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Language Policy of Pakistan

Urdu was intended to be the national language of Pakistan according to its 1973 constitution, but English remains the de facto official language. Pakistan suffers from uneven educational opportunities and classism due to the lack of a single medium of instruction across schools, which use either Urdu or English. Additionally, ethnic tensions arose regarding Urdu due to the higher positions held by Urdu speakers at independence. The language policy of Pakistan has been ignored since its creation but adopting a national language could help solve many of the country's problems by unifying people and positively impacting education, class divisions, and development.

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92 views

Language Policy of Pakistan

Urdu was intended to be the national language of Pakistan according to its 1973 constitution, but English remains the de facto official language. Pakistan suffers from uneven educational opportunities and classism due to the lack of a single medium of instruction across schools, which use either Urdu or English. Additionally, ethnic tensions arose regarding Urdu due to the higher positions held by Urdu speakers at independence. The language policy of Pakistan has been ignored since its creation but adopting a national language could help solve many of the country's problems by unifying people and positively impacting education, class divisions, and development.

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khadija tariq
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Language policy of Pakistan

In august, 1947 Pakistan emerged as a new nation on the map of the world with an identity of its own and
a national language to back it up. At the time the nation was wounded by the unfair partition and
administratively immaturity, to even form its own constitution. Consequently, the official language was
the colonial language of English. However, the most spoken languages at the time were Urdu and
Bengali. Urdu had a very special role in the freedom struggle of the country it emerged as the language
of the Muslim and unified Muslims all over India either through events such as Urdu Hindi controversy in
1867 or spiritual motivational waves in the form of Iqbal’s poetry.

The government of Pakistan has never issued or published a single document about the language policy of
Pakistan. However, there is a mention of the national language in the 1973 constitution according to
which the national language of Pakistan will be Urdu and arrangements will be made for it being used for
official purposes and other purposes within fifteen years of the commencing day until then English
language will be used. The constitution also states that the provincial languages shall be promoted
without prejudice to the national language. As we can see now 15 years have well passed but the official
and technical languages of Pakistan is still English. Clearly the colonial roots and elitists sentiments hold
too much power in our classist society for middle class language of a common man to be accepted as the
technical language of the country. The country also suffers an education crisis due to the lack of a single
medium of instruction. The madrassah’s, which are the religious education institutes, and government
secondary level schools all use Urdu as their medium of instruction whereas private schools, and higher
education institutes use English.

These uneven educational and professional opportunities further promote classism in the society and leads
to shunning of the use of our national languages be it provincial or federal. The current government
brought in policies like single national curriculum to counter this, but the use of language was still
ignored in it. Another tragedy that our national language faces is ethnic repulsion, so the ethnic groups in
Pakistan were always threatened by the language of Urdu because of the higher positions, either in the
bureaucracy or the military being held by the Urdu speaking class of the society (the Muhajirs) at the time
of independence and their elitist sentiments towards others. This unfortunately gave birth to political
tensions and a slightly hostile environment towards the language of Urdu by the ethnic minorities. The
language of a country being its mean of transfer of information plays a very important role in the
development of the country. Most developed countries of the world use their national language for
technical and official purposes, so the transfer of information is fluid and comprehensible even for the
masses. This way nobody must learn a new language other than their first language to climb up a social
ladder.

The language policy of Pakistan has been ignored and disregarded since the creation of the country. The
government must understand the power the nation language holds. So many problems of the country can
be solved by just unifying people under one language. Education, classism, and development of the
country can be positively impacted by a well-developed language policy of the country.
References
http://apnaorg.com/book-chapters/tariq/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225248416_Language_Policy_and_Education_in_Pakistan

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