Please give it a thought and offer your contributions on this topic.
Language: most of us have stopped speaking in bhagnari ourselves unless we interact with elders, besides children and grandchildren speak in English and barely understand what their grandparents say.
Culture:The members now live in various parts of the world, the rituals and recipes associated with festivals, bhagnari songs and other tales are not chronicled for the future generations.
Nor do we have any record of all the stories we have grown up listening to with regarding to the life in Karachi and our past.
Jog your memories and come up with all that you remember so we build up a databank for the future generations and keep our traditions alive.
To put it in simple words, the future of Bhagnari language and its culture are a matter of serious concern. If some concrete steps are not taken immediately, there is a possibility that by the next generation we may have to bid goodbye to our dear Bhagnari language.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we have taken a few initiatives, I feel these are not sufficient to sustain our culture and the language.
The least we could do is to ensure that we and our children speak in Bhagnari language at home and amongst friends. Our Panchayat can only impress upon the members of the community to speak in Bhagnari at home, but the real change has to come from within ourselves. Unless this does not happen all our efforts would be futile.
Anecdotes from Karachi and our community's migration to Mumbai, would certainly help to revive our memories of our elders and their lives. In this regard the article about the history of Bhagnaris on the community website and Ashok Lulla's article ‘Rangeele Bhagnaris’ have aroused some interest. But we need more.
It would be great if the youngsters could gather some details about the life in Karachi and the experience of our migration to Mumbai. Such write-up could either be put up on the community site or on this blogspot.
How about recording songs/stories/plays/skits as audio mp3 files and video files and making them available ?
ReplyDeleteI am also concerned that the younger generation of Bhagnaris (which is mostly overseas) is losing touch with its heritage and unless we all take the initiative to do something, the link will be completely severed. How about setting up a wiki site where various people can post their contributions? I’m sure that many Bhagnaris have knowledge and experiences (history, culture, language, recipes, etc.) that they can share with the rest of us. The wiki site would be easily accessible by everyone in the Bhagnari community and would also preserve this information for posterity. The articles ‘Rangeelay Bhagnaris’ and ‘History of Bhagnaris’ are an excellent way to start. Perhaps we should ask those of our kids who are more web-savvy to set up the wiki site. This would also be a way to engage them more fully in this important ‘heritage preservation’ project.
ReplyDeleteI truly appreciate the initiative as I am one of many who would be interested in learning about our history and culture.
ReplyDeleteThe language is clearly diminishing as English is used at most events, this is really sad & any effort made to revive this would be great.
I had the privilege to learn Bhagnari from my dadaji.
Ramesh uncle, we truly appreciate your efforts to keep us updated and connected…
Dear Rameshjee,
ReplyDeleteGreat start !!
I tried putting in my comments however was unable so thought of putting it to u to post it as follows:
"At the outset let me THANK our Senior Bhagnaris for their constant efforts to save our language, culture and keeping our community identity alive.
I feel/suggest all our communication in net, circulars, email, etc must be in Bhagnari language (in english) there by we will all read the language and if our kids cannot understand we wil guide them and this will create a great interest in speaking. Ofcourse writing most of us do not know. But speaking/reading in english bhagnari language will be a great help to keep the language alive..... This will require efforts but it will give a good start and if some one lacks understanding will try to seek guidance. Extra effort in translation will save our sweet language & identity as BHAGNARIS. ..... KISHORE ARJANDAS GEHI"
Thanks & Best Regards.....
I don't know whether I should comment on the issue of language and culture of Bhagnari Community or not because I don't belong to Bhagnari Community. However, there is one resemblance that the name of my ancestors' town is Bhagnari, Balochistan, Pakistan. I am not sure what is your connection with the above mentioned town, and I am also confused that most of you state that you have migrated from Karachi that shows no connection of your community with Bhagnari town in Balochistan. If anyone of you may kindly guide me because I am interested to collect historical facts about the people of Bhagnari Town.
ReplyDelete