I dunno yaaar I agree that we are loosing ourselves to outside influences whether from our neighbors to the East or the West as a Civilization but that is because of our failure to come up with a narrative of our own & telling our people - Who we are ? Had we built a collective consciousness of our own this would not be happening; therefore our failure is our own & only our own !
At the same time let it not be said that I'd advocate not learning from the West or the East or not letting their influences in; I'd very much want that but Nations should '
learn' & be '
inspired' not '
imitate' & '
conform' - Had we done what was required of us we would not be having this conversation right now !
On the Languages thing - First off all languages are derived from each other & the languages before them; therefore to tremble with indignation that Urdu is little more than Persianized Hindi is both, in my opinion, irrational & wrong ! There is nothing wrong with learning Hindi, I wouldn't want to because I prefer some other languages but there really isn't anything wrong with that. Plus we must bear in mind that Urdu evolved in a different direction due to Persian & Arabic influences & that our values, our anecdotes & our analogies in Urdu have an indelible mark of Persian & Arab thought & linguistics but because we're natives of this land - the Indian Subcontinent - naturally there are some values & some analogies & anecdotes that are common to both Hindi & Urdu - I find nothing wrong with that !
Furthermore I would prefer if we teach Classical or Koranic Arabic as part of our Curriculum along with Persian, Urdu, a native language of Pakistan of choice & English ! Learning Koranic Arabic would not make us an Arab State, as if we want to be one, & nor will learning Persian make us Persians, again as if we want to. Both of these languages have the greatest amount of Muslim Thought & Works of Unparalleled Scholarship preserved in them along with the former being the language of the Koran which would enable us to understand the nuances of the language to fully grasp the meaning & spirit of God's Word !
Urdu is our Lingua-Franca & it must be there for any 'unifying' force should be encouraged & not discouraged. Plus it also has an enormous amount of our Thoughts & Works preserved in it with many of them being particular to Pakistan & Pakistan's paradigms !
Our Regional Languages should be cherished & they should be learned to help us maintain our cultural & linguistic diversity along with pleasure of reading everyone from Ameer Hamza Shinwari to Baba Bulleh Shah in the language they should be read in !
Lastly English is a language that would help us Progress the most & any attempt to obtain the most knowledge from what the world (East or West) has to offer is the key to our Progress.
But it all boils down to one thing - Know Thy Self ! And if we can define that for ourselves there is nothing & no one's influence that we should be afraid !