UMERKOT: Speakers at a conference on the Sindhi language have urged the government to declare Sindhi a national language and regretted that a national language bill tabled in the National Assembly a couple of years ago have been put on the back burner.
The language bill failed to catch attention of the government which instead saw it expedient to form a commission for new provinces, they said at the conference organised by the Sindhi Adabi Sangat in collaboration with the Umerkot chapter of the Primary Teachers’ Association here on Monday.
PPP MNA Nawab Yousuf Talpur said that he had moved the language bill in the National Assembly but it had been in cold storage since then. Before him, PML-N leader Marvi Memon had tabled a similar bill but it failed to get lawmakers’ attention, he said.
He said he had personally requested the then prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to consider the bill but instead the government found it expedient to form a commission for new provinces.
He said that a Sindhi president and legislators had failed to take concrete measures to conserve the language which was on the verge of extinction.
Renowned intellectual Qalandar Shah Lakyari said that soldiers could serve at one of the world’s highest battlefronts in Siachen in harsh weather conditions for a meagre Rs15,000 a month but a teacher was not ready to teach even after receiving Rs35,000 a month.
In India, he said, there was no geographical location where Sindhi was spoken but the country had declared Sindhi a national language. Sindhis had played a great role in the freedom movement but soon after independence Sindhi medium schools were closed down in Karachi, he said.
He said that rulers had always shown criminal behaviour towards core issues of Sindh and left the nation alone to face consequences of their actions.
Mehrunnisa Larak of Sindhi Adabi Sangat said their love for their mother tongue did not mean hatred for any other language. The government had filled 1,500 vacant posts for Sindhi teachers by 5,000 illiterate and incompetent teachers who could not pronounce and write even a single word in Sindhi, she said.
Renowned scholar G.M. Bhagat said that language should be free and autonomous and all researches should be carried out in the mother tongue but regretfully Sindhi was not free.
The Sindhi language had become an endangered language and Sindhis were primarily responsible for it because they themselves preferred other languages in order to make themselves heard and understood, he said.
Arbab Nek Mohammad said that admission of Sindhi students was banned in Karachi institutions and Sindhi was not taught in Karachi and in private schools.
He said that Sindhi for Sindh, Balochi for Balochistan, Punjabi for Punjab and Pashtu for its province should be declared their national languages.