language was so well developed that it could be put at par with other developed languages of the region, or even the world.

The other speakers said that though more than a couple of centuries had passed since Shah Latif’s death but his poetry was still relevant.

If one read his verses today he would feel that the issues discussed and highlighted were the same ones which were being faced by the people nowadays. Shah Latif gave more importance to Sindhi as compared to an alien language.

This was one reason why his poetry was still popular among the masses.