Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 3: In a specially arranged poetic symposium by Dogri Sanstha Jammu, here today, prominent Dogri poets expressed their anguish through poetry on the step-motherly treatment being meted out to Dogri language.
The poets made a scathing attack on the Government, which is hell bent on imposing Kashmiri in the colleges of Jammu region and is completely ignoring Dogri and other regional languages. According to them, this was a well planned sinister move to establish hegemony of Kashmir and relegate Dogri to the margins.
The poets through their emotive and soul stirring poems gave a clarion call to all the people of Jammu to be aware of the dangerous designs of Kashmir centric forces and to rise and unite to protect their mother tongue and identity.
Those who participated in the poetic symposium, included Gaianeshwar Sharma, Abdul Qadir Kundaria, M S Kamra, Susheel Bagannaa, Rattan Bhardwaj, Sunil Sharma, Shiv Dev Manhas, Chanchal Bhasin, Bansi Lal and others.
Members of Team Jammu, headed by its chairman, Zorawar Singh Jamwal, also participated in the symposium and extended full support to Dogri Sanstha in its fight against Government’s nefarious designs of imposing Kashmiri language in Jammu colleges.
President of Dogri Sanstha, Chhatrapal, who also presided over the Kavi Sammelan, said that the hierocracy of the State Government has been exposed by the glaring fact that the Higher Education Department of the State Government has issued circulars to all the universities and institutions of the State to promote the Kashmiri language but no similar circular had been issued for Dogri or any other regional language by the concerned department. He further said that the Principals of colleges of Jammu are being pressurized by various means to start teaching Kashmiri in their colleges.
Earlier speaking on the occasion, Prof. Lalit Magotra, the convener of Dogri Advisory Board in Sahitya Akademi , New Delhi, said it was unfortunate that the elected representatives of Jammu had abdicated their responsibilities of protecting the mother tongue and the identity of the people of their region with the result that onus has fallen on the poets to raise their voice against this injustice. “Under these distressing circumstances, the people of Jammu will have to fend for themselves and fight to protect their identity, as it is fight for the existence of Dogras,” he added .
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