TWO LANGUAGES, TWO CLASSES Written by Zubair Torwali Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go send your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child---------------Rudyard Kipling (1899) Language plays a crucial role in power structure. It is not just a means of communication but also of manipulation and control. Very often language planning has been used to give a desired direction to the people within a nation state. Cooper (1989) has defined language planning as “deliberate efforts to influence the behaviours of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their language codes.” The British came to India to conquer it. To civilize the natives— the “new-caught sullen peoples/ half devil and half child” as referred to by Kipling. One of the means they used to meet this end was language. They began by replacing Persian, the official language of Mughal India, by English. This was clearly an instance of language policy being used forextra-linguistic motives. According to Rubin (1983) “extra-linguistic” language policies are those that aim to change the local distribution of indigenous languages for non-linguistic reasons—in this case for political purposes. A change in the use of indigenous languages can lead to a change in the power structure. Persian was a symbol of Muslim rule in India. Its replacement by English in 1835, thus reflected the shift in power dynamics and symbolised British control over India. Further, the introduction of English language and traditions was also of economic and administrative value for the rulers. The purpose being, to prepare “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste and character, in morals and in intellect” as Lord Macaulay’s Minutes of February 2, 1835 set forth. During the early days of the colonization the sole purpose of the colonizers was to export goods from the conquered lands to their home countries. However, the rise of industrialization made the exploration and creation of new markets for their products a priority. The industrial boom at home in the UK was thus a factor in the implementation of educational policies in India with the aim of instilling European tastes and culture among the natives, thereby creating a demand for goods produced at home. The implementation of English in education in India, however, was not without internal contestation among the British. There was a group of scholars—the orientalists—who had done intensive research on the local languages or vernaculars of India, as they call them and were in favour of developing the indigenous languages and knowledge. They were, however, defeated by the proponents of English. English was made one of the languages of education in British India in 1847. This resulted in the setting up of two different types of schools in India—English-medium schools and vernacular schools. Admission to English schools was restricted to people with money and those from the landed class—the rajas and the feudal lords. The vernacular schools, on the other hand, were meant for the ordinary people and funds allocated to English schools were much higher than those for vernacular schools. This created two classes within India—the elite rulers and the subordinate staff. This British legacy has continued to exert itself in both India and Pakistan even after nearly 67 years of independence. In Pakistan, English has maintained its position, which even today coexists with Urdu as the country’s official language. During the struggle for Pakistan, Urdu was used as symbol of Muslim unity. Urdu was described as being different from Hindi even though the two languages share the same grammar and an overwhelming lexicon. Urdu was thus constructed as a language of Islam. This, in turn, paved the way for right wing political parties to insist on making it Pakistan’s only national language after independence. Urdu was seen as a tool to unify a diverse nation under the umbrella of Islam. The founding leaders of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan opted for an Urdu-only policy. In his English speech to Bengalis in 1948 Jinnah said, “it is for you, the people of this Province, to decide what shall be the language of your Province. But let me make it very clear to you that the State Language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead you is really the enemy of Pakistan.” This policy added to the resentment of the Bengalis who had been advocating equal status for Bangla right from the days of the struggle for Pakistan. At the time of foundation, Bengal or East Pakistan (modern Bangladesh) was the most populous province in Pakistan with Bangla as its majority language. As per the census of 1951 the population of East Pakistan was 54.6% of the total population of Pakistan. Bangla was, however, considered only a provincial language. This refusal by the state to accept Bangla as one of the national languages of Pakistan was one among many other factors that fuelled separatist sentiments among the Bengalis, who finally achieved independence from Pakistan in 1971. Despite this wrangling over national languages, however, the status of English remained unchanged. In 1948, Pakistan declared Urdu to be the medium of instruction at the primary level but at higher levels English remained the medium of education. Similarly, in addition to Urdu medium schools, English medium schools continued to be maintained. This resulted in the creation of two distinct systems of education that reflected the aims of the previous British policy: to create two classes of people—one trained to govern and the other to serve. General Ayub Khan restricted the military training of officers to English, forbidding the use of ethnic languages. The Ayub Government established a commission to look into the issue of language in education. The commission in its submission in 1959 reported that in approximately 15 years, Urdu would be able to reach a stage of development where it could be used as medium of education at the university level. Urdu was institutionalized as a medium of instruction at government schools, with English being a compulsory subject. Yet private, elite English medium schools were allowed to flourish. With this policy, pro-Urdu activities increased—especially after the 1965 war with India, which also fostered patriotic literature in Urdu. In addition to maintaining the status of English, Z.A. Bhutto tried to appease the right-wing political parties by giving Urdu an official recognition in his newly framed constitution of 1973. Due to his fanatic mind-set, General Zia Ul Haq pursued his Urdu obsession with more severity. He implemented a language policy that advised English medium schools to either shift to Urdu or to another recognized provincial language. Only one language was recognized as the provincial language in each province, denying the existence of other ethnic languages altogether. He even went a step further and made Arabic a compulsory subject in schools. The Muqtadira Qaumi Zaban (National Language Authority) was established in 1979 for the promotion of Urdu. The government imposed an Urdu-only policy in government schools, but elite English medium schools were allowed to operate. Thus, even during the period of spurious Islamization and Urduization, the British policy was kept alive. Zia’s assassination in 1988 resulted in a political circus in Pakistan and no visible changes were made in terms of language planning in education for nearly a decade after that.Benazir Bhutto did make a few minor changes in a her first term, giving schools the option of selecting either English or Urdu as medium of instruction and making English an additional language to be taught from class 1. Then in 2007, General Musharraf’s minister for education, Javaid Ashraf Qazi, declared English to be the medium of instruction for Science, Mathematics and Computer Studies right from class 1, with Urdu being restricted to Islamic Studies. Thus, there were no significant changes in Pakistan’s British-like educational policy till the passing of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution in 2010.This amendment abolished the concurrent list and consequently primary and secondary education came under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The provinces have yet to take advantage of this change to promote their languages. Khyber Pakhtunhwa has taken the lead in this regard, making Pashto the medium of instruction at the primary level in most of the province. Along with Pashto, four other languages have also been recognized as mediums of instruction in their respective localities. Arrangements were underway for the development of reading material in these languages before change of government in 2013. Now the status of these languages has become ambiguous as the current PTI-led provincial government is yet to announce its education policy. The fate of the other minority languages in the province also remains unknown. Pakistan’s experiments with successive two-language policies and its failure to adopt linguistic pluralism, defined by Cobarrubias (1983) as the “co-existence of different linguistic groups and their right to maintain and cultivate their languages on an equitable basis”, have divided the nation into two distinct classes not only in terms of wealth but in terms of worldviews as well. Instead, the implementation of linguistic pluralism could have helped “foster a feeling of equality among various ethnic and linguistic groups” in Pakistan, according to Ahmar Matloob (2002). Language planning in a country reflects the language attitude of the elite. The elite class in Pakistan is very much in favour of English because it has been a language of development, science, technology, power and social prestige. According to Sahiba Mansoor’s study Punjabi, Urdu, English in Pakistan: a Sociolinguistic Study, “there is a great discrimination between the Urdu medium and English medium students regarding job opportunities and that the attitudes of employersdisplay a clear bias in favor of English medium students. Highly favourable attitudes to English speaking community are seen in responses of all [in the study]. The motivational intensity and desire to learn English borders on an obsession, as English education is preferred over all languages as a compulsory subject and a medium of instruction.” The importance of the English language in today’s world cannot be underestimated. Its significance has only increased with the advance of information technology and new trends in globalization. However, due to the confusion or fear ingrained with the theory of one-language-one-nation and the consequent denial of linguistic pluralism, Pakistani society has become divided into two classes: the English speaking elites, who find better job opportunities and higher social prestige and the Urdu medium educated, who are left to toil in job markets. The Urdu-only policy has also been counter-productive and proponents of Urdu have been unable to make it a standard language for science, technology and research despite multiple resolves undertaken in the constitution and in successive education policies. On the contrary, Urdu has, to a large extent, become an easy propaganda tool in the hands of those promoting hatred and extremism in the country. This has further ripped the fabric of society and reinforced the two-class division in taste, culture and thinking.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 09:44:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015