Scholars highlighted the invaluable services of the great archivist and oral historian Lutfullah Khan at a literary reference organised by the Pakistan Academy of Letters.
Held at the Sir Syed University of Engineering & Technology (SSUET) to pay homage to the late Lutfullah Khan, the reference was chaired by SSUET Chancellor ZA Nizami.
Speaking on the occasion, Nizami said that Khan was a committed and devoted person who spent most of his life in the collection of voices of people from different walks of life.
Nizami said that Khan had collected a wide variety of voices, like the speeches of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Gandhi and Maulana Azad, the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Noon Meem Rashid, Jigar Moradabadi, and the sermons of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi.
The chancellor said that Khan had some unique and extinct recordings of voices that no national institution could claim to have.
He offered SSUET’s full support in preserving the valuable record of voices by utilising the latest technologies. “The collected record of voices by Khan is, in fact, our preserved history”, he added.
In his speech, the eminent critic Dr Muhammad Ali Siddiqui said, “We are a nation that tends to either distort history or give it a shape as we want to see it, but the late Khan recorded the voices in their original forms with complete honesty and sincerity.”
He said that Khan was a more senior broadcaster than ZA Bukhari and Pitras Bukhari, but he has never been remembered as such.
He claimed that if anyone were to listen to all the material that Khan had recorded, one would require at least three and a half years for that. Khan was able to save contemporary history to a great extent, added the critic.
Poetess Fatima Hassan informed the participants of the reference that Khan had recorded over 5,000 voices in a much organised form with well-maintained catalogues.
She said that Khan was a multifaceted man who entered the world of archives through his passion for classical music. However, she added, it was being an archivist that overshadowed the rest of his talents.
Poet Sarshar Siddiqui, Pakistan Academy of Letters Chairman Abdul Hameed and Pakistan Academy of Letters Resident Director Agha Noor Muhammad Pathan also spoke on the occasion.
