International Day for mother tongues; Balochi deserves a better treatment

International Day for mother tongues; Balochi deserves a better treatment
balochsThe world is celebrating the international day for mother tongues on Sunday. It is being celebrated on the call of the UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations, promoting education, culture and social norms the world over. The day is being observed in Pakistan also. Some of the newspapers are publishing special reports on the day highlighting the state of languages, particularly the mother tongues of the people.

Pakistan is a multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-lingual country, where many languages are spoken.
However the big and major national languages of Pakistan are Balochi, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Siraiki besides Urdu being the Lingua franqa of the link language among the Pakistani nations.
Balochi is spoken on a vast track of land in this region. It is the contiguous region spread over from Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, the Persian Gulf countries and to some adjacent parts of Africa.
Balochi is spoken from Kerman or Khurasan in Iran to Dera Ismail Kan, a long distance of more than 3000 kilometers and with a historic contiguity spread over to more then two thousand years. It is the one old language binding the Baloch people into a single nation.
No other Pakistani language is spoken on such a large track. Balochistan is itself more than half of Pakistan if we include the Baloch region of Dera Ghazi Khan and the Balochi speaking areas of Sindh.
The Balochi Academy and other similar organizations had served Balochi language in a tremendous way promoting the language with dedication. In any case, the regional governments of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan had not served the Balochi language according to its status and the language of their own people. In a way, Balochi is the most ignored language in the entire region Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan Whatever contribution made to the promotion of Balochi language was done by the individuals and prominent institutions like Balochi Academy and not the Governments.
Balochi is the most ignored language in Pakistan. On the country, Sindhi is the most developed and patronized national language of Pakistan.
The government of Sindh, in a recent decision, increased the grant of Sindhi Adabi Board by Rs 30 million in a single stroke while Balochi language is receiving a grant of few hundred thousand rupees from all state institutions.
A high level delegation of the Balochi Academy had a meeting with the Balochistan Governor, Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi, and requested him for his patronage to promote Balochi language. The Governor expressed his usual inability to provide substantial financial help to the Balochi Academy for obvious reasons and he recommended the same to the Prime Minister of Pakistan for help.
To our complete shock and surprise, the Prime Minister of Pakistan turned down the request or recommendations of the Balochistan Governor curtly.
Again, the Governor repeated the request and sent the recommendation through another official letter, the Prime Minister turned down the request once again disappointing the Baloch intellectuals, writers, poets and journalists. Chief Executive of this multi-national and multi-lingual country of Pakistan indicated that Balochi language had no place in the official circles in the Government of Pakistan. Similarly, we made an approach the President of Pakistan, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, for financial assistance to promote Balochi as one of the national languages of Pakistan and spoken on more than half of Pakistan, if we include the Balochi speaking areas of Dera Ghazi and Sindh.
After months, we have yet to receive a response from the Presidency that had already verified all the details from Quetta through official and Government channels.
One of the prominent intellectuals instantly remarked that the Prime Minister should not talk about the rights of Balochistan or the Baloch people as he is least interested in promotion of Balochi or refused to give a rightful place to Balochi language in his Government set up.
It is clear that what will be the fate of the Aghaz-i-Huqooq-i-Balochistan and not in distend future.
It will be unfair not to mention the contributions of prominent Baloch nationalist leaders of their role in development and promotion of Balochi in their respective Governments.
Sardar Ataullah Mengal was the first ever democratically elected Chief Minister of Balochistan who convened a national conference on promotion of Balochi language. Late Mir Gul Khan Naseer, Education and Senior Minister, presided over the conference in which far reaching recommendations were made. Those recommendations were praised by the Government of Turkey and also the Pakistan Army offering complete support in implementing those recommendations.
The second contribution was made by Nawab Akbar Bugti who issued an order making Balochi as a medium of instructions in the educational institutions, mainly in the primary schools in Baloch dominated regions.
The successor Government of Mir Taj Mohammad Jamali made some improvement and made it a law but it had never been implemented to this date. Thus Balochi was not made a medium of instruction in the primary schools and no successor Government made any effort in this regard.
However the Government under Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal allotted a piece of land in heart of the Provincial Capital where a huge and beautiful building of the Balochi Academy had been constructed.
He also increased substantially making it sustainable for subsequent years.
Balochi Academy had published more than 400 valuable books. It is providing books free of cost to important public libraries.
The Academy is paying royalty to the writers and poets on their books published by the Academy. It is publishing the most prestigious Balochi dictionary. It plans to publish the Balochi encyclopedia in near future. It is improving the library converting it into a digital one offering books to the readers on line.
For promotion of Balochi the chosen representatives of people should exert pressure on the Federal Government. At all forums, to start an exclusive TV channel in Balochi programs while other national language had their own. The Government of Pakistan is under moral and constitutional obligations to establish Balochi TV channel as all other national language had their own.
Similarly, the Pakistan broadcasting corporation (PBC) should also allocate one full time station for Balochi programmes to be heard all over the Baloch land.
When Srdar Farooq Leghari was the president of Pakistan, he issued an order to the PBC to start Balochi programmes, including news bulletins in Balochi, from Multan Station of PBC. His orders were never implemented.

By Siddiq Baluch
Writer is a Baloch senior journalist, the chief editor of Daily Balochistan Express Quetta

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