New Delhi: Former Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra on Friday called for reviving Punjabi language, saying its rich literature needed to be translated into other languages.
He was speaking at the inauguration of a three-day international conference on “Hindustan’s Partition” and the birth centenary of Sikh author Kulwant Singh Virk. The event is being organised by Mata Sundri College for Women here.
The former Governor praised the college for organising the conference, which also had participants from Pakistan. He asked Principal Harpreet Kaur and conference convener Veenakshi Sharma to involve the Sahitya Akademi for translating Punjabi literature into other languages and to get the National Book Trust publish these works at affordable rates.
“There is a great amount of Punjabi literature that needs to be translated,” he stressed, delivering a part of his speech in Punjabi and lamenting how those in Delhi-NCR had stopped speaking Punjabi.
He called for documenting Partition stories, saying: “In a few years, the pre-Partition generation will be gone. It’s time to put their memories together.”
On Partition, he said: “Pakistan chose to be an Islamic republic while India opted to be a socialist democracy. Pakistan started off as a democracy, but in 1958 the military generals took over. We have seen a small period of civilian rule in Pakistan. We need to ensure peace is restored between the two countries as common citizens don’t want enmity.” Observing that India had never ever tried to capture a foreign territory, he said: “Unfortunately, Pakistan waged wars in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. In Kashmir, their military and the ISI have been carrying out a proxy war since 1990.”
Prof BS Dhaliwal, former Dean, Punjabi University, Patiala, described Virk as a storyteller par excellence.