‘Urdu fourth largest language in UK’

LAHORE

Manchester University United Kingdom’s teacher of Urdu language Sheraz Ali has said that Urdu is the fourth largest speaking language in the UK and it was progressing despite all difficulties.

Addressing a seminar titled “The Future of Urdu language in the UK” organized by the PU Department of Urdu he said modern facilities were available at British universities for teaching Urdu language and Pakistani universities could also benefit from their experiences.  

The seminar was presided over by renowned expert of Iqbaliyat Prof Dr Rafi Uddin Hashmi while Chairman Department of Urdu Dr Muhammad Kamran, Dr Zahid Munir Amir, other faculty members and a large number of students were present. 

Dr Rafi Uddin Hashmi and Dr Zahid Munir Amir lauded Sheraz Ali on playing his role for promotion of Urdu language in UK. 

Seminar: Speakers at a seminar on the “Interdisciplinary role of philosophy in the academic space of university” on Saturday objected to the euro-centric configuration of knowledge in the developing countries, and supported the idea of situating philosophy in the context of its indigenous operation. 

The one-day national seminar, spread over four technical sessions, was organised by Government College University (GCU),  Lahore, Philosophy Department with the support of the Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC).

In her opening speech,  Dr Sobia Tahir of GCU Philosophy Department said academic seminar was designed to explore the basic question: What type of conceptual and paradigmatic unity interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinarily could bring about when operating in the multidisciplinary world of human knowledge? And what role philosophy can play in this enterprise? In his key note address, eminent philosopher and novelist Prof Mirza Ather Baig said every culture had its own particular requirements, so it could not be fitted easily into a developmental sequence derived from Western experience of tradition-modernity-postmodernity.

He said, "The queries naturally and enthusiastically hence rather crudely erupting from the young minds are why there is no Pakistani Literary theory? Why are they calling their theorizing German, Russian, American or French? What has happened to our minds that we generally fail not only to theorise about physical, chemical, biological, social and psychological matters but even to conceptualise the first step in the ladder leading to schematise human experience as valid knowledge?"

Prof Baig said, "Actually we never feel the urge or drive to indulge in such a cerebro-cognitive exercise. For us it is more than enough to gobble the appropriate disciplinary texts and then re-text them at appropriate moments on demand." He said these intellectually mellowed down version of these inquisitorial exhortations rising though from a particular miniscule onto epistemic location yet pointed towards the emergence of the rudimentary contours of the Nonstandard or Revised Academic Model. 

He also said nobody would be imaging absurdities like Pakistani physics, Indonesian biology, Saudi Arabian mathematics, or Indian chemistry but these disciplines actually work in “the minds and hearts” of these varied cognitive spaces, their lived reality against the backdrop of their cultural a priori was probably the most crucial question, answer to which could go a long way to the formation of the Revised Academic Model. He said, "What is needed is a phenomenological analysis of the life-world of disciplines both in the dominant and dominated sites of knowledge and learning. Such an acute self-awareness of the complexities of our relationship with disciplinary knowledge would be the first step to unfold the real dynamics of the much touted, but very vaguely understood paradigm of 'Indigenization'."

Vice-Chancellor Prof Hassan Amir Shah expressed gratitude to PHEC Chairman Prof Nizamuddin for his technical support and funding for the highly crucial academic activity. He also said modern research had grown complex and interdisciplinary, rather multi and trans-disciplinary; subjects of social sciences such as geography were playing key role in inventions and innovations in the fields of natural sciences such as physics and biology.     

GCU Dean of Social Sciences Prof Dr Tahir Kamran and noted philosophers Prof Dr Abdul Hafeez Fazil, Dr Ali Raza Tahir, Hassan Farooqi and Muhammad Afzal Khan also addressed the seminar.

Noted academician from Punjab University Shahzeb Khan explicated upon the imperil connection of the disciplines of philosophy and English literature.