Pakistan is a rich tapestry of folk tales, songs, and stories with historical background and tradition and inherits diverse cultural and traditional values. Most of these tales are regional and represent a floral colour of the region and its history and culture. The stories feature mythical creatures, moral lessons, and local heroes that include Punjabi folk tales, Sindhi folk tales, and Balochi, and Frontier folk tales. This tapestry is further enriched because of Sufi poetry, which has proved a hallmark for the poetics and politics of literature in these areas. The Sufi poets include Baba Farid, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Bulhay Shah. All these poets give a very spiritual message in their poetry by using allegorical language and metaphors to render spiritual insights for their followers and disciples.
These pieces of folk literature are a rich source of learning language because of the frequent employment of local proverbs and sayings formed out of centuries-long local wisdom and cultural values. These proverbs and sayings are the day-to-day language of the people from these areas and therefore, the use of such idioms contributes to the revitalizing of the tradition of storytelling in Pakistan. The liberal use of such poetic metaphors is helpful in the formation of the cultural landscape of Pakistan because each province has its distinct and unique music, songs, and poetry from Punjab, Sindh, KPK, Balochistan, Gilgit Baltistan, and Kashmir. These songs and music talk about heroism, love, and cultural pride. Folk literature is intertwined with religious and cultural rituals like Basant, Urs celebrations at the shrines, singing, dhamal dancing, and storytelling. Along with this, the art of puppetry and traditional performances of Dhol or Chmita are also folk impressions. Through puppet shows some moral tales, or romantic incidents, or any tradition is relived and the same is the case with the dance on drum beating also in the tune of some folk song. All this hinges on the oral tradition of storytelling and oral literature which has traveled and transferred from person to person orally.
Folk literature becomes not only a rich source of historical and cultural diversity but also helps bind people together.
When folk literature is seen in this way, it becomes not only a rich source of historical and cultural diversity but side by side it helps bind the people together both socially and culturally and makes them into a nation because it embeds in it the roots of so many cultures and traditions, as is claimed by Diana Wynne Jones that If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible color you could imagine. If folk literature is also part of our curriculum and education syllabus, it can prove a tremendous source yet to be tapped to achieve numerous and enormous benefits culturally and educationally. Teaching and research in academic arenas can help us preserve our cultural roots along with the language, idioms, and metaphors. The students can at least develop an appreciative point of view about locally produced literature. It can further foster respect, understanding, and value of the customs, languages, and traditions of various ethnic groups of Pakistan.
The post-colonial global challenges have forced us to focus more on the English language and culture and consequently, our regional and cultural folk literature and tradition have been ignored. This over-emphasis may be justified at the global level but at home, folk literature must have been equally tapped to maintain cultural diversity and linguistic harmony to promote tolerance and empathy among all diversities of Pakistani people. Besides, it is essential to look back with deep attention at our cultural heritage to maintain the roots of our identity and recognition. Teaching and researching folk literature can provide an impetus to language learning because the language of folk literature has as much diversity as this literature itself, and so, students would be able to learn the diversities and harmonies of language. Not only this but also moral and ethical values associated with the language will also be acquired by the young generations to come along with the development of a very strong connection with the history of our region and nation.
Most of the folk literature is in oral form and so learning, studying this literature would promote creativity and original indigenousness of literature. As creativity would stem from heritage, it would reflect and determine the identity of the people in general. It would develop critical thinking also because the students can raise questions about the aspects of the debate in this literature and so can find answers to their queries from within the literature or without literature. Tapping of this literature can promote tolerance and more acceptability for the literature of people other than the ones we know.
The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at [email protected] and Tweets at @Profzee