All official events & ceremonies for PM Imran Khan to be conducted in Urdu

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.geo.tv/latest/353660-all-events-organised-for-pm-imran-khan-to-be-conducted-in-urdu

Prime Minister Imran Khan has instructed that all events organised in his honour be conducted in Urdu, it emerged on Saturday.

Parliamentary Secretary for National Health Services (NHS) Dr Nausheen Hamid shared a notification from the Prime Minister's Office stating that henceforth all programmes, events, or ceremonies arranged for the prime minister shall be conducted in the national language — Urdu.

Dr Hamid added that the ministers and other government officials have also been directed to make all speeches and statements in the national language.

This is not the first time that the prime minister has shown a preference for Urdu over English.

Back in 2019, when PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had addressed the parliament in English, the prime minister had responded by saying that it is an "insult" to the people.

"Ninety percent of Pakistanis do not know English. We know this. So how is it then, that we speak in English on these public forums? Why do we do this?

"We know Urdu, the people know Urdu, but you start speaking in English," he said, in sharp rebuke for English speakers.

The premier went on to ask whether in the British parliament, anyone ever speaks French.

"If someone does that, they will be made fun of," he said.

 

[MenInG]

I am sure this was done in Zia's time also - not sure what will be achieved by this?

 

[Bewal Express]

I am sure this was done in Zia's time also - not sure what will be achieved by this?

A sense of national pride. You don't see Boris doing his speeches in Urdu or Mandarin.

 

[Gharib Aadmi]

I am sure this was done in Zia's time also - not sure what will be achieved by this?

So that the majority of people can understand what is being said. In Pakistan everyone can speak Urdu, however only a minority is comfortable with English.

 

[MenInG]

I am not sure if too many engagements are in English as is - do you have examples of these? All the ones on official channels seem to be in Urdu?

 

[Majid Khan]

It makes sense to speak in the national language on official ceremonies and functions so that majority of people in Pakistan can understand…

But at the same time the analogy of do they speak in French or Mandarin in British Parliament is a flawed comparison also , in my view - because :

1) French or Mandarin are not the default language that are used for conducting business , civil service in UK - can we say the same about English in Pakistan ? As an example, you go to any Pakistani government website and what is the default language being used, is it not English ? The Pakistani legal system, constitution , look at the report on Nawaz Sharif’s case from Pakistan SC that was published a couple years ago and talked about the Sicilian Mafia/Godfather, was that in Urdu ?

2) In modern day Pakistan , even people speaking Urdu and this trend is more with the elite and privately educated people , how many speak pure Urdu ? it’s a mix of Urdu with English words and phrases. Even Urdu speaking parents are telling their young kids “chalo beta uncle ko sorry bolo” - never mind listening to someone like Asad Umar talking about the economy in Urdu or Aitzaz Ahsen talking about constitutional law on a Pakistani TV channel in Urdu, they will be using English words every third or fourth word.

Maybe more needs to be done to promote Urdu as the national language not just symbolically , but in practical terms by making it the default language for civil service and government affairs to start off with ?

 

[street cricketer]

Well wasn't urdu the lingua franca for Pakistan even before this order?

I would be surprised if many official events and ceremonies were conducted in English.

 

[MenInG]

The Supreme Court on Monday said that the federal government had failed to make Urdu the official language.

A three-member bench headed by acting Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial presided over a contempt of court petition seeking the use of Urdu as the official language.

“Without mother tongue and national language we will lose our identity,” Justice Bandial stated, adding that, “in my opinion, we should also learn Persian and Arabic, just like our ancestors.”

The acting CJP maintained that the apex court had ordered making Urdu the official language in 2015 that the federal government failed to do.

“Article 251 of the Constitution mentions the mother language along with the regional languages,” said the acting chief justice as he sought a reply from the Punjab government for failing to introduce Punjabi (as an official language) in the province.

Read Experts call for Urdu revival in India

Lawyer Kokab Iqbal has filed a contempt of court petition for not using Urdu language, whereas a contempt of court petition has also been filed by a citizen Dr Sami against the Punjab government for not introducing Punjabi (as an official language) in the province.

The apex court sent notices to the federal and Punjab governments and adjourned the hearing for a month.

Earlier in June, Prime Minister Imran Khan directed authorities concerned for all official engagements to be held in Urdu, aimed at giving due respect to the national language and promote the same.

“The prime minister has been pleased to desire that henceforth all the programmes events/ceremonies, arranged for the prime minister, shall be conducted in the national (Urdu) language,” read a communique issued by the PM’s Office in June.

It added: “Further necessary action to implement the above directions of the prime minister shall be taken by all concerned accordingly.”

Furthermore, the PM was quoted as saying that he was “committed to promoting and giving due respect to the national language.”

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2321215/govt-failed-to-make-urdu-official-language-sc

 

[Tubs]

I have heard that the Urdu-level in Pakistan is diminishing, especially among the educated folk, as they tend to use a lot of English. While being fluent in English is invaluable, it is a necessity to maintain a good standard of the national language.

To give an extreme example, the Welsh language was almost destroyed due to colonialism, but they are now reviving it at a decent rate (due to Welsh-medium schools, government-funded Welsh-learning projects, etc). However, Irish and Scottish Gaelic weren't so lucky. Obviously, Pakistan won't go down that route, but as more English gets used, I can see a shift away from Urdu.

The personal downside for me is that I find it very difficult to understand anything above rudimentary Urdu (British-born, family language is Pothwari [though I'm not perfectly fluent, I can speak a decent bit and understand a lot], but my parents know Urdu), so I will be annoying my parents a lot to translate whenever I'm listening in to Pakistani news.

 

[Cpt. Rishwat]

I was under the impression that Imran himself is more comfortable speaking English than Urdu so there is some irony here. But I guess he has to show an example.

 

[Napa]

Justice Bandial stated, adding that, “in my opinion, we should also learn Persian and Arabic, just like our ancestors.”

There you have it, the root of the identity crisis of the South Asian Pakistanis.

 

[Junaids]

Rather comically, I had relatives at Dacca Racecourse in 1948 when Jinnah, who couldn’t read or write Urdu, gave a speech in English telling the majority Bengali-speakers of Pakistan that the official language would be Urdu, which 3/4 of Pakistanis - including Jinnah himself - could not speak.

So Pakistan ended up losing most of its population due to the dumb decision to make Urdu the state language.

For the record, in 1951 the population of Pakistan was 75.7 million, of whom 42 million were Bengalis and 33.7 million what would nowadays be called Pakistanis.

So we arrive at this thread today thanks to the tail trying to wag the dog 73 years ago, picking the wrong National language and making the majority of Pakistanis second class citizens in their own country.

 

[DeadlyVenom]

There you have it, the root of the identity crisis of the South Asian Pakistanis.

What is the identity crisis here? They are asking people to learn Urdu which is an Indo-Aryan language and also Persian which was widely spoken for hundreds of years in what is now India and Pakistan, to the extend that the British were instructed to learn it before arriving in India.

Arabic has a deep religious value for many Pakistanis and it makes complete sense to learn this language since it is the language of our scripture.

Rather than it being an identity crisis it should be seen as making attempts to combine multiple legitimate identities and cultures into one Pakistani identity.

Would you prefer he asked them to learn Malayalam and Tamil?

 

[Napa]

What is the identity crisis here? They are asking people to learn Urdu which is an Indo-Aryan language and also Persian which was widely spoken for hundreds of years in what is now India and Pakistan, to the extend that the British were instructed to learn it before arriving in India.

Arabic has a deep religious value for many Pakistanis and it makes complete sense to learn this language since it is the language of our scripture.

Rather than it being an identity crisis it should be seen as making attempts to combine multiple legitimate identities and cultures into one Pakistani identity.

Would you prefer he asked them to learn Malayalam and Tamil?

When you give two foreign people (Arabs and Persians) more importance than yourself (mostly Punjabis and Sindhis) you are going to end up with an identity crisis.

English is also a foreign language, but it is the language in which international business is conducted, and also the language in which most of science and new ideas are expressed.

In contrast Iran is a hot mess and Saudi Arabia is even worse. Having such dysfunctional countries as models is a recipe for disaster.

 

[DeadlyVenom]

When you give two foreign people (Arabs and Persians) more importance than yourself (mostly Punjabis and Sindhis) you are going to end up with an identity crisis.

English is also a foreign language, but it is the language in which international business is conducted, and also the language in which most of science and new ideas are expressed.

In contrast Iran is a hot mess and Saudi Arabia is even worse. Having such dysfunctional countries as models is a recipe for disaster.

He didn't say he wanted to emulate arabic people or persian people, but rather to learn certain languages. Don't worry, English will remain an official language and will be widely spoken.

Are you denying that Persian was common in the subcontinent? If so then it seems you are suffering from an identity crisis here.

 

[Napa]

He didn't say he wanted to emulate arabic people or persian people, but rather to learn certain languages. Don't worry, English will remain an official language and will be widely spoken.

Are you denying that Persian was common in the subcontinent? If so then it seems you are suffering from an identity crisis here.

You are on the right track when you said that Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language, however the Urdu partisans promote Urdu to distance themselves from the Indo-Aryans. For them the history of Pakistan prior to the Muslim invasions is to be downgraded. There is an attempt to "rid" Urdu of Sanskrit origin words and replace them with Persian or Arabic words. Grammar of a language of course cannot be changed, so the Indo-Aryan grammar persists. The script for Urdu was not the Indo-Aryan Devanagari, but the Arabic origin Nastaliq.

This distancing of oneself from one's origins and hankering after something foreign leads to an identity crisis.

The Muslim élite ruling India during the thirteenth century used Persian as the court language. However, when the British rulers replaced Persian with the vernacular languages of Indiaóof which Urdu, called Hindustani by the British, was oneóin 1834, the Muslim élite had already adopted a deliberately Persianized form of the language which functioned as an identity symbol for them (Rai 1984, 248–50). The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw Urdu become more closely associated with Islam as religious literature proliferated and the Pakistan Movement made it a symbol of Muslim identity (Rahman 2006).
https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/53765/10RahmanStandard.pdf?

As for Indians, the language Persian was never spoken by a significant percentage of the population, and is now irrelevant. Looking at the state of Iran, one can only say that there is nothing to be gained by promoting it. Something that no one cares about (the language Persian in modern India) cannot lead to an identity crisis, though at some point in history it was the preferred language of some feudals.