The language concerns that have arisen in the wake of the current decision of the Supreme Court have been addressed in today’s Special Report
It seems that the Supreme Court of Pakistan has taken upon itself to set everything right in this country. After having ordered the political leadership of the provinces to hold local government elections, the latest directive to have come from the apex court is to make Urdu the official language of Pakistan.
It’s a fact that both the orders have come in to fulfill the constitutional requirements. Urdu was to replace English as the official language as per the 1973 constitution (Article 251-1), with a condition that this will be effected in 15 years time. But that is not the only constitutional requirement. What is being ignored is the sub-Article 3 which states that "a provincial assembly may by law prescribe measures for the teaching, promotion and use of a provincial language in addition to the national language."
Dr Tariq Rahman,a scholar par excellence, while commending the decision to implement Urdu as the official language, insists that in addition to Urdu "Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Seraiki, Balochi and Brahvi, too, deserve to be national languages to be used at the basic level in education and to be given some presence in Pakistan’s linguistic landscape".
There are two arguments worth making here. One, the demand of Urdu as the national language has a history that owes itself to the West Pakistani establishment. Announced by none other than Jinnah in 1948, this led to the Bengali language movement that is said to be the precursor of the eventual dismemberment of the country’s Eastern wing.
As Naseer Memon writes, the cultural hegemony demanded that Urdu was used henceforth as a symbol of "Islam and two-nation theory".
Two, it is not this historical baggage alone that is making people look at the current directive with skepticism. They don’t understand how to disconnect an official language from the language of education. And everyone seems to agree that the language of higher education is English. Even though there have been institutional efforts to promote Urdu, there is a need to teach English as a subject and teach it really well.
The language concerns that have arisen in the wake of the current decision of the Supreme Court have been addressed in today’s Special Report.