FTER elections of district bar associations in Punjab, the Punjabi Adabi Board once again plans to approach the legal bodies on the much-trumpeted Seraiki province issue from linguistic point of view. The board had contacted the bars at the tehsil level in September with the plea that new provinces apart, the legal community should take notice of introduction of a new language called Seraiki, as spoken in south and west Punjab.

Till the creation of Writers Guild in Ayub's period under the pro-martial law group of writers like Qudratullah Shahab, Jameeluddin Aali and stalwarts like Baba-iUrdu Maulvi Abdul Haq, the leaders of this Karachi-based organisation consisting of official writers somehow thought that Multan region should be encouraged to claim an independent status for Multani, which has throughout history been taken as the dialect of Punjabi. Multan branch of the guild got an unusual importance from the Shahab group.

It was further strengthened by creating another body, Bazm-i-Sagafat, which was fi-nancially supported by central and provincial governments. Tariq Rahman in his book Language and Politics in Pakistan says: 'According to antagonists of Seraiki, a powerful bureaucrat in General Ayub's government, Qudratullah Shahab, patronised the writers of Seraiki, asking twenty of them to claim that their language was different from Punjabi.' (P 180) How Khawaja Farid was dishonestly represented as Serail(i poet? Tariq adds: 'Cultural activities began in earnest in 1960 when Riaz Anwar, a lawyer from Muzaffargarh, celebrated Jashn-i-Farid in Muzaffargarh.

As the saint was becoming a symbol of distinctive cultural identity of Seraiki people, this celebration helped create a sense of identity.

This was being done to honour the mission, Shahab had assigned to Multani writers, while the fact is that Farid named Punjabi his language as well as the language of the area. (Maqabeesul Majalis P621, 703, 866) Khawaja Farid's only assertion about his language was de-liberately never mentioned by any of the scholars of Farid, including CSP Shahzad Qaisar, who recently retired as secretary to Prime Minister Gilani and was appointed as secretary toMajlis-i-Iqbal.

With reference to Farid's saying, the bars were requested to consider the issue from linguistic and h i s t o ri c al point of view and stop political vested interested fromdividing Punjabi sufi literature and literary history.

The same request was made to 49 rights organisations working in Punjab with an emphasis that it's every child's fundamental right to have early education in his mother tongue. They advocate that right and demand from the government and other institutions to introduce Punjabi (may call it Seraiki) as medium of instruction at the primary level. The board has asserted that if Punjabi has been made medium of instruction, there will have been no question of linguistic bi-partism.Such a request was also made to Asma Jahangir of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association. Being rights acti-vist it is her moral duty to plead for the rights of Punjabi children.

The linguistic separation is such a delicate issue that governments should have app ointe dsome learned body or higher commission to inquire about the commonalities and differences among dialects of south, west, north and east.

The board claims that it appealed to President Zardari, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Lahore High Court chief justice and the Punjab chief minister, but none of them cared to acknowledge the request. Is Punjabi language such a mean issue?

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Right from his college days, he has been serving the Punjabi cause and contributed many books in prose and verse to Punjabi. He remained associated with a national Urdu daily as a literary correspondent and in that capacity he paid more attention to Punjabi and introduced Punjabi writers through the Urdu daily. After retirement from the paper he continued his activities to promote Punjabi through the monthly Saanjhan and in the latest issue of the Punjabi-Urdu paper he has included an interview of Allama Iqbal published in the prestigious Punjabi monthly Saarang of Lahore in 1930, the year he delivered his address on which was based the Pakistan Movement.

Tanveer has reproduced this interview in view of the demand for a separate province by the feudal of the south Punjab and the rest of the country on the basis of a separate language called Seraiki.

Tanveer has already contributed an article to a Lahore daily, opposing the partition of the province on a dialect basis. The linguistic history of Punjab stands witness that never inthe past southern Punjabi (locally l<nown as Multani, Riasti, Deri, Lehnda etc.) was counted as a separate language, not even by Khawaja Farid. Iqbal's interview is very important in the present context because Iqbal like Farid considered the dialects spoken in the south and the west parts of the province part of Punjabi and not independent languages... Iqbal told the editors of Saarang that Urdu was far behind Punjabi as far as mystic, patriotic and folk poetry was concerned.

The fact is that Punjabi is deeply rooted in people having history of million years.

Iqbal and the Punjabis of that period knew well the boundaries in which Punjabi was one recognised language. For instance, Iqbal did not learn Punjabi formally, but when he quoted a verse it was of a poet from Taunsa/Bahawalpur, Ahmad Yar, and it was in southern dialect.