The curious case of regional languages

If you speak Urdu and visit any province of Pakistan, people will at least understand what you are trying to say

Two weeks ago, a Pakhtun group staged a rally outside the Karachi Press Club on International Mother Languages Day. Their demand was that Pashto be granted national status. Unsurprisingly,  many MPAs in the Sindh Assembly want Sindhi to get similar status.

Such debates have been going on for decades. It is not uncommon for some thinkers to argue how Urdu has been usurping the right to recognition of regional languages. Moreover, some of them believe Urdu is responsible for the lack of literature that the other languages have produced with writers like Iqbal, Faiz and Manto who, despite their ‘non-Urdu’ origins, chose to write in Urdu.

And lest we forget, let’s remind ourselves of the rhetoric on the Quaid’s March 1948 speeches in Dhaka.

Perhaps, we are the only nation in the world that bashes its founder with such ease and, sometimes, pleasure. While criticising Muhammed Ali Jinnah for his decision to choose Urdu as the national language over other regional languages, we forget that it was not a decision based on the Quaid’s personal biases. In fact, I believe that it was and is, to date, the right decision.

Let’s first decide what the difference between a ‘national’ and a ‘regional’ language is. I feel that a national language is supposed to be representative of the whole nation — which comprises several ethnic and religious groups. On the other hand, a regional language is expected to represent the people of a certain region.

Let’s take the example of our languages. How many of us living in any province other than Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa understand, let alone speak, a sentence of Pashto? I, or my non-Pakhtun acquaintances, don’t even know a single word of the Pashto language for that matter. Coming over to Sindhi, how many of us living in Karachi (which is the capital of the province and comprises various ethnic groups), speak Sindhi beyond ‘Hiya billi ahay’ (This is a cat)? On what grounds, then, can we argue for national status for regional languages?

In contrast, Urdu is the lingua franca of Pakistan. If you speak Urdu and you visit any province of the country, people will at least understand what you are trying to say.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2015.