WITH the second edition of the Pakistan Mother Languages Literature Festival getting under way in Islamabad yesterday, it is worth pondering over the value attached by communities to the languages they are rightly proud of owning. But what must also be highlighted is the divisiveness that has arisen from what is understood by many as the state’s effort over the years to homogenise the population. From the choice of Urdu as the ‘national’ language to bureaucracy’s retention of English as the medium through which officialdom conducts its affairs, the promotion, or otherwise, of one language over another has always been a political issue that has even led to serious violence. Given this context, celebrations of linguistic diversity through means such as the festival take on greater importance. The two-day event in Islamabad, hosted collaboratively by public and private organisations including Lok Virsa, the Sindh department of culture and the Strengthening Participatory Organisation, brings together over 150 writers, intellectuals and critics that write in over a dozen languages other than English and Urdu. Besides attractions such as music, performances and food stalls, the backbone of the event is the availability of books in languages including Brahvi, Seraiki and Balochi, as well as the major provincial languages, and their translations in Urdu and English.

If the effort of continuing to make the languages festival can be sustained over the coming years and the event itself expanded in both academic quality and size, it holds the promise of being a game changer in terms of saving and reviving languages and dialects in the country that are at risk of being lost. The hard fact is that other than arguably the provincial languages, the state never really has made a concerted push towards a cohesive, all-inclusive and above all, doable language policy. The back and forth over the issue in different provinces, from whether or not students ought to be taught in their mother tongue at the primary level, at times reaches remarkable proportions — consider, for example, Sindh’s move to make the Chinese language compulsory in schools, or a PML-N MNA’s recent comment that terrorism is increasing in the country because students are not being taught Arabic. There can be no argument that it is good to teach students more than one language; but certainly the indigenous languages, those inherited by the land that constitutes Pakistan, ought to be given precedence. There is no need to put the cart before the horse.

Published in Dawn February 19th, 2017