STATUS AND POSITION OF ENGLISH IN PAKISTAN

The emergence of Pakistan, after a long and arduous freedom movement,

was infecting a great victory of the democratic idea of life. The Indian
Muslims happily and valiantly laid down their lives and properties to
achieve a destination in which they saw the fulfillment of their dreams of
living an independent life free from Hindu and British dominance.
Initial Difficulties of Pakistan
On the eve of its creation Pakistan faced a number of stupendous problems
which hardly had any parallel in the history of the world especially of any
newly born state. Pakistan had too many burdens to carry and too many
problems to solve. She came into being almost with practically no central
administration of office routine. She was a state without any practicable
economic or geographic basis, political organization or political tradition
with any pertinence to modern conditions. Militarily she was weak and
defenseless, with enemies, not reconciled to her establishment, busy in
conspiring to strangulate her on its very birth. But fortunately she had a
great leader and organizer in person of Quaid-i-Azam to steer the ship of
her destiny to safety and security. Almost single handedly he grappled with
all these problems which would have broken a man of lesser mettle. But he
was not a man to be over-powered by any danger, challenge or obstacle
that confronted him. Under his inspired leadership the nation also showed
its inherent strength to grapple with these problems with remarkable
determination and success.
Along with many other problems, language was one of that major issue that
let our one major province cut from us. Language is a crucial part on any
culture. It is a dominant feature in determining the basis of nationalism or
ethnicity, as it represents a nations identity and preserve its heritage.
Language is also the driving force behind the unity of people and makes
them distinct from other nations. Language is never imposed but adopted.
It is difficult to eliminate it from the society until the society decided to
change or adopt something different.

The question about the state language of Pakistan was raised immediately
after the independence in 1947. Imposition of Urdu as the national
language of Pakistan created disastrous problems for the country in the
coming years. This decision was resented in East Pakistan and strong
opposition came from its masses when the central government of Pakistan
started the unilateral use of Urdu in money order forms, postal stamps,
currencies, coins, railway tickets and official letterheads even without
formally adopting Urdu as state language of Pakistan.
Neglecting Bengali in this process spawned the feeling of distrust and
discontent among the students, intelligentsia and political parties of East
Pakistan. Even the common people of East Bengal started speculating of
motives of the anti-Bengali ruling elite. The government argued that
decision of making Urdu as the national language of Pakistan was just as
Hindi was the state language of India. To counter this decision, people of
East Pakistan resisted and demanded that Bengali should also be made as
one of the state languages and the medium of instruction in East Pakistan
along with Urdu. They pleaded that it was the language of majority as 54%
people spoke it as compared to Urdu that was spoken by 7% in Pakistan.
Bengali referred it as cultural domination of one ethnic group on others and
resented it.
Urdu as a language evolved during the last days of Mughal rule in India.
Persian was the official language, while Turkic and Arabic languages were
also popular. Turkic language was the mother tongue of many among the
rulers, and Arabic language was used for religious needs and scholarly
purposes. At that time and its surrounding areas. Due to the interaction of
local population and the ruling Persian-Turkic-speaking Muslim elite, a new
language evolved and was known as Hindustani. Its Persianized form was
called Urdu. With the passage of time this language became popular but
remained limited to Northern India and never became the official language
by Mughal rulers. Other local languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto,
Kashmiri, Seraiki and Baluchi were also in use. Urdu has lot of Persian words
and is written in the Persio-Arabic script, whereas Bengali and Hindi has
Sanskrit words and is written in the Devanagari script. Regardless of the
script both languages in both countries were spoken by the masses Urdu
and Hindi. Since North India was the base of Muslims rulers during British
rule Urdu-speaking Indian Muslims from North had an environmental
advantage in getting better education and jobs as compared to other areas.
This benefit brought domination of Urdu-speaking Indian Muslims and they
avail the opportunity and succeeded in bringing some other non-Urdu-
speaking Muslims towards Urdu, who sought better education and status.
According to a government enquiry it was pointed out that a large number
of Muslims even of the lower classes preferred Urdu to Bengali as the
medium of instruction for their children. So true and is not just propaganda
about Urdu as being, true Muslim language of South Asia. During Pakistan
movement, it was further promoted due to majority of Urdu speaking
North Indian leaders. After independence, this leadership introduced Urdu
to Non-Urdu speaking people of Pakistan as state language. Which resented
in East Pakistan.
Language always been a crucial issue for Pakistan which also caused the
lost of its major part Bangladesh, but still prevail in its roots with same
adversity as still no permanent and acceptable to all solution is found.
Pakistan is a multilingual and multiethnic country with six major and over
57small languages. However, the languages of the domains of power
(government), corporate sector, media and education etc are Urdu and
English. Urdu, which is also not spoken by big number of the population, is
the national language while English is the official language. The small
languages are under tremendous pressure some of which have become
extinct. While others are about to extinct because of the states favoring
Urdu and English at the expense of others.
Urdu is spoken by the people who migrated from India to Pakistan at the
time of partition. They are called Mohajirs, which itself is an Urdu word
meaning (refugees) or (settlers). Almost all of them settled in urban Sindh,
southern province of Pakistan. Since they were educated they dominated
the bureaucracy of Pakistan. Now that Urdu has become the language of
domain of power, indigenous people have to learn Urdu and English, which
is the official language to get a job in public and private sectors. Thus
indigenous languages lost their vitality for their own people for pragmatic
reasons. Members of the elite class had a stake in the continuation of
English because it differentiated them from the masses and constituted a
class-identity marker. Thus Urdu and English depict the elite while
indigenous languages to a lower status where they became a stigma
instead of repertoires of local knowledge.
Pakistan emerged as an independent Muslim state in 1947 when India was
partitioned after the British left the subcontinent as their colony. The major
ethnic groups that comprised the newly created state were Bengali,
Punjabi, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Balochs. Bengalis were more than 50% of
the total population, who in 1971 seceded from Pakistan to become
Bangladesh. Privileging Urdu at the expense of their language Bangla was
one of the grievances that led to the division of Pakistan on ethnic and
linguistic lines.
Language policies have far-reaching educational, economic, and political
effects. In multiethnic countries like Pakistan, language policies can
determine who has access to schools, who has opportunities for economic
advancement, who participates in political decisions and who has access to
jobs etc. Despite the great diversity of languages and ethnicity in Pakistan.
The government has paid little attention to language as policy because of
which some ethnic groups are disproportionately powerful and advantage.
Though only small number speak Urdu. It has been privileged and must to
cement the distinct ethnic groups into a nation.
In 1947 soon after Pakistan was created an All Pakistan Education
Conference was held which recommended to the Constituent Assembly
that Urdu should be declared lingua franca of Pakistan and that it must be
taught as a compulsory subject in schools across the country. Soon after
the conference Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the first Governor General of
Pakistan, and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan announced that Pakistan is a
Muslim state and it must have its lingua franca, a language of the Muslim
nation. It is necessary for a nation to have one language and that language
can be Urdu and no other language.
This statement instead of cementing further divided the imagined nation
when Bengalis launched a language movement against the states language
policy. Most of Pakistans language problems grew out of regional linguistic
groups taking umbrage at the states insistence on making Urdu the
national language. The overarching problem in this regard was the
governments unaccommodating language policies.
Right from 1947 till date English has been the official language of Pakistan
which has further cornered regional languages. In 1973 the Parliament of
Pakistan unanimously passed a new constitution the first ever by an elected
Parliament. This constitution which after several amendments is still
enforced in the country has the following provisions about language in the
country:
1. The national language of Pakistan is Urdu, and arrangements shall be
made for its being used for official and other purposes within fifteen years
from the commencing day.
2. English may be used for official purposes until arrangements are made
for its replacement by Urdu.
3. Without prejudice to the status of the national language, a provincial
assembly may by law prescribe measures for the teaching, promotion and
use of a provincial language in addition to the national language.
However despite the lapse of almost 60 years. Urdu has yet to replace
English as official language. A critical implementation issue for language
policy is education. Before the creation of Pakistan during the British
colonial era the language in education policy was that Urdu should be the
medium of instruction for the masses and that English should be the
medium for the elite. Since 1947 Pakistan has formed several education
policies but their implementation has generally failed to develop in line
with policy. As the result of language policies of Pakistan, the country is
losing its cultural and linguistic diversity which is alienating the young
generation from their ancestors, their roots, their culture and their
essential self. They do not add useful skills they subtract from existing skills.
Languages are repertoire of indigenous knowledge. When a language
becomes extinct humanity loses one storage of knowledge. Therefore, to
reverse the language deficit Pakistan needs to adopt additive
multilingualism. Fundamental education should be imparted in national
tongue. Not to be left behind in the knowledge of science and technology,
English should be added to the curricula. The regional languages should be
promoted on provisional level.





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