5/2/2017 The case for Urdu as Pakistan's official language ­ People & Society ­ Herald

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The case for Urdu as Pakistan's

o cial language
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Illustration by Marium Ali

A patriotic song blares through speakers placed on either side of the

stage. The Urdu ditty that talks down terrorists was produced and
released by the army’s public relations department in response to the 2014
Army Public School attack in Peshawar. The audience, a chirpy mix of men,
women and children, is gathered for the Qaumi Nifaz-e-Urdu Conference.
They all await the guest of honour inside Aiwan-e-Quaid at Islamabad’s
Fatima Jinnah Park on the morning of July 24, 2016.

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The atmosphere within the venue is gregarious. Outside, it is oppressively

hot and humid even though it rained the previous night and drizzled the
same morning. A wrinkled banner on a sidewall asks: “If we are a nation
then where is the national language?” Another reads: “Mohsin-e-Urdu
Justice Jawwad S Khawaja ki jura’at ko salaam (salute to the courage of
Urdu’s benefactor Justice Jawwad S Khawaja).”

The event, put together to call for

the adoption of Urdu as Pakistan’s
ofଘcial language, morphs into a
prolonged standing ovation as
atomic scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer
Khan enters the venue. Speakers
later emphasise that Urdu
strengthens Pakistan’s ideological
foundations (even when it is the mother tongue of approximately eight per
cent of the people in a country of nearly 200 million). It is also the language
of Islam, most argue.

At one point, a female teacher rises from the audience and says that Arabic
should be compulsory in schools. At this, some people at the back start
shouting “Urdu ko band karo (shut down Urdu)”. While some speakers, too,
advocate making Arabic the medium of instruction, others skirt around the
topic. None of them, however, disowns Arabic.

When Abdul Qadeer Khan makes his speech, he admits he could not have
made the atomic bomb had he not learnt English. He nevertheless insists
that Urdu unites people and it is imperative that we become “proactive in
its implementation”.

He is joined on stage by Irfan Siddiqui, adviser to the prime minister on

national history and literary heritage. A veteran Urdu columnist, he is
known to have the ear of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. “I have a spiritual
connection with Urdu. I have studied, taught and written Urdu,” he says to
highlight his afଘnity with the language. But, he adds, he cannot implement
Urdu as the ofଘcial language because “it is not part of my job”.

Abdullah Gul, son of the late pro-Taliban spymaster General Hamid Gul,
apologises for being late. He was held back by a delegation that came to see
him on behalf of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani without prior notice, he
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him on behalf of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani without prior notice, he

deems it necessary to tell the audience. Then he mentions a television
interview of his. “I told Al Jazeera that Urdu is the second most spoken
language in the world. You should start a channel in it.”

Once food is announced, the crowd bursts out of the hall. Chicken pulao
and shami kebabs in styrofoam boxes are hastily distributed by volunteers
as people ଘnd a suitable spot to consume their meal in the oppressive heat.

A lawyer writes an application at the Lahore High Court | Murtaza Ali, White Star

T he 1973 Constitution recognises Urdu as Pakistan’s only national

language. It also promises to make it the ofଘcial language of the state.
Article 251 of the Constitution says “arrangements shall be made for [Urdu]
being used for ofଘcial and other purposes within [next] ଘfteen years”. A
subclause allows the use of English until those arrangements are made;
another subclause permits provinces to promote “provincial languages”
alongside Urdu.

Dutch anthropologist Oskar Verkaaik calls this recognition of Urdu part of

the “ashra𐴀zation” of the language that began long before Partition. In his
2004 book Migrants and Militants: Fun and Violence in Urban Pakistan, he
deଘnes ashra𐴀zation as a “long-term process of making Urdu the language
of cosmopolitanism and distinction”. A necessary corollary of ashra𐴀zation,
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according to him, has been that regional languages including Sindhi and
Bengali were deemed “inferior” in Pakistan.

Since the adoption of the Constitution about 44 years ago, the process of
Urdu’s implementation is still far from complete. In many areas, it has not
even started. The 15-year time frame given in the Constitution has passed
almost thrice but English remains an administrative, economic and social
necessity. As regional languages experience an unprecedented revival in the
age of smartphones and social media, where these technologies have
democratised activism, Urdu’s status as the “language of cosmopolitanism
and distinction” seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Nothing reଘects this more than a 2015 Supreme Court decision. A three-
member bench led by then chief justice Jawwad S Khawaja combined
different petitions – that came up for hearing 18 times in 2015 alone – over
the violation of Article 251. One was ଘled in 2003, by lawyer Kaukab Iqbal,
and the other by Syed Mehmood Akhtar Naqvi, known for being a serial
petitioner, in 2012. The case received immediate public attention. In
proceedings spread over seven months, the judges observed they were “not
informed of satisfactory arrangements by the government” for Urdu’s
adoption as the ofଘcial language.

The court issued its verdict on September 8, 2015, directing the federal and
provincial governments to make Urdu the ofଘcial language within three
months. “In the governance of the federation and the provinces there is
hardly any necessity for the use of the colonial language [English] which
cannot be understood by the public at large,” the judgment noted. The
judges, however, recognised “the importance of English as a language used
in international commerce”.

They also carefully avoided demographic and political questions

surrounding Urdu by using words that sound more sacred than realistic.
“We are tasked to both obey the Constitution and to enforce it, and we
cannot shy away from our obligation to the same while the nation suffers
even if some may (from habit or training) ଘnd it more convenient to
continue using the colonial language [English].”

The judges left the ball in the government’s court — implement the
Constitution or change it.
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D r Sharif Nizami is a chemist by profession and a Jamaat-e-Islami

activist by choice. Born in Punjab’s Vehari district on January 1, 1947, he
runs an organisation called Pakistan Qaumi Zaban Tehreek. It was this
organisation that made last year’s Qaumi Nifaz-e-Urdu Conference in
Islamabad possible. It was also the force behind Kaukab Iqbal’s petition at
the Supreme Court.

Pakistan Qaumi Zaban Tehreek – that, according to Nizami, runs on

“contributions from supporters” – was formed on November 5, 2010 in the
drawing room of his Rehmanpura Colony residence in Lahore. He and 11 of
his associates decided to bring it about when, in 2009, the Punjab
government announced that English will be the medium of instruction at
primary schools. The organisation has been making minor stirs through
opinion pieces in Urdu dailies as well as with sessions meant to bring round
people of power and inଘuence to the cause of Urdu’s implementation.

It is already midnight but Nizami is as energetic as ever (he says he has been
used to all-nighters ever since his time as a student at the Punjab
University). “We are not against English. We are against the slavery of
English,” he says as he points towards a cardboard efଘgy standing shyly in
one corner of the drawing room. Dressed in western attire, the efଘgy has
something written on it: “Pakistan — the born slave of English”. Another
inscription displays the mobile phone numbers of the organisation’s ofଘce-
bearers. Nizami plans to parade the efଘgy outside educational institutions
in Lahore.

He sees the Supreme Court verdict as a “victory that we could not have
imagined in our dreams”. There was no hope in sight until Justice Khawaja
came along.

With a tendency to break into monologues about Pakistan’s ideological

foundations, laced with verses from Allama Iqbal, Nizami insists in an
interview conducted last month that service to Urdu is service to Islam.
“Our ଘrst step is the implementation of Urdu across all sections of society,”
he says, “the second step will take time but it would be ideal if we could
adopt Arabic in the future.”

P rime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved the implementation of Urdu as

the ofଘcial language even before Justice Khawaja came out with his
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the ofଘcial language even before Justice Khawaja came out with his
judgement — perhaps to evade censure by the court. The Cabinet
Secretariat issued a memo on July 6, 2015, directing all ministries and
divisions of the federal government to translate their paperwork, signboards
and websites into Urdu. The memo stated that all government
representatives will make speeches in Urdu, even outside Pakistan. Sharif
himself would not follow that directive in multiple foreign visits he made
subsequently.

The language of the memo certainly needed clariଘcation — duly provided by

Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms, Ahsan Iqbal, in a
July 18, 2015 interview with Time magazine. “Urdu will be a second medium
of language and all ofଘcial business will be bilingual,” he said.

Less than a month later, he

announced the introduction of
‘Urdish’ in schools — a mixture of
Urdu and English. At the launching
ceremony of an educational reform
programme on August 14, 2015, he
said Urdish “would get rid of the
English- medium/Urdu-medium
controversy which had damaged
education standards and adversely
affected the growth of young minds
in contrast to the world practice of
educating children in their native
languages”.

English, being the global language of

knowledge production, is
Efଘgy made by the Pakistan Qaumi Zaban increasingly becoming important for
Tehreek | Ali Raj Pakistanis looking for jobs in
services and other high-tech sectors
both within their country and abroad. Urdu, consequently, has lost its
salience within Pakistan’s education sector as a facilitator for high-paying
jobs — a view adopted by the provincial governments of Punjab and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa when they announced to make English language the medium
of instruction in schools, in 2009 and 2014, respectively.
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Outside the government education system, English-medium schools have

sprung up in every nook and corner of the country. They form a major part
of private sector education that, according to a report by Islamabad-based
Institute of Social and Policy Sciences, has seen a 105 per cent rise since
2000.

The linguistic divide between private schools (imparting education mostly

in English) and government schools (mostly Urdu-medium) is widening the
gap between rural Pakistan (where majority pupils still go to government
schools) and urban centres where private education has become, arguably,
the norm. It is similarly perpetuating existing class divides between the
English-speaking haves and the Urdu-trained have-nots – and generating
new ones – between the expensively educated and the cheaply qualiଘed.

Linguist Dr Tariq Rehman has written about these divisions in his 2005
paper titled Passports to Privilege: The English-Medium Schools in Pakistan.
“All the products of English schools, even those that are English-medium
only in name, agree in regarding themselves as an elite … with regard to
talent and knowledge,” he wrote.

As English ensures surer and faster social and economic mobility than Urdu
does, who wouldn’t want their children to study in English?

Competitive examinations for civil services manifest how resort to Urdu is

no longer a judicial or a constitutional affair alone. The Supreme Court
judgment mentioned these exams as an area where Urdu should be used. In
February 2017, Lahore High Court went a step ahead and issued a verdict,
directing the Federal Public Service Commission to conduct the 2018
Central Superior Service exams in Urdu. The commission appealed the
decision, saying time is a constraint. A different bench of the same high
court repealed the decision on March 29, 2017.

The 18th Constitutional Amendment could also have a role in delaying

Urdu’s implementation. It allowed the provinces to make their own
decisions about syllabus and medium of instruction (that is exactly what
Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have done vis-à-vis English). No central
authority exists in the country with the constitutional power to implement
a particular syllabus in a particular language – citing them as prerequisites
of national ideology and cohesion – as was the case with reference to Urdu
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of national ideology and cohesion – as was the case with reference to Urdu
and religious subjects in the not-so-distant past.

T he garden, covered in a marquee, is swept by a pleasant sea breeze and

a soft chatter of salutations. The ଘrst three rows of chairs under the
marquee are already full, with volunteers helping elderly guests ଘnd
suitable places to sit. It is 11 am on February 11, 2017, and a session at the 8th
Karachi Literature Festival at Beach Luxury Hotel is just about to start.

The session is titled Urdu Nu Kia Hua?. It reminds one of a Karachiite trying
to speak Punjabi. Its ostensible objective is to bring under the microscope
the “Punjabisation of Urdu”. Whether the insertion of a single Punjabi
preposition in an Urdu phrase as opposed to having the entire title in
Punjabi is a gimmick or an innocent pun, it does illicit a confused response
from the audience during questions and answers towards the end of the
session.

Saif Mahmood, a Delhi-based translator, is present on stage to moderate the

session that has nothing to do with the state of Urdu in his country. He is
ଘanked by Lahore-based educationist Arfa Sayeda Zehra and novelist Ali
Akbar Natiq and Karachi-based poet and translator Afzal Ahmed Syed.

There is little disagreement among the panelists about whether Punjab has
added to Urdu’s ଘavour. Syed admits that Punjabi – even though he is not
exposed to it directly – has seeped into his writing because of what he calls
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the homogenisation of cultures in Pakistan. To illustrate how Punjab has

also beneଘted from Karachi’s Urdu-speaking culture, he cites an example
from a ghazal of Punjab-born Urdu poet Zafar Iqbal: Maloom nahin ishq ke
sauday mein khasara, mere ko ziada hai ya tere ko ziada (Don’t know
whether loss in the deal of love, mine is more or yours is more). The use of
mere ko (mine) and tere ko (yours), Syed argues, is a compliment to Karachi’s
street slang.

Other than quoting from Mir Taqi Mir, Insha Allah Khan Insha and Daagh
Dehlvi, Natiq reads out his Urdu poem, Laqa Kabootar Kisne Palay? (Who
raised fantail pigeons?), which in spite of being in Urdu, derives heavily from
the Punjabi social and cultural ethos.

Zehra says it is only logical that Urdu is changing as a result of its

interaction with other languages in Pakistan. For her, Urdu is held hostage
today by anchorpersons on television, but she is not entirely unhappy with
that either. “If language is used for informing, its disrespect is acceptable.”

A woman in the audience asks why the decay of Urdu as a language is not
being questioned, as opposed to celebrating linguistic amalgamation. She
does not get an answer. The microphone passes on to the next questioner.

Books being fumigated at Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu's library in Karachi | Arif Mahmood, White
Star

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M arvi Memon was at one point Pakistan’s youngest female chief

executive, heading a ଘrm that offered the country’s ଘrst satellite
tracking system. After the 2008 general election, she became a member of
the National Assembly from Punjab on a reserved seat. She was a nominee
of Pakistan Muslim League–Quaid-e-Azam.

In 2010, Memon tabled a private member bill in the National Assembly to

declare Balochi, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Shina and Seraiki as national
languages alongside Urdu. The bill was shot down, mainly because it was
seen as clashing with Article 251.

Memon joined Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) in 2012 — just in time

as the party won the next general election. She again became a member of
the National Assembly — on a reserved seat but this time from Sindh. Her
new party was convinced that Pakistan could not have a single national
language. “In most nation states all major mother tongues are national
languages,” its 2013 election manifesto said. It promised to set up a “National
Language Commission … to develop criteria for giving the status of national
language to all major languages.”

The party made its federal government soon after that election, but the
commission is yet to come about. Memon, who now heads the government-
run Benazir Income Support Programme, managed to retrieve her 2010 bill
from the legislative archives, bringing it to the National Assembly’s
committee on law and justice in February 2014, now as a draft constitutional
amendment. It suggested two major changes in Article 251. “The National
Languages of Pakistan are Balochi, Balti, Brahvi, Punjabi, Pushto, Shina,
Sindhi, Seraiki, Hindko, Urdu and all those mother tongues as deemed to be
major mother tongues of Pakistan by the National Language Commission,”
read one of them. The other stated that a fund would be set up for language
promotion and Arabic and Persian would be “taught as subjects at school
level”.

The bill was rejected by the committee on July 16, 2014. Even though
Memon protested that it was in line with the PMLN manifesto, her own
party colleague, Mahmood Bashir Virk, who headed the committee, voted
against it. He was persuaded by law ministry representative Justice (retd)
Raza Khan that Article 28 of the Constitution already calls for the
preservation of Pakistani languages and that Pakistan suffered in 1971 mainly
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preservation of Pakistani languages and that Pakistan suffered in 1971 mainly

due to the recognition of Bengali as a national language alongside Urdu.
Awami National Party’s Haji Adeel is reported to have made a similar failed
attempt in the Senate to get other Pakistani languages the same national
status as Urdu enjoys.

Article 251 simply cannot be touched.

A rare manuscript at Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu's library | Arif Mahmood, White Star

A mid the whirring of generators and appetising smell of fried savouries,

Abdul Razzaq Janjua is perched on a stool, wearing a white prayer cap
and looking around with an empty gaze. His Olympia typewriter is facing
him; he himself is facing a line of desks with computers, printers and busy
customers haggling with the operators of those devices.

At Lahore’s District and Sessions Court, time is precious but Janjua seems to
have plenty. Ever since the arrival of computers and more energetic
competitors at his workplace, his time is mostly spent daydreaming and
exchanging pleasantries with old acquaintances.

He retired from his revenue department job in Gujranwala 32 years ago and
became an application writer at the court. Every morning, his son drops
him at the court entrance. In the evening, he packs up and catches the
metro bus to his house in Shahdara, on the other side of the Ravi river.
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metro bus to his house in Shahdara, on the other side of the Ravi river.

For a few hundred rupees, he can type anything for you in English. For
drafting in Urdu, he relies on longhand. The two languages are still being
used together at the court, the Supreme Court’s order notwithstanding.
“Urdu might be our national language but this [implementation] won’t
work,” he says. “The whole world is using English. We are subjects of English
speakers. How will Urdu work?”

His younger counterparts, Zain and Zafar, two Punjab University graduates,
left their jobs last year to form a drafting and composing start-up. On a
good day, they take home about 1,000 rupees. A former employee of
German IT ଘrm Rocket Internet, Zain knows Punjabi, Urdu and English but
he can draft a legal document even in Chinese, Persian and Arabic (a sure
sign of the changing nature of court work). How? That’s a trade secret, he
responds with a smug smile.

The two believe Urdu can still beneଘt the common people. Seated with
their machines not far from Janjua’s perch, Zain entertains a customer as
Zafar plays a computer game. A Punjabi by ethnicity, the former considers
Urdu his mother tongue and points to its currency among the poor. “The
common man understands Urdu so it is good if all his documents are in that
language,” the latter chimes in, as he shuts down the game to open an
unlicensed version of InPage, the premier Urdu word processing software
introduced in 1994.

Conversations at Lahore’s upscale grocery stores, restaurants, rickshaw and

taxi stands in middle-income and posh areas is mostly in Urdu, dashed here
and there with phrases or jokes in Punjabi. Generally in the city, speaking in
Urdu makes one look either sophisticated or docile — or an outsider from
Karachi. Umair Arshad Rana, a Rajput by caste and a Lahori by residence,
says his friends refer to those talking in Urdu as ‘Mummy Daddy’ — a term
used for someone who does as their parents say. He studied marketing at a
British university and works as a part-time sales manager at a steel
company in the mornings. In the evenings, he drives a Careem taxi.

Rana believes people do not think much about the language question in
urban Punjab. Or, maybe, they just do not talk about it.

Shahbaz Ali, another resident of Lahore who also drives a cab, aspires to
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Shahbaz Ali, another The case for Urdu as Pakistan's official language ­ People & Society ­ Herald
resident of Lahore who also drives a cab, aspires to
one day speak English with impressive ଘuency. From within Pakistani
languages, he prefers Urdu over Punjabi.

“Urdu is a sweet language and Punjabi is a dirty language,” he says. His

father addresses him in Punjabi but he hesitates to respond in the same
language — out of respect. “I speak Punjabi only when I am with my friends,”
he says.

This may explain why hundreds of thousands of Punjabis from the educated,
urban middle classes are reported to have marked Urdu as their mother
language in the 1998 census. An equal number, if not more, is expected to do
the same during the ongoing census.

Workers bind dictionaries at the Urdu Dictionary Board in Karachi | Arif Mahmood, White Star

Lahore-based Punjabi poet Mushtaq Sooଘ sees Punjab’s colonial history at

play behind this attitude. “When the Punjabis say that Punjabi is a dirty or
ill-mannered language, it is our colonial history that is talking,” he says.

The British annexed Punjab on April 2, 1849, almost 10 years after the death
of Ranjit Singh — the founder of the Lahore-based Sikh Empire. It was one
of the last few states in the Subcontinent to fall to them. By that time, East
India Company had governed some parts of India for almost 100 years and
had devised a language policy as an instrument of control.
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This was done mainly through the English Education Act 1835. Thomas
Babington Macaulay’s infamous Minute on Indian Education surfaced on
April 2 that year as the British parliament started debating expenses to be
made on providing ‘western’ education in India. Macaulay emphasised the
need for teaching English to “native subjects” and letting the “masses”
acquire education in vernacular languages. Sir Charles Trevelyan, who in
1838 wrote a book with the self-explanatory title On the Education of the
People of India, also advocated the same.

The dual-language policy the British adopted underwent a change in

Punjab. To facilitate the north Indian bureaucracy that the British had
brought with them to Lahore, they enforced Urdu as the vernacular
language here, instead of Punjabi.

This begs the questions: Why was there no resistance? Was the
acquiescence because Muslims and Hindus deemed Punjabi as the language
of Sikhs?

Hundreds of thousands of Punjabis from the educated, urban middle

classes are reported to have marked Urdu as their mother language in the
1998 census.

Sooଘ argues that “economic compulsion” is often overlooked in ଘnding

answers to these questions. “The British brought with them a whole new
system of railways, telegraph, telephone, hospitals, courts, police stations …
a whole new job market was created where Urdu and English [were both
used],” he says. This occasioned the birth of an Urdu-speaking middle class
among Punjabis.

The canal irrigation system subsequently built by the British in Punjab

initiated a whole new age of zameendari (landowning) and gave the British
an ally to perpetuate their colonial project. That also helped English and
Urdu spread across the canal-irrigated regions.

A Sahiwal-born PTV veteran, Sooଘ vigorously champions the cause of

Punjabi language and culture in his newspaper columns. After a stint with
Lahore-based music recording company, Sachal Studios, he has recently
joined an upcoming liberal arts university whose campus on Lahore’s
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The case for Urdu as Pakistan's official language ­ People & Society ­ Herald

Raiwind Road is near completion. It will be the ଘrst university in Pakistan to

ofଘcially adopt Urdu, English and Punjabi as mediums of instruction and will
add more languages depending on the linguistic diversity of its student
body. “Language is the best product of mankind. If there is only one
standard of being human, it is language,” he muses. “The problem starts
when one language is used to repress another.”

Sooଘ started taking Punjabi seriously during his time at the Government
College, Lahore. He now heads the Punjabi Adabi Board, an independent
institution formed in 1975 for reviving Punjabi language and literature. The
board ଘled a writ petition in the Lahore High Court last year for the
implementation of local languages, including Punjabi, Seraiki and Pothwari,
in primary schools of Punjab, mainly as a means to counter urban biases
towards these languages. “Urban Punjabis shy away from talking in Punjabi
out of contempt of their rural brethren who are considered lesser humans,”
Sooଘ remarks.

It is clear that Urdu’s implementation in Punjab during the British period

happened at the expense of local languages. But who did it beneଘt? “It
beneଘted Urdu,” says writer and critic Nasir Abbas Nayyar, who heads the
Urdu Science Board in Lahore and did his post-doctorate at Heidelberg
University, Germany, with a focus on Urdu syllabi in colonial India. “In the
20th century, all giants of Urdu literature were from Punjab.”

The Urdu publishing industry in

Punjab has experienced a
simultaneous rise. “We are unable to
meet the appetite of the market,”
says Afzaal Ahmed, owner of Sang-
e-Meel Publications, one of the
country’s largest publishing houses.
A Mercedes is parked outside its
multistorey ofଘce-cum-bookstore
on Lahore’s Lower Mall road. The
ଘrm has a policy to tolerate
shoplifting — to encourage a culture
of reading, says Afzaal Ahmed.

His father Niaz Ahmed opened

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His father Niaz Ahmed opened
Sang-e-Meel Publications in a
single-storey ofଘce in 1962 on the
A staffer at the Urdu Dictionary Board in same premises. One may not ଘnd
Karachi | Arif Mahmood, White Star populist writers such as Umera
Ahmed and Hashim Nadeem on its
catalogue, but its market share – with 200 annual publications – is still
considerable.

“Books of Mustansar Hussain Tarar, Dr Muhammad Younis Butt, Intizar

Husain, Bano Qudsia, Ashfaq Ahmed and Qurratulain Hyder sell like hot
cakes,” Afzaal Ahmed says, mentioning writers who all made it big in the
latter half of the 20th century.

Almost 70 per cent of Sang-e-Meel Publications’ titles are in Urdu — 29 per

cent of them are in English (mostly non-ଘction by foreign writers) and only
one per cent in Punjabi. Why does Sang-e-Meel refrain from publishing in
languages other than Urdu? Pakistani English writers are yet to write
something that is relevant to the Pakistani common man, Afzaal Ahmed
responds. That is a surprising answer coming as it does in a city where the
language of choice for aspiring young people is English, not Urdu.

Athar Tahir, who heads the International Centre for Pakistani Writing in
English established at Lahore’s Kinnaird College in July 2014, says there has
been a history of hostility towards Pakistanis writing in English, mainly for
ideological reasons. Back in the 1950s and the 1960s – when poets like
Tauଘq Rafat were pioneering a Pakistani idiom in English – those writing
ଘction and poetry in English were considered anti-Pakistan, he explains.
Only in recent decades has Pakistani English-writing gradually begun to
gather an audience within Pakistan, he says. But that audience remains
small.

A former federal secretary of the education department, Tahir pairs his

kameez shalwar and waistcoat with Oxford cufଘinks. “Language can shape
your identity in the sense that it can inଘuence your mannerism,” he says. It
does not make you a traitor nor can it supplant, or transplant, your identity,
he suggests. “If you have your feet ଘrmly planted in the soil then any
language can sing the song of the soil.”

A Punjabi speaking with a fellow Punjabi in Urdu and learning English at

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The case for Urdu as Pakistan's official language ­ People & Society ­ Herald

school will remain a Punjabi — just like an Englishman will remain an

Englishman in the United States where most people speak the same
language that he does.

A t Dhaka University’s convocation on March 24, 1948, Governor General

Muhammad Ali Jinnah delivered a speech that is spoken of to this day.
“In my personal opinion, Pakistan’s ofଘcial language – which will become a
source of communication between its different provinces – can only be one
and that is Urdu. No language other than Urdu,” he said.

Jinnah was responding to those who

were asking for Bengali’s adoption as
the second national language. Four
years later – on February 21, 1952, to
be exact – the state responded to
the same demand with brute force,
arresting and killing many students,
teachers and intellectuals at the
same Dhaka University.

It was in the memory of that bloodshed that the United

Nations Educational, Scientiଘc and Cultural Organization (Unesco)
celebrated its ଘrst International Mother Language Day on February 21,
2000. Since then the day has become an annual ଘxture — as a stark
reminder of how Pakistan has massively mishandled its national language
question.

On this year’s International Mother Language Day, Pakistan Academy of

Letters put together a two-day event in Islamabad. Littérateurs, scholars
and journalists from across the country were invited. At the concluding
session, Marvi Memon’s constitutional draft came up for discussion. She
was subjected to a number of emotional and academic questions. Some of
those questions later became the basis for editorials in literary journals.

Karachi-based scholar Rauf Parekh, who was present at the event, took
exception to a clause in her draft (carried forward from Article 251) that
provides for an additional 15-year period for Urdu’s implementation.
Another 15 years? He asked in a scathing March 2017 editorial in the
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monthly journal Qaumi Zaban. “Whenever there is talk of Urdu’s

implementation … to make Urdu and other Pakistani languages clash, a new
controversy is initiated,” he further wrote.

As Memon was defending her proposition at the event, Senate’s Standing

Committee on Law and Justice was holding a public hearing on two private
members’ bills – one presented by Sassui Palijo and Mukhtiar Dhamrah of
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the other by various members of PMLN
and PPP – both calling for similar amendments in Article 251. A February 21,
2017 news report in daily Dawn says legislators and people from different
walks of life present at the hearing agreed with the proposals to give
national language status to a number of regional languages.

Post-independence, changing the state’s administrative idiom from

English to Urdu was one of the 𐴀rst challenges policymakers faced.

The agreement would have been an abomination to Sardar Abdur Rab

Nishtar, one of the founding fathers of Pakistan. “No one can dare make any
language other than Urdu the national and ofଘcial language of Pakistan,” he
once famously proclaimed in a 1951 speech.

Urdu, after all, was a major symbol of the Pakistan Movement.

Post-independence, changing the state’s administrative idiom from English

to Urdu was one of the ଘrst challenges policymakers faced. They started by
setting up institutions. The Urdu Dictionary Board was set up in 1958.
Prominent writers like Qurratulain Hyder, Jamiluddin Aali, Ghulam Abbas
and Qudratullah Shahab among others formed Pakistan Writers Guild in
January 1959. It was the country’s ଘrst state-backed literary organisation
dedicated, at least on paper, to promoting literature in all Pakistani
languages and protecting the rights of those producing it. The guild was
modelled after the Union of Soviet Writers set up in the wake of the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 as well as India’s Sahitya Akademi. In
practice, the guild was seen by many leftist and pro-democracy writers and
poets as a handmaiden of General Ayub Khan’s military regime.

Many other institutions followed soon afterwards — such as Writers and

Scholars Foundation, National Book Foundation, Pakistan Academy of
Letters, National Language Promotion Department.
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Letters, National Language Promotion Department.

Poet Iftikhar Arif has spent nearly 24 years of his life holding key positions at
all four. He claims credit for initiating the construction of both buildings —
Pakistan Academy of Letters and the National Language Promotion
Department. He has served at the former twice and is in his second stint at
the top of the latter. If Faiz Ahmed Faiz is to be believed, Arif has made Urdu
fashionable.

Iftikhar Arif sits in his ofଘce at the National Language Promotion Department | Tanveer
Shahzad, White Star

His ଘrst major literary assignment, however, was not in a state-owned

institution. He joined the Third World Foundation’s Urdu Markaz in
Piccadilly, London when it was founded in 1981 and worked there until it
shut down in 1990. The Markaz was funded by the Bank of Credit and
Commerce International (BCCI), set up by renowned banker Agha Hasan
Abedi who came from an Urdu-speaking family that had migrated to
Karachi from Lucknow.

Urdu Markaz served as a home away from home for Pakistani writers and
poets forced into exile during General Ziaul Haq’s military regime. It was
also a meeting point for Urdu littérateurs from around the world.

In a recent interview at his residence in Defense Housing Authority,

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Islamabad, Arif says literary institutions have an important role in the

evolution of a language and its literature. “Such organisations exist in every
progressive society the world over,” he says.

What about military rulers such as Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq using these
organisations to cultivate an intellectual atmosphere in their favour? “That
does not invalidate their existence. Zia came and used the Pakistan
Academy of Letters for his own ambitions. That does not make the academy
purposeless,” he responds.

T he Pakistan Academy of Letters and National Language Promotion

Department sit across each other on Islamabad’s Pitras Bukhari Road.
Going by what their staffers say, the two institutions also sit across from
each other on almost everything.

There is a turf between the two that, thankfully, does not go beyond mutual
recrimination in private conversations. Their staffers differ on the
implementation of Urdu as the ofଘcial language. The people at the academy
take an idealistic view and want to ensure its implementation at any cost;
those at the department are not so sanguine even though the
implementation is essentially their ofଘcial raison d’être. There is another,
rather personal, reason: Arif, who heads the department, does not seem to
like the way the academy is being run. His prejudices echo among his staff.

Formed on July 7, 1976, the academy has a mission to promote literary

activities through awards, grants and publication of books and journals. It is
also mandated to ensure the welfare of people of letters through insurance
packages and stipends — a purpose not exactly different from that of the
Pakistan Writers Guild. It pays 7,000 rupees each to the families of nearly
500 writers every month. The amount will be raised to 13,000 from July 1,
2017.

The academy recently gave its highest honour, Kamal-e-Fun Award

(carrying one million rupees as prize money), to poet Kishwar Naheed only
to the chagrin of poet Zafar Iqbal’s supporters. This is not the ଘrst time –
and will not be the last – when sections of the Urdu literati stand
diametrically opposed to each other.

Within the academy, however, the atmosphere is as staid as in any ofଘce in

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Within the academy, however, the atmosphere is as staid as in any ofଘce in
Islamabad.

The entrance of the National Language Promotion Department, Islamabad | Tanveer Shahzad,
White Star

Akhtar Raza Saleemi had done his masters in Urdu from Sargodha
University when he saw an advert in the newspaper about a clerical vacancy
at the academy. Almost 11 years later, and at the age of 42, he is working as
an editor here. A Hindko speaker from Haripur district, he has authored two
novels and four poetry collections — all in Urdu.

His ofଘce cabin smells heavily of tobacco. Those who know Urdu cannot do
much except write or teach, he says. “The problem is that English has
become the standard for being knowledgeable.” He fetches a packet of
cigarettes from his coat’s front pocket and clariଘes that his views are
personal and do not reଘect the position of the academy. “The national
language is just a symbolic thing. Our national game is hockey. You know
how it is [faring].”

Every subsequent generation of bureaucrats and politicos has preferred to

defer the matter to those who came after them, so it seems.

Dr Qasim Bughio, the academy’s chairman, does not seem to have many
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Dr Qasim Bughio, theThe case for Urdu as Pakistan's official language ­ People & Society ­ Herald
academy’s chairman, does not seem to have many
friends within Pakistan’s literary circles. During the Gwadar Book Festival,
held between February 16 and 19 this year, not a day went by when he was
not condemned by the speakers and the audience for one thing or the
other.

Old associates of the academy accuse him of removing plaques that had
their names on them. “Bughio is part of the government’s conspiracy to
delay Urdu’s adoption [as the ofଘcial language],” says a poet in Karachi,
requesting anonymity. “He deliberately invited Marvi Memon to the event
last month to make [the adoption of Urdu] controversial.”

T he National Language Authority was set up on October 4, 1979 as an

autonomous entity to facilitate the adoption of Urdu as the
government’s ofଘcial language. On August 17, 2012 it was renamed as the
National Language Promotion Department and was attached to the federal
information ministry as part of a larger institutional overhaul.

The department’s headquarters in Islamabad is surrounded by lawns and an

odd silence. It provides jobs to as many as 100 people, only ଘve of them
women. Its library is stocked with 40,000 books and around 15,000 journals
— almost all of them donated to it. “We publish [Urdu] dictionaries of
technical terms, pure sciences and vocalisation that no private institution
has the capacity to work on,” says Safdar Rasheed, 45, a language developer
at the department. He holds a doctorate in Urdu.

When the department was an autonomous institution, it used to translate

documents for various government departments for a fee that would get
deposited in what was called ‘Services Fund’, which was mostly used for
language promotion activities. Now that fund has ceased to exist, as have
language promotion activities.

Dr Fateh Muhammad Malik, 74, served as the department’s chairman from

December 20, 2000 to August 27, 2005. In his resignation letter, he wrote
the department had already fulଘlled all its responsibilities. These days he
spends his time working on his writings at his Islamabad residence. “We
even translated the bureaucracy’s bible, ESTA Code. For federal ministries
and divisions that wish to switch over to Urdu, the department has already
published 29 essential manuals and 96 books of Urdu terminology, all
available on its website.”
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It is clear that Urdu’s implementation in Punjab during the British period

happened at the expense of local languages.

Malik narrates an anecdote about the 15-year clause in the Constitution.

When the clause was being enacted back in the 1970s, senior bureaucrats at
the time thought they would have already retired before that period
expired. That is why they did not object to the clause, thinking that dealing
with it would be the headache of their successors and not their own, he
says.

Every subsequent generation of bureaucrats and politicos has preferred to

defer the matter to those who came after them, so it seems.

“Nobody is serious about it,” says a senior ofଘcial at the department,

requesting anonymity. “In one ofଘcial brieଘng, Irfan Siddiqui himself said let
things run the way they are running.”

Yet, the Supreme Court verdict has stirred things a little. Nubla Pirzada,
head of the translation section at the department – and who has a degree in
geography from the Punjab University – has overseen the translation of over
3,000 pages of ofଘcial documents for 56 government and semi-government
institutions and reviewed the translations of an additional 3,000 pages of
ofଘcial documents for 25 institutions since the verdict was issued.

Pirzada is one of the department’s longest-serving ofଘcers. She has been

here since 1986. Her own children went to The City School, an English-
medium school right across the street from her workplace. “Knowing
English is as important as knowing Urdu,” she says.

T he Urdu Science Board was set up on May 24, 1962. Called Markazi Urdu
Board originally, it has its head ofଘce in Lahore and regional ofଘces in
all four provinces. It was also an autonomous institution before it was
attached to the federal information ministry in 2012.

The board has approximately 40

Inside the Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu's library in employees and houses a library
Karachi | Arif Mahmood, White Star stocked with nearly 10,000 titles. It
has so far published 900 books.
Nasir Abbas Nayyar took over as its youngest director general on December
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Nasir Abbas Nayyar took over as its youngest director general on December
21, 2016.

The board has a revolving fund of ଘve million rupees, generated by book
sales, that it uses for publishing Urdu books on social, pure and applied
sciences, though according to Nayyar, it published “only ଘve to six books
last year”. The target, he says, is to publish 50 to 60 books this year.

A Punjabi born in Jhang, Nayyar has dedicated his life to Urdu literary
criticism. He stresses the need for promoting the study of linguistics as a
subject.

Rather than playing politics on the issue of language, promotion of a literate

culture could be a better way of improving language literacy — of Urdu and
all other languages spoken in Pakistan. “There is decadence in general when
it comes to languages,” says Nayyar.

Sitting in his cabin that overlooks a well-kept garden within the board’s
ofଘces on Upper Mall, Lahore, he says that the time is gone when people
would come out onto the streets for Urdu. Why should they? The state has
used Urdu for perpetuating a particular national narrative, making both the
language and the narrative sound sacred. “Speakers of other languages feel
their rights are being usurped,” he says.

“I f we leave Urdu to its fate or the forces of nature, its blooming garden
will turn into a withered heap,” thus spoke Maulvi Abdul Haq, the
language’s most ardent champion in the middle decades of the 20th
century. At the time of Partition, he was working as the secretary of
Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu, founded in 1903 under the auspices of the All-
India Muslim Educational Conference to promote Urdu and counter the
inଘuence of Hindi in north India.

He brought with him one part of Anjuman to Pakistan after 1947, along with
as many books as he could. The other part still operates from New Delhi.
The government is building the Anjuman’s headquarters – called Urdu Bagh
– in a 5,331-square yard complex in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar area.

Educated at Aligarh University, Haq is lovingly called Baba-e-Urdu (Father

of Urdu). In 1948, he set up Federal Urdu Science College in Karachi to
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The case for Urdu as Pakistan's official language ­ People & Society ­ Herald

impart higher education in Urdu; it became Federal Urdu University of Arts,

Science and Technology in November 2002.

Land for Urdu Bagh was acquired as far back as June 1987 but construction
began only after President Mamnoon Hussain – himself an Urdu speaker –
took personal interest in the project that is receiving almost 30 million
rupees from the federal government. If all goes well, the Anjuman’s ofଘces
will be shifted here on Haq’s 56th death anniversary on August 16, 2017.

The Anjuman is a private entity but it receives an annual grant of 10 million

rupees from Karachi’s city government. It also receives money from the
Pakistan Academy of Letters for book publishing — in 2017 it will receive 2.5
million rupees to publish 24 books.

The Anjuman owns as many as 60,000 books and 30,000 magazines that are
stacked on the ଘrst ଘoor of its current abode — a 1,000-square yard house
in Gulshan-e-Iqbal area. Its catalogue has been recently digitised and boasts
of rare, historical documents such as Kulliyat-e-Mir published by Fort
William College, Calcutta, in 1811. Due to a lack of space, 2,500 of these rare
manuscripts are housed at the National Museum in Karachi.

The Anjuman has seen many presidents come and go but it has had only
three secretaries — poet Jamiluddin Aali succeeded Haq and handed charge
to Dr Fatema Hassan on March 24, 2014, after occupying the post for over
50 years.

F ollowing the 1970 general election, National Awami Party-Wali (NAPW)

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ollowing the 1970 general election, National Awami Party-Wali (NAPW)
and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam formed a coalition government in North West
Frontier Province (NWFP), present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Mufti
Mahmud, a Deobandi scholar and head of the latter party, was elected as
chief minister. In Balochistan, Sardar Ataullah Mengal of NAPW became the
chief minister of a coalition of the same parties.

Both governments enforced Urdu as the ofଘcial language of their provinces.

“A note by a former chief secretary of NWFP highlights the fact that as a
result, available human and ଘnancial resources of both provincial
governments were optimised,” reads the Supreme Court verdict on Urdu’s
implementation.

In Punjab, under the aegis of then chief minister Hanif Ramay, Dr Fateh
Muhammad Malik was working at Majlis-e-Zaban-e-Daftari — a committee
that, according to American historian Alyssa Ayres, was formed by Punjab’s
governor in 1949 to coin new Urdu words. The Majlis had prepared the
necessary groundwork for implementing Urdu in Punjab government’s
ofଘces when then prime minister Zulଘkar Ali Bhutto called up Ramay and
asked him to slow down. “He said if you don’t go slow, you will cause
immense problems for me in Sindh,” Malik recalls.

Muhajirs, indeed, are an amalgamation of numerous migrant groups and

each group has a distinctive vocabulary, vocalisation and literary culture
of its own.

The problems did emerge — though from a different source.

Zulଘkar Ali Bhutto’s cousin Mumtaz Bhutto led the provincial government in
Sindh then. With overt support from him, the provincial assembly passed
the Sindhi Language Bill, 1972, on July 7 that year, declaring Sindhi as the
ofଘcial language of the province. Resistance to the imposition of Sindhi
from the Urdu-speaking residents of the province – most of whom were
muhajir (migrants) from north India – was both swift and severe. It resulted
in deadly riots across urban centres in Sindh. The riots in Karachi were the
most widespread.

“ … The mother tongue of a very big ethnological minority [almost 30 per

cent in Sindh] happens to be Urdu and this community is as deeply attached
to Urdu as every old Sindhi is attached to Sindhi. Moreover, Urdu has been
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to Urdu as every old Sindhi is attached to Sindhi. Moreover, Urdu has been
declared the national language of Pakistan and the provincial language in
the Punjab, NWFP and Balochistan,” is how leftist intellectual Sibte Hasan
wrote about the origin of the riots in the Herald’s August 1972 issue. The
slogan for a separate province of Karachi, called Muhajiristan, was ଘrst
raised in the wake of those riots, Hasan said.

A telltale photo published in the Herald back then showed a couple of young
people holding a placard that “warned” the police and buses that their entry
had been banned “till further orders”. More ominously, the placard read —
‘province: Karachi; capital: Liaquatabad’.

No exact ଘgures are available on how many people died in the riots which
were quelled days later after the army took control of Karachi and other
cities, and imposed curfew.

Books at the Urdu Dictionary Board in Karachi | Arif Mahmood, White Star

In My Life’s Journey: The Early Years (1966-1988), published in 2011,

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder Altaf Hussain thus commented
on the riots: “The language clashes in Sindh were the result of a conspiracy
whose purpose was to fan conଘict between the Sindhis and the Mohajirs
while the exploiting class retained their positions in the government.”

This political proclamation aside, language riots were a major reason why
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This political proclamation aside, language riots were a major reason why
Hussain formed MQM in 1984. The other factor in the party’s rise was a
gradual fading away of the Urdu-speaking elite’s dominance of federal
bureaucracy, judiciary, intelligentsia and banking/business sector. It was
being replaced by the newly rising Punjabi power elite, backed by the
Punjabis’ numerical majority in institutions like the military and law
enforcement agencies. A resurgent Sindhi nationalism, another perceived
threat to Urdu-speaking muhajirs, was yet another factor.

Along with religion and class, Urdu is one of the most signiଘcant factors
contributing to what MQM calls the muhajir identity. The party made that
identity the centre of its politics to highlight, protect and promote the
rights of muhajirs. “ ... Urdu which is the mother tongue of a majority of the
muhajirs ... [and] muhajir culture and civilization are also in harmony with
the demands of the modern age,” Hussain said. “In contrast, the other
languages spoken in Pakistan … have still not been successful in assimilating
modernity,” he said, not concealing his cultural superiority complex.

Karachi-based writer Asif Farrukhi has immaculate credentials for being a

member of high-minded ahl-e-zaban – people of north Indian origin where
Urdu ଘrst ଘourished as a language of culture and commerce – whom
Hussain pointed to his book. He is the son of Lucknow-born literary scholar
Aslam Farrukhi and heads the Arzu Center for Regional Languages and
Humanities at Karachi’s Habib University. But he believes deeming only ahl-
e-zaban as the genuine speakers of Urdu “is very exclusionist and outdated”.

For him, literary achievement and expertise in language are what make
someone ahl-e-zaban. “I refuse to accept any deଘnition of the word Urdu
speaker which would include a gentleman sitting in London (Hussain) but
leave out Shaikh Ayaz (a Sindhi), Allama Iqbal (a Kashmiri-Punjabi), Faiz
Ahmed Faiz (a Punjabi) and Saadat Hasan Manto (a Kashmiri-Punjabi). To
me, all of them were Urdu speakers.”

Language riots were a major reason why Altaf Hussain formed MQM in
1984.

Mushtaq Sooଘ sheds light on the same problem from another angle. He
blames Urdu-speaking muhajirs living in Sindh’s cities for siding with
parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami and MQM which, respectively, have
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parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami and MQM which, respectively, have
exhibited extremist and fascist tendencies, heavily laced with violence
against their opponents. “Muhajirs are mostly educated, urban people. They
should have an inclination towards democratic values,” he says. Because
they are not seen by Punjab-based intelligentsia as siding with democratic
forces, he says, there is “no sympathy for Karachi’s Urdu-speaking people in
Punjab”.

Even when there is a lot of respect, to some extent even mobilisation, for
the language and the cultural values it represents, people in Punjab do not
ଘnd it convincing when MQM talks about the marginalisation of Urdu
speakers.

J awaharlal Nehru, India’s ଘrst prime minister and one of the most revered
leaders of the Indian National Congress, seems to have made the rural-
urban distinction with reference to Urdu much before MQM did. “Urdu is
the language of the towns and Hindi is the language of the villages. Hindi is
of course also spoken in towns but Urdu is almost entirely an urban
language,” he once said.

With some minor adjustments, this is probably true of today’s Pakistan, too.
While Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Seraiki, Hindko, etc, remain the main,
in some cases the only, languages in the villages where their respective
speakers live; urban Pakistan mostly, if not entirely, converses in Urdu of
various tints and hues. Its widespread use in government-provided
education over the last seven decades and in mass media such as
newspapers and television has spread all across the country, enabling
people everywhere to acquire some level of proଘciency in it that helps them
talk to their compatriots who are native speakers of a tongue other than
theirs.

Even among Karachi’s ahl-e-zaban population, Urdu has as many variations

as it has elsewhere in Pakistan. Muhajirs, indeed, are an amalgamation of
numerous migrant groups and each group has a distinctive vocabulary,
vocalisation and literary culture of its own.

Consider the residents of Banarasi Mohalla in the heart of Baloch Goth in

Karachi’s Orangi Town. They originally came from Banaras, present-day
Varanasi, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Their older generation speaks a
mélange of Banarasi Boli, Bhojpuri and Hindi/Urdu. The younger ones speak
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mélange of Banarasi Boli, Bhojpuri and Hindi/Urdu. The younger ones speak
state-standardised Pakistani Urdu, with a smattering of English they picked
up at private English-medium schools they attend.

Like most other Banarasi families, Tanveer Esaar’s parents settled in the
area in 1983. Born in 1960, he has ଘve children: three daughters and two
sons — three of whom live with him in a single-storey house that comprises
two bedrooms and a small workshop where he and his sons weave cloth for
menswear. Of the nine languages listed on the census form, he is marking
Urdu as his mother language because, he says, it is associated with the
“Pakistani” identity.

His afଘnity with this trans-ethnic identity is a sign of changed times in

Karachi. As MQM is losing its monopoly over the city’s politics, its
constituents, the ahl-e-zaban, feel increasingly unsure which way to look
for support and protection. Esaar’s insistence of being a “Pakistani” is more
a bid to survive in a highly polarised society than an expression of cultural
preferences. The late Jaun Elia, a Karachi-based poet who was born in the
Uttar Pradesh town of Amroha before Partition, has captured the ethos of
Pakistan’s Urdu-speaking muhajir community such as those living in
Banarasi Mohalla in a poignant half-verse:

Additional reporting by Ali Haider Habib

This was originally published in the Herald's April 2017 issue under the
headline "A language in search of a nation". To read more subscribe to the
Herald in print.
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Herald in print.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

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