Successful first festival celebrating International Mother Language Day

Date published: 27 February 2023

The inaugural Rochdale Maa Boli Festival was a great success with people travelling from Oldham, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield and Blackburn to attend.

The Rochdale Maa Boli - which means 'mother tongue' - Festival is a celebration of the spoken word of four South Asian languages - Pahari, Pothwari, Punjabi and Urdu.

Organised by Kashmiri Productions UK in association with Touchstones, the event on 21 February – International Mother Language Day – featured poetry and short/personal stories shared by local South Asian talent, followed by dinner.

International Mother Language Day is a worldwide annual observance held on 21 February to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity.

Zafar Iqbal, of Kashmiri Productions UK, said: £I am so thrilled to have organised this festival to bring four different language speaking communities under one roof to celebrate our mother tongue.

“It was amazing to see a full house and this goes to show how much people wanted to see such events locally. We salute Bangladesh to invent this idea of International Mother Language Day. This is the beginning, and we are planning of including more languages for the next year’s bigger festival.”

Mayor of Rochdale, Syed Ali Ahmed said: “This is brilliant event to promote our mother tongue. Well done to Zafar Iqbal and team for a successful event. I feel proud being a Bengali that this trend was created by Bangladesh and now it’s being used to celebrate different languages around the world.”

Bryan Beresford, of Touchstones, said: “This is great to see different communities coming together to enjoy Rochdale Maa Boli Festival on the occasion of International Mother Language Day here at Touchstones.

“We want to let people know this is a community place, we have art galleries here, a café, research room, shop and so much more for you to come and enjoy.”