Am I too radical for Pakistan?

[Jugger]

Well yes, that is true, but that's how nations and civilizations were formed in the past.

Do you think everyone in Britain used to speak English? In fact English is an Anglo-Saxon language brought by invaders, after the Roman Empire had left. They had a vast array of native languages and cultures before that.

What about Germany? China? Japan? Same story.

The Han Chinese were originally just one tribe of people along the Yellow River, same with the original British and the original Germans.

Same with the Indus civilization, which (in a similar fashion to Anglo-Saxons) came from outside the country and managed to become the predominant civilization in the region.

If everyone kept their "native" culture, language and religion, then we would all still be tribals. In fact there are some places in the world (like the rainforests of Brazil) where tribes 1 km apart from each other have completely different cultures and languages. Which is how it was in the tribal era, and is a more "natural" state of affairs. But do we really want that? If people can't communicate+cooperate with the tribe next door, how can there be any progress?

Sir, you are right on your analysis, but I said imposition i.e forcing such things on someone or some people, now if forced then there will be fierce opposition but if the population accept the foreign language then there is no problem what so ever.
This is how Indians gradually accepted English as their second language.

 

[KediKesenFare3]

@Kaptaan @Kambojaric @That Guy @Khanate

Can you give me your thoughts on this topic, please?

 

[Tiger Genie]

If i am not wrong, even Urdu is a language of UP from India...It is foolishness of India that they somehow disowned the native language which was taken up by Pakistan..Otherwise, the native language of Pakistan can be either Arabic( Due to Islamic nation) and can be regional language spoken by each province....

what do you mean India disowned Urdu? it is still quite widely used - check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_India_by_Urdu_speakers
And it is not a physical object to be thrown out and Pakistan picked up! You forget most Pakistanis were Indians before becoming Pakistanis or within two generations of such a person. Obviously they inherit the Indian ancestry, and languages their fathers spoke whether it be Sindhi or Punjabi or Urdu..

Hey guys,

I have been here for some years now and still don't understand many highly complex structures and dynamics in Pakistan's siyaset and society even though I really try keeping an open mind towards anything political that comes from Pakistani users here. I even read a couple of Pakistani newspaper on a regularly basis.

There is one main issue that bothers me most. Couple weeks ago there was an article regarding the extinction of some regional languages in Pakistan: http://www.dawn.com/news/1306783

Many users here and in the Pakistani part of the internet criticized the government for not preventing this regional languages from disappearance. And I asked myself: Why should the government help preserving this languages?

This lead me to the question why Pakistan's politicians don't implement a Pakistanization policy in every corner of Pakistan. I know many of you guys are super proud to be a Punjabi, Baloche, Kashmiri, Pashtu, Sindhi etc. But, pardon my language, who cares about these regional sub-identities?

I know that many people will argue that Islam is the sole and exclusive social glue of Pakistan that keeps the country and society together. In my opinion, it is not acceptable (and not healthy for Pakistan) that Muslim Punjabis in Pakistan and India have more in common than a Pakistani citizen of Punjabi and Baloch origin in Pakistan.

That's why, in fact, there are three very important markers for national identity:

Language; Culture; Religion

Other markers are clothing, food, physical appearance, values, norms etc. Anyway, the most important points here are:

Language - Urdu

Religion - Islam

Culture - ???

When it comes to culture, I'm not so sure whether there is a "pan-Pakistani" culture. Can someone give me a major characteristic that a citizen from Balochistan, Gilgit Baltistan and Sindh share apart from religion?

Why are people opposing the idea of a "one nation - one language - one religion" concept for Pakistan anyway? This is rather strange because typically religious people in the Islamic world don't care that much about their ethnic identity. Many Sunni Arabs and Kurds assimilated into the Turkish society. Secular Azeris in Iran are often fond of irredentist ideas whereas conservative Azeris tend to have a stronger Iranian identity.

Strangely enough, in case of Pakistan all of this assumptions are wrong. People are generally very religious, Islam plays a very important role in their lifes but yet people are sticking to their regional identities and traditions. But why? Can someone enlighten me, please?

Theoretically, as a Pakistani politician, I would try to systematically enforce Urdu in every part of the country. Only Urdu should be taught at schools, there should be a box "Pakistani" in the section about ethnicity in every census to strengthen a "pan-Pakistani" national identity. The children of Pakistan must learn that Pakistan is older than 70 years. The Indus Valley Civilisation must become a fixed part of school instruction, curricula and programs. The Pakistani civilization is thousands of years old. Educational school trips to archaeological sites would be a fine idea.

Even resettlement programs should be discussed. Punjabis and Sindh people could be resettled from crowded places in their home province to rural areas of Balochistan for the purpose of mixing up the different ethnicities like Turkey did after becoming a nation-state.

Focusing on religion as the main commonality among the different ethnicities in Pakistan is very dangerous. In fact, it creates a false sense of security. India with the help of Afghanistan is already trying to disturb the peace in Pakistan. Kabul and New Delhi are trying to awake a Pashtu nationalism in Pakistan. And I'm totally against any kind of federalization in Pakistan.

This is another thing that I don't understand. Why are people constantly demanding more and more provinces? You can ask a secular or religious Pakistani - both will explain to you that the current administrational system of Pakistan is not working very well. Why do you want to implement even more not working administrational units in the first place? Why do you want to pay monthly salaries to thousands of new deputies? The majority of the Pakistani diaspora is right now living in Anglo-Saxon states with federal governing systems. This system may work in those countries but it isn't a working and reliable system for Pakistan. It does not fit. Federal systems are only productive in wealthy and homogeneous societies.

Last but not least: I know that only a military-led government can impose all of these ideas. Therefore the democratic electoral system should be suspended for at least 25 years; centralization (of power) is the key issue.

So, am I too radical for Pakistan? Am I missing or ignoring important points? Sorry for my bad English and I apologize in advance if some of you feel insulted or offended by my posting. I'm just trying to understand a little bit more because I care for Pakistan.

You touch upon a key point of identity of which Pakistan has always had a crisis about. Being a new country, for something called Pakistani culture to develop and take hold, sufficiently distinct from any of their ancestral ones, a few generations have to pass. You cannot force feed this. Islam is an insufficient factor and is in fact only a third or fourth place influence: race, ethnicity and culture are far stronger. In fact Pakistan has proven that Islam takes the back seat to even economics, as you look at some of the ironic Chinese interactions.

Yes a tyrannical dictatorship can try to force some stuff but as Pakistan found out several times, dictatorship drags their country down as opposed to what happened in Turkey in the past. Ultimately you have to admit though they don't like to admit - they still act and try to be more Indian than Indians themselves.

 

[ZenBird]

This doesn't make sense. Rural Balochistan hardly can support people living there because so many reasons and main one being water and barren land. The only plan in early years of Pakistan was to settle some FATA population in thal region of punjab. It didn't go anywhere. Anyway this isn't medieval age where you forcefully or voluntarily resettle some people here and there. They will go wherever opportunities to earn money will be. You can expect many people from other parts of Pakistan to move to Gwadar once its developed with basic infrastructure in next 5-10 years.

Now days Pakistanis rarely move from one village to another to work in agriculture because this doesn't improve their quality of life much at all. They move to main urban centers. Also if what he said was true then why Turkey still have Kurdish insurgency?

Bro can I rest my case from our other thread about Punjabs after reading this thread? So many people agree with the OP, we Punjabis would die before changing the official language of Punjab to Hindi, rest of India can go to hell.

 

[Kambojaric]

@Kaptaan @Kambojaric @That Guy @Khanate

Can you give me your thoughts on this topic, please?

Centralization in Pakistan is a tricky question due to extreme diversity present in the nation in terms of ethnicities, languages, sects etc. This naturally makes the state very weak, and from that pov I understand your confusion as to why Pakistan has not sought to go down the centralization route. I might be wrong here but I also feel that your view on this issue arises from Turkey's experience of centralization under Ataturk, and the positive influence this had on Turkeys development.

The first major impediment to uniting the country into one homogeneous unit is the lack of a charismatic leader. Turkey for example achieved what it did because it was blessed with a leader like Ataturk. Our Quaid (Jinnah) was also of a similar resolute nature, but unfortunately we lost him a year after our independence from Britain. This opened the floodgates for petty minded politicians to enter the fray and use language, sect, ethnicity for their own political purposes.

Secondly nations increasingly unite through the notion of 'shared memories'. If I can take the example of Turkey again, The Turkish people witnessed the decline of the Ottoman Empire, witnessed the incoming disaster of Sevres, witnessed the amazing turnaround under Ataturk, and this all unites people to live together as the ability to face seemingly impossible odds and come out as a victor spreads optimism for the future.
The British occupation of the Indus valley however destroyed this 'shared memory' notion as we were subject for a century or so with policies of 'Indianization'. The British wanted all of their territories in South Asia to unite so as to make the task of ruling easier for themselves, whilst at the same time earning prestige for the Empire for having brought unity and civilization to these 'backward' Asian people. To give an example, Farsi was the lingua franca in the Indus region prior to the British, and this united all of the ethnic groups together., so much so that even the Sikh Empire with its capital in Lahore used Farsi as the court language. Post the arrival of the British however Hindi and after much protest Urdu were made the official languages and this tied the Indus increasingly with the Gangetic plains. The generations from the 1850s onwards hence developed their identities in the context of being Indian, rather than residents of the Indus valley. The "pan-Pakistani" or Pan Indus culture that you mention in your OP hence was destroyed or aborted during the colonial period and replaced with a "Pan Indian" culture and culture takes time to change.

This links in to my third point which is that with time Pakistan will increasingly centralize, as the "Pan Pakistani" culture takes shape. Our parents and grand parents generation still think in the context of the "pan Indian" culture. This can be seen through even the language used for our independence, which is casually referred to as a "partition" from India, rather than independence from Britain, by them. Many in the newer generation including myself however make a point to always refer to the event in 1947 as our independence, not partition. As generations pass and Pakistan persists, the belief in Pakistan and the memories that have developed over the years will increase.

In my opinion Pakistanis are not yet ready for hardcore "Pakistanization" policies, because we are still recovering from the colonial hangover, but given time yes this has to happen, sooner or later. This can be done through emphasis of folklore which transcends ethno-linguistic boundaries. An example is Sassi Pannu (which is about a Balochi and Sindhi couple and just as popular amongst Punjabis as it is amongst Sindhis or Balochis), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassui_Punnhun. The Indus is of course another major uniting factor and crosses our whole country. As more memories are developed this will further bring our people together, but as said hardcore Pakistanization has to wait at least another generation or two.

 

[my2cents]

Those who owns these languages and funding to promote the regional languages are not interested .. In Punjab University or Sindh University Jamshoro ....all lingo department collecting dust and pest. May be few of these books in my collection , but after few decades , someone will sell Pakora making lafafa from these books. ..

Promote Urdu by all means but don't lose your identity and culture in the process. Don't fail to promote your culture and language and its associated music and dance. Turkey is not a good example because it is not divided on the basis of ethnicity. If I am not wrong your higher education is in English. So, you would have to promote three languages in school that is English, Urdu and your local language. This is good for nation building and avoid any regional resentment by imposing one dominant language over other. Like Punjabi over rest of the nation.

In India local languages are thriving in spite of state governments involvement. Most TV channels, movies and radio songs are in local languages. Local newspapers and magazines sell more than English language papers. But English is preferred in most schools as medium of instruction and for higher education. So, it is a mixed bag of contradictions that is prevalent here. I am of the opinion that more languages the better. The dominant language will prevail over others in due course of time.

 

[Kyoto]

Promote Urdu by all means but don't lose your identity and culture in the process. Don't fail to promote your culture and language and its associated music and dance. Turkey is not a good example because it is not divided on the basis of ethnicity. If I am not wrong your higher education is in English. So, you would have to promote three languages in school that is English, Urdu and your local language. This is good for nation building and avoid any regional resentment by imposing one dominant language over other. Like Punjabi over rest of the nation.

In India local languages are thriving in spite of state governments involvement. Most TV channels, movies and radio songs are in local languages. Local newspapers and magazines sell more than English language papers. But English is preferred in most schools as medium of instruction and for higher education. So, it is a mixed bag of contradictions that is prevalent here. I am of the opinion that more languages the better. The dominant language will prevail over others in due course of time.

In India the regional languages are more evenly split with hundreds and millions of Bengalis, Biharis, Marathis etc. In Pakistan around half the population speak Punjabi or Urdu as their first language as the population is centred in Punjab and Karachi.
I know Pakistanis want to create a national identity in a diverse nation but basing it on Punjab will only strengthen fears of Punjabisation and promote a culture more similar to north west India's.

 

[Well.wisher]

Baloch
Zafarullah Khan Jamali ( 15th Prime Minister of Pakistan)

[ .

Lol this guy is from my town .
He provided gas to our village , really thankful to him .
Another temporary president named khoso was also from my town . He gave it the status of district

 

[Kabira]

Bro can I rest my case from our other thread about Punjabs after reading this thread? So many people agree with the OP, we Punjabis would die before changing the official language of Punjab to Hindi, rest of India can go to hell.

I don't think it will happen, but urdu act like neutral language for native Pakistanis, before it was Persian. Hindi on the other hand have completely taken over north and central India and replaced every other language there as native tongue. Only east punjab, east india and south india have maintained their ancient tongues. In Pakistan urdu will continue to be official language but regional languages are not in danger. Remember hindi is official language by default even outside cow belt.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

This lead me to the question why Pakistan's politicians don't implement a Pakistanization policy in every corner of Pakistan. I know many of you guys are super proud to be a Punjabi, Baloche, Kashmiri, Pashtu, Sindhi etc. But, pardon my language, who cares about these regional sub-identities?

Well to begin with we have to recognize some facts. Punjab, NWFP (Pashtun), Sindh and Balochistan provinces existed before Pakistan. It was these provinces that voted to join and federate together to constitute Pakistan as part of a legal constitutional process. If a building is made of bricks how can you expect the building to dissolve the bricks that gave life to it?

In fact according to the orginal constitutional process basis of which the voting was taken the provinces would have had more power then they do today. The federation in a sense usurped the power of the provinces although over the last few years moves have been made to restitute some of the powers that were taken by the federation.

This explains the legality and the constitutionalism behind the present set up. As regards the suggestion you make some points I would make are -

1. Since early 20th century increasingly power has been diffused. In addition the world has shrunk in terms of travel time and news time. We live in a more connected world. In making highly centralized states requires draconian policies that inflict overwhelming force on the populations to create homogenuity. For example Tsarist Russia and even Stalins Russia used extreme force to try to create a homogenous entity out of disparate peoples. For example I read that Muslim women were forced to remove their veils and paraded in Tashkent square in Uzbekistan. any men who protested were shot. Millions of people were moved to Siberia or scattered like Chechens to remove and groups that posed threat to Moscows rule.

2. In United Kingdom - a union of English, Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish was created with absolute force over period of few centuries. The 1995 movie with Mel gibson 'Braveheart' is about the 13th-century Scottish warrior Williem Wallace who led the Scots in a war against English domination. Over the succeeding centuries the English prevailed by force in creating a 'Britain' where all native languages like Welsh or Scotish Gaelic are not used by a tiny fringe. English rules supreme.

3. As your aware more than me how Turkey homogenized a polyglot of ethnic groups. Most Pakistani's don't really know how variegated the Turkish population really is. It thanls to Turkish policies of the early 20th century that have made Turkey what it is today.

4. At Para., (1) I mentioned how Tsarist Russia tried to create a single order society which continued into the USSR. However the same attempt to do that between 1979-89 by USSR to Afghanistan failed miserably despite having succeeded in the neighbouring Stans in Central Asia. The reason for the failure is found in what I said about power having diffused and living in a connected world. The Afghan's rebelled against the Kabul regime which tried to change Afghan society supported by Red Army. They got support from USA and weapons poured in that frustrated the Red Army leading a stalemate of sorts until eventually the Soviets pulled out in 1989 having failed to do what their forebearers had done so easily by comparison in the Stans. Times had changed.

Therefore today even if there was political will in Islamabad to do what your saying it would lead to a bloody conflict as foreign powers would jump at the chance to harvest the anger that would be unleashed if draconian measures were adapted to erase sub national identities like Baloch, Pashtun, Sindhi etc

This would therefore be a recipe for disaster. If the year was 1890 sure I would suggest your ideas would be best to carry out but those days are gone. I will add part 2 to this when I get time where I will suggest the way forward with some views of where and how we got to today.

 

[Roybot]

I don't think it will happen, but urdu act like neutral language for native Pakistanis, before it was Persian. Hindi on the other hand have completely taken over north and central India and replaced every other language there as native tongue. Only east punjab, east india and south india have maintained their ancient tongues. In Pakistan urdu will continue to be official language but regional languages are not in danger. Remember hindi is official language by default even outside cow belt.

Hindi hasn't replaced anything, people still speak their local languages.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Lol this guy is from my town .
He provided gas to our village , really thankful to him .
Another temporary president named khoso was also from my town . He gave it the status of district

Are you Jamali from Dera Murad Jamali?

 

[ZenBird]

Hindi hasn't replaced anything, people still speak their local languages.

It is the official language of those states and the local dialect is spoken colloquially. This is the same state as in Pakistan, Punjab and Southern States use local language as the official language.

Well to begin with we have to recognize some facts. Punjab, NWFP (Pashtun), Sindh and Balochistan provinces existed before Pakistan. It was these provinces that voted to join and federate together to constitute Pakistan as part of a legal constitutional process. If a building is made of bricks how can you expect the building to dissolve the bricks that gave life to it?

In fact according to the orginal constitutional process basis of which the voting was taken the provinces would have had more power then they do today. The federation in a sense usurped the power of the provinces although over the last few years moves have been made to restitute some of the powers that were taken by the federation.

This explains the legality and the constitutionalism behind the present set up. As regards the suggestion you make some points I would make are -

1. Since early 20th century increasingly power has been diffused. In addition the world has shrunk in terms of travel time and news time. We live in a more connected world. In making highly centralized states requires draconian policies that inflict overwhelming force on the populations to create homogenuity. For example Tsarist Russia and even Stalins Russia used extreme force to try to create a homogenous entity out of disparate peoples. For example I read that Muslim women were forced to remove their veils and paraded in Tashkent square in Uzbekistan. any men who protested were shot. Millions of people were moved to Siberia or scattered like Chechens to remove and groups that posed threat to Moscows rule.

2. In United Kingdom - a union of English, Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish was created with absolute force over period of few centuries. The 1995 movie with Mel gibson 'Braveheart' is about the 13th-century Scottish warrior Williem Wallace who led the Scots in a war against English domination. Over the succeeding centuries the English prevailed by force in creating a 'Britain' where all native languages like Welsh or Scotish Gaelic are not used by a tiny fringe. English rules supreme.

3. As your aware more than me how Turkey homogenized a polyglot of ethnic groups. Most Pakistani's don't really know how variegated the Turkish population really is. It thanls to Turkish policies of the early 20th century that have made Turkey what it is today.

4. At Para., (1) I mentioned how Tsarist Russia tried to create a single order society which continued into the USSR. However the same attempt to do that between 1979-89 by USSR to Afghanistan failed miserably despite having succeeded in the neighbouring Stans in Central Asia. The reason for the failure is found in what I said about power having diffused and living in a connected world. The Afghan's rebelled against the Kabul regime which tried to change Afghan society supported by Red Army. They got support from USA and weapons poured in that frustrated the Red Army leading a stalemate of sorts until eventually the Soviets pulled out in 1989 having failed to do what their forebearers had done so easily by comparison in the Stans. Times had changed.

Therefore today even if there was political will in Islamabad to do what your saying it would lead to a bloody conflict as foreign powers would jump at the chance to harvest the anger that would be unleashed if draconian measures were adapted to erase sub national identities like Baloch, Pashtun, Sindhi etc

This would therefore be a recipe for disaster. If the year was 1890 sure I would suggest your ideas would be best to carry out but those days are gone. I will add part 2 to this when I get time where I will suggest the way forward with some views of where and how we got to today.

Kaptaan saab - you should write intelligent posts like this more and not let the internet trolls drag you to their level of mud slinging. I really enjoy reading your perspective.

 

[Roybot]

It is the official language of those states and the local dialect is spoken colloquially. This is the same state as in Pakistan, Punjab and Southern States use local language as the official language.

How is that different from Pakistani Punjab? Where Punjabi is spoken but Urdu is the official language?

Hindi is to North India what Urdu is to Pakistan,

 

[ZenBird]

How is that different from Pakistani Punjab? Where Punjabi is spoken but Urdu is the official language?

Buddy, do you have dyslexia? I'm saying in the above post and the original one that it is not different than Pakistani Punjab. Indian Punjab is different.