Words from Tharparkar: Desert women missing from local literature, lament speakers

FUUAST hosts two-day conference on literature of desert areas

KARACHI: People have recently started learning about the desert areas but no one writes about the women of these deserts, lamented Dr Fateh Muhammad Burfat on Wednesday.

He was speaking as the chief guest on the second day of the two-day conference on the Literature of Desert Areas of Pakistan held at the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology. Dr Burfat appreciated a paper written by Pritam Piyasi in which he had written about the four types of feelings of women described in the folksongs of Thar desert. "The love for own language doesn't mean hate for other languages," he said.



University of Karachi (KU) professor Dr Seemi Naghmana Tahir agreed that the threat to any language is from its own people who cease to speak or write in their own language, and not from others.

"The Brahimi script derived from the Indus script is a source of all the languages in the Subcontinent," said linguist Dr Aftab Abro, adding that multiple languages are derived from the same script, including Gujarati, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Pali and others.

Sohail Sangi, a journalist by profession, also read a research paper in which he claimed that Dhatki and Thari are languages in their own right and not dialects of Sindhi. "Unfortunately, these languages could not be termed as languages due to political, social and cultural reasons," he shared. The language of the Great Indian Desert is a mother language of various local languages of the region, he said.

Elaborating on the politics of the desert, KU Sindhi department chairperson Dr Abdul Ghafoor Memon regretted that instead of facilitating the people of Thar, our politicians are point-scoring on their issues. The media has played a negative role by making commercial profits out of Thari people in a recent turmoil in Thar, he added.

Professor Nasarullah Khan Nasir, who came from Bahawalpur, spoke about how the literature of desert areas has been ignored in the past. Since more than 65 countries of the world have deserts, now the people want to know about their literature and the collective wisdom of people living there, he said.

Though the Ghaggar-Hakra and Sarasvati rivers flowing through the desert areas of Rohi and Acchro Thar have dried up, the birds and animals still visit its remains, he said. Unfortunately, they are hunted by the cruel hunters of the area or due to the unavailability of water, he added.

Writer and scholar Imdad Hussaini appreciated the subject of the conference and lauded the efforts put by the varsity's Sindhi department. It is the duty of scholars and researchers to find a way to preserve the literature of all the desert areas of Pakistan, he added.

A professor of Persian at KU, Dr Ramzan Bamri said that the people of deserts have always used love, humanity, friendship, happiness, patience, sacrifice and tolerance as the subjects of poetry. Among the five deserts of Pakistan, Kharan desert situated in Baluchistan is always overlooked by researchers and scholars, said Dr Bamri, adding that Mast Tawakali is among the famous poets of Kharan desert and his work must be appreciated.

Research scholar Samia Kazi read a research paper on Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and how he was the first great poet who travelled across the Thar desert and made Marvi the subject of his poetry.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th,  2016.