SOCIOLINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF PAKISTAN

Sindhi is one of the world's oldest languages with origins in 10 CE. It is a language of 25
million people living in India and Pakistan and constitutes about 12% of the population of
Pakistan. Sindhi's origins can be found in the lower Indus valley of the Sindh province of
Pakistan. The Sindhi language is basically Indo-Aryan (Hammad & Anwar, 2019). According to
Daivd, ali and Baloch (2017) This language consists of a strong foundation of Prakrit and
Sanskrit with Arabic, Persian and Dravidian ancestors from the Mediterranean subcontinent, also
known as the Mohen-jo-Daro Civilization. Moreover, Sindhi has a longer history than Sanskrit,
and its associated civilization or culture is derived from Sindh's civilization or culture, as well as
the Sindhi language. Sanskrit is Sindhi-born, at least indirectly if not directly. Rahman (1999)
stated that Sindhi is perhaps Pakistan's oldest written language. Even when Persian was language
of Sindh Muslim rulers, Sindhi was given more importance than other languages of Pakistan in
the Sindh educational institutions. Furthermore, Bengal and Sindh were the only provinces of
independent Pakistan in which Indigenous languages were used for teaching at non-elitist state
school and colleges and apart from that Sindhi was also medium of instruction in government,
courts as well as journalism. At that time people who learned Sindhi get easily jobs and it was
the time when this language enjoyed high status in the country. Moreover, In Sindh, the feeling
for Sindhi was strong because it was already part of the battle against Bombay's administration.
But unfortunately a huge influx of refugees, called the 'mouhajir,' who fled from India the day
before communal riots resulted in conflicts between Muslim and Hindu, causes a major backlash
to the fortune and dominance of the Sindhi language as a dominant language of Sindh. The
sequel to the settlement of thousands of Urdu-speaking migrants were immense and enduring as
they also affected other socio-economic factors such as the allocation of assets, power struggles
as well as political divisions. This incident deeply altered and left Sindhis threatened and
marginalized in its linguistic and cultural landscape (David, Ali & Baloch, 2017). Furthermore,
Rahman 1999 stated that the Ayub Kahn martial law era was much worse for the Sindhi
language, because language advocacy was regarded at that time as suspicious and mistrustful.
Even these incidents happen but Pakistani Sindhis still have deep feelings and are aware of their
ethno-national and ethno-linguistic identities and they are struggling a lot from upliftment of
their language.

Sindhi is the language of South Asia's Sindh region, which is now a province of Pakistan.
Sindh has the highest number of Sindhi speakers in Pakistan. The remaining speakers can be
found all over the world and specially in India, Mostly Indian Sindhi speakers are members of an
ethnic community that migrated after Sindh became a part of Pakistan in 1947 (Mukherjee,
2018). According to David, Ali and Baloch (2017) more than 35-40 million people, mostly in
Pakistan and India, speak the Sindhi language. It is also spoken by smaller Sindhi communities
residing in Britain, the United States, Oman, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and sindhi
people living around the world. Cole (2006) stated Sindhi enjoys the status of an official
language of the province. Almost half of Sindh's population lives in rural areas, where Sindhi is
the main language of the people of Sindh. Sindhi language is further divided into six main
dialects and these are Siro, Vicholi, Lari, Lasi, Thari and Kachi. Siro is also known as siraiki
which is spoken in upper part of Sindh and also in southern Punjab. Whereas, vicholi as word
itself means central so this dialect is being spoken in central part of the Sindh. This is considered
as standard dialect and also a language of education and literature. Next, Lari is a dialect of
Sindhi language that is spoken in the southern part of the Sindh. Lasi is usually spoken in the
Lasbela and the khirthar range on the western boarder of Sindh. Dialect that is spoken in the
eastern part of the Sindh and also in Jaisalmer district in Rajasthan is Thari or thareli. Whereas,
Kutchi is a Sindhi dialect that is usually spoken in the Kutch region and also in Kathiawar Gujrat
(Mahar, Qadir & Abbass, 2009).

Sindh has different cultural traditions and has been the seat of civilization and meeting
place of various cultures from time to time. As a result, the people of Sindh established their own
unique artistic heritage. They have maintained their original taste in their art and craft, music and
literature, games and even in sports. In the 12th century, the first translation of the Quran was
done into Sindhi language. Whereas, during the 14-18th centuries, because of its rich vocabulary
Sindhi was one of the literary languages of the eastern world. Moreover, there are 52 letters in
the Sindhi language. They include not only characters with unique dot combinations that write
implosive consonants and the distinctive series of nasal sounds; they also have several other
dotted letters that write most of the aspired consonants including bh, dh, th etc (Hakro, Ismaili,
Talib, Bhatti & Mojai, 2014). Sindhi may be written in more than seven ways: The Arabic,
Devanagari, and Gujarati scripts Khudabadi, Choyiki. Sindhi scripts can be written in more than
seven ways. The language is derived from the Sanskrit script scheme. The Khudabadi script was
used by nearly 20 million people in Sindh province of Pakistan and India to compose the
language of Indo-Aryan Sindhi. The script is modified to Sindhi-Arabic in the Persian written
language, which itself adapts the Arabic system.

Sindhi poets and authors played a major role during the development of this language.
According to Shackle (2018) Sindhi developed excellent poetries under Soomras and Sammas,
and the name of Syed Ali and Qazi Qadan, the names of both the Thatta and their younger
contemporaries, Shah Abdul Karim of Bulrhi, the grandfather of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, is one
of the pioneers and well-known poets of that time. Qasi Qadan brought philosophy into the
poetry of Sindhi. He put much focus in his poetry on the pure mind and self-study. Whereas,
Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit is the greatest poet in Sindhi, known for his poetry book Risalo. Latif
rejected all manifestations of religious Orthodoxy and preached God's unity and eternal fraternity
in Sufi-laden words. He was accompanied by a poet who enriched a tradition of sacred songs,
abdul wahhab sachal sarmast, also a sufian saint (das, shackle & jotwani, 2015). As, Sindhi
poetry is prominent in Sindhi culture. Regional poets also Sheikh Ayaz, Ustaad Bhukhari,
Ahmed Khan MAdhoosh etc. In the nineteenth century the development of the language was
further supported by authors, journals and other literary figures. TV and print media are doing a
lot for the development of this language. there are many Sindhi channels where Sindhi is being
promoted by different genres. examples of sindhi channels that are operating in Pakistan are
KTN, Sindh TV, Dharti tv and many more. apart from this daily Sindhi raaga, music or poetry
are being sung or played at different dargah sharifs. Sindh government is also active in
promoting their language by organizing different programs all over the Pakistan. However, in
several school districts, Sindh used Sindhi as the only teaching medium, and Urdu as a
compulsory subject. In certain urban areas, Urdu was also used as a teaching medium and Sindhi
as a compulsory subject. English was therefore also studied and taught from subsequent classes,
i.e. grade 6, as a mandatory subject in all four provinces (Rahman, 1996). Sindhi as a medium of
instruction is used all over the province and even universities are also providing degree in Sindhi
language. Apart from that, CNIC is too issued in three languages; Urdu, English and Sindhi. In
different part of Sindh, sign boards are also written in Sindhi language. These practices help to
promote regional language and also to preserve one of the oldest language of the subcontinent.

References:

Cole, J. S. (2006). Sindhi. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (pp. 384-387).

Elsevier Ltd.

David, M. K., Ali, M., & Baloch, G. M. (2017). Language shift or maintenance: The case

of the Sindhi language in Pakistan. Language Problems and Language

Planning, 41(1), 26-45.

Hakro, D. N., Ismaili, I. A., Talib, A. Z., Bhatti, Z., & Mojai, G. N. (2014). Issues and

challenges in Sindhi OCR. Sindh University Research Journal-SURJ (Science

Series), 46(2).

Hammad, M., & Anwar, H. (2019, November). Sentiment Analysis of Sindhi Tweets Dataset

using Supervised Machine Learning Techniques. In 2019 22nd International Multitopic

Conference (INMIC) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Mukherjee, S. (2018). Sindhi language and its history. Language Division, Kolkata.

Rahman, T. (1999). Language, politics and power in Pakistan: The case of Sindh and

Sindhi. Ethnic Studies Report, 17(1), 1730-1848.

in Sindhi language. In 2009 International Conference on Natural Language Processing

and Knowledge Engineering (pp. 5-5). IEEE.

Shackle, C. (2018, July 9). Sindhi language. Encyclopedia Britannica.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sindhi-language.

Shackle, C. Das, S. K., & Jotwani, M. W, (2015, Feb 24). "Sindhi literature". Encyclopedia

Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Sindhi-literature.