Besides a range of socio-cultural, economic, and political refined doctrines based on Islamic injunctions which Muslims had brought in the Sub-continent, the most important legacy that Muslims brought was of language: Urdu. It is no denying that Urdu gave Muslims a long-lasting recognition and individuality as a Muslim community. Although Urdu at that time was a product and an amalgamation of a plethora of local languages, however, the language had succeeded in giving Muslims a complete identity and privilege to rule on the Sub-continent for centuries apparently culminating in the second half of the nineteen century.
After the Mutiny of 1857, when Muslims were subjugated and suppressed by the British Empire with the conspiracy of Hindus, the same language, Urdu, advocated Muslims properly vis-à-vis Hindu. The Urdu-Hindi controversy in 1867 was the clear manifestation of the fact that Urdu was the language of Muslims and must be made equal to Hindi at the polity level. The untiring efforts of unparalleled personalities including Sir Syed Ahmad Khan for the promotion of Urdu in Muslims’ educational institutions across the Sub-continent, was for only one aim, to protect Muslims identity at any cost, as they felt that Muslims were at the brink of an abyss if their identity and rights at citizenry level were not protected through language.
After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, controversy began on whether Urdu would be a national language or Bengali. The former was used as lingua franca in West Pakistan and in some portions of East Pakistan, while the latter was the language of common people in Bengal. On 12 February 1952, language riots resulted in huge bloodshed and civil unrest in Bengal, the day was then designated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO. Today no one is disagreeing with the fact that language controversy was a major cause among others that had led to the dismemberment of East Pakistan. Had a broad-based approach been adopted, an inferiority complex and identity crisis, engendered in the Bengali community due to their language, could have been eliminated.
Language is not just a collection of words and a source of communication, but it is a carrier of culture and a reservoir of social norms, traditions, and history. To put it simply, language is an identity, if you lose and forget your mother language, your identity as an individual and group will be washed out. No community is ready to lose its identity at any cost.
Every indigenous language has its own essence and linguistic charm, every word has its own history and entrenched concept. Moreover, native speakers keep deep-rooted passions for their language. In order to clarify this, let’s take two lexical words, ‘Deen’ in Pashto and ‘religion’ in English, both referring to divine codes of principles. But the concepts of the two words are very different from each other. For instance, the Pashto domain of ‘Deen’ i.e., Islam, is vastly different from that of a ‘religion’ i.e., Christianity in the West. The two words of both languages are not the same, although both refer to the same phenomenon. With this concept in mind, Nelson Mandela had once aptly said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his mother language that goes to his heart”.
With the fast-moving age of globalization and technology, a number of regional and local languages are approaching ‘Language death’_ according to David Crystal, a condition in which a language has left no native speaker at all. Meanwhile, approximately 7000 languages are spoken worldwide. However, unsurprisingly, according to linguists, by 2100, nearly 50% to 90% of languages will be dead. This is a very alarming situation for the vast ethnolinguistic groups across the globe. Ironically, a democratic and pluralistic West, if want to mainstream the ever-neglected ethnicities, then it should have first promoted and documented their languages. The West one language policy will surely yield disastrous consequences just like its neoliberal policies have brought across the board.
In Pakistan, nearly seventy languages are spoken. Among them, most of the languages are near extinct. Pakistan is a multi-ethnic country with different communities speaking different languages. However, despite this, the state has made no genuine efforts to conserve the linguistic cornucopia of far-flung regions including Northern Pakistan (Gilgit Baltistan and Northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). For instance, Badeshi, Kalasha, Ushojo, and Gawarbati are the endangered languages of the region.
A language is properly mainstreamed mostly in educational institutions. However, for the past decades, it has been a bone of contention among our curriculum designers as to what language is chosen for the medium of instructions in curriculum compilation. One school of thought supports a classical point of view. According to them, the mother tongue must be prioritized at the primary level over other supporting languages, so that the child gains proficiency in reading and writing in his/her mother language. This argument is further justified by recent research that a child’s understanding of power is greater in his/her mother language. Another side takes inferences from Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition. According to the latter, there is an abstract processing system, Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which performs efficiently in language acquisition during critical time-frame i.e. five to nine years. Most of them argue that a second language should be introduced to children early at the primary level so that the child gains sound expertise in that particular language, e.g., English in our case.
While this debate is going on, a pragmatic approach in the light of Applied Linguistics is needed to be followed to resolve this long-standing issue. In this never-ending controversy, we have Urdu, English, and local languages of different communities. Urdu is our national lingua franca and a language of political power; English is a pathway to the corridors of knowledge, and local languages i.e., mother tongues are related to identities. Evaluation and assessment of these languages are essential while inserting any of them in curriculum designing. To be multilingual is not bad, but to set aside a mother language for other languages is lethal.
Pakistan is a home to different ethnicities with their different linguistic tools. And indeed this is that very beauty of this country. The government should accept this reality to its fullest. Unfortunately, the present government’s flagship project, SNC, is no less than a tool to kill diversity. Stop alienating the-already neglected and unrepresented ethnicities of their languages. Their languages are their identities; please acknowledge them and their languages.
