Urdu as a unifying force

The prescient Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in order to keep the newly founded Pakistan united as a single nation, had declared Urdu as the national language of the country. Unfortunately, during his lifetime, the Bengalis in East Pakistan objected to the imposition of Urdu as the state language and started agitation, forcing the Quaid to visit Dhaka to resolve the issue. On 21 March 1948, addressing a mammoth public meeting, he said “Let me restate my views on the question of a state language for Pakistan. For official use in this province, the people of the province can choose any language they wish… There can, however, be one lingua franca, that is, the language for inter-communication between the various provinces of the state… The state language, therefore, must obviously be Urdu, a language that has been nurtured by a hundred million Muslims of this subcontinent which, more than any other provincial language, embodies the best that is in Islamic culture and Muslim tradition and is nearest to the languages used in other Islamic countries.”

He went on to warn that there are fifth columnists who were trying to exploit the language controversy in order to stir up trouble. Their sole object in exploiting this controversy was to create a split among the Muslims of this state.

There was a rationale behind this bold declaration, which needs to be taken notice of. Ever since Islam came to the subcontinent, there have been many different languages used. As any group came to the rule the subcontinent, they brought with them their own language, such as Arabic or Turkish. Effective rulers appreciated the need to foster an understanding of arts and literature, and so it is not surprising that these new languages took root and spread.

The language which perhaps had the greatest impact was Persian. During the Mughal period, it was the official language in the court of Delhi. Most books were written in Persian and it was adopted by poets and scholars, such as Amir Khusrau. Shah Waliullah translated the Quran from Arabic into Persian so that it was accessible to more people. Many Sanskrit books were also translated in Persian. However, Urdu, which had initially emerged as a mixture of languages used by the Turkish, Persian and Hindu soldiers and some local dialects, became the official language of the Mughal Empire.

During the reign of Aurangzeb Alamgir, all the official documents were in Urdu language. In 1867 some leading Hindus started a campaign to replace Urdu with their language Hindi. Their complaint was that Urdu language was written in Persian script which was similar to Arabic script, while Arabic was the language of the Quran. Moreover, the script was identified with the Muslims who had invaded and ruled India for several centuries. The Hindi campaign rapidly gained strength.

For both Muslims and Hindus, the disagreement over languages was very important. Muslims saw the attack on Urdu language as a threat to their culture and rights. It was a clash over which group was to be the most important and powerful in India.

Indian Muslims – ironically led by a staunch Bengali like Sir Khwaja Salimullah, who was one of the founders of the Muslim League in 1906, and other political and religious leaders such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk and Maulvi Abdul Haq – leapt to defend Urdu.

While the use of Urdu grew common with Muslims in northern India, the Muslims of Bengal primarily used the Bengali language—an Eastern Indo-Aryan language that arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages around 1000 CE and developed considerably during the Bengal Renaissance.

When Pakistan received its independence, following the partition of India in 1947, it comprised various ethnic and linguistic groups, whereas the geographically non-contiguous East Bengal province mainly had homogenous Bengali population. As mentioned earlier, in 1948, the Central Government of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Bengal. The Quaid’s decision was based on the fact that Pakistan comprised the provinces of Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, Bengal and North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa): each with its own language, with numerous dialects. If the Quaid had agreed to both Urdu and Bengali being state languages, the Sindhis, Balochis, Pathan and Punjabis would have demanded equal representation of their mother tongues.

Alas, the Quaid expired on 11 September 1948 and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated on 16 October 1951. Ironically, Liaquat Ali Khan’s successor Khwaja Nazimuddin—a Bengali, staunchly supported the Urdu-only policy. Thus, the protests against the imposition of Urdu as the state language persisted, reaching its climax in the killing of six protesting students by police firing on 21 February 1952.

Agitation and protests continued till on 7 May 1954, the constituent assembly resolved, with the Muslim League’s support, to grant official status to Bengali, which was adopted as an official language of Pakistan along with Urdu in article 214 (1) when the first Constitution of Pakistan was enacted on 29 February 1956. The seeds of dissension, however had been sown.

The Bengali Language Movement (Bhasha Andolôn) was a political movement in former East Pakistan advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language in East Bengal. In 1999, in response to a resolution tabled by Bangladesh, 21 February was declared to be the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO.

Today, some myopic observers blame the Quaid for executing a wrong decision by imposing Urdu on the Bengalis. Even a casual glance at various nations in our own neighbourhood depicts that despite having numerous languages and dialects, a single language is chosen as the national language.

Officially, there are 302 living languages in China but Mandarin is its official language. India, one of the world’s most populous country in the world, is home to more than 19,000 languages, making it the most linguistically diversified nation. The tradition, culture, art, language and food vary from state to state and are unique to each region, yet the unifying force is the Hindi language in its Devanagari script.

Language plays a very important part in our lives. It can be used to define a common identity but it can also be used as a political tool to sow division. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had witnessed the struggles of the Muslims in the Indian Subcontinent and the visionary leader’s first instinct was to unite the Pakistanis; thus he chose to break the shackles of bondage and instead of imposing English, he chose Urdu. This scribe started his basic education in East Pakistan in the fifties, where English was taught in most schools with fervour and zeal, but no one picked up the cudgel to discontinue English, the language of the people who had enslaved the subcontinent. Deliberate hatred for the imposition of Urdu language was created, which ultimately led to the severance of our Eastern Wing.

If the Quaid had lived longer, in the next stage of our evolution as a nation, he would probably have encouraged the learning of provincial languages: Balochi, Bengali, Pushto and Sindhi, further unifying us, as he had mentioned in his 21^st March 1948 speech at Dhaka.

The writer is a Group Captain PAF and an author