By Hafizur Rahman

Dawn Lahore Edition, Karachi Edition

The federal government in Pakistan should be striving to promote the various languages of Pakistan (sometimes called the regional languages, although the speakers don't like the expression) but, for some reason, it doesn't. If you were to ask the federal government why, and it could speak, its reply could be, "What have we done for the national language, i.e. Urdu, that we should be expected to waste time, money and attention on half a dozen other languages? For us English is enough."

This is said facetiously. But speaking seriously, the federal point of view would be that it is up to the provinces to look after the language of their people which is one of the basic expressions of their culture. None of the provinces do that except Sindh. One reason for that is that Sindhi is a well-developed language - developed through long usage - and is officially used in courts (except for the High Court) and in much of government business in the districts. This status it has continued to enjoy ever since the British annexed the province some 160 years ago. Even otherwise the government and the people of Sindh love their language, are proud of it and patronise it in many ways. There are more than one organizations that nurture it and foster it and aim at getting an international status for it on the strength of the lakhs of Sindhi-speaking Hindus who left for India after Partition. The lack of similar interest on the part of Punjabis, Pukhtoons and Balochs in their respective mother tongues has a number of facets, including psychological, though their examination is not the purpose of this piece. Today I am mainly concerned with what I have read recently about the NWFP government's welcome concern about Pushto and thoughts arising therefrom.

Some time ago the Frontier governor declared the Pushto academy of Peshawar University as a "language authority." The occasion was the inauguration of the language laboratory of the academy, which, he hoped, would go a long way in promoting Pushto if full use was made of the latest computer technology. The function was attended by a large number of literary figures of the province.

The Pushto Academy was set up in the early fifties, soon after the creation of Peshawar University. I remember when I was posted to Peshawar in June 1957 that it was a prestigious body, though still not sure what it was expected to do. It was headed by Maulana Abdul Qadir, a highly revered scholar of Pushto, Persian and Urdu, whose association with the academy inspired universal respect for it. Since then it has always had a well-known scholar of Pushto as its Director. The governor did not specify what he meant by language authority, nor did the news report clarify the matter, but obviously it was a significant rise in its stature and responsibilities.

The governor said the traditional disharmony in the thinking of Pukhtoons had given rise to many complications in the evolution of a standard language and a unified dialect for Pushto. He exhorted the Academy to work to strengthen and enrich the language by adopting new words and discovering new vistas.

In order to accord an authoritative status to the Pushto Academy, the governor suggested a committee be formed forthwith to devise the necessary legal status for the Academy as language authority. He lamented that activities for the promotion of Pushto in Afghanistan had come to a standstill, therefore the Academy should take up the unfinished task. The government would extend every possible help in this respect. he announced a grant of one million rupees to start with.

Apparently the governor is culturally a sensitive soul and feels that Pushto has to play a dominant role in publicising the culture of the area. (More about the exact place of Pushto as the people's language in the NWFP follows in a moment). He regretted that,for the last many years, the Pushto Academy had not been as active as a research organization as it should have been, and hoped this deficiency would be made up now. He particularly wanted the feasibility of introducing Ph.D. and M.Phil in Pushto language and literature be explored.

Pushto is the language of the majority in he NWFP. But those who don't belong there, or have never lived or worked there, should know the exact position. Let me clarify the situation by naming the exceptions. But for a few tribal tracts, the language of the whole of Hazara, a very populous division, is Hindko, which is a variation of Punjabi, but don't say that in front of a Hindko-speaker. Because of being administratively a part of the province, and also because racially they are Pukhtoons, they understand Pushto but their own language is Hindko. A little variation of Hazarawal Hindko and you get the Hindko of Peshawar and Kohat cities. In most of Dera Ismail Khan they speak Seraiki. While all these dialects are mutually understood, the language of Chitral is entirely distinct and different and has no resemblance with any of them. It is somewhat akin to Kashmiri and the Shina of Gilgit. But the language of the majority in the Frontier, including FATA and the provincially administered tribal area is certainly Pushto, the most developed of them all.

It may be the most developed but it is also ignored and neglected. There are only two daily papers in Pushto, started not more than ten years ago but most people read the Urdu dailies. With rare exceptions, they write to each other in Urdu. Most educated Pukhtoons in the cities who pride themselves on speaking Pushto cannot read it properly, and of course they can't write it because a dozen letters of the Pushto alphabet are like nothing in Urdu. A recent bad habit is that, like the Punjabis, many of them have started speaking to their children in Urdu.

It is good therefore that the governor is paying so much attention to the development and promotion of Pushto. If this were not done the vast treasury of Pushto literature might well be lost through sheer neglect and the people lose interest in their mother tongue. You might say this is being done because the governor is from NWF Province. But then, the governor of Punjab is a Punjabi, and the governor of Balochistan is a Baloch. Why aren't they moved by the desire to do something for their mother tongue? This is where the psychology of some racial types comes in, and calls for a separate analysis, although Dr Tariq Rahman has thrown sufficient light on the issue in his learned articles on Pakistani languages in this newspaper.