چھوٹا بھیم آرہا ہے بھائی جان۔ ہمیں ٹی وی دیکھنے دو
This is what I recently had to hear when my aunts kids came over to my house for a birthday party a week back. The wanted to watch a kids show featuring a shirtless rustic Indian boy with a prominent Bindi plastered on his forehead and his band of even nuder friends (with bindis) engage in adventures featuring kiddized versions of Hindu deities and Hindu themes that end up with Hindu heroes saving the day from cartoony enemies with victories attributed to Hinduism/ Hindu logic.
The kids werent satisfied with just that. After Chota Bheem ended, another cartoon show called Roll No.21 actually features a blue skinned Hindu deity in kiddiized attending an American-style school!
I sat through the one hour that the kids (in my home in central Pakistan) watched on my tv and couldnt believe how engrossed the children of my aunt were in these cartoons. These were the same little kids that I could catch any other day playing cricket in the fields or singing the national anthem in the school morning assemblies. After the show, I couldnt be more appalled to overhear these kids using phrases like chinta mat karo or bhariya among themselves.
I tried another experiment, I went over to there home and switched the tv. The CGI kids movie Kung Fu Panda 2 was coming on a movie channel in English. Honestly, Id expect kids to go crazy for a movie like that. I left the movie on the tv thinking any moment now the kids would come in and start crowding the room in order to see this movie. They did come in, sat a while (possibly wondering why I was watching a kids movie) and then asked me to change the channel. I obliged and asked them Where to? They anxiously stated a channel number and I pressed the remote expecting a cartoon channel to appear on the screen
instead Salman Khans ugly face in sunglasses and a police uniform popped onto the screen. The atmosphere changed from the moroseness of the past half hour I had the King Fu Panda Movie up on the tv screen to intense shrieking and excitement in an instant!
DABANG! DABANG!!! the kids screamed.
The remote was snatched from my hand and the kids pumped the tvs volume to its maximum. Two hours would pass before the kids got off the tv set. And they didnt get off because the movie ended (Thanks to Indian advertisements, 2 hour long Indian movies can stretch to 4 hours on tv), neither because the sun had set and none of these 7-13 years had any Asr or Maghrib Namaaz to pray, but because MY OWN AUNTS INDIAN DRAMA HAD STARTED!!!
Later in the evening, on the excuse that I wanted to watch some news, I pried the remote out of a reluctant aunt and her elder daughter and quickly skimmed through what channels they had. It was a pretty ordinary tv setup: 10 Pakistani news/politics channels, 15 Pakistani entertainment/drama channels, 3 cartoon channels 5-6 local-language channels 4-5 Sports channels, 4-5 English movie channels, 5 Islamic channels and only 2 Indian music channels. The only Indian entertainment channel broadcasted from India was Life OK. But the tv had 20 channels that I can only describe as the Mobile phone vote channels: these channels were solely dedicated to Indian films, and unsurprisingly, these were the favourite tv channels of the house and would be watched nonstop until Pakistani political shows took over at night when the men of the house returned home.
Focusing on the kids channels that were available: Cartoon Network Pakistan, Nick Pakistan and POGO. Only one channel was in English (Cartoon Network) while the other two: Nick and POGO aired only Hindi dubbed cartoons full of phrases as shakti- shaali and Indian actors/actresses advertising branded products nonstop.
I understand that these kids wouldnt like to watch Pakistani Political shows nor the housewife-oriented Pakistani dramas nor the Urdu-dubbed Turkish Dramas, but perplexing of all, why wouldnt these kids watch English-language kids movies on the movie channels or cartoons from the English-language Cartoon Network. I asked them and they said unanimously that they were not in Urdu.
But they would readily watch Hindi language POGO and Nick because, as they said, to my horror: they were in Urdu.
How damned could we be that our own Pakistani children couldnt tell the difference between Urdu and Hindi and, despite having quality English programming on tv readily available (EVEN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES), they preferred a plethora of Indian Indian tv songs/ shows!
These kids were more likely to sing Jai Ho than Dil Dil Pakistan if asked!
As a final question, I asked what was the price of there cable tv connection:
Rs. 450
thats probably affordable to 99% of Pakistan!!!!
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This little investigation begs the questions:
Why is it, that we are shamelessly so engrossed with a country that still doesnt fail in denigrating us at any moment anywhere in the world with its media and government and still seeks to destroy us over sixty years after our independence.
Why is it that we can allow our children to be exposed to the very practices and culture of India that our forefathers struggled to save us from?
Why cant Pakistanis stop comparing ourselves to poverty and disease stricken India when we should be comparing ourselves and trying to emulate to the better nations of Asia like South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia that have achieved successes beyond what 4th world India will ever achieve. Or why not look to the shining example of Turkey that serves as a model for Pakistan to follow? All these countries were once devastated by war, strife and poverty in many ways that were worse than what Pakistan is suffering from today, but yet we still look to India what we should be.
Why Pakistan? Why?
Why do our mothers and sisters pick the most Indian of fashions for their wedding days? Why do our singers and artists go over to India to perform? Why can a Pakistani instantly recognize the latest Bollywood movie and not the Hollywood movie it is ripping off? Why are we using the latest Hinglish catch phrases in our speech that are an abomination to real spoken English? Why do ALL foreigners from the Americans to the Chinese consider Pakistanis and Indians the same people? Why can Pakistanis easily identify notable people from India but NOONE from the rest of the Muslim nor the Western worlds? Why do many of us not fear it if Wagah border is opened (as many of our politicians would like) that it would allow the the Indians to flood our economy and enslave us to the will of Indian businessmen (effectively turning Pakistan into an Indian colony)? Why dont we feel sorrow for the deaths of our Pakistani soldiers who lose their lives in deadly avalanches while defending our country everyday but are impressed when India gets new aircraft from Russia and America? Why cant we remember the millions of Muslims these Indians had slaughtered like animals during partition? Why cant we even remember the thousands of Muslims recently massacred in Indian Gujrat in 2002?
And if we are so attached to India mentally, then why dont we feel humiliated when Indias economy grows at a rate of 8% and ours struggles at a measly 4%?
Tough questions, and like all good politicians, there can be a million meaningless answers.
The answers actually lies in the innocent statement uttered by my aunts kids: Its in Urdu!
Urdu, our national language which our teachers and textbooks have repeatedly stated that it is a language that is separate from Hindi. Its also said that Urdu is 70% Persian, Turkish and Arabic and shares only 30% of its vocabulary with Hindi. If so, then why can we totally understand whatever an Indian says in Hindi (even in heavily Sanskritized Hindi) but not even a casual sentence uttered by any Iranian, Arab or Turk?
Urdu, as we know it is nothing but Hindi enveloped in myth and the Persian alphabet.
Every Pakistani learns Hindi in school, we just dont call it that.
Thats the explanation of the dichotomy we see in Pakistan today: we can keep on stressing that we are Pakistanis ready to defend ourselves against India and yet shamelessly enjoy the poison the enemy sends across the border.
Urdu is not the as benevolent as we take it to be in our country. It is helping our foe conquer us without a single shot. And yet, none of us are ready to admit this.
Just think for a moment, if Urdu really had no relation to Hindi, then would ever be possible for the cultural situation we see today in Pakistan? Would it ever occur for any Pakistani to ever even think of even visit the excrement-filled streets of India? It wouldnt. But no, plenty of people desire to visit India just because of what they saw on television about Incredible India. And why are these tv images so effective? Its because they are speaking in the language of Pakistan, and that language is Hindi.
Still think I committing blasphemy? That Im unpatriotic? Really? Then go ask yourselves you Urdu- speaking Pakistanis: When was the last time you watched something from the Indian media/cinema AND ENJOYED IT?
For most of you, the answer is very recently, even though you dont want to admit it.
And then ask yourselves, Why was it enjoyable?
The answer to that is the same as the kids said; Indian media/cinema is in HINDI WHICH ALL OF US CAN UNDERSTAND BECAUSE URDU IS JUST LIKE HINDI!!!
Nay, you still deceive yourselves, because Urdu IS Hindi and Hindi IS Urdu. They are both the same language!!!!!
If Urdu and Hindi were different languages then theyd be as different as lets say, Urdu and Sindhi.
Can you, yes you non-Sindhi Pakistani Urdu-speakers, understand basic Sindhi conversation?
Honestly, just a bit or not at all.
And thats what you call a separate language. Hindi and Urdu on the other hand are barely different from each other as Cockney and Texan English!!! Hindi and Urdu use virtually the same words in all instances!!!!
Still dont believe me? Then I issue you a challenge.
Go to the wikipedia websites FrontPage and look at the bottom left column. There will be a list of languages given. In that list there will be a language listed as Fiji Hindi. Click on that name and your browser will be directed towards the Fiji Hindi wikipedia.
In this language version of wikipedia, you will be introduced to a Hindi form that is not written in the Devanagri script, but this Hindi will be written entirely in the English alphabet.
Now, with Hindi written in English letters, I dare you, you Pakistani Urdu-speakers to read what is written and tell me that you understood 90% of what is written there.
You will be surprised at how similar both Fiji Hindi and the so called URDU are the same.
According to linguistics, if two spoken forms share at least 85% of there speech with each other, then they are called dialects. But Hindi and Urdu share 90% of their everyday speech with each other, they arent just dialects, they are the same language!
But Hindi uses Sanskrit words and Urdu uses Persian words is what many say.
That maybe right, if it was the 1950s. We are living in the 2010s and guess what, nether Persian-filled Urdu nor Sanskrit-filled Hindi are the same as they were at the time of independence in 1947.
In case you have noticed, we Pakistanis tend to unconsciously use a lot of English words in our speech DAILY. While many say this is natural because both languages are taking words from English that dont exist in these languages(for example telecommunications). I beg to differ. Whenever you use an English word in Urdu, its not some really scientific or technical word, its usually simple words. And whenever you use a simple word, its usually because you are not using the Urdu word.
How many times has it occurred that Pakistanis have used English words instead of the Urdu word?
Car instead of Gaaree, Table instead of Mayz, Building instead of Imaarat, Government instead of Hukoomat, Teacher instead of Ustaad/Ustaani, Office instead of Daftar, Shop instead of Dukaan, Train instead of Rail-Gaaree, Time instead of Waqt, Pen instead of Qalam, Market instead of Bazaar, Blood instead of Khoon, Magazine instead of Risaalah, Cream instead of Malaaii, Birthday instead of SaalGira, Party instead of Jashn, Leader instead of Quaid, Game instead of Bazi or even Khayl.
This list can go on and on. But little do we Pakistanis realize that day by day, we are losing all of our Persian vocabulary that has existed in Urdu for centuries and replacing them with English words.
Why this is a bad thing is not because Im against English (otherwise I would have typed this post in Urdu) it is because it is exactly the same thing that is happening in Hindi.
Even in Hindi, all the Sanskrit words are under threat from English words. There is an entire list of what English words have entered Hindi right here:
[plz GoogleSearch: "Brian Steel's Soap box English words in Hindi"]
As you read the English words found in Hindi, you will notice that most of these words are the very same English words that are used in Urdu!
Now how could that be possible? Urdu and Hindi are borrowing the very same English words? How come?
Its because Hindi and Urdu are the same language! Thats why English is having the very same effect on both languages!
If they werent the same language then Urdu and Hindi would borrow very different words from English.
For example, Urdu has a word called Hukumat, and doesnt need to borrow the word Government, but in common Urdu speech, Pakistanis use the word Government instead of Hukumat!
The exact same thing has happened in Hindi where the Sanskrit word has been replaced by Government in common speech. Why would the very same thing happen in both Urdu and Hindi? Its because Urdu and Hindi are the same language!
This is a fact that is clear to all: any difference that once existed between Urdu and Hindi in 1947 is slowly but surely being eroded away by the English words that are entering both of them.
And once an English word has replaced a native word in both Urdu and Hindi, it cannot be removed. Therefore, guess what?
URDU AND HINDI ARE BECOMING MORE SIMILAR TO EACH OTHER DAY BY DAY!!!!
That means everyone from Peshawar to Chennai in the very near future will speak neither Urdu nor Hindi, but HINGLISH.
[Plz GoogleSearch: the indiatoday article "Hindification of India leaves Indian brown sahibs baffled"]
Hinglish is the guaranteed future of Urdu and Hindi. You cannot deny it, because you already speak it. No Pakistani is willing to go back to language of Ghalib, nor is any Indian is willing to go back to language of 3000BC.
The pull of English is just too powerful to resist and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Still dont believe me? Then have a listen to the audio file given on this page and then say Im wrong:
[Please GoogleSearch: "Mixing English in Pakistan by PRI Aaron Schachter 2008"]
But there are those who say that it is a good thing that Pakistanis and Indians will speak the very same language in the very near future (about 2025 I think?). They think that there will be greater cooperation and understanding between these two countries and hence the lower the chance of war.
You probably heard that from some traitor singer who went over to India to get rich, or from a starry-eyed fan who wishes Bollywood film stars to visit Pakistan.
Dont peddle me nonsense and wake up to reality: Pakistan was created to be not only separate but to walk a different path from that of India. There would be no point of creating Pakistan if there was no problem between Muslims and Hindus. But guess what, there is.
Without much nagging, it is clearly understandable to why a common language between Pakistan and India is very dangerous for Pakistan:
Once the language is the same, the culture become the same; once the culture is the same the ideas become the same; once the ideas become the same the borders mean nothing; once the borders mean nothing, the borders come down; once the borders come down, the demographics become the same; once the demographics become the same, the economics become the same; once the economics become the same the political thinking becomes the same; once the political thinking become the same, the identity becomes the same; once the identity becomes the same
there is no more Pakistan, there is only India.
Well be back to living under the nightmare that was the Maratha and Sikh rule of the 1700-1800s.
Period.
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Urdu is the knife that is backstabbing Pakistan without any of us knowing about it. Its about time that we Pakistanis pull out the knife and destroy it before it destroys us.
But how can we get rid of the very thing that makes us Pakistani? Which people think is, Urdu.
Firstly, Urdu doesnt make us Pakistani. Urdu makes us Indians. Heck even Urdu literature doesnt even connect us to the land of Pakistan, it connects us to the poets of Delhi, Lucknow and Deccan Hyderabad, which are, as you know, in India. Urdu is itself an inherently Indian language, whose homeland is not Pakistan but Uttar Pradesh in India. There is nothing much in Urdu to call it Pakistani and whatever it did have is quickly being lost under the swarm of English words that have entered it which make us Pakistanis even more Indian than ever before.
What makes us Pakistani is our people: our Punjabis, our Pathans, our Sindhis, our Seraikis, our Balochis, our Karachiites and 50 other types of Pakistanis groups. All we Pakistanis need is a lingua franca that not only unites our country but keeps all of us free from India, who has sworn to destroy us.
Many countries have changed their languages. The Turks have changed there language from Osmalica to Turkish, the Russians got rid of French for Russian, The Koreans got rid of Japanese, The British got rid of Latin, The Indonesians got rid of Dutch, the Central Asians and Azerbaijanis got rid of Russian, The Algerians got rid of French etc etc etc. In most cases, these countries got rid of a language that oppressed them and had existed for centuries in their countries but then they prospered with languages that freed them.
So why cant Pakistan do the same with Urdu?
An excellent selection of articles is available here if you still arent convinced:
[Plz GoogleSearch: "oocities paklanguage/opinion"]
The next question that comes along is: What can replace Urdu?
The Better Question is: What language(s) will let Pakistanis prosper?
The above link gives ample reason for why Persian is an excellent replacement for Urdu. But Im obliged to give the advantages and disadvantages of Persian for Pakistans national language.
PERSIAN
Little do Pakistanis know that poets of Urdu like Ghalib were far more proud of their works in Persian than in Urdu. Allama Iqbal even preferred Persian to Urdu in his works. Thats why most of Iqbals Poems are written in Persian and not in Urdu. Thats why most Pakistanis cannot understand the message of Iqbal; they were denied it when Urdu was made the national language of Pakistan and they will forever be denied of it with Urdu.
Persian is the father of Urdu and until the 1970s, it was taught as a second language in Pakistani schools. With Persian, Pakistan will totally be rid of the Indian menace forever and connected to the Muslims of Central Asia and Iran as it should be.
(Please refer to the oocities article cited above for the benefits of Persian)
However, Persian is not a desirable language in the 21st century. Persian will connect Pakistan to the war torn land that is Afghanistan, to the isolated and insignificant country of Tajikistan and will not connect Pakistan to the internationally embargoed Iran. Ties with Iran, the worlds second most universally hated country in the world after North Korea, are quite harmful to have in the 21st century especially for Pakistan, who needs to improve its relations with the international world for its well being. Even if Pakistan risks ties with Iran, Pakistan will find that the country is stuck in isolation and not progressing ahead. This will be very harmful for Pakistan if Pakistan goes the same way.
You may have your opinions about Persian. Please do share them
ARABIC
Most Pakistanis dont know this, but a famous figure from the Pakistan movement once pleaded that Pakistan shouldnt adopt Urdu as the national language just when Pakistan became independent. He was the Aga Khan III, the founding father of the Muslim League, way before Quaid-i-Azam even joined the Muslim League. As the leader of the Ismailis and whose forefathers had a long history in Iran, it would make sense for him to ask Pakistan to adopt Persian as the national language, giving the long history Persian has had in the land that is now Pakistan before the British came. But he didnt. Here is a man who truly wanted good for the newly independent Pakistan. He made his speech about this back in 1951, which you can read today right here:
[plz GoogleSearch: "amaana.org sultweb arabicpak"]
Let me update the information of this speech a bit:
There are 300million Arabic speakers in the world today all belonging to over 20 independent nations. The Arabic speakers represent the largest language group in the Islamic world rivaled by no other Muslim language, Bengali coming in at a second place with 200 million speakers. But while Bengali is spoken only in Bangladesh and West Bengal, Arabic is spoken from the Atlantic all the way the Arabian Sea which is a the Shores of Pakistan. The closest Arab country to Pakistan, Oman, is a mere 500 miles away from Pakistans coastline. If Pakistan adopts Arabic and replaces Urdu, it will be directly connected to the centre of the Muslim world and fully broken off from the enslaving influence of India.
Already half of Urdus Perso-Arabic vocabulary is Arabic and Urdu uses the same script as Arabic. While the rest of the world calls Arabic a very difficult language, Pakistanis already exist at the threshold of mastering Arabic. It will be a Category II language for Pakistanis at max.
The Benefits of Arabic are numerous. Not only does Arabic allow Muslims to directly understand the message of the Quran and Hadith, Arabic itself is a very versatile language. Very few languages exist on Earth that have been able to modernize without borrowing words from Western languages. Arabic is so versatile that it has been able to coin words from its own roots to meet the needs of the modern age. So, Arabic frees ones mind from ever kowtowing to any foreign power and hence is the perfect language to keep ones independence.
Some may fear that the spread of Arabic may lead to increased extremism in Pakistan. I dont think so. When each and every Pakistani Muslim is able to open actually read and comprehend the very words and commands of the Quran that forbid the killing of Muslims, then extremism itself will fade out.
Others fear that Pakistan may be turned into a colony of Saudi Arabia if it adopts Arabic. That is highly unlikely. Firstly, Pakistan does have a mind of its own and will keeps its independence (Which it cannot do if it shares the same language as India). Secondly, Arabic teaching in Pakistan will not be carried out by any Saudis. Arabic teachers from other countries in the Arab world are far more likely to be teachers of Arabic in Pakistan than touchy Saudis will ever be. Teachers from places like Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Sudan are more likely to come to Pakistan to teach than Saudis. Hence, Pakistanis will get a very multinational education in Arabic.
Some fear that Arab systems of government will form in Pakistan.
Just ask yourself: Can Pakistan ever be a monarchy? Impossible. Can Pakistan ever have an unending military government? 4 such governments have come and gone. It is unlikely that they will ever come back again now that we have a free media in Pakistan.
The economic benefits are huge. Most Arab countries are desert countries with little agriculture, but have fast growing populations. Pakistan, as an agricultural country, can win the export markets in all these countries and earn a steady income for all time to come that is not dependent on oil!
You may have your opinions about Arabic. Please do share them.
PUNJABI AND SINDHI
Many argue that no nation became great by adopting a foreign language. And thats what Persian and Arabic are, alien foreign languages. They both are hard to learn for the average Pakistani to learn and also rely on expensive foreign teachers to be taught and promoted in the country. But since our education system isnt that widespread, nether Persian nor Arabic are feasible for Pakistanis to quickly adopt. The same goes for English.
However, the local languages of Pakistan are free of this. They can be easily taught due to the availability of many teachers and the relatively low difficulty of these languages for all Pakistanis.
With Sindhi, a language not spoken in India, Pakistan can gain what it lacks today: a national identity that is based within the territory of Pakistan.
The same goes for Punjabi which has only 5% of India speaking it. (Please refer to the oocities article cited above)
In countries such as Malaysia, the are TWO national languages along with English. So why cant Pakistan have two highly acceptable national languages instead of the single harmful Urdu?
You may have your opinions about Sindhi and Punjabi. Please do share them.
I personally think replacing Urdu with both Sindhi and Punjabi is the best way forward along with English as the real lingua francas of Pakistan. Trilingualism, like in Switzerland should be promoted in Pakistan. Not only will it ease the burden of learning so many languages on the Pakistanis and help it progress in the modern world, but it will give Pakistan what it has always being lacking: a sense of self-identity based on its own people.
So what do you say?
