Language has remained a very serious and contentious issue in this country since its inception.
KARACHI: A private language bill has recently been presented in the National Assembly, with the objective of making several languages other than Urdu our national languages. This is a welcome development. Language has remained a very serious and contentious issue in this country since its inception.
In 1948, when Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah declared Urdu as the sole national language of Pakistan in Dhaka University, a group of students launched a protest. Also, a former prime minster of India, Morarji Desai, is quoted as having once said: “Pakistan was broken on the basis of language.”
During a visit to Bangladesh last month, I visited the War Liberation Museum in Dhaka and noticed that in 1948, Bengali members of the Constituent Assembly had proposed that Urdu, English and Bengali be declared as national languages of Pakistan. However, vested interests in West Pakistan rejected this suggestion.
I suggest that the bill should be amended to make provincial languages such as Punjabi, Balochi, Sindhi and Pashtu national languages along with Urdu.
Mohammad Khan Sial
Published in The Express Tribune, February 6th, 2011.
