Speakers stress for promotion of regional languages

Shafiuddin Shafqi

KARAK: Poets and literary personalities played a key role in eliminating extremism from the society through their creations and added that the promotion of regional languages meant to contradict the promotion of extremism.

This was claimed by the speakers while addressing to a daylong seminar held under the aegis of English department of Khushal Khan Khattak University Karak here on Monday at main hall on the title of ‘Role of mother languages in elimination of extremism’ on the eve of International mother languages day.

On the occasion Dr Syed Zubair Shah said that languages were the need of the societies and strengthens the social bonds as societies and languages must go together. He said that pure language got promoted in rural and literature in urban area and regretted that an artificial distance was created between Urdu and other regional languages.

He claimed that co-existence of different languages promotes one another as languages promoted with its links with each other and added that Urdu and other regional languages suffered due to lack of links with one another. Mr Shah regretted that regional languages were expelled from the Universities and stressed on the establishment of regional languages departments in the Universities which would be helpful in eliminating the feeling of strangeness among the people of different parts of the country which was must for the unity of the country.

He said that language was the recognition of any nation and it was the pleasant blend of feelings, sentiments and culture of that nation. Dr Shah went on to say that mother languages play a basic role in increasing the literacy ratio of the country and demanded that regional languages should be taught as an optional subject in the educational institutions. On the occasion, Dr Owais Qarni said that all creations have been made in the mother languages but later have been translated into other languages.

He claimed that poets and literary people have no nation and they were global citizens. He stressed that they should learned all languages but should promote their mother language. Dr Abdul Hakeem Shah on the occasion further added that the opposite of extremism was moderation and stressed that they should adopt the middle way to fight against extremism.

Vice Chancellor of the University Professor Dr Jehan Bakht on the occasion said that the importance of the mother languages was universal and regretted that today the students could not write Pashtu.

He stressed on the translation of modern science knowledge into Pashtu and claimed that only poetry in Pashtu was not sufficient. He said that teaching in native languages were easy for the students compared to alien languages but it was the collective responsibility of academia to translate the knowledge of different science subjects into Pashto. The students of the English department also presented their poetries in the seminar and at the end vice chancellor gave away shields to the speakers.