Who Speaks Punjabi?

By Altaf Hussain Asad

Altaf Hussain Asad reports on last month’s World Mother Language Day activities in Lahore and what needs to be done to rid Punjabis of their apathy for the language .







World Mother Language day falls on February 21 and people celebrate the day across the globe by resolving to respect the cultural diversity that springs up due to the intermingling of different languages and dialects. Here in Lahore too people belonging to different walks of life came forward and made their presence felt by arranging an impressive show. Punjabi activists, academics, NGO workers, leftist workers, lawyers and students of the colleges and universities staged a demonstration which started from Lahore Press Club and concluded at the Punjab Assembly. Lead by celebrated Punjabi poet and intellectual Mushtaq Soofi who is also the chairman of the Punjabi Adbi Board the demonstration proved to be quite impressive in terms of the attendance; in the past only a handful of people used to stage a sit in on the Mall on the eve of the Mother Language day. Mushtaq Soofi was happy to see the gathering this year. “We are happy to see that more people participated in the demonstration this year. We demand that Punjabi language should be made a compulsory subject from class one. Punjabi is there as an optional subject in the degree classes but a language flourishes only if you introduce it at the grass root level. We demanded a grant of 2.5 million rupees for the Punjabi Adbi Board from the Punjab Government but received only a meager sum of 1 Lac. Instead of issuing the amount we had demanded from the government it reduced our grant from 3 Lac to 1 Lac. In Sindh there are many institutions working for Sindhi language and culture and they receive grants in millions from the government”, Mushtaq Soofi rues. Amid the din of the slogans in the favor of Punjabi language and culture the participants of the demonstration were fully charged to demand the right of their mother tongue. Perveen Malik, Punjabi writer secretary of the Punjabi Adbi Sangat, was of the view that it’s the right of Punjabis to demand the imposition of their mother tongue in the schools in Punjab. The paucity of the funds the Adbi Board is facing will not deter us in doing work for Punjabi, she resolved.