MEMON LANGUAGE

On the auspicious occasion of holding of FIRST INTERNATIONAL MEMON CONVENTION 2001, I first of all as a Secretary General of ALL PAKISTAN MEMON FEDERATION congratulate the organisers of convention as we can foresee the best results in the future.

Nature has bestowed upon each and every clan and tribe with some exceptional qualities and the qualities with which God has blessed the memons for which they are also known and acknowledged throughout the world is apart fro their business acumen and honesty. They are accepting with full heart the profit and loss in worldly dealings (Risk Bearing Ability). The proofs of this are the points given or presented in the convention, as these two above-mentioned qualities are the backbone of the idea given through this meeting. The Grace of God blesses the memons with these qualities.

I, to draw the attention and serious consideration of all the attendants, present some suggestions and recommendations very clearly envisaged in the agenda of this convention. But, before doing so, I would like to put forth the preview of my proposals.

My dear friends, God has sent man in this world as the most supreme of his creations and as his representative on Earth. This is the reason that man has acclimatized himself to almost all the different geographical regions of the world and has adjusted himself to the demands of different places.

As the environment of different places and regions of this world are varied so the same way the people in these regions are also varied culturally and traditionally and the biggest identity for these different community and ethnic groups is their language and dialect.

Allah says in the Surah Al-Hujrat verse#13, in Al-Quran, "We have created you from one man and one woman and divided you in clans and tribes so that you could distinguish one from the other, but in the eyes of Allah the most Respectable and Dignified is the one who fears him the most. Believe you that Allah knows all".

My friends, historically the place of origin of the memons is the region of Sindh, which, is now a part of Pakistan. As per provincial distribution of land, some areas are now part of the Punjab because before the partition of sub-continent India, the area as far as Multan was a part of Sindh.

When memons started to migrate and settle in Gujarat province via ran-of-kutch they moved on as far as they could go on their way. They got settled in different regions of the world. Now this ethnic group is settled on Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Middle East, Africa, USA and Europe.

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As we have settled in different regions, the influence of different cultures and norms of their people on us are inevitable, that is why the only thing which can tie us together besides our Religion is our Language and our risk bearing ability.

We all are memons and we are proved to be so as in addition to being business oriented, we are the people with a good record of events, which can prove our immense love for Humanity and Care for people.

Allah has created these tribes, clans and ethnic groups for identity and our identity is that we are memons. This is the Blessing of Allah that he gave us a sweet language to complete our identity. We have great many qualities as community. But to prove ourselves as such and to be worthy of being called by this name. We have certain obligations and one of them is to save our language for our future generations. For this we have to give a status of language. Apparently it seems impossible to give a complete new script to this language and then make it common in all the regions, where memoni is spoken specially in the fastly changing world. To make this difficult task a reality, a Pakistani writer and artist Iqbal Motlani took this challenge and started writing memoni language in Urdu/Nastaliq script for the first time and his columns first got published in the daily "AGHAZ" Karachi and a time came when he launched his first book in memoni language with the title "PANJI BOLI MAIN". During this time I remained associated with this work wherever I could provide y services and at the launch of this book Pakistan Memon Federation had been of great help.

To write memoni in Urdu scripts was not something degrading or lower as Urdu is our National Language and by this we can bring memons in the national mainstream, nor was it something which could come down as a big surprise as there are many languages in our country which don't have their own script especially Punjabi which is a language of millions of people is written in Urdu script with a vast repertory of literary work all written in Urdu script.

The recommendation, which I put forward to declare memoni as a language though seems out of the agenda of this conference, practically comes under its objectives because topic No. 5 of Memon International Convention 2001 (CO-ORDINATION OF SOCIAL WORK) concerns the memoni language directly or indirectly. However it may need a little more consideration with the suggestions and opinions of people as to whether any other script apart from urdu i.e. Roman etc. be utilized to create a worldwide appeal for the people who speak this language and live in different regions of the world.

Coming to topic no. 1&2 of this convention I would again refer to Sura Al-Hujrat in which Allah says that "THE MOST DIGNIFIED OF YOU IS THE ONE WHO FEARS ALLAH THE MOST".

Now the Jewish lobby has taken full control of the world economy and made this world a place full of problems we can only get rid of this by following the golden rules of Islam. Memons should establish new financial institutions and launch interest free banking and businesses so that this world, which is so much in distress, can have relief fro their miseries. When we see the solution to the present crisis in Islam then we also know that the memons are blessed with the abilities and resources, which makes them capable of meeting these challenges.

Once again I would refer to those good qualities with which this community is blessed by Allah that they have the flair of business and finance and at the same time they cherish the love for humanity and accept the profit and loss with full courage and not only they can maintain their identity because of these but they can help their brethren by eliminating interest based banking.

It would not be out of place to mention that our God gifted qualities make all those governments to view our identity as business community in highly favourable terms around the globe for their activities. The simple reason is that the business and commercial activities of our community has always been facilitating the economies of those countries and created considerable number of employment opportunities for the local people and thereby attracting great admiration by the respective governments. Our tendency of social welfare activities in those countries is yet another reason to make them distinguished among the migrated communities. Let us gauge the credibility and importance of our community can be by some historical factors, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi and Mr. Jawahar Lal Nehru did their best at the time of partition to stop our community from migrating to Pakistan just because of their qualities. Another occasion worth mentioning here is after the unfortunate division of this country when most of our community shifted from east Pakistan to west Pakistan. This was a serious blow for the government of Bangladesh and Mr. Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman had repeatedly appealed to this community to return and take charge of their business and industrial activities. Recently built Memon Centre In UK was inaugurated by His Royal Highness Prince Charles adds a jewel to the crown of our reputation and credibility that prevails within the Royal Family of Great Britain.

Gentlemen, we cannot just afford to sit on our achievements, we should think to transfer our and will have to work out now. The strategies and long term planning to transfer our above basic qualities to the generation to come. Obviously there cannot be a better avenue than this convention, which can go a long way to make things happen in this direction, if so done the purpose of this convention would be considered as fully achieved.

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