The Rocking Horse
By Prof. Dr. Satish Rohra
Little children often take pleasure and entertainment in sitting on a rocking horse, pretending to ride on it, whereas in reality, the wooden horse does not move forward, but only keeps swinging and rocking at its fixed place. All our attempts at promoting the Sindhi language are like a child riding on his rocking horse. The only difference being that a child is so innocent that he assumes his rocking horse to be moving, while, we grown ups are so clever that in spite of knowing that nothing much has happened in the field of development of our language, we are still making tall claims about our horse moving forward.
Today, there are a large number of government, semi government and non-government organizations working for the upliftment of the Sindhi language and are also earning great profits every year. Approximately, even if in a year one lakh rupees could be spent on one individual to teach him the language, al least 100 individuals in a year with fluency in the language can be produced. Which means that even if the last ten years, out of the 50 long years of Indian independence, would have been utilized towards this, we would have had a thousand individuals, who would read, write and speak in the Sindhi language! But this would have been possible had we been riding on a real horse and since we have chosen the rocking horse, there aren't any positive results or changes to be found.
The question which needs to be raised here is that why have the efforts towards the development and upliftment of the language been like that of a rocking horse?
Not that there is no answer available to this question, but just that it is so bitter and painful that it will sound almost unacceptable.
Attending and organizing seminars and conferences meetings and cultural programs on the development of the Sindhi language or speaking a few lines in favor of the importance and inevitability of the language is one thing, and bringing about a revolutionary change by working day in and day out for its up gradation, is an altogether different thing.
The need of the hour, is, therefore, not to merely sit on the rocking horse and dream of reaching the destination, but open our eyes wide to the reality around us.