LAHORE: Governor Chaudhry Sarwar says Pakistan extended the hand of brotherhood to India but did not receive any positive response.

He was addressing a three-day international conference on Punjabi started at Punjabi Department of the Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) on Thursday.

He said Prime Minister Imran Khan had opened the Kartarpur Corridor to unite Punjabis on both sides of the border. He said he had spent 37 years of his life in the UK but would prefer speaking Punjabi at home.

LCWU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Bushra Mirza said they would continue playing a role in promoting language, literature, arts and culture. She said Punjabi language had a significant status among other languages of the world and it was written in two scripts.

“Gurmukhi is its oldest script and it has been proven that the language and the script date back to fifth and sixth centuries,” she said.

Seventy-four national and international scholars presented their research work in the conference, including Osaka University Japan Prof Dr Marghoob Hussain Tahir on ancient Punjabi language, SANVAD Canada Editor Sukhinder Singh on Language of Peace, Rajwant Kaur Bajwa from Amritsar on Analysis of Punjab, Dr Devinder Pal Singh, director Cambridge Learning, Canada, on Punjabi Language-Current Status and Future Prospects.

Mr Sarwar also inaugurated a new block of social sciences at the university. The block was constructed at a cost of Rs215.6m, in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission. Over 1,900 students will benefit from it.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2020