By Zubeida Mustafa

OCT 16 was a red-letter day for Balochistan. In Lanjar, a village in Awaran, a schoolteacher brought together some girls and boys after school hours to teach them the Balochi language. One could well ask what was so special about this that it must be celebrated? The fact is, the tragedy of the Baloch is that they have been robbed of their language. For years we were fed the fiction that Balochi is only a spoken language with no literary tradition. The emergence of scholars and poets such as Zahoor Shah Hashmi and Saba Dashtiari belied this myth. Now we know better.

زبیدہ مصطفیٰ

انگریزی سے ترجمہ: شبیر رخشانی

ا16 اکتوبر بلوچستان کی تاریخ میں ایک یادگار دن تھا جب لنجار کے ٹیچر نے سکول کے اوقاتِ کار کے بعد لڑکے اور لڑکیوں کو جمع کرکے بلوچی لینگویج کلاس کا آغاز کیا۔ کوئی پوچھ سکتا ہے کہ اس میں ایسا کیا خاص ہے جس کا جشن منایا جائے؟ حقیقت یہ ہے کہ بلوچ سے اس کا زبان چھینا جا چکا ہے۔ عرصہ دراز سے یہ فسانہ گڑھا جا چکا ہے کہ بلوچی زبان جس کی کوئی ادبی روایات موجود نہیں صرف بول چال تک محدود ہے۔ مگر اسکالر سید ظہور شاہ ہاشمی اور پروفیسر صبا دشتیاری کی کوشش اور کاوشوں نے اُس تاثر کو غلط ثابت کیا۔ اب اس حوالے سے ہم سب باخبر ہیں۔

By Zubeida Mustafa

HERE is a narrative to introduce the subject so close to my heart. At a family gathering, I was chatting with my cousin’s granddaughter, a lively girl of three. As she told me about her interests I asked her to move closer as I couldn’t hear her and I pointed to the hearing aid I was wearing. She obliged me and showed great interest in the tiny device, asking intelligent questions about it before examining it. What impressed me was her curiosity and eagerness to learn.

By Zubeida Mustafa

I have a little friend in Kheiro Dero in Larkana district named Sitara, a bright child of six. She speaks Sindhi. I speak Urdu. Yet, we get on well. We don’t need a language to communicate in our friendship.

But in education, one needs a language. Sitara’s father has dreams of educating his little darling and so Sitara started her schooling at the Ali Hasan Mangi Memorial Trust community school, which makes education a fun activity for its students — the best way for a small child to learn.