| Islamabad
Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) has proposed re-creation of the National Commission on History & Culture (NCHC), with academic and cultural organisations as its components.
According to a summary by Fakhar Zaman, Chairman PAL, NCHC was established in April 1994 under the directive of the then prime minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed with a prime objective to check the duplication and overlapping of activities of its institutions in the fields of culture, literature, performing arts and publishing.
Benazir Bhutto intended to provide a platform with a broad spectrum in order to coordinate the work of various cultural, performing art, history and literary organisations, and wished to ensure an integrated approach to avoid duplication and overlapping of activities between those institutions.
During the short period of its existence, NCHC succeeded in bringing out the first ever Cultural Policy of Pakistan and get it approved by the competent authority in 1995.
The summary says that the Cultural Policy is still lying unattended without implementation for the last 14 years due to non-continuation of NCHC, and it is imperative to review/reactivate the Commission with academic and cultural organisations such as PAL, National Language Authority, National Book Foundation, Urdu Science Board, National Documentation Centre, Pakistan National Council of the Arts, National Institute of Folk & Traditional Heritage (Lok Virsa), Central Board of Film Censors, National Academy of Performing Arts, Iqbal Academy, Quaid-e-Azam Academy, Urdu Dictionary Board and National Institute of Historical & Cultural Research as its components.
NCHC was inoperative, as the later governments ignored the importance of academic and cultural activities to build a healthy society. The ever-changing scenario has necessitated the revival of NCHC as a supreme body to oversee, supervise, assess, review and coordinate the activities of those institutions that are working in isolation.
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