I was in the middle of posting some thoughts that had been troubling my mind for sometime, but unfortunately, the thread got close. But that’s okay, we can always make a new thread, right? But if this thread also gets closed, then we definitely have an issue!
So the question that I want to ask is that an all influential and all popular Sindhi party (PPP) has been enjoying some sort of monopoly in Sindh for good 45 years! They’ve held power in the centre through popular votes on plenty of occasions. Now I ask, why didn’t they do anything to give their mother tongue an official language status in their own backyard? Instead of putting founding fathers’ graves on trial to desperately impose the guilty verdict, let’s ask ourselves that why the proud sons of soil didn’t do jack squat for their motherland and mother tongues. It’s a very valid question, methinks.
If only the founding fathers had the 10% lifeline of some of the current political parties, I’m sure they would’ve kept shaping Pakistan bit by bit. Who knows, had Jinnah lived for longer, he would’ve got rid of feudalism. I do get angry with him for creating Pakistan when he knew he was dying and the country will be at the mercy of ‘khotey sikkey’ that surrounded him and succeeded him. What was he thinking? He wast at fault. He definitely was. Wasn’t he?
Indeed, I would really appreciate if someone could answer this question. What you perceive as anger is genuine annoyance at disproportionate criticism. It’d be interesting to see if this question manages to stir any emotions and make some heads rolls in the same fashion.
I felt a while back in this forum that if we simply as an experiment change the countries name to Sindhsagar! then that would relate more to the Geography of the region with Durya Sindh being the major River! and from that Sindhi language would gain more importance…but no body was buying
but I did change my Avatar to indicate my sentiments for the region of Sindh! as you can see for yourself.
Do you even realize that you are directly attacking one particular nationality, a race, an identity, an entire culture.
Yes you can say wutever about a party or their leaders or anything but why bash an entire province? why so much hatred? wut if they come back and say similar about your belongings?
Its ok to do a mistake, but i think its better to apologize when you offend someone like this.
A small example why @TLK mentioned in rate the nation thread that we are not united.We don’t act like one nation and do not realize or care if we are hurting others feelings by our actions or thoughts.
Pakistan is only 68 years old and PPP has ruled one particular province for good 40-45 with influence and authority. Now my understanding that Sindhi language (or imposition of Urdu) is still an uncompromising and deeply felt issue in Sindh, it is so important and the sentiments are so hurt that one is met by an impression that perhaps the separatist campaign, profound and infinite sense of victim complex, is entirely based on the issue of Sindhi language not being recognised as ‘national’ or ‘official’ language in the province. Last time I checked, Bilawal Bhutto’s all costly and ethnic sensibilities reviving Sindh Festival opened up with a speech and a rap song in English. Interesting.
However, my understanding is also this that the PPP walas are neither cursed for being invaders nor looters or even outsiders in Sindh, if the language issue has scarred the local psyche, then why didn’t the sons of soil do anything to get the official language status approved and running successfully in their own backyard? PPP was not a small party. They’d been in and out of power from Centre. There was a time when people from all provinces were willing to take on streets and give their lives for their leadership.
Lastly, let’s get Jinnah out of this equation for a second. He was a Brown Sahib - a Burger in today’s term - what did he know about languages and ethnic pride, he could neither speak Gujrati nor Urdu properly. How tragic. God knows my heart weeps for that man, he was a good man, but he was wrong. So wrong. But my heart still weeps for him.
I believe fighting over culture thing is waste of time and energy.
Imagine (if you can) what your province 100 years latter would be. Once you all are westernized which is bound to happen, there would be no punjabi paggri, sindhi top/ajrak etc. look at theme of karachi and lahore, do you find anything actually cultural there? no. And dont confuse a few seminars in lahore or karachi on cultural values with real culture practice in action. And actually, active struggle for revival of culture is required is sign of start of disappearance of cultural values.
I don’t think anyone fights over differences in culture…but different Justice or giving one preference over the other will turn people off!
Best example is the big melting pot in good ole USA! it is a multi cultural society! same goes for Canada.
There has been so many heating debates on this forum. Are you saying issue does not exist in real life? Kamaran conduct a show in Sindh and asked people about BB assassination etc. People were replying as Punjab is ghaddar they killed BB. According to some poeple, it is because of oppression of Sindh by Punjab. In last year even PPP’s chief minister has declared Federal govt biased for doing injustice to Sindh and not releasing fund for them.
There is nothing like multi cultural thing in USA, as for as I know. All the cultures are merged into one. Anyway, taking Food and Clothing as case, could you tell me the differences among the states?
I think he probably meant that people don’t have issues with the cultures of others. Like a Punjabi / Paktun / Balochi don’t have issue with listening to Shah Latif’s poetry and a Sindhi don’t have issue for going though poetry of say Waris Shah or Khushal Khan Khattak. The issue arises when a party faces or made to believe that it faced injustice from other culture / province.
In my personal opinion, the major issue with the unity of Pakistani nations (yes I’ll not call Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtoon, Balochi just races. They are nations of Pakistan) that we all are afraid of diversity on collective level. We think that self imposed tag of one nation at the cost of suppressing identities of nations that existed for thousand years is the only solution for Pakistan’s unity. This proved wrong when One-Unit was imposed. One-Unit when mentioning names of Sindh was a crime, postmen were ordered not to deliver letters carrying ‘Sindh’ in address. What were the results? Unity? No, it just lead to disintegration and resentment.
Look at the stupid comment by Justice (retd) Raza Khan, Special Secretary of Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights in the link (post # 13) :
Best example of how diversity scares us. If this was the case, India would have divided into 14 parts.
Apart from the fear of diversity, what we lack is putting ourselves in other’s shoes. We have ready-made tags like nationalist (negative way), separatist, traitor for those who talk for their rights and have different approach to their mother tongues than ours. If we start putting ourselves at their places and look at things from their perspectives, the things might not be as complicated as are today.
Ethnic diversity in simple practical terms means tolerant and peaceful co-existence of different ethnic groups in one place without any fear of discrimination and subjection of their rights as citizens. Diversity means freedom for people to practice their culture. Diversity, however, does not mean or promote ‘imposition’ of every second person’s culture and tongue on the whole of community (now I know exactly what the answer to this question is going to be). You can ‘celebrate it’ and ‘promote it’ all you like, but should not expect people to go out their way to emulate you, be you and become you. There are forty different spoken languages in Pakistan, how many of those languages should we technically ‘impose’ just to please the diversity lobby? And how many of those languages should an average Pakistani learn to prove he’s not anti diversity - 4/5/6/7/15? Let’s not try to burden this very basic and simple idea diversity with any unnecessary romantic self interested ideals. Art for art’s sake, really.
Maybe times have changed, people in Pakistan are not dying to study the language of Shah Latif and Bulleh Shah. Maybe our country’s progress do no rest on people learning Sindhi or Punjabi or Hindko to please the proudly resentful nationalists. Maybe hopeless romanticism in Arts have indeed taken a back seat, and the Pakistan of 2014 genuinely want to experience scientific advancement, technical revolution and socio-political-economic progress. Maybe the desire to take the ‘nations’ back to thousands of years where they resembled fortified villages of small heterogeneous community is not a selleable idea anymore. Instead of yearning to bring the good old centuries back, it’s time to confront and acknowledge these realities - the change in our times. Cultures are not static, they evolve with time.
There is this wrong perception that people will need to learn all national languages. By this perception all Indians are required to know all 14 languages their constitution support, but the reality is different.
No one is compelling others to be like them. People need recognistion / acknowledgement of their languages. To each their own, if they feel that languages are less / more important than technical advancement. No more twisting of comments will be replied.
