ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to Meiryam Ali’s article “Saeen to saeen, let the Mohajir be saaen” (July 16). Usually, I don’t get a chance to read every item on the city pages of a newspaper but I have been reading the blogs of young people on your newspaper’s website of late to see what our young people think.
Being a “saeen” myself, I couldn’t pass the catchy headline given to Ms Ali’s piece. And I must admit, that I was really moved by what she had written and empathised with her sentiments. Sindh has never been a linguistic and cultural monolith. For hundreds of years, Farsi, Arabic and English have remained the official languages of Sindh. As far as ethnic background goes, Turks, Afghans, Iranians, Africans and other races have made Sindh their abode.
However, Sindh never saw the kind of migration of people that it did after the creation of Pakistan and this was mainly people coming from the northern districts of UP and CP. Since most of the migrating population chose to live in the larger cities, economic reasons dictated that it was not necessary for them to learn Sindhi. Compared with that, the experience of those migrants who went to the hinterland was different. Even today, the sons and daughters of the migrant communities who live in interior Sindh speak perfect Sindhi.
It is a good fortune of Sindh and its people to have provided a home to such a large linguistic and cultural diversity of people. This is the province’s strength and not a weakness. This also means that we shouldn’t be shy to mention this and, in fact, should celebrate it.
As a Sindhi whose broadcasting and theatre career started with the Urdu language, I am proud to be a Sindhi who speaks Urdu and Sindhi — both languages of Sindh — fluently.
I would say to the writer, who I consider my young friend, that from Karachi to Kashmore, Sanghar to Sehwan, the entire Sindh is your own. Yes, a male is ‘saeen’, but in the writer’s case, she is one of the millions of brave ‘sainn’.
Murtaza Solangi
Director General
Radio Pakistan
Published in The Express Tribune, July 17th, 2012.
