okay then.
I see your argument as:
1. A country with a national language is a national language is ahead in the process of "nation building" than a country without a national language.
2. Pakistan has a national language while India is only trying.
3. Therefore, Pakistan is ahead of India in nation building.
I disagree with premise 1, and the conclusion is hollow anyway.
1. A nation is built on a *sense* of shared history, identity and culture. language is one small part of it, arguably a diversity of language only contributes to the glory of the common culture. attempting to stamp out the diversity by forcing an unnecessary third language other the mother tongue and a pragmatic common language (global is better) is simply disastrous.
in response to your conclusion, my response was: a common sense analysis of the two nations will quickly reveal that the Pakistani nation is much more divided than India. a shared language doesn't seem to have helped, in fact it was the first spark of protest against Pakistan in Bangladesh.
so in conclusion, you can harp about common language all day, but at the end of day, India is more cohesive without a national language, than Pakistan is with a national language. unity in diversity might sound like a meme to you, but it's a very powerful meme. afterall, at the end of the day, nations are just imagined communities. powerful ideas that drive a nation don't come out of attempting to enforce a bland template of common language, common blah blah programs.
After so many trolling comments, I was hoping for an intelligent discussion, but I suppose some things are too much to hope for.
But, I suppose you've tried to make an effort, so I'll accept.
Before I reply, we need to understand that your objection, therefore your reply primarily is in regards to language, so this discussion will concluded on this topic, if it goes elsewhere, then you'll be classified as a troll.
Let us get one thing clear, no-one including you has the authority to create your own reality and create an argument based on your own reality. If I use your logic, then I can declare I'm God, therefore what I say is right and everything else is wrong, it would be idiotic.
So any claims made must have some link to reality, how the world exists and how things are defined around the world, there has to be some uniformity in what is a reasoned argument, a reasoned point, and what defines a nation, identity and such things.
There is a fantasy based claim of historical Indian nationhood. The language aspect was in regards to that claim. I never claimed language to be the only determining factor in what classifies a nation, again you’re trying to misrepresent what I said, that’s not right.
There are other factors, but language is a major and the most important determinant that defines a nation, this is an established fact, you cannot create a new reality to fit your world-view that is contrary to an established facts.
As you have already mentioned, history, identity and culture, I’ll answer, but will keep this short. India does not qualify for historical nationhood on any of those metrics, because Tamil history, identity and culture is as different from a Marathi, as it is from a Punjabi or Bengali or any other ethnic group of India. That’s because India has never existed as a country, it was always a region, much like Europe, the Middle East, and other regions. Those regions have a lot more commonalities then India, but they do not make silly claims of historical nationhood, because unlike Indians they do not live in a fantasy. We are here to discuss realities.
The fact is India does not have a national language, this is not by choice, but because no-one will accept Hindi as a national language.
But, India has been trying to push Hindi down the throat of it’s citizens since its creation in 1947, India has tried constantly, but failed.
There is a clear border between Bengali ethnic region to Behari, Marathi ethic groups and Malayali, and between Malayali ethnic groups and Tamils and so on. That’s because each has a distinct identity, history, culture and language, they are ethnic groups, totally different from each other. Indian isn’t an ethnicity marker, it is merely a historical a description to define who lived in the Indus region and beyond, it became a regional description to identity the British Indian colony, and since 1947 it is merely a marker for citizens of a nation-state called India, that came into existence in 1947.
A unified language has always been and still is vitally important for a national identity, and language carries with it so much, that is deeper then mere communication. The Soviet Union had Russian as the standard language, that is why people can still speak Russian in areas formally ruled by the Soviets. Russian is spoken because the Soviets tried to create a new identity, hence the use of the Russian language, but they obviously failed miserably, that failure had other reasons. But, language was central to that process of nation building.
The North African region is not historically Arabic, they were Berber’s, but they accepted and adopted Arabic identity and language as part of the process of creating a new identity. Identity is always a process, no one wakes up and decides that they are going to be Arab today or Bengali, or Tamil, it is a process of shared experiences and memories, that is expressed through language, that’s why language is the most important determinant. Hence every nation has tried to bring into use a single language, hence why India has tried, still trying, but failing. You cannot claim a historical nationhood when you are still in the process of nation building, that is an obvious fact.
What happened in Bangladesh was not singularly a language issue, it was one of the markers that defined a bigger problem. The primary being that it was over 1000 miles away, with a larger hostile neighbour in between. And, because there were cultural differences between the East and the West, the same differences that exist in India, even today.
The distance, and also because Pakistan was still setting up the structures of a state made it difficult to bridge that gap, language became a symbol of that problem, but it was not the problem. But that is another discussion.
Today Urdu is Pakistan’s national and official language, it is also the language of each province, each provinces has their regional mother tongue, but have also given Urdu equal status, that is called acceptance, there is no opposition to Urdu in Pakistan, but there is continuous opposition to Hindi in India, even today.
There are other markers that show the integrated nature of Pakistani society and state, but that’s for another discussion.
China is 90% Han ethnicity and they all speak Chinese, Han identity was developed over time, they did not wake up one day and decide we are Han Chinese, but through centuries of sort of unified rule and continuous belief in a shared identity, that’s why they are Han and speak Chinese, it was a historical process, that never took place in India, because India was never a single entity, never a single nation, there was no desire for it. It only had a set of loose broad regional similarities, nothing more.
The Egyptians did not speak Arabic, they spoke another language written in hieroglyphic form, but they also adopted the Arabic identity and language, because language is paramount identification of a shared identity.
The examples are endless, that’s the reality and a solid fact. I hope you succeed in your nation building process, but please do it without creating fantasies and lies.
