Urdu takes centre stage at Goa Art and Literature Festival

PANAJI: For the first time, a language other than English dominated the

Goa Art and Literature Festival

(GALF) 2017 with

Urdu

literature taking the centre stage at the event.

Scholars

M Asaduddin

and Rakhshanda Jalil and author Annie Zaidi discussed the topic of ‘Indomitable Urdu’ with a lot of energy and enthusiasm on day two of the festival. Zaidi thanked the two scholars for translating the Urdu works of writers like Manto, Ismat Chugtai and Intezar Ahmed into English and making high quality Urdu accessible to common readers.

Jalil said that people wanting to learn Urdu must make efforts to learn the script. “I sometimes wonder why there is so much fear to learn the Urdu script when people can learn the Chinese and Japanese script,” Jalil said.