or decades, I have wondered why my parents did not speak with their children in Punjabi and Purbi. I grew up listening to them communicate emotions and meaning so effortlessly in these languages. Punjabi and Purbi were the mother tongues of my mother, father and our extended family, but they were not the ones I intentionally or spontaneously learned, or grew up speaking. Mine was a gentrified Urdu and English within a colonial monolingual ‘success for life’ framing. I strongly believe that the first post-Partition generation bore the brunt of being pulled away from its mother tongue (maadri zubaan) entitlements. A few years prior to my birth (1952), several students lost precious lives in what was then East Pakistan fighting to preserve Bangla. It is because of them that UNESCO, in 1999, decided to dedicate the annual International Mother Tongue Day on February 21 to celebrate linguistic preservation, diversity and mother tongue acquisition. The students’ successful demand for the right to linguistic freedom is now a global celebration.

History has continued to repeat the socio-linguistic trauma. In 1849, after the tough annexation of the Punjab (East and West Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa/ NWFP) through toppling of the Sikh Empire by the East India Company for incorporation into the British Empire, Urdu was made the official language. After Pakistan gained Independence in 1947, its policy makers prioritised Urdu as a national language at the cost of undermining its rich regional languages—erasing languages, erasing history and severing connection between people, their mother tongue and social emotional communication.

With the exception of Sindhi, Urdu is the medium of instruction nationwide together with English as an aspirational language. Professor Tariq Rahman’s research has documented 73-77 regional languages spoken across Pakistan, yet there is little provision by the state to provide them their due status and active use. Scholars and activists including Tariq Rahman, Zobair Torwali from upper Swat/ Torwal lands and Zubeida Mustafa, the celebrated journalist and education reformer, have been waging a longstanding battle against the tyranny of the one-size-fits-all approach, leading to loss of identity, expression and above all low learning in borrowed mediums of instruction.

The results from the ASER surveys (2010-2023) on challenges of foundational learning inform the discourse of low learning and exclusion of mother tongue-based learning in formal schooling. This emotional, cultural, social cognitive disconnect and depletion and extinction of linguistic diversity was and still is a bitter reality giving the International Mother Tongue Day immense significance.

The Citizens Foundation took up the challenge posed by Zubeida Mustafa to rigorously test mother tongue-based multilingual education in Tharparkar, Sindh, where 13 sub-regional languages are used, including Dhatki, Marwari, Katchi, Oadki and Pakari, but with little guidance on how to construct such a pathway. The benefits of adopting such a child-centred approach include cognitive understanding, academic ability and social belonging and social emotional learning with parents and guardians. A systematic approach needs community engagement, language progression, developing learning materials, training and supporting teachers, right teacher recruitment backed by research and evaluation. This journey requires an investment in time and resources which the government is unable to make coherently in spite of constitutional and legal provisions. Backed by Articles 251 and 28 of the constitution, there is full cover for propagation and preservation of provincial and local languages, script or culture and establishment of institutions for this purpose.

The language authorities, including the National Language Authority set up in 1979 and renamed as National Language Promotion Department, the Sindhi Language Authority, the Punjab Institute of Language Arts and Culture, the stillborn Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Regional Language Authority, provisioned under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Regional Languages Authority Act, 2012, all work as attached, semi-autonomous bodies under the Ministry/ Departments of Culture, Heritage etc having no or little engagement with the Ministries/ Departments of Education. This disconnect does not help the cause of preserving and promoting mother tongue teaching. In Balochistan, it is the independent academies of Balochi and Brawhi that have kept the flag flying for languages together with the Balochistan University. Important work for content and promotion of mother tongue remains fragmented undermining the science of language and learning in Pakistan.

Education policies and frameworks since 2009 and post devolution of education in 2010 (18th Amendment) have proposed promotion of mother tongue/ regional languages but without a focused long-term programme with institutional support. There is no language policy in Pakistan; at best, the intent is noble but without a systematic approach to address the language -learning conundrum. There is growing research (the British Council/ TCF) that mother tongue-based approach should be promoted from pre-school to grade 3 with all the basics of language acquisition; transitioning to national and foreign languages (English) from grades 4-7 through a bilingual or multilingual teaching and learning model to a full-fledged national Urdu/ English medium of instruction mode from Grade 8 upwards for proficiency and knowledge access.

Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi has been collaborating with Room to Read; the School Education Department, Punjab; School Education and Literacy Department, Sindh; and more recently with the PILAC and the National Book Foundation to produce, adapt and translate children’s books in multiple languages, including Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, Dari, Punjabi and Seraiki. More recently, it has engaged with Balochi translators and publishers to enable content in all major languages of Pakistan. Initiatives to reclaim and build foundational learning content of endangered languages have been undertaken by ITA with South-South collaborations such as Every Language Teaches Us under the People’s Action for Learning Network for Wakhi, Khowar, Dhatki and Seraiki.

Annually, passionate stakeholders celebrate the International Mother Language Day for three days, at the Pakistan National Council of Arts. But much more needs to be done; the journey is long, systematic and requires:

A rolling 25-year plan that is coherently tied to education and literacy departments for both formal and non-formal programmes.

Promoting MTBL for stronger learning for all children as an anchor principle with clear transition plans for the first, second and third languages—a trilingual model backed by investment in curriculum, teacher preparation, content development, digital/ AI opportunities and assessment systems and rigorous research.

Institutional coherence is critical for continuous and close linkages across academies, language authorities/ ministry/ departments of culture and the departments of education and literacy.

A close engagement with parents/ communities to understand language pathways from pre-school to secondary and post-secondary education and livelihood opportunities.

Above all, a unified approach towards a strong language policy, conscious of challenges of transition across education systems promoting mother tongue teaching and learning through a multi-lingual lens.

Let us walk the talk for mother tongue-based education as a lifelong learning imperative.

The writer is the CEO of Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi. She is a founder of the Pakistan Learning Festival and a global champion of the Learning Generation Initiative. She can be reached at baela.jamil@itacec.org