ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: In prime springtime next month, Urdu is set to make a big show of its charm in Islamabad designed to serve peace and itself.
Organizers said on Friday the programme had been finalised for the country's first International Urdu Conference to be held on March 9-13.
The event will attract big guns of Urdu from far and wide to beat the drum for the country's national language, which the organizers say, has been a victim of neglect by governments and private organizations.
The basic aim of this linguistic and cultural gala is to give the Urdu tongue a tang it needs to meet present-day challenges. But it is also aimed to project a "soft image" of Pakistan and help the current peace process with India.
Participants of the five-day event will come mainly from within Pakistan and India, but also from as far as Europe, America, and such unlikely places as Russia, China and Japan.
The Capital Development Authority (CDA) will play host in collaboration with the ministries of education and culture, the Academy of Letters and the National Language Authority.
The conference, which the organizers intend to make an annual feature in the future, seems to be enjoying the blessings of President Pervez Musharraf, whose concept of "enlightened moderation" is one of the aims it will seek to promote.
"It will be aimed at projecting Pakistan's soft image," conference chief coordinator Ms Tallat Azim told Dawn on Friday. "We are being perceived as extremists the world over," she complained, and said: "This image has to be washed off."
Other subjects to be discussed and debated in a total of seven sitting after the conference's inauguration by President Musharraf include Urdu's historical evolution, development of its literature in poetry and prose, its musical rendering and related forms of expression, and the rise of Urdu print and electronic media and Urdu cinema.
NO HEGEMONY SOUGHT: Ms Azim dismissed the fears voiced recently by World Punjabi Congress Chairman Fakhar Zaman that the Islamabad conference and the lack of similar patronage to other Pakistani languages could mean a move to establish Urdu's "hegemony".
"Not at all," she said, adding: "That (Urdu) has its own big charm and they (other languages) have their own big charm." She said ever one with whom the conference idea was discussed supported the move and "it has become bigger than expected".
Conference secretary Shamoon Hashmi said the event would actually be a service to all regional languages as it would seek to link the country's youth with their culture through dialogue. A concept paper issued by the Urdu conference secretariat cited seven reasons for holding the event:
- Promote an interest in contemporary, classical and indigenous literature and all its forms of expression amidst "the onslaught of technology and/or the feared clash of civilisations in the new world".
- Have the new generation of Pakistan develop a taste for the beauty and culture of the language in a modern environment.
- Bring out the best of our performing arts for acknowledgement, projection and promotion.
- Encourage new talent to choose careers in the fields of creative and performing arts "where huge vacuums are being created".
- "Fill the landscape of thought with flower fields and to paint the canvas of life with finer feelings".
- Project Pakistan as "a modern, forward-looking, culturally rich Islamic state in line with the president's vision of enlightened moderation and the prime minister's recent directives to the ministry of culture".
- "Actualise the directives issued at the conclusion of the Saarc summit held in Islamabad (in January 2004) where it was affirmed that dialogue will open up and CBMs (confidence-building measures) will be carried out on different fronts".
Five "tangible outcomes" of the conference cited by the paper are:
- Develop reports based on conference recommendations which can become a basis for improving syllabi at all levels.
- Cause a chain-reaction amongst the youth, creating awareness at university level, which will eventually make them cross- cultural citizens.
- "Harmonize Pakistan with the rest of the world by show- casing its rich literary treasures and its sophisticated heritage".
- Once all these special events and happenings are streamlined, they could be show-cased in various world festivals.
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