Issue of SaraikiStan: Post 18th Amendment
The paper primarily focuses on salient dynamics voiced for division of Punjab and establishment of Saraiki Province and is aiming to aware coming parliamentarians regarding the sensitive issue so that they can make themselves capable to develop skill to resolve such generic issues. The non-justifiable allocation and distribution of resources by the federal government not only created hatred between East and West Pakistan in 1971 but later on among four provinces of Pakistan as well. For the last more than seventy years, the inspirations of ethnicity and regionalism evoked by Pukhtoons, Baluchis, Muhajirs and Saraikis made the process of national integration complex and so politicized different socio-economic and issues concerning different people of different regions which sometimes led to civil war situations in Pakistan. Though state's constitution provided equal rights and opportunities to all nationalities in all spheres of life. However the feeling of provincialism or regionalism awakens in the minds when the people of a particular area are continuously neglected by the ruling class and so they are politically educated as backward and discriminated people by their local leaders. In this way, these leaders keep political hold over the specified area and its people. Regional disparities in terms of revenue and consumptions have awakened the perception of ignorance and discrimination and this is the reason that PML (N) faced severe hurdles and the repatriation of its own parliamentarians as the Saraiki community has been continuously neglected by the Punjabi dominated Political Party in the National legislature.
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Ethno-Nationalism, Identity Crisis, Deprivations, Regionalism, Saraiki Nationalist Movement, Eighteenth Amendment
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(1) Sana Ullah
Demonstrator & PhD Scholar, Department of Political Science, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Pakistan
(2) Ijaz Khalid
Demonstrator & PhD Scholar, Department of Political Science, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Pakistan
(3) Shazia Hassan
Assistant Professor, LMS Department, Faculty of Contemporary Studies, National Defence University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Uncovering the Environmental and Aesthetical Roots of Nature in Taufiq Rafat's Poetry: An Ecopoetic Critique
The relationship between poetry and nature enjoys timelessness. But the poetry relating to beauty, spirituality, and preservation of nature secure a special place as ecopoetry among other poetic genres. Taufiq Rafat's poetry is no exception when it comes to describing the natural landscapes, flora and fauna,seasonal variations, and human civilization to showcase the relation of man with nature. This study attempts to scrutinize the ecopoems from Rafat's poetry collections Arrival of the Monsoon: Collected Poems 1947-78 (1985) and HalfMoon: Poems 1979-1983 (2008) from two different perspectives of ecopoetry, i.e., environmental poetry to discuss rights of nature and ecophenomenological poetry to discuss nature for nature's sake propounded by J. Scott Bryson and Jonathan Bate, respectively. The study addresses political issues of identity construction through Tuanian topophilia - a sense of belonging with the place through comparative images from the natural world -, environmental abuse or revised sublime such as urbanization, poor management of the residential areas,industrial agriculture, uncertain climate change, deforestation, scarcity of water,extinction of wildlife, and loss of natural habitat, etc. - a postcolonial inheritance- leading to an identity crisis, and reconstruction of lost identity through nature-friendly living under the former sub genre and imaginative impulse revived through the effects of sublime and beautiful on the tired soul of Rafat to create the feelings of respectful awe and love under the latter one.
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Tuanian Topophilia, Revised Sublime, Identity Crisis, Sublime and Beautiful.
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(1) Saba Rasheed
Teaching Assistant, Department of English, Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan, Punjab, Pakistan
(2) Asim Aqeel
Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Linguistics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.