It is extremely important to keep our eyes and ears open on the enemy. Language resources are a vital tool to know what the enemy is thinking. Apart from the obvious intelligence requirements there is a long term strategic advantage in monitoring enemy mass media and internal propaganda which gives a deep insight into the mindset of the enemy . This information is open source but still in a different language. Most nations facing permanent strategic and tactical threats from enemies in the region, and all super-powers established Schools of Languages with the objective of providing resources for monitoring of enemy information. Israel developed very advanced capabilities in monitoring Arab media. U.K., USA. Germany ( both pre-World War 2 and present), Soviet Union ( now Russia), Japan, and China have very advanced language resources which are employed not only for military intelligence, but for soft power media out reach to enemy populations. Earlier the media outreach was usually through mail in print media, shortwave radio station broadcasts, and where possible with terrestrial TV broadcasts ( though these could easily be jammed) . In the 21st century the outreach is through podcasts, through streaming digital channels and where possible through FM radio.
Refugees from an enemy nation are an important addition to language resources.
During World War 2 a large exodus of Jews from Europe provided the Allies with invaluable resources in every language from Serbo-Croat, Czech, Polish and of course German.
Pakistan's language resources.
From 1947 till the 1980s Pakistan enjoyed a huge advantage in language resources over its enemy India due to the influx of Muslim refugees who brought in every language in from Ao and Khasi in the East; Gujarati in and Marathi in the West, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Tulu in the South. Pakistan even had Gurmukhi literate Punjabi speaking Muslims educated in Sikh Gurukuls who could read
Daily Ajit very easily.
Due to its eastern wing Pakistan had immense language resources in Bangla and Sanskrit.
Radio Pakistan broadcast in Bangla and Punjabi to India audiences and Muslim Rababis broadcast Sikh
Shabad kirtans to Sikhs in India on Sundays.
With the loss of the eastern wing Pakistan's Bangla and Sanskrit language resources suddenly depleted, though expat Bengali speaking Pakistanis kept Radio Pakistan's Bengali language services going till the mid 1980s.
Radio Pakistan's Hindi language service didn't fare very well. Post 1971 the influx of Indian Muslims declined to insignificance, and as the older Partition generation died off Hindi language resources became non-existent.After a stellar 35 year term the service shut down.
Pakistan's enemy today enjoys an advantage in language resources, with Sindhi, Pashto and Baluchi speaking assets.
Pakistan no longer has a significant pool of displaced persons from India to serve as a language resource. Pakistan needs to urgently revive its language resources pool by starting to teach the languages used by the enemy to a new generation of scholars.
Most important of all is to have scholars learning Hindi. The new Hindi that is officially used in India is completely different from the Bollywood mish-mash. It is highly Sanskritized with 90% of the words in Sanskrit and only the grammar roughly resembles Hindustani. It is exclusively in the Devnagari script which no average Pakistani can read.
It is therefore vital that as in the 1950s a language resource pool of Pakistanis fluent in modern spoken and written Hindi be available. We must be able to read the meeting minutes of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's
Marg Darshak Samiti ( and for that matter we should be able to read an editorial in
Eenadu and
Samna )
Pakistan does have a Department of Sanskrit in Punjab University ( link below) but Sanskrit is not Hindi. We must be able to understand Indian news-anchor Asha Om Kashyap's rant, and also news anchor Rohit Sardhana's hysterical outbursts. When RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat makes his annual Durga Puja address we must understand what the mindset is. We will never win against an Enemy we do not understand.
But it is not just the government of Pakistan. There is a 5th generation war to be fought on the social media. it is younger computer savvy ordinary Pakistanis who must rise to the demand and learn Hindi, ( or Telugu, Marathi etc.) to worm their way into enemy social media sites and disrupt them. There are free on-line resources to learn simple Hindi. We must fight the enemy in the virtual world.