By Dr Shahid Siddiqui

The Dawn: December 29, 2008

THE significance of language in individual and societal lives is vital. It’s one of the important cultural expressions that act as an identity marker. With the passage of time the socio-political aspects of language were brought to light by linguists, anthropologists and social thinkers.

Now language is considered a linguistics phenomenon and a highly socio-political concept that is linked to power.

Language is no more viewed as merely a neutral and passive tool of communication but a powerful constituent of social reality. In a number of imperialist adventures language was used as a weapon to gain and sustain control over the colonised nations. The cultural hegemony is generally facilitated and made possible with the help of language. Power groups consider their language and culture as supreme and take on the job of civilising others by imposing their language and culture on them.

No language is inherently superior or inferior but its speakers’ status lends to social prestige to the language. Powerful groups consider their language supreme and view others’ as substandard. Terms such as ‘dialect’ and ‘vernacular’ were used to downgrade a language. The contemporary view, however, suggests that all languages are equally respectable. That is why the term ‘dialect’ that had a negative connotation, is no more in vogue and linguists prefer the term ‘variety’ instead.

During the imperial rule in pre-independence India, English was used as a tool to create a class of people who could act as a liaison between the colonisers and the Indian masses. Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education was a typical example of the imperialistic technique of glorifying one’s own language and culture and stigmatising others’. Comparing the superiority of English over Sanskrit and Arabic, the two languages so dear to Hindus and Muslim, Macaulay’s view was sweeping and judgmental, “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature in India and Arabia.”

The imposition of English was made possible in a strategic manner by attaching benefits and perks to it which included government jobs in the British Empire and a relatively elevated social status. These pragmatic benefits persuaded people to learn English.

Some religious groups in India opposed English as a symbol of imperial rule but very soon Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his colleagues realised that closing the doors to English would simply mean giving up opportunities for an improved life during British rule. During the Pakistan Movement language emerged as an important factor to fight the case of an independent country on the basis of the two-nation theory. Urdu was adopted by Muslims as their language as compared to Hindi associated with the Hindus.

In 1947 when India was divided and Pakistan came into being, Urdu was declared the national language of the new state. We see three major trends in deciding the national language of a country. The first is that the mother tongue of the majority is given the status of national language as in the case of the US and UK where English is the mother tongue of the majority of people and thus the national language. The second trend is that liberated colonies decided to keep the language of their masters as the national language as happened in Africa. The third is that instead of one language certain countries declared more than one language as their national languages as in Canada where they have English and French.

In Pakistan we see that none of these trends were kept in view while deciding about the national language. Urdu was not the mother tongue of the majority. The majority comprised Bengalis followed by Punjabis, Sindhis, etc. There was not much resistance against Urdu from Punjab on two major counts: First because of the close affinity between Urdu and Punjabi at the grammar and lexicon levels; second, because Punjabis were in the army and in the bureaucracy and thus were close to the centres of power. This was not the case with the Bengalis as there was no affinity between the two languages and Bengalis, having minimum representation in the army and bureaucracy, were not present in the centres of power.

This sense of deprivation coupled with the centre’s insistence on having one national language led to historical protests. The demand was to declare Bangla, besides Urdu, as a national language. By the time centre was forced to declare Bangla as the second national language it was already too late. The death of Bengali students at Dhaka University gave impetus to the movement of freedom that culminated in the shape of Bangladesh.

In the recent past a group of scholars raised the issue of replacing English with Urdu. But this proposal is abstract in nature and not practicable in the absence of political will at the state level. The use of the mother tongue at an early level, however, needs serious consideration as there is ample research to suggest the usefulness of the mother tongue during the early phase of education for concept formation among children.Language choice should not be an either/or question. We need to expose our children to different languages, including English. But learning English should not mean sidelining our mother tongue and indigenous languages.

The writer is director of Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.

shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com