[lg policy] Pakistan: Saving our indigenous languages

Tue May 15 14:54:57 UTC 2012

VIEW: Saving our indigenous languages — Asher John

The colonial language policies were designed to help the Raj
perpetuate its rule and did not respect or care about the local
languages and cultures

Pakistan is one of the many countries in the modern world that can
boast of a rich cultural, demographic, and geographic diversity.
People in the US are often surprised when they are told that Pakistan
has beautiful mountain ranges and places where it snows even in summer
(many Americans consider Pakistan to be a desert country somewhere in
the Middle East!). The same Americans are frequently stunned to learn
that Pakistan is a multilingual country where roughly 72 languages are
spoken (many Americans think that every country in the world is
largely monolingual and mono-ethnic). To confound my American audience
further, I usually add that more than one million people each speak
seven of these 72 languages. However, unfortunately, the good news
ends here and the bad news begins.

We Pakistanis seem to be harming ourselves in the domain of social and
cultural heritage like all other fields of life. Instead of being
proud of our rich cultural heritage and diversity, we are destroying
our own sociocultural background and history. How aptly someone has
been quoted in a recent British Council study that, “Pakistan is a
nation of people who don’t know who they are.” This attitude is
evident in our education and language policies. Even 64 years after
independence, we still have the colonial era language policies that
are not only detrimental to our social and cultural fabric but are
also exploitative of the tens of millions of people who have no
recourse to wealth and power (both in the literal and electric
sense!).

The colonial language policies were designed to help the Raj
perpetuate its rule and did not respect or care about the local
languages and cultures. These policies were aimed at eradicating
dissent against colonial rule. The epitome of this policy by the Raj
could be seen in their education-language policy. They declared Urdu
to be the medium of instruction for the masses and English for the
elite. This policy ignored all other languages of present day
Pakistan. The continuation of these colonial policies has not only
created a chasm between our people and their culture but has also
caused irrevocable damage to our society in the social, economic and
educational spheres of life.

A recent report by South Asian Forum for Education Development (SAFED)
claimed that only half of the children in grade five could read grade
two level Urdu or mother tongue book and just 40 percent could read a
grade two English book. Another study by the British Council has
pointed out that one of the reasons for the high dropout rate from our
primary schools is the language of the medium of instruction. Having
taught in Pakistani schools and colleges, I can claim from experience
that half of my students could not express themselves in the written
mode in any language, let alone English.

The above-mentioned situation demands an immediate and lasting
solution but instead of addressing this situation in an objective and
scientific way, we are actually trying our best to make matters worse,
which is evident from such decisions as making English the language of
instruction and examinations for middle and high school children by
some provincial governments. Decisions like this by our respective
governments are harming our rich cultural and linguistic heritage. If
the present situation continues, it is possible that before long we
will be on the brink of possible abandonment and extinction of some of
our beautiful languages. It is time that the federal and the
provincial governments accord due recognition and status to all our
indigenous languages.

The question that could be asked is how our languages can be given
their proper place in our society and how they can be used to control
illiteracy and many other social problems our society is facing.
Modern linguistics looks at languages as capital and if this capital
can be traded fairly and squarely in today’s burgeoning economy, then
the speakers of that language tend to retain and promote their capital
(language). One of the many ways to make a language more marketable
and desired is to give it an official status and use it in different
public spheres. Declaring the mother tongue as the medium of
instruction for elementary education in the country and making the
local languages official languages at the lower level of the
bureaucracy can start the process of empowering our neglected
languages and their speakers. These small steps will not only give
these neglected languages their due share in society, they will also
address and solve many of our social and educational problems and
needs.

The writer is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at Ball State University
in Muncie, Indiana

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\05\15\story_15-5-2012_pg3_4

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