LAHORE: A large number of people belonging to Punjabi background on Wednesday demonstrated a protest outside the Lahore Press Club in connection with the ‘International Mother Language Day’, demanding to include the Punjabi language as a subject in Punjab’s educational institutions.
The mother language day was first announced by UNESCO on November 17, 1999, and is an annual event since then. The date represents the day, 21st February 1952, when four young students were killed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, because of the Bengali and Urdu language controversy.
To mark the day, a large number of organisations and people working for the promotion of Punjabi language organised rallies and seminars across the provincial capital.
The members of Punjabi Parchar, Punjabi Adbi Board and other organisations joined by activists, students, teachers and a large number of civil societies took out a rally from the Punjab Assembly to the Lahore Press Club. They said that the Article 251 of the constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan binds the provinces to adopt the necessary measure for the promotion, teaching and usage of regional languages. They were carrying placards and banners, inscribed the demands to make the Punjabi as a compulsory subject from primary to graduation level.
Addressing the rally at Lahore Press Club, Punjabi Parchar’s President Ahmad Raza said that the mother tongue holds an important role in basic education as it provides better learning to the children. He said that this was why the Punjab government must provide all the children with the right to learn their mother tongue – which is also stressed by the UNESCO.
Calling upon the provincial government to follow the orders of the Supreme Court about the promotion of Punjabi language, Raza said that the teaching of Punjabi language was their fundamental and constitutional right. “After the 18th amendment it is now the responsibility of the provinces to implement this right but Punjab has been committing sheer violation despite repeated requests made to the government,” he said.
Punjab Adbi Board President Mushtaq Sufi said the Punjab government was deliberately making the children of Punjab ignorant through banning the education in their mother language. “Every year, we come here to remind the government that Punjab has its own language which has not been given its due respect,” Sufi said while urging the government to adopt Punjabi as a compulsory subject from primary to graduation level.
A Denmark-based IT expert Shehzad Ammar, who also participated in the rally, highlighted that all the provinces other than Punjab were promoting their local languages at school and higher levels. He urged Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif to immediately enforce the adoption of Punjabi in the educational institutions.
Some other prominent Punjabi activists including Punjabi Khoj Garh Director Iqbal Qaiser, Punjabi Parchar General Secretary Tariq Jatala and Afzal Saahir, also called for early education in Punjabi and asked the government to take immediate steps to start teaching the language.
Ghazala Nizam Din, Rana Abdul Majeed, Shahzad Joiya, Babar Jalandhari, Perveen Malik, Samson Salamat, Zubair Ahmad, Mazhar Tirmizi, Raja Sadiqullah, Dr Saeed Bhutta, Momin Hashmi and others reaffirmed carrying out such rallies until their demands are met.