KOT SULTAN:
In the Indian subcontinent, the standard medium of language which was imposed on ancestors by the British colonisers and later recognised by our successors after the independence was English. As a result, the non-standard medium of language, which was a collection of different native languages of the people during colonial era, started becoming less and less significant. Today, while parents are eager to teach their children proper English, they tend to forget the beauty and mystic nature of the local language of Pakistan, Urdu. Even though we were able to get rid of the British, their cultures and ways had already been ingrained in us. It is because of this that citizens have developed a colonial mindset and still inadvertently follow the ways set by the British. A person’s overt fascination with the English language is a depiction of his enslaved mind.
In the process, the Urdu language has disintegrated with time. Not only has the elegance of the language slowly withered away but it has been mutilated by mixing English words in its vocabulary. We, therefore, need to tackle this issue on the massive level by giving equal importance, if not more, to Urdu as well as other regional languages including Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi, etc. We have to recognise that while English is the need of this era, our local languages are what define our identity.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 25th, 2021.
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