Language Commission: need of the hour
English, a colonial legacy is still language of the Power in South
Asia. After removing Persian, colonial masters introduced Hindi & Urdu in
numerous provinces of British India in 1860s. In some provinces like Bengal and
Sindh, they promoted mother tongues yet in many provinces like the Punjab,
Kashmir they did not allow mother tongues at all. After 1947, Dar commission
partially helped newly formed Bharati parliament to resolve language issue. it
identifies 96 languages with 26 having more than 5000 speakers. So Bharti
constitution allowed these 26 languages to be used as medium of instruction. In
Pakistan, first education minister Fazl ur rehman had the vision(see his speech
in Nov 1947 in favor of Pakistani mother tongues delivered at First education
conference) to tackle the language issue yet politics of Objective resolution
ruined this vision. Liaqat Ali Khan, Moulvi Tameezudin khan, Sir
Zafrullah khan, Shabir Ahmad Osmani, Khwaja Nzamudin, Abdur Rab Nishtar were
main spokesmen of that vision. First draft of proposed Pakistani constitution
came in 1950 which proposed Urdu as Sole national language which was not only
against vision of Iqbal as narrated in Allahbad Adress of 1930 but also against
vision of Jinnah as narrated by him in three speeches in East Bengal during
March 1948. Iqbal supported linguistic diversity while in Jinnah's vision there
was a room for mother tongues yet Khwaja Nazmudin in 1952 declared Urdu as Sole
National language. In reaction opposition picked the point and raised a
movement. After historic defeat of Nazmudin group in 1954 provincial elections
of Bengal, victors ( Jugto front) agreed on a compromise formula ( Muhammad Ali
formula) which not only created One Unit but also proposed Bengali as
co-national language. So Bengali got place with Urdu yet in reality conflict of
Urdu with Pakistani mother tongues was in favor of English and ICS officers
were behind that game. In the first Pakistani constitution of 1956, both
languages got place as national languages yet the conflict remained there as
there were lot more Pakistani languages like Punjabi, Pashto, Balochi, Sindhi
etc. The conflict remained there till 1971 and after 1971, instead of accepting
its faults, establishment decided to tackle issue of languages in more negative
way. Now they planned to raise in-fighting between Pakistani mother tongues on
the name of language & dialects. So from Zia period till the 3rd PPP tenure
we have witnessed that negative politics.
There is an immediate need to address this issue by establishing a
national commission. read urself
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