HYDERABAD, Nov 8: Prof Dr G A Allana suggests that all Pakistani languages be recognised as national languages, Urdu should replace English as state language and all the provincial languages should be used as official languages as ordained in Article 251 (3) of 1973 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Mr Allana said this while reading a paper on “Three Language Formula” at the Shaikh Ayaz International Conference on Language and Literature on the second day of the conference on Saturday. He was one of more than 30 scholars from universities of Pakistan and abroad who read papers.

He said Urdu had of course, earned the status of being the link language but efforts made so far to make Urdu medium of instruction throughout the country had failed, he added.Dr Devika Narula from the University of Delhi said in her paper on Depiction of Cultural Dislocations in the Fiction of Contemporary South Asian Writers said that the use of English as medium of writing invariably invites evaluation of literary works on the basis of Eurocentric criticism but diasporas evolving out of erstwhile colonies have assimilated the Queen’s English and evolved their own differently expressive variants of the English language.

She said that under such circumstances, hegemonic norms of Eurocentric criticism cannot and should not apply to South-Asian writers since they are writing out of a different context and with a different ideology.

Research scholar from the University of California USA, Ms Ghazala Rehman, said in her paper on Language and Politics in Sindh 1947-2007, that Sindhi children are denied a meaningful education because of the erasure of their language from schools.

In his paper on Survival of Pashto Language and the Challenges of 21st Century, Ahmad Shah Durrani from Balochistan University of Information Technology said that Pashto is not only a language, it is also constitution, culture, traditions and customs. Reading paper on Women’s Role in Literature in the Colonial Era, Dr Ramani Hettiarachchi, scholar of history from the Sri Lankan University of Peradeniya said that Sri Lankan traditional prose literature had been nourished by themes evolving around religious matters and this movement away from this tradition into a secular path could be regarded as a result of European influence.

Speaking on Strain of Romanticism in the Poetry of T.S.Eliot, Dr S.M.A. Rauf of the University of Karachi said that there is no depth in Eliot’s classicism and merely a gloss and a superficial view of the literary trend is prevalent in his Harvard days.

Prof Dr Chander J. Daswani said on Script for Survival: The case of Indian Sindhi that a very small number of Sindhis in India receive education in Sindhi although Sindhi is a recognised national language.