By Riaz Missen

The Frontier Post Peshawar Edition

Academics play a very important role in all the civilised societies of the world. They are the people who tear down myths and solve the mysteries that stand in the way of the development of the society. The governments look for their guidance to formulate policies to run the affairs of the state. All over the world, they are doing their job and are dually rewarded for their services.But not all the nations are grateful to these sages of the time: Dr. Tariq Rahman, an eminent linguist of the country, says that our universities have become too bureaucratised to let their academics play their due role in the society.

In Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, you will find very few academics that have adopted the profession by their own choice. Although it may not be a case with the faculty of natural sciences, academics of social sciences are treading on this path due to sheer bad luck - they envy their class fellows who have become civil servants. However, Dr. Tariq has come to this field by choice. He is also among a few in the country who could be considered an authority on linguistics. He has traveled through the length and breadth of the country for the research work on the languages of Pakistan and has written a number of books on this subject.

What are his findings and what he has suggested to overcome the political problems of the multi-linguistic state of Pakistan are not devoid of interest even for a layperson who feels concerned about his motherland. But he is doing it against all odds of the time as far as the attitude of the government towards academics is concerned. His saying, " I don't wonder if the people don't write, but I wonder if they do" should worry the conscious persons of the society. He says that there are over 58 languages in Pakistan. This tapestry of languages can prove an asset if the government pays due attention to their preservation as well as their growth. Languages are like humans that need patronisation from the people at the helm of affairs. Thus, the language policy of the state plays an important role in the development as well as extinction of some language in the society.

Dr Tariq's much-publicised book 'Language and politics in Pakistan' (Oxford University Press, 1996) has emphatically underscored this point. At the same time, the state's policy to promote a particular language at the cost of the rest can't be without political repercussions. To assert this point, he has given a detailed analysis of the political developments in the subcontinent in the context of language movements in the sub-continent, right from Urdu-Hindi controversy to the language movements in the present- day Pakistan.

The language is a means through which the people communicate their messages to their fellow beings. There are innumerable languages in the world but there are a few states, commonly known as the nation-states, where the people speak the same language. But there are also states in the world where the existence of more than one language becomes a problem; it becomes the main hurdle in the national integration and sometimes poses a serious threat to the geographical integrity of the state.

Our own country has been deprived of its eastern limb due to this problem. In South Asia, India solved this problem by drawing the boundaries of the states on linguistic-cultural lines and officially recognising the various regional languages as state languages. In the present-day Pakistan, the tapestry of language is still a hurdle in the process of national integration as it has surfaced itself in the form of ethnicity.

Dr. Tariq sees it imperative to have a language policy that helps the promotion of all the languages of the country. To him the current policy of the country strengthens apprehensions of small ethnic groups that they are being consistently wiped out through the government's effort to promote Urdu at the cost of regional languages of the country. The Sindhi-Muhajir divide in Sindh, Punjabi-Seraiki divide in the Punjab, Hindko-Pushto divide in the NWFP and Pushto-Balochi divide in Balochistan are the factors contributing to the political instability in the country.

This policy has caused resentment among the members of minority linguistic groups of the respective provinces and has weakened the federation. Pointing to this, he says,"Redrawing of the provincial boundaries on the linguistics lines, using them as official languages in their respective provinces, using Urdu as a national language (given the provinces agree to it), while English should serve the purpose of facilitating communication at the international level." Intensive field research work has driven him to this conclusion.

Given the role and status of academics in the society, he, however, does not attach many hopes with the government to take his advice seriously. "But an academics must do his job even in the face of circumstances like that prevail in Pakistan," he maintains.