Is Pakistan’s problem Urdu?

The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.

For Pakistan’s founders, Urdu was to be the glue cementing together the new country. The pre-partition Muslim League rejected suggestions that English, Hindi, or Hindustani be the official language of undivided India. Instead, it wanted Urdu (Pirpur Report, 1938) because it was thought to be the carrier of Islamic culture. In 1948, Mr Jinnah addressed the students of Dacca University in immaculate English. He was emphatic: “The state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. And anyone who tries to mislead you is an enemy of Pakistan.”

Mr Jinnah spoke little Urdu and did not read its script. East Pakistan rioted but he was unmoved; nation-building needs a language. With time Pakistan rid itself of the burden of Bengal. Its new leaders drafted a new Constitution of Pakistan (1973) which decreed that Urdu become the official language within 15 years. This did not happen.

Gen Ziaul Haq also thought that Pakistan needed the ‘correct’ official language. He wanted Arabic, but some of his colleagues and administrators dissuaded him. He consoled himself by imposing compulsory Arabic teaching upon schools.

Examine: Urdu in schools causes ‘grievances’, says Unesco report

Since that time our language obsession has continued. In September 2015, an irritated Supreme Court judge, Justice Jawwad Khwaja, gave Nawaz Sharif’s government three months to implement “Article 251 in line with Article 5 of the Constitution”. This would make Urdu mandatory for “official and other purposes”. The ultimatum expired, English stayed.

Though not yet the official language, Urdu is Pakistan’s lingua franca.

Eventually Urdu did come to Pakistan — naturally and painlessly. Today fewer and fewer people speak and understand English — far fewer in percentage terms than in India or Sri Lanka. For lack of viewership, local English-language television channels have closed down but there are dozens of Urdu channels and some Sindhi and Punjabi ones too. Though not yet the official language, Urdu is Pakistan’s lingua franca.

But the rise of Urdu, and the decline of English, have not weakened regional, tribal, or class identities. Baloch separatism is fuelled by inequitable distribution of resources and high-handed treatment by the centre. Sindh’s grievances are over issues of water and land. Nation-building needs more than just a common language.

Ditto for building education. If we are to believe some of today’s education activists, most problems will miraculously disappear if only we make the right choice of language — whatever that “right” choice means. But flogging the language horse will get us nowhere. The problem lies elsewhere.

Read: Ways to switch over to Urdu

About 30 years ago, my colleagues at Quaid-i-Azam University and I had explored the conundrum of language and education through a documentary film broadcast by Pakistan Television. It was part of a 13-part series Rastay Ilm Kay that took a critical look at the crisis of Pakistani education. Serious then, it is far more serious now.

Upon viewing a rare surviving copy of this documentary, I felt that time had come to a stop. Not a single argument or counter-argument has changed. On the one hand, our cameras recorded those who wanted education in Urdu and condemned English as a colonial remnant. They blamed it for creating social inequality, and argued that teachers with bad English skills force students to memorise blindly. The cameras also captured those who said that English provides a vehicle to carry us forward. A true debate!

Unless we wish to spend the next 30 years arguing the very same points, we must squarely face two basic truths — those that mere wishes cannot change. If these truths take us in opposite directions, then we must learn to navigate as best as possible.

First, English opens a window into the external world so wide that all vernacular languages, Urdu included, are tiny peepholes in comparison. In principle, all languages can carry the same content. But in practice they reflect very different stages of intellectual development. Nobody is more unreasonably proud than the French. But even they have grudgingly accepted their language’s reduced status. English is now the choice of a shrinking globe, not the spearhead of aggressive colonialism.

Second, English cannot be a solution for Pakistan. Early learning happens fastest in the mother tongue, and only the tiniest fraction of Pakistanis speaks English at home. But even if English is decreed compulsory from the cradle onwards, there is insufficient language teaching capacity to make this work. Moreover Pakistan’s different languages encode distinct cultures with beautiful prose, poetry, and fiction in each. To lose this history would be tragic.

How terribly contradictory! Yet this bipolar conflict is generic to all former colonies. Using different mixes of bilingualism, and even trilingualism, managing conflict intelligently has enabled some to develop a better education for their young. Pakistan has not. Our students have ever decreasing ability to reason, low curiosity levels, and abysmal general knowledge. Why?

The real enemy of education in Pakistan is a regressive mindset, not language or financial resources. Critical thinking is actively discouraged, memorisation is encouraged. There is heavy presence of religious materials in all school subjects from history and social studies to biology and math.

So go ahead and change the language to the ‘right’ one. You might get a 10pc improvement at most. A parrot singing in Urdu or Sindhi understands no more than one who sings in English. The terrible authority of the teacher, sanctioned by tradition, weighs heavy upon young minds.

Here’s an example — a real one. Some pre-engineering college F.Sc students came to see me the other day. For fear of retribution they asked me to keep their visit secret. Their teacher had told them in class that seven divided by zero was zero! Dissatisfied, they sought an explanation. Instead they were reprimanded for being cheeky. I am older and more qualified than you, said the teacher, and so I am right.

To conclude: no nation becomes stronger by having the ‘correct’ official language. Instead it gains strength when it addresses the real needs of its people. Likewise, education cannot be improved by flipping from English to Urdu or vice versa. Change can happen only when education is seen as a means for opening minds rather than an instrument of ideological control.

The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2016

CJP asks govts to switch over to Urdu at earliest

NASIR IQBAL — PUBLISHED SEP 09, 2015 06:41AM

ISLAMABAD: A day before doffing his robes, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Jawwad S. Khawaja rendered a judgment decreeing that the federal and provincial governments use Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, for all official and other purposes.

“Bearing in mind the constitutional commands in Articles 5 (loyalty to state) and 251 (use of national language) of the Constitution and noting the inaction and failure of successive governments, we have no option but to order that the provisions of Article 251 shall be implemented with full force and without unnecessary delay by the federal and provincial governments,” says a judgment authored by the CJP.

The judgment also disposes of a petition moved by Advocate Kowkab Iqbal, who had claimed that the state and the government were deliberately not implementing Article 251 of the Constitution, which asks to make arrangements to implement Urdu for official and other purposes, within 15 years of the commencement of the Constitution. On account of non-implementation, a societal and linguistic divide has been created in society, the petitioner argued.

The verdict also asked the governments to consider and implement the three-month timeline, given by the government itself in a July 6, 2015 letter to all government departments, and asked the federal and the provincial governments to coordinate with each other for uniformity in the ‘rasmulkhat’, or font style of the national language.

Sets 3-month timeline for implementation of measures enshrined in Articles 5, 251

In addition, federal and provincial laws will also be translated into the national language within three months, as suggested by the government in its July 6 letter; whereas statutory, regulatory and oversight bodies will take steps to implement Article 251 without delay and ensure compliance.

The verdict also asked governments to introduce the language in competitive examinations at the federal level. Judgments in cases relating to public interest litigation or those judgments enunciating a principle of law in terms of Article 189 must also be translated into Urdu and published in line with Article 251 of the Constitution.

Similarly, in court cases, government departments should make all reasonable efforts to submit their replies in Urdu to enable citizens to effectively claim their legal rights.

If, subsequent to this judgment, any public bodies or public officials continue to violate the constitutional command, citizens who suffer a tangible loss from such a violation shall be entitled to enforce any civil rights which may accrue to them on this account.

The court also ordered that copies of this judgment be sent to all federal and provincial secretaries, who must take immediate steps to enforce Article 251 in line with Article 5 of the Constitution. The federal and provincial secretaries concerned have been asked to submit compliance reports, the first of which will be due in three months.

It was not as if the government lacked imagination or expertise to conceive ways in which Article 251 may be implemented, the judgment deplored. For instance, even in 1981, certain recommendations were made by the National Language Authority – now renamed the National Language Promotion Department through a notification issued on Aug 17, 2012 – for the implementation of Article 251.

What is lost on the government is that Article 251 is not a stand-alone provision, the verdict said, adding that this provision was directly linked to the realisation of different fundamental rights protected by the Constitution, especially the right to dignity (Article 14), the right to equal treatment under the law (Article 25) and the right to education (Article 25A).

It is a corollary of a person’s right to dignity enshrined in the Constitution that his or her language (national or provincial) should be respected and recognised by the state, which exercises authority over him or her. Likewise, it is a corollary of a person’s right to equality that he or she must not be denied access to economic and political opportunities because he or she is only conversant in the languages recognised and referred to in Article 251 and not conversant with the English language. When the state refuses to recognise this, it denies to its citizens equality of status and opportunity and also their dignity in a very real sense, the verdict said. Article 251 of the Constitution only refers specifically to Urdu.

There is also no doubt that the right to education has a direct link with language. Article 25A of the Constitution states that the “State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in such manner as may be determined by law. Empirical studies throughout the world (including those by Unesco) advocate the use of a child’s native language in instruction since this is the language the child grows up with and which is in use in his home and around him,” the judgment said, adding that the government seemed to be ignoring this important issue.

Nearly all of the current CJP’s decisions have been issued simultaneously in English and Urdu, and on Tuesday, he announced the short order in Urdu as well.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2015

PM to attend summit of Saudi-led military bloc

THE NEWSPAPER'S STAFF REPORTER — THE DAWN

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is scheduled to pay a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia from March 9 for underscoring the importance of the kingdom for Pakistan.

The visit has not been officially announced yet, but multiple government sources confirmed that Mr Sharif planned to visit Saudi Arabia from March 9 to 11.

During the visit, the prime minister is likely to meet Saudi King Salman.

Separately, there are reports that he might also attend the inaugural summit of the 34-nation military alliance which Saudi Arabia has announced for fighting terrorism.

The meeting is reportedly taking place on March 10.

The prime minister is making the trip ahead of a planned visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Islamabad that is likely after March 20.

Nawaz Sharif scheduled to visit Riyadh from March 9 to 11

The dates for Mr Rouhani’s visit have not been finalised yet as the Iranians are keeping them open for now because of what a diplomatic observer described as a developing situation.

Islamabad and Tehran have a history of cancelling visits due to regional issues and at least two trips were called off during the past couple of months.

Mr Sharif visited both Riyadh and Tehran in January when tension between the two states was at its height. It was dubbed as a ‘mediation trip’.

The Iranian leadership welcomed the initiative, while Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir apparently spurned it in a later statement, saying: “A lot of countries have offered mediation and delivered ideas between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but there is no need for this.”

The issues Mr Sharif would possibly discuss with Saudi leaders during his stay in Riyadh include Pakistan’s role in the 34-nation military alliance; Saudi Arabia’s financial assistance and planned investment in Pakistan; regional issues and other facets of bilateral ties.

“The prime minister will touch on those issues and ensure that we remain aligned with the Saudis,” an official said.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2016

Sartaj Aziz’s frankness

EDITORIAL — THE DAWN

SARTAJ Aziz, adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs, is no amateur or wide-eyed newcomer to foreign policy. So when Mr Aziz decides to speak frankly to a US think-tank audience about the leverage that the Pakistani state has over the Afghan Taliban, it is hoped that a great deal of thought went into the revelations.

To be sure, what Mr Aziz has claimed — that sections of the Afghan Taliban leadership reside in Pakistan and that Pakistan has nudged those leaders to the negotiating table by threatening to restrict their movement, withholding access to medical facilities and clamping down on family life — is neither surprising nor new.

Indeed, the leverage that Mr Aziz described is in line with what American officials in particular demanded that Pakistan use in early 2014, when the push for talks with the President Ashraf Ghani-led Afghan government was first made. But the question remains: why now?

First, however, Mr Aziz’s candour ought to be welcomed. For years Pakistan has clung publicly to an unrealistic, untrue and untenable position — that the Afghan Taliban leadership is predominantly based inside Afghanistan and that the Afghan government was shifting blame for its failures to limit the Taliban’s activities onto Pakistan.

Second, the full range of Mr Aziz’s words in Washington needs to be considered. The foreign adviser stressed that both in the past and in the present, Pakistan’s influence with the Taliban has its limits — that, effectively, the Afghan Taliban do what is in their own interests and Pakistan cannot dictate policies to them.

Perhaps, then, Mr Aziz was trying to correct the historical record while simultaneously trying to impress on interlocutors — in Afghanistan, the US and China — the real-world limits of Pakistani influence with the Taliban.

That approach has a possible dual benefit: it prevents the Afghan government from automatically blaming Pakistan and puts the onus on Kabul to make talks successful.

What remains to be seen is the extent to which the army-led security establishment here backs Mr Aziz in his risky approach. Silence in the coming days and weeks will be interpreted as an implicit endorsement of the foreign adviser’s stance. That would be welcome on two levels.

First, it would suggest that the military and civilian sides of the state are in fact able to work together. Second, it would indicate that the old culture of secrecy and denial in the ranks of the military leadership may be changing.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2016

Legitimate dissent

A.G. NOORANI — THE DAWN The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

THERE is something appallingly unprincipled about the manner in which Sonia Gandhi and her colleagues in the Congress rant and rave each time the BJP-led coalition headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes a conciliatory gesture to Pakistan.

This is the very policy which the Congress-led coalition, headed by Dr Manmohan Singh, followed for a whole decade from 2004 to 2014. People were disgusted at the charges by the BJP then. It was none other than Atal Behari Vajpayee, who wrote a long letter in 2005 to the prime minister on “the disturbing turn that the peace process with Pakistan has taken”. It has now “become Kashmir-centric”.

Manmohan Singh replied, reiterating his stand on Kashmir. But he made a telling point which has acquired greater relevance now in view of New Delhi’s objection to the Hurriyat leaders meeting Pakistan’s leaders in New Delhi. “You are aware of the fact that in the last four or five years these leaders have regularly met Pakistani dignitaries visiting India as well as Pakistani diplomats.”

L.K. Advani took up the cudgels in a letter of March 2007 with greater gusto: “May I urge you to categorically state that J&K will neither be demilitarised nor our deployment of troops in aid of civil power made part of any bilateral negotiations”. What they implied, of course, was that there was no room for any compromise on Kashmir. It is perfectly legitimate for an opposition in a democracy to voice its dissent on foreign policy. What is not permissible is hypocrisy; adopting one position when in power and another when in opposition. In this, Sonia Gandhi has simply emulated Vajpayee and Advani.

A government must respect honest dissent on foreign policy.

There is, however, a far worse form of behavior for an opposition to adopt. It is obstruction. Its grossest form is the opposition reaching out to a foreign government, behind the back of the government of its own country, urging it not to settle with its government and promising it better terms when it acquires power replacing the government of its country.

This sordid ploy was used by the super patriotic BJP leaders, the former foreign minister of Pakistan, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri records in his memoirs, Neither a Hawk, nor a Dove. “Leaders of the BJP advised me to go slow on the peace process during one of my trips to India in 2007. I asked Brajesh Mishra why he was advising me in this manner when he was confident when he was in power that Pakistan and India could resolve outstanding disputes in six to eight months. With a twinkle in his eye, he responded, ‘Kasuri sahib — woh to hum nain karna tha aur karain gay — aap zara dheeray chalain’ (Kasuri Sahib — it was we who were supposed to do that and we will when we are in power next time — please go slow).” Such conduct is reprehensible. Dissent on foreign policy is not only legitimate but necessary. There is a fine tradition of such dissent in Britain which the late professor A.J.P. Taylor recounted, with wit and learning, in his lectures in 1956 published under the title The Troublemakers: Dissent over Foreign Policy 1792-1939. That tradition has been maintained since to this day. Hugh Gaitskell led the Labour Party’s protests against the Suez war. Robin Cook resigned from the cabinet when he found himself in disagreement with the Blair government’s foreign policy.

No government’s foreign policy can possibly succeed unless it enjoys domestic support. It is equally the duty of the government in power to treat dissent with respect. It must establish a relationship based on trust with the leaders of the parties in the opposition. They must be briefed properly. This will help to narrow the gulf.

India faced a serious challenge in 1977 when, for the first time, a non-Congress government of the Janata Party headed by Morarji Desai came to power. In opposition they had denounced the Indo-Soviet Treaty of 1971 and accused Indira Gandhi of a pro-Soviet tilt. Some even ridiculed non-alignment.

People were surprised to see the Desai government adopt a conciliatory policy towards Pakistan, reiterate India’s commitment to non-alignment and — to the Indo-Soviet Treaty. National interest required continuity and national interest is damaged by extreme partisanship as distinct from honest dissent.

Witness the situation in the United States. Franklin Delano Roosevelt wisely involved Republican seniors Senators Tom Connally and Arthur Vandenburg in the talks leading to the adoption of the UN Charter. Truman assigned to John Foster Dulles the task of negotiating a peace treaty with Japan. This was wrecked by hardcore Republicans who repudiated the policy of détente with the Soviet Union. The chasm continued to widen. No problem, no dispute can be solved without compromise, and compromise necessitates concessions.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2016

Trump says US troops needed in Afghanistan to protect Pak N-arms

ANWAR IQBAL — THE DAWN

WASHINGTON: If elected to the White House, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump would keep US troops in Afghanistan to ‘protect’ Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

“I think you have to stay in Afghanistan for a while, because of the fact that you are right next to Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and we have to protect that,” said Mr Trump while responding to a question during Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate.

Mr Trump is an outsider who blitzkrieged into the 2016 Republican presidential campaign and propelled himself into the first position by capturing the highest number of delegates in early primaries. He is particularly popular among conservative Republicans and in rural America, where 70 per cent white voters live.

“Nuclear weapons change the game,” said the billionaire campaigner while explaining why Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal necessitated continued US military presence in Afghanistan.

Last year, Mr Trump suggested involving India in efforts to denuclearise Pakistan. “You have to get India involved. India’s the check to Pakistan,” he said in a radio address in September.

“They (India) have their own nukes and have a very powerful army. They seem to be the real check... I think we have to deal very closely with India to deal with it (Pakistan),” he added.

Mr Trump’s suggestion to keep US troops in Afghanistan was one of the few serious references to foreign policy issues at the presidential debate.

Most US media outlets described the debate in Detroit, Michigan, as a two-hour long shouting match with no substance.

The prestigious New Yorker magazine ran its report on the debate with the headline: “Donald Trump and an even cruder Republican debate.”

“One clear loser in Thursday’s debate: the Grand Old (Republican) Party,” The Washington Post reported.

The post noted that following his big wins in Super Tuesday primaries, “this might have been the night when Trump could safely shift into statesman mode”. But he lost the opportunity.

Last week, former CIA director Michael Hayden said in an interview to a US media outlet that the American military would refuse to obey Mr Trump if he gets elected and orders them to torture prisoners or kill the families of terrorists.

At the debate, a moderator, Bret Baier, asked Mr Trump to comment on Gen Hayden’s statement. Mr Trump rejected the suggestion that the US military would defy their president.

“But they’re illegal,” Mr Baier reminded him. “Let me just tell you, look at the Middle East. They’re chopping off heads,” Mr Trump said.

“I said it’s fine! And if we want to go stronger, I’d go stronger, too,” said Mr Trump, while defending his earlier statement that he would allow waterboarding to coerce information from suspected terrorists. The remarks earned him a wild applause from the audience.

“What would these animals over in the Middle East, that chopped off heads think of a hesitation to commit war crimes?” Mr Trump asked.

“We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding.”