Instability: Pakistan

Pakistan is a hotbed of internal tensions. The Indus river basically divides modern Pakistan in half, with Indic (Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi) on one side and Iranian (Pashto and Balochi) on the other. Further, the Pashto and Balochi speaking peoples live in ranges which straddle the national borders of Afghanistan (for the Pashto, who form the largest minority there) and of Afghanistan and Iran (for the Balochi).

Pakistan was created by dividing British India along religous lines, the first time in history that has happened.1 The region has long been predominantly Muslim.

Right before the British, the Mughal Empire ruled Pakistan from Delhi. Hindustani became the lingua francae of the Mughals. Hindi is Hindustani written with the Sanksrit script, Urdu is Hindustani with Arabic letters. Pakistan chose Urdu as its national language, even though today, after an influx of Urdu-speaking Muslims from India, Urdu is spoken by only 7% of the population.

Regional Linguistic Issues in Pakistan's History

Most of the rulership are Punjabi or Muslim Urdu-speaking immigrants from India, attracted by the creation of a Muslim state in 1947.

Although Urdu is the language of the government and the capitol, in the highest power circles English is the language used. Both Pervez Musharaff and Benazier Bhutto speak English better than Urdu.

In the Northwest Frontier Province there was a movement which wanted to make Pashto the language of the region. It was put down by Pakistan's founder Jinnah by suspending their regional assembly. Flareups occured over the language issue in East Pakistan(Bangladesh) in 1951, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1966 and 1970-71. The government tried to change the Bengali language by educating people to write it in Arabic, this in order to make it more Islamic. Student protests which the police put down violently, killing four, are memorialized in Bangladesh as Ekushe, or "Language Day"2 . In 1954 the East Pakistanis voted for a coalition including the Awami League, which wanted to make Bengali a national language, which did very well overall. To nullify the results of the election, that month the Governor of East Pakistan was dismissed by the Pakistani Prime Minister, and East Pakistan's assembly was kept closed for two years. East Pakistan's Governor was replaced by someone who was openly hostile to East Pakistan.3 .

Two months after the 1958 military coup by General Ayub Khan he tried to force all Pakistanis to use the English (Latin) script. That failed.

The Siraiki language group agitated for the creation of Bhawalpur province.4 .

Sindhi was its own linguistic grouping from 1930, compared to the rest of West Pakistan, where the British used Urdu, although many Urdu speaking people moved to Sindh, as Sindhis left for India, after the birth of Pakistan. Bloodiest riots in Pakistani history followed the July 1972 Sindhi language bill, requiring Sindhi and Urdu language instruction in 4th through 12th grades, where previously only Urdu had been required. It also required Sind's government to use Sindhi in all departments. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then Pakistan's Prime Minister, declared that no one would be denied a government job for lack of knowledge of Sindhi or Urdu for the next 12 years.5 The Sindhi issue has faded into the background since 1989.

Language riots in Sindh during the 1970s

Punjabi, the language of most top government and the largest portion of top military leaders, is nearly mutually intelligible with Urdu, unlike the other major languages.6 The first Pashto governor in Pakistan had preferred creating a Pakhtunstan for Pathans on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border before the creation of Pakistan. He was almost immediately sacked, and since his party controlled the NWFP assembly, it was dissolved for months until a pro-Pakistani leader could be found.7 Balochi people speak a variety of dialects, and were using Urdu as a link language. Using the language as a unifying factor was a much more recent development. From 1990 to 1992 there was a brief period where local languages were required in schools.

"Despite the great diversity of langauges and ethnicites in Pakistan, the government has paid little attention to language as a policy issue. Seemingly, its leaders continue to believe that ethnic problems can resolve themselves if the proper formulations of political representation are developed."8

Footnotes. "The name Urdu is short for zaba_n e urdu_ e mualla_, Persian for 'language of the camp exalted', where the first and last words are originally Arabic, the middle one Turkic, and the linking e's pure Persian. Hindi is a shortening of Hindui or Hindvi, the word for 'Indian talk' originally used by Muslims, since the word Hind itself is a Persian version of the name of the Sindhu river, known to the Greeks (and the Europeans) as the Indus."9 back