Roman script to help preserve Sindhi language

Abu Dhabi: The Sindhi community, a prominent Indian business group in the UAE, is trying to preserve its language by adopting the Roman script, instead of the existing Arabic and Devnagari scripts, a community leader told Gulf News on Sunday.

"If many western communities can adopt the Roman script to preserve and promulgate their languages, why can't our small community do the same?" Dr Ram Buxani, the managing trustee of Ram and Veena Buxani Foundation, told Gulf News on the sidelines of the programme to mark the announcement of the Ishwaribai Buxani Life-Time Achievement Award- 2008 for outstanding contribution to Sindhi literature and culture.

The award will be presented to Dr Dayal Asha, an eminent author and educationalist who has written more than 50 books in Sindhi, Hindi and English, Dr Buxani said.

Dada J.P. Vaswani will present the award at a function, to be held in India shortly.

Sindhis have been living in the UAE for more than 200 years, said Dr Buxani, who himself had landed in Dubai 50 years ago to make a living.

"I started as an employee in a company, but later became the holder of a substantial number of shares of the company," he said.

'Striving hard'

"The nearly 50,000-strong Sindhi community in the UAE is striving hard to preserve at least spoken Sindhi", he said.

"Such an attempt will be fruitful if about 10 million members of the community worldwide adopt the Roman script for our language, which is now written in Arabic and Devnagari scripts," he said.

He said his foundation was taking the initiative to popularise the idea within the community.

The Sindhi community has made remarkable achievements in the UAE business sector, said Dr Buxani. Business organisations run by the community members employ thousands of people, though they never want to identify themselves as "Sindhi business persons" since there are people of various nationalities working with such organisations.

"Even my own organisation, International Traders Limited, has less than 20 per cent Sindhis. To name a few other prominent organisations are Jashanmal Group of Companies, Jumbo Electronics, Choitram Supermarkets, Al Maya Group and Al Fara properties", said Dr Buxani.