‘If Urdu Has It, So Should Sindhi’: Sindhis Want A Doordarshan Channel In Their Language

Last week, the Delhi High Court heard a petition filed by a Sindhi cultural organisation demanding that the government start a 24-hour television channel in their language.

It's a decade-old demand that reached the court in 2015. As per the representatives of the Sindhi community, the government is obliged to start a Sindhi channel on Doordarshan (DD) as it has done in the case of other linguistic minorities. They also argue that since their language is included in Schedule VIII of the Constitution, which lists the country’s official languages, the government is obliged to promote the language and culture.

However, the central government has maintained that it's difficult to provide a channel for each of the estimated 122 languages in the country. In a similar vein, Prasar Bharti has said that they can’t possibly start a new channel because of the “serious resource crunch and staff shortage”.

In the hearings last year, the Union government had said in court that when such a proposal was considered in 2012, it was found unfeasible. The court, however, directed the government to submit an affidavit on the alleged non-feasibility citing “credible material”.

When the case came for hearing on 1 March, the failure of the Union government to provide the affidavit led the court to list the matter for further hearing on 28 August.

“It’s just getting delayed. We are in a fix. We don’t know what to do next,” laments Asha Chand, the petitioner and co-founder of the cultural organisation Sindhi Sangat, who lives in Dubai. Speaking to Swarajya over phone, Asha Chand said that the Sindhi language is dying and their only hope to save it is through the power of the television.

Chand’s non-governmental organisation (NGO) has been fighting this battle for a decade now. It was in 2007 when the Mumbai-based organisation wrote to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that till a full-fledged television station is created, the government should allocate daily time slots for Sindhi programmes on existing channels. The next year, the NGO wrote to the central government that if states where the Sindhi community is largely settled (like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh) are not promoting a channel in Sindhi language, the centre should do so.

The argument was that if the Union government could run an Urdu channel, speakers of which are also spread across many states, the same standard should be used for their language.

“We are scattered as we don't have a state of our own. This has stopped us from getting a Doordarshan channel in our language on the lines of DD Bangla or DD Punjabi,” says Chand. “But Urdu has the privilege that we don’t. Despite Urdu-speaking people scattered across the country, they have a channel of their own.”

The original petition says that the government discriminates against the Sindhi minority community when compared to Muslims.

“Discriminatory and inefficient conduct of the Respondents [Union governemnt] is evident from the fact that a 24 hours channel is allocated [to] another minority community (Muslim community) whereas the present minority community [Sindhis] is completely discriminated and is given step-motherly treatment. It is pertinent to note that DD Urdu has been launched by Respondents without any sponsoring state,” says the petition which also had representation from senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani.

The petition claims there are around 50 lakh Sindhi speakers in India.

Chand refutes the argument that it is the non-feasibility of the proposal that is stopping the government from executing it. “Have you seen any advertisement on DD Urdu?” she asks. “It's obvious that the government is already managing channels that are incurring losses. So this argument has little merit.”

The clamour for a 24-hour DD channel reached a crescendo in 2013 after a privately run bilingual Sindhi-Kachchhi television station in Kutch shut down. The channel was running losses and its owner was in no position to pay the licence fee (for broadcasting rights) to the government, reports Hindustan Times.

Meanwhile, the community has also started an online petition to put pressure on the government. It describes Sindhis as inheritors of a 5,000-year-old civilisation who got uprooted from their homeland in the 1947 partition.

The petition says, “By sheer hard work, they overcame all adversities and regained their monetary, educational and social status, but at a very heavy price. They started losing their cultural roots and identity. The Sindhi Language is also fighting a losing battle, especially with the younger generation. The only hope today is the power of the Television to reverse this trend.”

Chand says she has often been told that the Sindhi community, which is largely prosperous, can start such a venture on their own. But it’s an argument she refutes.

“It is our constitutional right. The government cannot refuse us what we legitimately deserve,” she says.