Let a thousand flowers bloom

Punjab Governor Chaudhry Sarwar has emphasised the need for promoting Punjabi language and has said Punjab University will be made a role model in this regard. We welcome the announcement. Speaking at the Baba Fareed and Baba Guru Nanak International Conference at Lahore recently, he said he has lived in Britain for 40 years and his children have been brought up there, but his family fluently speaks Punjabi at home. It is a good thing to remember one’s mother tongue while living in a foreign environment, because generally what happens is that while living in an alien environment people gradually tend to forget their own language. It happens because they don’t hear their language in their surroundings. This is not so with expatriate communities in Britain, especially in the case of Asians. There are sizable numbers of these immigrants there and because of this factor they remain in daily contact with people who speak their languages.

We should consider all languages of mankind as our own mother tongue. This will help us remove linguistic prejudices. In order to promote a language it is necessary to popularise its folklore and classical literature, especially among those outside that language group. All languages have important things to enrich the culture of entire humankind. It is a noble thing if one knows more and more languages. Formerly, there was a tendency to purge one language of words from other languages. This did only harm to languages whose champions in their misdirected zeal engaged in purifying their languages of the ‘bad outside influence.’ Now languages are liberally borrowing from one another. This process is enriching all languages.

One may be a polyglot but he describes humour in a more effective way in his own language, because humour is the gift that perishes in other language.  Let a thousand flowers bloom! All Pakistani languages, including the national language Urdu, should be promoted. It will benefit all Pakistani languages.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2019.

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