The status of Urdu became a marker for Muslim identity in the pre-partition Indian subcontinent, and helped legitimise the Two-Nation Theory, based on which Pakistan was created. However, the continued imposition of a single dominant language across our heterogeneous nation poses evident problems. These problems range from lingering grievances linked to wider issues of socio-political marginalisation, to loss of cultural heritage, as well as undermining educational outcomes.
The insistence to declare Urdu the sole national language became a precursor to the outright secession of Bangladesh and it continues to cause regional and sub-regional grievances even today. Ignoring regional languages also has a particularly detrimental effect on education according to Unesco’s latest Global Education Monitoring Report which has categorically cautioned against hegemonic assertions of a national language in multi-ethnic societies. Unesco’s review of 40 countries’ education plans found that less than half of them adequately recognise the importance of teaching children in their own language, particularly the younger students.
It is thus unfortunate that large numbers of children in so many countries, which are struggling to improve their education levels, are actually being taught in languages that they don’t really understand. This single fact poses a major hurdle in the way of developing critical reading and writing skills in early years of schooling, which are needed in order to pursue further education.
The decision of promoting Urdu as the national language and the language of instruction in schools may have been a choice of necessity in the context of post-independence, but this policy stance has now became a source of alienation in a country that was home to six major linguistic groups and dozens more smaller ones. A vast proportion of poor parents who send their children to government schools often not only lack literacy skills, they are also unfamiliar with the official languages used in school, which in turn is reinforcing gaps in learning opportunities between minority and majority language groups.
The hesitation of our policymakers to encourage the use of the mother tongue in education is troubling, given the plethora of research pointing to the positive effect of using local languages in education. Our Constitution requires provinces to take steps for the promotion, teaching, and usage of regional languages. The 18th Amendment, 2010, which devolved education to the provincial level has provided an opportunity to incorporate regional languages within the education system.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Sindh and Balochistan have made some efforts to include regional languages within the education system. However, these efforts have not picked up the required momentum. Conversely, Punjab has controversially begun experimenting with use of English as the medium of instruction in many government schools. While a unifying language for a globalising world, teaching children in public schools in English is not a feasible solution, given that hardly any government teachers, let alone the children’s parents, can speak the language fluently.
To help improve the quality of education being provided by our public school system, it is imperative that we begin teaching children in a language they understand. At least six years of education in the mother tongue is considered necessary to ensure that children from ethnically diverse communities do not fall behind. Bilingual or multilingual education programmes can be formulated to help ease the transition to the teaching of official languages like Urdu at higher levels of education.
In practice, however, our provincial education departments have found it difficult just to avail textbooks in regional languages, let alone infuse the curricula with regional culture and literature. Our educational planners will need to take a much more holistic approach to incorporating regional languages within the public education system. Teacher education will need to be revised to enable teaching early reading skills in more than one language, and to use local language materials effectively. Even teacher hiring policies will need to be altered to hire and train teachers from diverse linguistic and ethnic minorities, to in turn serve in the schools within their own ethnic communities.
Accomplishing these tasks is not going to be easy, but it is an effort worth making. Incorporating regional languages within the public education system could help acknowledge and celebrate the rich ethnic diversity within our country, as well as improve student learning outcomes and student retention rates in the early stages of education, in turn enabling the multitudes of children currently enrolled in public primary schools around the country to effectively reach the secondary education level.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 11th, 2016.
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What hegemony? Young generation can’t even read Urdu or speak properly! Why are the local languages for only the poor? Don’t create an under class by forcing primary education in local language only! Provide options of local language, Urdu, and English or any combination thereof and let parents/students decide at the local level. UN is not always right. We will be making the same mistake by forcing local languages on the poor that we did by forcing Urdu before.
Any thoughts about English’s hegemony? As for Urdu, it is absolutely essential for Pakistan. Imagine a Pakhtoon truck driver talking to a Sindhi roadside restaurant waiter, which language they use to communicate? From Karachi to Skardu and FATA to Tharparkar, Urdu is the common language of communication, even illiterate people can communicate in Urdu.
@Old Ravian:
Hindustani is understood in Pakistan only because it has been forced on us for over 70 years. Indigenous languages must have greater rights in Pakistan than this language imported from India.
The necessity of Urdu is an idealized need, which holds no weight. Gone the days when nations integrate societies based on single language. Also, Pakistan is not primary based upon any single language, ethnicity and religion but on economic uplift, which was missing in Muslims in general and in this region (Modern day Pakistan) in particular before the division of subcontinent.
Key for integration of Pakistan is not a language or religion, but common economic interests and for that it is necessary for Pakistanis to speak and write global language i.e English.
@Frank @Ahmed
@Old Ravian is spot on Pakistan needs a language of wider communication, and Urdu is the only one that fits the bill. Making it a national language seems to be overkill, infact Pakistan should not have a national language and Urdu should just be the official language.
Schooling should be in the mother tongue but that decision should be with the district govt or even better with the school principle, can you imagine the hoopla if Sindhi was forced in Karachi/Hyderabad by the Sindh Govt? same case with Hazara or Seraiki.
Urdu as a language should be taught to all children starting from class 6-12 and English as a language from class 11-12 for preparation in higher education. Starting from English at the earliest is a non-starter and misguided no nation ever has progressed using an education system based on a foreign language.
@Frank:
Time for you to wake up and let go of your ‘native’ language.
Urdu was already spoken in Pakistan, which was Hindustan,
up until only 68 years ago.
@Old Ravian:
Agree with you. You can go in any corner of the Land of the Pure,
converse in Urdu or make yourself understood, in Urdu.
It is the lingua franka of the Indo Pak sub continent. That is about
2 billion people, roughly.
@ Motiwala
Before British rule Hindi was spoken by virtually no one in the area that is now Pakistan. Even by the end of British rule it was only spoken by some urban punjabis. It is the Pakistani state that forced Hindi on us. It can have a role to play in pakistan but is an injustice to deprive Pakistanis of their own languages.
@Motiwala: Who spoke Urdu in Pakistan until the British came ? You don’t know that Hindustani is only a few hundred years old. It is not the native language of any region of Pakistan. Progress in Pakistan can only happen if people get educated in their native languages – not a foreign language which has limited use like Urdu. I would prefer English as the official language like most Pakistanis since it is just as foreign but more useful.
@Motiwala: India has a 3 language formula in most states for public schools : local language is medium of instruction, Hindi is the 2nd language and English is the 3rd language. Of course private schools (and not necessarily elite private schools who teach English as a first language are attracting far more students even from the poorer sections of society.
India does not have one national language. IT has 22 official languages. Yet Hindi is widely understood without coercion. Incidentally while people do understand Hindi across India for the most part – it is NOT the lingua franca for 60% of Indians outside the Hindi belt where people prefer to communicate in their mother tongue.
Also Urdu was not widely spoken in present day Pakistan at all prior to partition. This however has no bearing on what language Pakistani parents choose to educate their kids. It is best if parents decide rather than the state. If parents want to teach Urdu, its history as an Indian language should be irrelevant to their decision.
An impression has been made over the many years in urban areas of Pakistan (Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore) and throughout, elite schools, institutes, colleges and universities, that he/she who speaks Urdu language has got to be ‘cool’, ‘modern’, ‘sophisticated’, and ‘broad-minded’. Speak in mother-tongue other than Urdu, such as Sindhi, Pashto, Punjabi or Balochi, every eye will roll and stare at you, as if you are an alien, backward, a joker etc.
Now why is such bad treatment of indigenous languages? Because of the policies of the Establishment and the Federal Government, who have been trying for years to keep imposing a single language (Urdu) on the rest of 180 million people who neither speak Urdu as their mother-tongue. Despite the UN research that children could learn far better in their own language over foreign/alien language.
Let’s ignore and forget all lessons of great Muhammad Ali Jinnah, but let’s stick to this only lesson, that “Urdu will be the national language of Pakistan”. As if that saved the East Pakistan, as if that has eliminated differences between provinces, as if that has brought closeness among the people.
Urdu is a beautiful language and we respect that, and promise to carry it with us like all others, but let’s face it that it’s not a language spoken by 180 million population. Some apologists for this language speak about the language promoting unity, Islamic brotherhood etc. All these are fallacious lies and nothing else, if this were the case, then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) wouldn’t have parted from us.