KARACHI: Addressing the 13th International Urdu Conference organised by Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi, the scholars and intellectuals said that no matter the language, hatred does not teach love. Urdu has spread the message of love all over the world.
Writers and intellectuals should guide society. In a society, literature goes hand in hand with the whole society. The Urdu language moves across the borders like a breeze. The development of the Urdu language in this century has not been as great as in the last two or three centuries. The more the Urdu language was crushed, the more it developed. No language of Pakistan is in conflict with Urdu. The purpose of the Urdu Conference is to show what impact the writers have left on the society with their creations and what role they should play for the guidance of the future society.
Zada Qasim Raza Siddiqui, Zahida Hina, Noorul Hadi Shah, Hasina Moin, Prof Sehar Ansari, Qudsia Akbar and Shah Muhammad Marri Yusuf Kushk addressed the conference, while Iftikhar Arif, Gopi Chand Narang and Yasmeen Hameed addressed through the video link.
The World Urdu Conference at Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi was seen live on social media all over the world. Syed Sardar Ali Shah, Provincial Minister for Culture and Tourism, who was the special guest at the World Urdu Conference, said that the four units of Pakistan are not administrative but constitutional. They have their own language and culture thousands of years old and the Urdu Conference of Arts Council Karachi is a link to unite these cultures. This is the dream our elders had in the case of Pakistan. He said that Sindh has never spoken of hatred. Sindh is the land of love. He said that Urdu is made up of all languages and today speakers of all languages are sitting under the presidency of Zahra Nigah.
He said that besides Urdu, languages of all nationalities should also be declared as national languages. A bill to declare other languages as national languages has been in the assemblies for ten years so that we do not have to regret that India can declare 26 languages as national languages. So why don't we speak four languages.
Arts Council President Ahmad Shah said that 13 years ago this dream was successfully carried out but today we are saddened on the occasion of the 13th World Conference because some people are not with us in this conference. He said that due to the current situation, the participation of more people was avoided and many of our writers and poets are joining the conference through video link.
Wanting to keep alive, he said that no language of Pakistan is in conflict with Urdu but some people want to do politics on the basis of language. He said that there is no difference of opinion among the intellectuals of different languages except for ideas. Josh Maleeha Abadi, Sadiqin, Mehdi Hassan, Kamal Ahmad Rizvi and other writers and intellectuals and artists are being named after different parts of the Arts Council Karachi.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020