Give Pashto official status – PkMAP, PkSO
The PkMAP and the PkSO called upon the government to declare Pushto as the official language in Pakhtun-dominated areas.—Photo by APP
QUETTA: The Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and Pakhtunkhwa Students Organisation called upon the government on Sunday to declare Pushto as the official language in Pakhtun-dominated areas.
The PkMAP organised a seminar at Government Science College and the PkSO held a demonstration outside the press club to mark the International Mother Language Day.
Usman Kakar, Dr Hamid Khan Achakzai, Abdur Rauf, Abdur Rahim Ziaratwal, Ahmed Jan and Kabir Afghan said that Pushto was spoken by millions of Pakhtuns in Balochistan, the NWFP and tribal areas.The meeting passed resolutions calling upon the government to introduce Pushto in government offices, schools, colleges and universities. They urged the government to release funds sanctioned for the Pushto Academy and asked cable operators to give priority to Pushto TV channels.
Source: Dawn
Identity crises
On February 21, the International Mother Tongue Day was
celebrated across the world. In Pakistan too, the Day was commemorated. Seminars and rallies were held in almost all major cities of Pakistan to highlight the importance of one’s mother tongue.
Over time educationists have established the important role played by one’s mother tongue as a medium of instruction. They have made recommendations that teaching up to the primary level should be in the mother tongue as it helps develop the cognitive faculties of the child without putting on it the extra burden of learning another language. According to UNESCO, the literacy rate in Tanzania increased by 96.8 percent after the mother tongue was adopted as the medium of instruction at the primary level.
Not only is the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction imperative in the education sector, it has cultural importance too. Pakistan is a multicultural society with distinct regional cultures having different languages and dialects that form an essential part of the overall identity of its people. Recognising and promoting the diversity of its people would help Pakistan develop into a pluralistic society with various cultures peacefully coexisting under the umbrella of an overarching national identity. This of course does not preclude the use of Urdu as the national language. In most developed countries, there are more than one national/official languages because they realise the importance of preserving and encouraging the different languages that their people speak. In Pakistan, regional languages have become the victims of confusion surrounding state identity and ideology. The language riots in former East Pakistan and Sindh are a grim reminder of this flaw in state policy. Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan promote regional languages at both official and unofficial levels while in Punjab, English is being made the official medium of instruction. Although this will help individuals in Punjab become citizens of the world, one should not forget one’s culture and heritage.
More than six decades have passed since our independence, yet the debate on the medium of instruction and, consequently, identity is still going on. It should be resolved as soon as possible. The government should implement programmes to protect and advance different cultural identities in this country because all societies are created on the shoulders of their people. The government should arrive at a better understanding of the different regions of which the country is comprised in order to enrich society as a whole through the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction at primary level, with the incremental addition of Urdu and English at appropriate levels. This would help create a greater wealth of knowledge in our people.
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20102\23\story_23-2-2010_pg3_1
Pakhtuns and Pashto
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sartaj Khan
Responding to opposition members in the NWFP Assembly recently, Bashir Bilour of the ANP asserted that Urdu was not the national language since it was not the language of the majority of Pakistan’s population. He made the remarks when a member from the opposition benches questioned the validity of English as the official language and another MPA declared Urdu and Pashto as being the national and local languages, respectively.
The ANP’s hue and cry over the language question is understandable with the party losing public support. The sheer weakness of the ANP is evident to its opponents. Recently, the newly formed Pakhtun Democratic Alliance and the World Pashto Congress organised a walk to observe International Language Day led by MPA Sikander Sherpao of the PPP-Sherpao. Speaking to the rally, the son of former chief minister Aftab Sherpao asked for Pashto to be declared the language of the province and strongly criticised the “so-called advocates of Pakhtun rights.” He too wants to exploit the situation, because Aftab Sherpao himself can be accused of the same sins of which his son accused others.
The language controversy is rooted deep in the history and the social fabric of Pakhtun society. Since mediaeval times the ruling languages in the Pashto-speaking region have been languages such as Persian, English and Urdu. Pashto has always been limited to the rural population. It must be noted that in both Afghanistan and Pakistan the Pakhtun elites have rarely promoted Pashto. Colonial Britain replaced Persian with Urdu in India in part to break the link between Afghanistan and the border areas then under its control. So far, the policy is intact, as an integral part of the policy of those ruling the province, including the nationalists.
It was the Khudai Khidmatgar, “Red Shirt,” movement led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan that in its early stages gave importance to Pashto. This was because the movement then predominantly represented that stratum of Pakhtun society which opposed colonial domination and the big feudal classes, with the rural poor and Pakhtun intelligentsia at the movement’s centre. While they were part of the Red Shirt Movement, Pakhtun radicals produced rich Pashto literature, under the influence of communists and inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917. That period can be termed as the golden age of Pashto literature.
After coming to power in the province, the policy of the government of Dr Khan Sahib was ambiguous on the language question. In 1937 Mian Jafar Khan, the minister of education, asked the NWFP Assembly to recommend to the government that “Pushto be made the medium of instruction in the primary schools in the North-West Frontier.”
That was the period when the movement was losing faith in the ordinary Pakhtun and coming under the influence of the ruling elite. The movement suffered in the face of the peasants’ uprising in the Ghalla Dhir, Mardan and adjacent areas. By now the Red Shirt Movement had begun to disappoint and demoralise rural Pakhtun intellectuals who were enthusiastically involved in peasants’ movements.
Pakhtun nationalists have always betrayed the hopes of the Pakhtun rural poor and the intelligentsia. NAP nationalists came to power in 1972, but again Pashto was neglected and Urdu was declared as the official language of the province. Later, the ANP, which succeeded the NAP, twice came to power in NWFP for brief periods, in coalitions with the PPP and the PML-N, but Pashto was never given the importance it deserves. Never since the colonial period has Pashto gone beyond being a language to be taught on the primary level, even under the rule of Pakhtun nationalists. They never used the language as a symbol of ethnic identity. On the contrary, their politics has revolved around a name for the province, and the land and its resources.
Dr Tariq Rahman of the Quaid-e-Azam University notes that in Pakistan only the Pashto language movement decreased in intensity. This is so because the Pakhtun elite and middle classes gradually integrated into Pakistani society, as demonstrated by Dr Feroz Ahmed in his research on Pakhtun nationalism. Pakhtuns joined the armed forces, the bureaucracy and state enterprises and institutions.
One positive contribution of the Red Shirt Movement is notable regarding Pashto. Despite its many limitations, the movement, together with the Progressive Writers Association, played an important role in the revival of the Pashto language and literature.
The writer is a political activist. Email: sartaj2000@yahoo.com
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