Published in the Newspaper The News April 8, 2025 (https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1284908-the-rock-opera-that-s-reviving-seraiki)
by Sarmad Khawaja
International Mother Language Day is celebrated today (February 21) and is a fitting time to draw attention to our 74 mother languages which are imperiled by an overemphasis on learning Urdu, English and Arabic.
According to Unesco, children taught in their mother language show better comprehension, engagement and critical thinking skills – and rightly so, since a child learns best in her mother tongue. The right to a mother language-medium education is vital. However, Unesco says, such education is in crisis because 37 per cent of children worldwide lack this right.
From my personal experience, the figure is closer to 100 per cent in the Seraiki-speaking belt of southern Punjab. Since it is not taught in schools, this mother language of about 29 million Pakistanis is not effectively being passed on to the next generation. Seraiki is becoming moribund, losing vital domains, and being used less and less for the serious things in life: education, work and communications, which use Urdu and/or English.
Sure enough, English, an artifact of British colonialism and American worldwide dominance, has a powerful hold over our imagination. Knowing it opens countless doors. It has fermented long enough in our sub-continent and dusted with several desi words. Yet many things cannot be expressed in English since it lacks the web of associations of the mother language, and its idioms, phrases, sayings, nuance and humour.
Teaching in the mother language liberates knowledge from the preserve of a tiny elite that works in a foreign tongue to the disadvantage of the vast majority of Pakistanis.
But this is not happening. Instead, something terrible is happening. Our mother languages are withering. We are losing what is embedded in them: the countless layers of human experience and the hyper-diverse heritage of our great Indus Civilisation, the poetry, the culture, the oral culture, the storytelling, etc. Everyone should be concerned because losing a language is everyone’s loss. But it is not an irreversible process.
To see how we may stem the tide I showcase the work of the Zoya Science schools which serve over 3,500 underprivileged children in a forlorn ‘corner of a corner’ of South Punjab. The schools promote math and science in the mother language of the children, Seraiki.
For over ten years with the help of the popular Seraiki poet Nawab Muztar, the schools have published posters/booklets, made videos, and written poems/songs, which are used alongside the regular syllabus and complement it. They explain math and science fundamentals, such as heliocentrism, Pythagoras’ Theorem, properties of circles, and triangles, Pi, the story of numbers, how to measure the Earth’s circumference, and how Eratosthenes, Al-Beruni, Aryabhata measured it, as well as spotlight the vital issues such as the endangered Blind Dolphin of river Indus, Rights of Children, etc. And provide a great foundation to build an education.
The songs use catchy tunes from old local songs, western rock and classical music, including Beethoven’s Ode to Joy – the world anthem of unity and hope. The children eagerly join in: memorise the songs, sing them, and hum them in classrooms, at home and whenever.
Recently, the schools have collected the songs into a book: Nawan Sij (or New Sun in Seraiki) a rock opera for children, which is more than just a mnemonic device. With additional songs inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem ‘Woman’s Work’, and Iqbal’s Farsi poem ‘Az Khob-e-Garoon Khez’, the math and science songs collection has morphed into an inspiring story of a local Seraiki girl who wishes to know how big the Earth is (its circumference) and finds out in the Zoya Science school. It is her story of striving against the odds: facing off against those who wish to put her back several centuries, learning math and science, and proving her competence. It is an opera of liberation.
The opera follows the style of ancient Greek drama, including a prologue that sets the stage with a chorus of villagers, vox populi, yearning for Nawan Sij to shine the light of education on all; And, the epilogue in which the villagers appear again. This time, inspired by the achievements of the opera’s heroine, who has learned to measure the Earth’s circumference and knows how big the Earth is (forty thousand kilometres in circumference), they pledge to send their children to Zoya Science schools and build a better world.
The songs foster community involvement in the schools that respond well. They understand each word. They see the links between solstices, used in the measurement of the Earth’s circumference, the rhythm of their lives which moves with the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, and traditional festivals such as Poh which also follows the Earth’s rotation and is centred on the universal idea of light in the darkness.
In Zoya Science schools and its communities, Seraiki is staging a comeback. Those who wish to promote their mother language may see in this effort a Sputnik moment – something to start with.