National language? Let’s not think!

[Tiki Tam Tam]

Daily Times

Tuesday, August 29, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

SECOND OPINION: National language? Let’s not think! —Khaled Ahmed’s TV Review

Issues we can’t tackle (language, culture etc) will be taken out of our hands by globalisation and we will get out of the mess without trying. If we think too hard we might end up having Arabic as our national language. Let’s not think!

The issue of language remains with Third World nations in one form or another. Most of them don’t get to make the decisions needed to establish a language policy. Such decisions get made because of external factors. Since language is mixed up in nationalism, most nations are better off not having a language policy. Most Muslim states are better off not having a culture policy too, and language is a part of our culture. If we think too hard we might end up having Arabic as our national language. Let’s not think!

Business Plus (July 13, 2006) had Rahat Kazmi talking to a group of young discussants about language in Pakistan. The discussion opened in welcome frankness about the job market being English-driven. Kazmi said the global market dictated which language a nation will learn. He said, barring a few trade-related languages, all other languages were threatened with extinction. He said some states like Turkey modernised through language by changing the script. But the group could not name other states that had modernised their scripts.

The global market with its ‘monoculture’ will come to our rescue. Issues we can’t tackle (human rights, women’s rights, environment, language, culture etc) will be taken out of our hands and we will get out of the mess beyond our collective intellect without trying. Above all don’t try! Aga Khan recommended Arabic for Pakistan, then Feroz Khan Noon tried to impose its script in East Pakistan, former chief justice of Pakistan, Nasim Hasan Shah, ‘regretted’ that Arabic was not Pakistan’s national language; and now Dr Israr Ahmad might get it imposed through a revolution which he insists will be led by him and bloody. Turkey’s modernisation through script was admired by many Muslims in India but Roman Urdu was mostly used by Christian missionaries. It appealed to no one. And Turkey’s masses don’t want a Kemalist state any more!

Kazmi said man needed language for five functions: knowledge, expression, self-awareness, life-defining ability and the critical faculty. He seemed to imply that in English there could be no creativity in societies with different mother tongues. He also implied that self-critical faculties could not be aroused except through the national or mother tongue. He accepted that English was the language of empowerment and argued that there could be more than one national language because children were extremely receptive to new idioms.

Kazmi was realistic while he spoke in favour of the national language or the mother tongue. English is the language of reason in Pakistan and Urdu is a carrier of our emotions. This is wonderful and makes us a more holistic society. The only problem is that only a few master the English discourse and therefore our rationality is restricted. In Iran not even this sliver of the rational population is available. We will always admire the Iranians for their collective defiance because of a vacuum of rational discourse, but we will survive with English even without the cushion of oil selling at $76 a barrel.

Rahat Kazmi advocated many languages instead of one and seemed to include English. This means that Pakistan’s regional languages will get an airing and populations will be exposed to Urdu and English as well as the regional idiom. He insisted that that there could be no creativity in English. He complained that literature had all but vanished from Pakistan and seemed to imply that this happened because enough importance was not given to Urdu, and that English seemed to dominate in an uncreative way. He referred to Faiz and other great poets and assumed that they somehow put a date on when the creativity declined after 1947. He said Faiz went to an Urdu school and yet was bilingual just like Allama Iqbal who too was educated in Urdu. He pointed to the fact that in his day (1960s?) school education was of a good standard, which was no longer the case today.

Increasingly the English language is being de-imperialised and the non-English are creative in it. Globalisation means English belongs to no one. Most Americans are non-creative in English just as not all non-English and non-Americans are uncreative in it. Iqbal, Faiz and all other Urdu geniuses belong to the British era. Even Daud Rehbar is not ours. We threw him out in the 1950s because we disliked his views on Islam. He has written a review of religions published in Naya Daur of Jamil Jalibi whose Urdu is next in creativity to Ghalib’s letters. What kind of Urdu does Qazi Hussain Ahmad write in his politically unconvincing journalistic prose? Urdu is mostly uncreative these days.

The discussants brought up the fact that Pakistan’s constitution was in English and all the state institutions functioned in English. Rahat stated that English was the language of the rich and the poor went to Urdu-medium schools, which was wrong. One discussant said that he actually thought in English.

India’s constitution is in English too. That is okay because Hindi is not accepted throughout India. Pakistan’s case is similar. What’s the harm? There is no rich-poor divide in the private education sector because you get schools of great variety. It was there when the monopolist state sector could not provide enough institutions and the rich sent their sons abroad. Now English is here and is accessible to all.

Rahat Kazmi criticised the government policy about starting English (compulsory) from class one in Sindh. There was also a plan to start computer education at the school level, which would require electricity in schools where not even proper buildings exist today. Rahat Kazmi agreed with Pakistan’s top language scholar Dr Tariq Rehman who recommends that up to class five the medium of instruction should be the mother tongue. After class five, Urdu and one other language should be introduced.

The acknowledgement of the importance of English is realistic but the effort to teach it is not. Dr Tariq Rehman’s suggestion is good but he also published a short study (Dawn, February 23, 2003) about how Urdu schools and madrassas spread prejudice against a pluralist society.

The programme concluded on the point of national pride. Someone said that some people are ashamed to speak Urdu. The lady said frankly she knew just enough Urdu to get by and it didn’t seem to create too many difficulties in her life. Rahat Kazmi said one should be proud of one’s language like the Turks who loved Maulana Rum.

What we should do is speak Urdu and English well by separating them. Rahat Kazmi should be our model because he does it so well. Business Plus discussants suffered from a kind of tonguelessness because they spoke a smelly hotch-potch of English and Urdu. If you want a clause in the Constitution on language it should be against the unholy melange.

The important aspect:

The programme concluded on the point of national pride. Someone said that some people are ashamed to speak Urdu. The lady said frankly she knew just enough Urdu to get by and it didn’t seem to create too many difficulties in her life. Rahat Kazmi said one should be proud of one’s language like the Turks who loved Maulana Rum.

What we should do is speak Urdu and English well by separating them.

Unless one knows correct idiomatic English and metaphoric English, problems in comprehension will occur and people will trot out balderdash adding to the confusion!

One must think in English while writing in English!

One cannot ever hope to write correct English if one thinks in the vernacular and writes in what one thinks is English.

A very timely programme and a very timely article.