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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Pakistan
Index
Language is an important marker of ethnic identity.
Among the
more than twenty spoken languages in Pakistan, the most
common
ones--Punjabi, Sindhi, and Urdu--as well as Pakhtu or
Pashto,
Balochi, and others, belong to the Indo-Aryan branch of
the IndoEuropean language family. Additional languages, such as
Shina and
other northern-area languages, are related to the Dardic
branch
of Indo-European and the early Dravidian language family.
Brahui
is one such language; it is spoken by a group in
Balochistan.
The Indo-Aryan vernaculars stretch across the northern
half
of the Indian subcontinent in a vast range of related
local
dialects that change slightly from one village to the
next.
Residents of fairly distant communities typically cannot
understand one another. Superimposed on this continuum are
several types of more standardized literary or commercial
languages. Although based on the vernaculars of their
representative regions, these standardized languages are
nonetheless distinct.
Nearly half of all Pakistanis (48 percent) speak
Punjabi. The
next most commonly spoken language is Sindhi (12 percent),
followed by the Punjabi variant Siraiki (10 percent),
Pakhtu or
Pashto (8 percent), Balochi (3 percent), Hindko (2
percent), and
Brahui (1 percent). Native speakers of other languages,
including
English, Burushaski, and various other tongues account for
8
percent.
Although Urdu is the official national language, it is
spoken
as a native tongue by only 8 percent of the population.
People
who speak Urdu as their native language generally identify
themselves as muhajirs. A large number of people
from
educated backgrounds (and those who aspire to upward
mobility)
speak Urdu, as opposed to their natal languages, in their
homes,
usually to help their children master it.
The Urdu language originated during the Mughal period
(1526-
1858). It literally means "a camp language," for it was
spoken by
the imperial Mughal troops from Central Asia as they mixed
with
speakers of local dialects of northern India.
Increasingly,
elements of Persian, the official language of the Mughal
administration, were incorporated until Urdu attained its
stylized, literary form in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The Devanagari script (used for Sanskrit and
contemporary Hindi) was never adopted; instead, Urdu has
always
been written using the Persian script. These two literary
languages, Urdu and Hindi, arose from colloquial
Hindustani, the
lingua franca of modern India before partition.
South Asian Muslims have long felt that Urdu symbolizes
their
shared identity. It has served as a link among educated
Muslims
and was stressed in the Pakistan independence movement.
Christopher Schackle writes that "Urdu was the main
literary
vehicle of the Muslim elite of India." At independence,
the
Muslim League (as the All-India Muslim League was usually
referred to) promoted Urdu as the national language to
help the
new Pakistani state develop an identity, even though few
people
actually spoke it. However, because many of the elite were
fluent
in English, English became the de facto national language.
The
push to elevate Urdu was unpopular in East Pakistan, where
most
of the population speaks Bengali (officially referred to
as
Bangla in Bangladesh since 1971) and identifies with its
literary
heritage. Language riots in Dhaka occurred in the early
1950s,
leading to the elevation of Bengali as a second national
language
with Urdu until the secession of East Pakistan in 1971;
when
Bangladesh became independent, Bangla was designated the
official
language.
Instruction in the best schools continued to be in
English
until the early 1980s. Mastery of English was highly
desirable
because it facilitated admission to good universities in
Britain,
the United States, and Australia. Then, in a move to
promote
nationalism, the government of Zia ul-Haq declared Urdu to
be the
medium of instruction in government schools. Urdu was
aggressively promoted via television, radio, and the
education
system. Private schools in urban centers (attended by
children of
the elite) were allowed to retain English, while smaller
rural
schools could continue to teach in the provincial
languages
(see Education
, this ch.).
Punjabi, spoken by nearly half of the population, is an
old,
literary language whose early writings consist chiefly of
folk
tales and romances, the most famous being the
eighteenth-century
Punjabi poet Waris Shah's version of Heer Ranjha
(the love
story of Heer and Ranjha). Although Punjabi was originally
written in the Gurmulki script, in the twentieth century
it has
been written in the Urdu script. Punjabi has a long
history of
being mixed with Urdu among Muslims, especially in urban
areas.
Numerous dialects exist, some associated with the Sikhs in
India
and others associated with regions in Pakistan. An example
of the
latter is the variant of Punjabi spoken in Sargodha in
central
Punjab.
The ethnic composition of Pakistan in the mid-1990s
roughly
corresponds to the linguistic distribution of the
population, at
least among the largest groups: 59.1 percent of Pakistanis
identify themselves as Punjabis, 13.8 percent as Pakhtuns,
12.1
percent as Sindhis. 7.7 percent as muhajirs, 4.3
percent
as Baloch, and 3 percent as members of other ethnic
groups. Each
group is primarily concentrated in its home province, with
most
muhajirs residing in urban Sindh
(see
fig. 7).
Data as of April 1994
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