Brahui is a Dravidian
language spoken by the
Brahui people in central Balochistan and Afghanistan. DESIGN: ESSA MALIK
Former senator and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Nawabzada Mir Lashkari Khan Raisani announced on Sunday that he would extend his full support to Brahui writers, intellectuals and researchers. The ancient language has been declared as one of the endangered languages of the world by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).
Brahui is a Dravidian language spoken by the local people in central Balochistan and Afghanistan. The 2013 edition of Ethnologue reports that there are some 4.2 million speakers; 4 million live in Pakistan. According to a 2009 Unesco report, Brahui is one of the 27 languages of Pakistan that is facing the danger of extinction.
He said this while addressing the two-day Brahui Literacy Seminar, which began on Sunday at the Arts Council of Pakistan. About two hundred participants, including writers, researchers, poets and scholars from Balochistan and Sindh, were also present for the seminar. Raisani also said that Brahui is one of the most ancient languages of Pakistan and the government and other stakeholders should do more to promote it.
The chief guest of the seminar, Balochistan Prosecutor General Mir Salahuddin Mengal said that injustices were done to the language. He said that the language is not aired enough on state-run television stations and the Brahui literary journals, which were previously published by the government, have also been closed down. He added that while all other languages of Pakistan have been included in the competitive examinations of CSS, Brahui has been excluded. About 12 research papers on different aspects of Brahui language were presented during the first day of the conference. While presenting their papers on the linguistic history of the Brahui language, Nazir Ahmed Shakir, Ali Hassan Malah, Ghulam Mustafa Solangi and others said that it is essentially the ancient Dravidian language of the Indus region and there were many similarities between Brahui and Sindhi languages. The researchers said that the resemblance in Sindhi, Brahui and Tamil languages proves that they are all Dravidian and after the attacks by Aryans, some stayed in the Indus region, others travelled up to the hills and some went as far as Sri Lanka and parts of India.
Other researchers who presented their papers included Saima Hassan, Zauk Brahui, Mir Brahui, Haji Abdul Latif Bangulzai, Sultan Ahmed Shahwani, Sarmad Brahui, Waheed Zaheer, Professor Ghulam Dastagir Sabir, and Abdul Qayyum Bedar.
The scholars claimed that in order to make it seem that the population of Brahui-speaking people had reduced, the language was excluded from the census form in 1997. They said that Baloch and Pashto academies had been provided plots and grants to construct their offices while Brahui Academy does not have an office. Similarly, Baloch and Pashto academies in Balochistan receive over 50 million rupees each in annual grants while Brahui Academy only gets about one to two million rupees per year.
More research papers on Brahui language will be presented today, which will be followed by a Sindhi-Brahui mahfil-mushaira and a Brahui music night.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 12th, 2014.
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These all people still don't want to know what is the reason that Brahui language is near to death. Research papers are very important but they can not save the language. The Impotent part of any language are there words and Brahui is missing its words. These all are speaking about offices and grants but what are they doing for saving the words of Brahui. So please try to save words of Brahui and try to element the words of other languages form Brahui.
Very informative report about Brahvi language, but there is one mistake about the annual grants of Pashto and Balochi academies. In the report mentioned: "Baloch and Pashto academies in Balochistan receive over 50 million rupees each in annual grants", this is very huge figure, but unfortunately, Pashto academy receive 1 million rupees annually and Balochi academy's annual grant is 5 million rupees, similarly, Brahui academy grant is equal to Balochi academy. We expect, Balochistan recent government will increase Pashto academy's grant and will construct building for Brahui academy.
The obsession for foreign languages i.e. Urdu, Arabic, English has destroyed the millennium old authentic cultures and languages of my land now called Pakistan.
In Lahore it is a sign of backwardness and illiteracy to speak Punjabi.