International Mother Tongue Day & New Literature Festivals

International Mother Tongue Day & New Literature Festivals

No doubt, language, fiction and literature is part of human life. Famous Aldous Huxley once explained it as “Every man's memory is his private literature.” 

Language is not merely a communication tool, it is far greater than communication. It is representative of your conscious and subconscious, either you know or don’t know it. The Mother means Land, Dharti and tongue represents people’s experience & continuity so knowing mother tongue means knowing yourself. Remembering people’s experience & continuity is more important which always reminds you who you are? What is your continuity? What is in your subconscious? Etc

Denial of mother tongue is denial of continuity. One can know her/his continuity in other languages yet if you want to understand it you have to learn from direct source.

Respecting mother tongue does not mean to hate any other language. The other important factor which is very harmful is the concept of cultural superiority. There is not any superior or inferior culture nor civilized or uncivilized people. It is merely a reflection of colonial continuity.

Today is International Mother Tongue Day approved by UNO in 2008 which is reflection of Change of minds. 

Arranging literature festivals is a new fashion. Just ignore who is doing it, ignore their sources of funding, but just remind them literature and languages of the people too. We love to listen from Pakistanis who are famous in the world of literature yet it should not be a One way Traffic. In such literature festivals we can add Pakistani mother tongues so that we can de-construct theory of cultural superiority as well.
read the piece i wrote today, published in a daily newspaper..click here

http://e.dunya.com.pk/detail.php?date=2014-02-21&edition=LHR&id=901883_69284085

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