Language of Power: How it is getting more exclusive

behram1 #84: ``are you agreeing then that you also want English to grow in Pakistan?``

Yes. I never stated what you attributed to me. You saw that on your own and then, for some strange reason, attached my name to it. Forget about English, I want even Java and C++ to grow in Pakistan. I am not pushing any language. All I am saying is that whatever language is the language of choice, should be equally accessible in an equitable manner, to everyone. That is all.........

``On the contrary, I always thought that people were clamoring to go thru an English medium school just because they wanted their children to learn English. In our BVS Parsi High School, we had music, and poetry, and drama, and arts, etc.``

How many people in Pakistan have access to English medium schools? Much less to music and drama etc. A very small %. People, of any social status, will send their kids to English medium schools, if given the choice. I agree with that. But then they should be given the choice. To have only a tiny number of schools with drama and arts in English, creates a social divide..........

Those with access to such facilities, move on ahead. While the rest of the society is left behind...........

``People, if given a chance, would go to learn English in droves``

And what does one do if they are not given the chance? Either give them a chance, or make some adjustments, where they are not at a disadvantage.............

The rest of your comments are more emotional, than anything else. And I try to avoid such discussions. I would like to ask you, how much exposure you have to Pakistan, outside of Karachi? Have you gone into rural parts of Punjab, NWFP, Sindh and Baluchistan? Have you seen the schools there, and the availibility of the English language, in those areas...........

Fuzair #83: ``You are confusing lingua franca with national language.``

I am not confusing lingua franca with national language. Nor with anything else. I am talking about lingua franca; a mode of common communication between people and within a society that has multiple languages. This communication does not mean just hanging out at the local street corner, and shooting the breeze. This means allowing people access to all aspects of society, making them upwardly mobile, in a language (any language) that is accessible to all, in a fair manner.

Be it English, Swahili, or Tamil or Urdu........

Whatever mode is chosen should be one that the most people have access to. And that, at the moment, certainly isn`t English. Either give everyone access to understanding English, or use a langauge that everyone understands.......

Secondly, this whole discussion started, when I stated that Pakistani leaders should speak in Urdu, when speaking internationally, so that Pakistanis can understand them. That is where the national language comes in. The aim should be to speak in a language, which everyone in Pakistan can understand. Not in one that everyone in USA can understand, and hardly anyone in Pakistan can understand.........

``No one would seriously object to making Urdu mandatory in, say, KG-6th, if you pose it as learning the lingua franca purely for convenience. However, you could also do the same with English eventually, after all, its Nigeria`s official language.``

What should people do after 6th?

If English is more accessible, then replace it with English. Or with anything else. But whatever it is replaced with should be available to everyone. That is my point. The language which the most people of the country can speak, has to be worth something. It should allow people upward mobility. To limit the upward mobility of a society to a tiny minority that can speak a foreign language, is quite ridiculous. Obviously that tiny minority is going to fight tooth and nail to protect that status, but they are still a minority...........

I am not pushing Urdu, English nor Sindhi. What I am pushing is that any language that a society settles on, as its mode of communication, has to be accessible in an egalitarian manner. Not in an elitist manner. And at the moment, I do not see that happening with English...........

Re: # 62

Dear Romair,

By asking [Who is saying that we should not allow English to grow in Pakistan?] are you agreeing then that you also want English to grow in Pakistan?

Where did you get this idea that [..... forcing it on people, who cannot even understand it.] Who is forcing this language? Upon whom? On the contrary, I always thought that people were clamoring to go thru an English medium school just because they wanted their children to learn English. In our BVS Parsi High School, we had music, and poetry, and drama, and arts, etc. And I did not find anybody forcing it upon anybody. So please keep that rubbish thought aside.

That is for the haughty ruling class to decide whether English is the official language or the national language. These nuances are irrelevant in the real world. People, if given a chance, would go to learn English in droves. Heck, my Pakistani friends are sending their spouses back to school just to learn English.

I agree with you...[It the aim is to make English the common language of Pakistan, then declare it as the national language, and provide everyone from the poor groups, an opportunity to learn it..........] This can only happen, when intellectual people like you stop, the double speak and confuse the heck out of the locals.

Inspiration and motivation, and guidance in needed to show path towards that Best Light and enlightenment.

Quit thinking that those of us who can speak proper English are creating social divides. This thought in and of itself is illogical. As a businessman you should know...How can one who has (according to your estimate) only 10% of the population do such a thing? For any business this is a great opportunity to get the other 90% of the market share. Don`t you think?

You are absolutely correct...[... then I am afraid you and I have a different understanding of the Pakistani society.] I know my Pakistani society from a poor minority perspective. And I have always loved that perspective. Do you have any problem with that?

Romair, you write [``Badtameez Urdu medium``]. I have never used that phrase and that is not in my vocabulary. But, there is certain mannerism that come with one`s spoken language, that you alluded to in one of your previous post, and that the use of foul language was acceptable to you. Would you consider that as sophisticated when the ruling class and the elite use derogatory vocabulary and use heavy handed tone of voice? In English or in Urdu, it does not matter.

Your thought...[The ability to speak good English is an elitist social divide in Pakistan. It is, in fact, the highest elitist divide in the country, other than wealth. Perhaps even higher.......] is totally rubbish. With English, I might have a different knowledge than without it. As you suggested, you read a lot.....how many books in Urdu do you read?

Quit your passionnte rhetoric, because it makes no sense whatsoever.

When you write[A person living in his own country, being left behind socially, just because he speaks his own national language, and is not proficient in the language of another country, is a sad state of affairs] Who is leaving whom behind? Have you seen a successful Ismaili businessman, or a successful Memon businessman, or a successful Bhora businessman of Karachi? Do you see them talk in their own language or in English?

Again, if leader is trying to convince the rest of the world then he should speak what the common language of the world is....and to your chagrin, these days the common language is English.

Romair, you write...[Suppose Musharraf went to the UN and started speaking in Chinese - the most spoken langauge in the world. Wouldn`t you feel odd that you couldn`t understand what he was saying.........That is how most of Pakistan feels, when he speaks in English..........]

Romair, why don`t you ask your leaders to speak with honesty and modesty, and with love and with care, and believe me people do understand that language. The language of dadagari, and goondas are long gone, and if we were to create a softer image for Pakistan, we must have leaders who know about this.

Respectfully submitted,

Behram B. Atashband

Romair:

You are confusing lingua franca with national language. There were riots in E. Pakistan over Urdu being imposed on it (and the Bengalis being told that they have a nice little vernacular, but nothing exceptional, but Urdu is the language of Islam in the subcontinent) and there were riots in Sindh over Urdu in the 1970s (same BS). Ignoring the fact that both Bengali and Sindhi are far older and richer written languages than Urdu (Zabaan e Urd, remember; the gutter patois that the Turki/Farsi speaking soldiers used to talk to prostitutes, storekeepers, and the conquered people of Hind) gave us nothing but trouble for most of our history.

Nobody here is saying replace lingua franca Urdu with English. Might as well replace it with German, or Spanish, or French; all are only marginally more ridiculous. What most of us object to is declaring a lingua franca as ``national language`` (with all its connotations of superiority, etc) over other languages. BTW, the same type of bigots (Urdu speakers from UP = Hindi speakers from UP) tried to ram Hindi down S. Indian throats and regretted it, in the 1950s in India (IIRC; anyone want to jump in here who knows more?).

As far as most Sindhis/Baluchis, I know quite a few ethnic Sindhis and Baluchis, family connections and friendships, and I know no one who will admit to Urdu`s ``superiority`` as a national language or that its study should be mandated in school, or Urdu fluency be required for any job anywhere. And yes, they were UPite/muhajir bigots who had nothing but contempt for the ``primitives`` they had come to lord it over after Partition. Ask anyone of that generation what things were like. Aga Khan III suggested to Jinnah that they make Arabic the national language since then no one could object to it and it would give no one group dominance over the others; IIRC this was vetoed by Liaquat and Co.

Don`t make the mistake of equating lingua franca convenience with acceptance as a national language. No one would seriously object to making Urdu mandatory in, say, KG-6th, if you pose it as learning the lingua franca purely for convenience. However, you could also do the same with English eventually, after all, its Nigeria`s official language.

---

Temporal,

Will get back to you on it; might take me a bit of time to track it down.

#81 by Romair
[Fuzair #78: ``Urdu not being acceptable by most Sindhis and Baluchis (and probably not that many Pathans either) as a ``national`` language.``

Can you quantify, on what basis, you are making this statement? ]

Romair, since when do you guys with fauji backgrounds need a basis to make statements? FYI, fuzair is also the scion of a colonel family, that too of the gora saab vintage..... so he can release flautulence like Faiz was a blood thirsty terrorist etc.

Fuzair #78: ``Urdu not being acceptable by most Sindhis and Baluchis (and probably not that many Pathans either) as a ``national`` language.``

Can you quantify, on what basis, you are making this statement? My guess is people would be ok, as long as their local languages were allowed room also............,i.e. they are given access to Urdu, and Sindhi etc.

I do not have practical experience of Sindh or Baluchistan. But I hope you are not serious about NWFP. I lived there for quite a while. Everyone seemed ok with Urdu, as the language of communication, with those who couldn`t speak Pushto (like me). Just like people are ok in Punjab with using Urdu as a the language of communication with those who cannot speak Punjabi........

How exactly would everyone communicate in Pakistan, if hardly anyone can speak English, and everyone speaks and understands their own language? Would the truck drivers use sign language, once they crossed from NWFP to Punjab. Or would everyone carry an interpretor with them. The only problem anyone in Pakistan has with Urdu is to ensure it doesn`t kill their local language. That is a legitimate concern. That concern would exist with English also. And with any other language......

If English is the answer, then everyone should settle on that, as I mentioned earlier. Make it the national language. And push it everywhere. But it should, then, be made accessible to everyone. It is quite ridiculous to keep a language accessible to a tiny minority and its kids, and simultaneously, push it as the langauge of choice, or the language of empowerment.......

For all practical purposes, Urdu is the language that Pakistanis speak. All the signs, documents, TV, etc. etc. that cuts across Pakistan is in Urdu. And are popular in Urdu. This is the world, where the non-English speaking awam of Pakistan lives. Then there is the tiny English speaking awam. They (we) have our own little world, which provides us with the best of the society, while keeping everyone else out..........

Such social and class differences in Pakistan should be discouraged. Either bring the masses up to the levels of the elites, and make them fluent in English. Or standardize on the most common denominator amongst the masses (i.e. Urdu, or anything else), and learn the other languages, as needed..........At the very least, move to the local languages then, which everyone can understand, and keep Urdu (or any other language that everyone can speak) as the common thread...........

A level playing field in a society should be the aim..............

digression: others please ignore

fuzair saheb:

perhaps you can help me?

there was an article/book i read based on a doctoral thesis...the author was an indian student at LSE...around 70s...sarkar, savarkar...not sure about the name

he provided data:

reparations in 25 years segments from india to UK.... the period was like 1700-1725, 1725-1750 and 1800-1825 etc...and the affect of that on indians

he (the author) attempted to establish a co-relation between the bengal famine of 1770s (30-40 million dead) and the amount of reparations out of india

any ideas re: the name of that book...net availability etc.?... woud appreciate if you can mail...

rgds

t

ylh #59 ``But the failure of Urdu is now painfully obvious... just like the failure of prohibition...the failure of Islam to stop all sins in Pakistan etc etc... ``

very true. but the failures of pakistan (i.e. those seeking to legislate the use of urdu, their understanding of islam, and so forth) wouldnt know failure if it hit them on the head. btw, we pakistanis are not alone in having fools trying to enforce their blind ideology on everyone: yesterday, an acquaintance who had just returned from iran told me that iranian maulvis were trying to insert arab words into farsi and so she could hardly understand her native tongue at time. at least we pakistanis are not alone in having so many fools around. :-)

Yasser is correct about Urdu not being acceptable by most Sindhis and Baluchis (and probably not that many Pathans either) as a ``national`` language. In any case, the Urdu script does need to be rationalized along the lines Ataturk used to rationalize Turkish: romanize it and clean it up! Whats all this nonsense about tays and toays, for example. Or kafs and qafs? Who but old muhajirs and frigging Arabs know the difference anyway?

Still no translation for 39 romair.

Faisaluno #60: ``if urdu is not the national language of pak, how come the circulation of jang is 10x that of the circulation of all the english language newspapers combined? numbers are even more skewered when you compare urdu newspapers with a regional language newspapers.``

You have hit the nail right on the head. Not only in newspaper circulation, but also in other areas. The most popular TV programs, in Pakistan, are, all, easily in Urdu. There is no English or local language program that even comes close. The most popular radio programs are in Urdu. Hindi movies on video, from India, outsell English movies from USA by gigantic multi-fold margins. How many Pakistanis know who Brad Pitt is? Or Gweyneth Paltrow? Everyone knows who Shahrukh Khan is. And Ashwariya Rai. Iqbal`s poetry is far better known than Wordsworth. Urdu/Hindi music is far more accessed than English......

Of course to understand this, one has to step outside the ivory tower confines of Defence, Clifton and Islamabad (and Chowk)........

In anything that is catered, directly, to the masses, without any govt. or elitist interference, Urdu beats English by such a huge margin that it is not even funny. If the Internet was accessible everywhere in Pakistan, and Chowk was accessible in Urdu, the hits here would go through the roof............we would then truly think what Pakistanis think...........

The only area where anything competes, with Urdu, is in movies, where Punjabi movies, probably, do better than Urdu movies.......

I have not spent much time in rural Sind and Baluchistan. But I have travelled through, almost every corner of Punjab and NWFP, (and much of Kashmir). I spent most of my professional life in Pakistan, living in the boondocks of these two provinces. Never once in my life, did I face a situation, where I ran into someone who could not understand Urdu. This includes going into the tribal areas. And hardly anyone I ran into, outside our small colonies, spoke English........

And never once did I run into anyone who could speak Urdu, but did not want to (like people I have run into into in Germany and France, who will not speak English, even if they understand it). Granted the response one got, in the rural areas, if one spoke Punjabi and/or Pushto was better. But Urdu was accepted, as the common language and not resented..........

The situation of India, in terms of languages, is different that that of Pakistan. India is far more complex. And Pakistan brought in an outside language, Urdu, which not too many resented, in West Pakistan. India did not have access to any such language (other than English). Having an accepted national language, that all provinces can communicate in, is a great asset for Pakistan. Also, pre-71 the situation was different. With East Pakistan around, using Urdu may not have been the correct option, if the Bengalis resented it. But I believe we are in 2005, now.

In any case, whatever language is used, has to be made accessible to everyone. That should be the first criteria. And should not divide the society into elites and non-elites.

Kulharee #73: ``What the hell is ..”masses of the population…”? you have too much redundancy in your written prose.``

You are probably correct. I need to cut down on the redundancy. I write my replies in one go, and just send them in, based on whatever comes into my mind.......

Khammy...

As I pointed out... the document in question is Modern Urdu used in the court today... not 18th century... which proves that Urdu is unsuited for modern state usage.


Kulharee...

So first you lie, then you are caught...and now you are trying to make alliances by kissing up to the one person who stands against all efforts byminorities to seek equal rights in Pakistan... I think all of this a lot about your credibility or lack thereof.


Romair

Instead of putting up inane nonsense translate 39 and prove that you are right about Urdu.

manto refuses to accept my challenge...what a shame...we are stuck with him...:(unless romair takes his challenge...

romair: pssssss...i will provide the translation, fiker nawt...;)

Re: # 72

Romair, now Manto is going to come back with his cockamamie theory of how ridiculous you sound. Can you put it in some easier words for him? What the hell is ..”masses of the population…”? you have too much redundancy in your written prose. The good news is that you use your head unilke Manto.

The use of wealth, land, family, language etc. to create unassailable social divides, by an elite, in a society, is a practice as old as mankind. Any beneficiary of a such a divide will try tooth and nail to maintain that divide. Because it gives such a group an automatic advantage over the masses of the population........

If I go to Pakistan, today, I will, definitely, have an advantage over individuals who are not as proficient in English, as I am. While I will not lose much if I am not as proficient as any competitor, in Urdu. This advantage will be far higher than what should be gained by knowing a certain second language. It is, in fact, a difference in social class that I gain by knowing English.........

The societies that have been able to get rid of such divides, have been the most successful in the world. They have lowered the gap between the elite and the non-elite..........

Pakistan has to do one of two things: If English is the way to go, then it needs to provide facilities to everyone to be able to learn and communicate in this language. And declare it the national language. That would put everyone on equal footing..........

If it cannot provide such facilities, then it needs to rely on the language that is the most spoken and understood, and most non-controversial in Pakistan (Urdu by a long-shot). It should then ensure that the social structure is based on this language, i.e. knowing English, does not create a social divide. The President should speak in the national language etc.

None of this means getting rid of local languages. It just means everyone settling on a voluntarily accepted means of communicating with each other, accessible to the most people (English, Urdu, Farsi, whatever)........

In such a situation, English (and any other language, including Java and C++ etc.) should be pushed as languages, which allows one to move around in the world, and in the business field, and should be learnt and encouraged for those reasons......

But what needs to go away is this elitist divide, whereby a tiny majority, and its children, has access to one thing, i.e. English, and supports a social structure, where the overwhelming majority, is out of the loop, with hardly any chance of getting in the loop.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the language, itself. It could be English, Urdu, Japanese, anything. Whatever is selected should result in an even playing field........At the moment, English is heavily tilted towards the elite, with no footing amongst the common man..........

Kulharee

If you lie ... then you get your due... in the future refrain from making inaccurate statements.