As a nation we have crossed a major milestone, a historic milestone which unfortunately went unnoticed. Let me copy the news piece from DAWN,
It was Wednesday, April 14, 2010. The last pages of the 22nd and final volume of Urdu Lughat (Dictionary): Tareekhi Asool par came out of press. The editors and staff were jubilant. Sweets were distributed and everyone seemed intoxicated — though no toasts were proposed — for after 52 long years of terrible labour, to borrow Winchester’s words, 22 tombstone-sized volumes of Urdu Dictionary were fully and finally complete. But no prime minister is here to celebrate the greatest feat of Urdu lexicography, for there are apparently more important tasks to attend to than expressing gratitude and admiration to the compilers of a 22-volume Urdu dictionary, notwithstanding the fact that compiling the most comprehensive dictionary of a language is one of the most important accomplishments in the history of a nation and should be a source of national pride. It is an achievement that has made us as proud as winning the 1992 cricket world cup or, perhaps, even prouder. The mere thought that Urdu is now ranked among the major languages of the world — along with English, German, Arabic and Persian — that have such comprehensive dictionaries, fills us with pride and joy.
Culture and arts have never really been a strong point of Pakistanis, thanks to a whole array of dead minds, minds who do not have any aesthetic sense and eventually decides to cover it with religion's ever so solid blanket. While other places of the world get titles like 'Cultural capital' or 'musical city,' we get titles like 'training grounds for terrorists,' our nation's biggest achievement is assembling a nuclear bomb and the second biggest achievement is ....well....winning a cricket world cup. That's all what our historical achievements are. But on a second thought that's not true, our cultural achievements are more than this, it's jut that as a nation we never really learned to appreciate them thanks to our atrophied minds.
I love English literature and language but this is a fact that if not for Britishers' countless colonies around the world, English language itself never had the power to be this popular. It doesn't have the rich language structures/grammar like other European languages or even Urdu, a simple example would be the lack of gender concept for things, for them everything is 'it'. In contrast Urdu provides a much richer set of concepts and ways to have a conversation, in concept it is in fact closer to languages like German and French. A majority of us are off course unable to appreciate the beauty of our language, nor do we understand that what literal and symbolic importance a national language has.
I am bitter because I am tired of my countryman's obsession with atomic bombs, missiles and off course their own brand of religion. This nation achieved such a big milestone and no T.V. channel had anything to say about it and we had no national level celebrations declared by the government. When we had no major celebrations, nobody in the world noticed that as a nation we are capable of achieving positive milestones too, we received no congratulatory notes from anyone.
But let's put the bitterness aside and let's be happy that we speak a language which is the fourth most spoken language in the world and which now has a complete lexicography. May our nation see many such milestones and may we learn to appreciate and celebrate them. And lastly I would like to show my gratitude to all the man and woman who labored hard for 52 years to complete this most difficult of the tasks.
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