National Punjabi Conference: speakers spell out impediments to promotion of culture

The Second National Punjabi Conference was held in Lahore under the auspices of World Punjabi Congress (WPC) here on Friday to highlight the injustice being consistently meted out to Punjabi language and culture.
The conference issued Lahore Declaration laying out a strategy to make Punjabi language as the medium of instruction at the primary level, establishment of Punjabi University, a radical change in the curriculum in colleges and university, employment of over 10,000 MA Punjabi degree holders and language of Punjab Assembly proceedings.
Chairman WPC Fakhar Zaman announced that starting next month, peaceful process would be held in Lahore and other divisional headquarters which would follow further steps to be decided jointly by the Punjabi organisations, intellectuals, writers, poets, artists and scholars. Zaman, a former chairman of Academy of Letters and Federal Minister, reiterated that Punjabi language should be extricated from the mire of archaic usage, purism and literary fundamentalism. He also announced that every month one-day National Conferences would be held to press their demands. He regretted that Punjab government and its anti-Punjabi bureaucracy was regrettably meting out step motherly treatment to the language of great Sufi poets, cultural ethos and cultural heritage of Punjab province.
He further said that TV channels and print media was showing little respect for that language, which according to Unesco report was the 10th biggest language in the world.
Dr M Nizamuddin, the Chairman of Higher Commission Education Punjab and former vice chancellor of Gujrat University, agreed that Punjabi should be taught at the primary level and also that a Punjabi University should be established in Lahore.
He said the HEC would render maximum facility in setting up such university. Dr M Nizamuddin also assured the audience and the WPC specially that he would look into the change in syllabi of Punjabi teaching and make it reflective of the contemporary sensibilities of eminent Punjabi writers.
Prominent intellectual Prof Dr Mehdi Hasan, Zubair Ahmed, Jamil Pal, Mudassar Butt, Ehtesham Rabbani, Tanvir Zahoor, Neelam Bashir, Dr Nabila Omer, Professor Saeed Bhutta, Dr Naheed Shahid, Dr Ismatullah Zahid, Hafeez Sheikh, Parveen Malik, Mushtaq Sufi, Parveen Atif, Abdullah Malik, Dr Shahid Dilawar, Parveen Sijal, Dr Ajmal Niazi, Adeeb Javedani, Dr Navid Shahzad, Qazi Javed, Professor Qamar Abbas, Shariq Nizami and others forcefully advocated the recognition of Punjabi language at all levels.