Over 120 children, participating in the National Children Mountain Conservation Meet visited Lok Virsa (National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage) at Garden Avenue, Shakarparian.
The participants were selected from all over Pakistan through a competitive process. This meet was launched in 2002 on the occasion of “International Year of Mountains” to create awareness of the significance of mountain ecology among the children.
They were given a briefing on various facets of Pakistani culture and folklore with special emphasis on the functioning of Lok Virsa (National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage) as a specialised body aiming to document, preserve and project the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Pakistan.
Later, the children were taken around different three-dimensional creative displays at the Pakistan National Museum of Ethnology, popularly known as Heritage Museum, spreading over an area of 60,000 square feet, which depicts living cultural traditions and lifestyles of the people of the country.
The children took keen interest in the displays. They were very much impressed by the display on sufis and their shrines, the hall of architecture, traditional folk theatre, kahwa khana (traditional tea serving place in Peshawar) and the wedding rituals of Cholistan desert.
While welcoming the children, Lok Virsa Executive Director (ED) Khalid Javaid apprised them of a number of practical steps that his organisation has already taken for inculcating awareness among the younger generation regarding arts, crafts, folklore and musical heritage. He particularly mentioned the establishment of children folklore society that is successfully running in 12 government schools in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Khalid Javaid also informed the children about valuable contribution of the great sufis and scholars to love, peace and harmony among the nation. He said, “Sufism encompasses a diverse range of beliefs and practices. This mystic Sufi tradition has existed in all parts of the country and is a binding force that brings the people of diverse cultures together.” The saints’ shrines are the meeting places of the masses, the rich and the poor, the rulers and the ruled and serve as a humanizing force in a society at both cultural and spiritual levels, he maintained.
Talking about folk tales, Khalid Javaid said, “Lok Virsa is a storehouse of folk literature that has passed from generation to generation and from the old to the young by word of mouth (also called the oral tradition). The folk literature is believed to be the people’s efforts to organize their experiences into meaningful patterns. It includes fairy tales, myths, legends, fables and other oral traditions of preliterate societies. Folk romances are actually the product of generations. The story in a folk romance revolves around its primary characters, i.e. a hero or a heroine, while all other characters constitute the secondary position.”
good text 🙂
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