QUAID-I-AZAM Mohammad Ali Jinnah, with his prescience, to keep the newly founded Pakistan united as a single nation, had declared Urdu as the national language of the country. Unfortunately, during his lifetime, the Bengalis objected to the imposition of Urdu as the state language and started agitation, forcing the Quaid to visit Dhaka to resolve the issue. On 21 March 1948, addressing a mammoth public meeting, he reiterated: “Let me restate my views on the question of a state language for Pakistan. For official use in this province, the people of the province can choose any language they wish… There can, however, be one lingua franca, that is, the language for inter-communication between the various provinces of the state…The state language, therefore, must obviously be Urdu, a language that has been nurtured by a hundred million Muslims of this subcontinent which, more than any other provincial language, embodies the best that is in Islamic culture and Muslim tradition and is nearest to the languages used in other Islamic countries.”
There was a rationale behind this bold declaration, which needs to be taken cognizance of. Ever since Islam came to the subcontinent there have been many different languages used. As any group came to rule the subcontinent, they brought with them their own language, such as Arabic or Turkish. Effective rulers appreciated the need to foster an understanding of arts and literature and so it is not surprising that these new languages took root and spread.
The language which perhaps had the greatest impact was Persian. During the Mughal period it was the official language in the court of Delhi. Most books were written in Persian and it was adopted by poets and scholars, such as Amir Khusrau. Shah Waliullah translated the Quran from Arabic into Persian so that it was accessible to more people. Many Sanskrit books were also translated in Persian. However, Urdu, which had initially emerged as a mixture of languages used by the Turkish, Persian and Hindu soldiers and some local dialects, became the official language of the Mughal Empire. During the reign of Aurangzeb Alamgir, all the official documents were in Urdu Language. In 1867 some leading Hindus started a campaign to replace Urdu with their language Hindi. Their complaint was that Urdu language was written in Persian script which was similar to Arabic script, while Arabic was the language of the Quran. Moreover, the script was identified with the Muslims who had invaded and ruled India for several centuries. The Hindi campaign rapidly gained strength. Indian Muslims, ironically led by a staunch Bengali like Sir Khwaja Salimullah, who was one of the founders of the Muslim League in 1906, and other political and religious leaders, such as, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk and Maulvi Abdul Haq leapt to defend Urdu.
When Pakistan received its independence, following the partition of India in 1947, it comprised various ethnic and linguistic groups, whereas the geographically non-contiguous East Bengal province mainly had a homogenous Bengali population. As mentioned earlier, in 1948, the Central Government of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Bengal. The Quaid’s decision was based on the fact that Pakistan comprised the provinces of Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, Bengal and North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). Each with its own language, with numerous dialects. If the Quaid had agreed to both Urdu and Bengali being state languages, the Sindhis, Balochis, Pathan and Punjabis would have demanded equal representation of their mother tongues.
Alas, the Quaid expired on 11 September 1948 and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated on 16 October 1951. Ironically, Liaquat Ali Khan’s successor Khwaja Nazimuddin—a Bengali, staunchly supported the Urdu-only policy. Thus, the protests against the imposition of Urdu as the state language persisted, reaching its climax in the killing of six protesting students by police firing on 21 February 1952.
Agitation and protests continued till 7 May 1954, the constituent assembly resolved, with the Muslim League’s support, to grant official status to Bengali, which was adopted as an official language of Pakistan along with Urdu in article 214 (1) when the first Constitution of Pakistan was enacted on 29 February 1956. The seeds of dissension, however, had been sown. The Bengali Language Movement (Bhasha Andolôn) was a political movement in former East Pakistan advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language in East Bengal. In 1999, in response to a resolution tabled by Bangladesh, 21 February was declared to be the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO.
Today some myopic observers blame the Quaid for executing a wrong decision by imposing Urdu on the Bengalis. Even a casual glance at various nations in our own neighbourhood depicts that despite having numerous languages and dialects, a single language is chosen as the national language. Officially, there are 302 living languages in China but Mandarin is its official language. India, the world’s second-largest populated country in the world, is the house of more than 19000 languages, making it the most linguistically diversified nation. The tradition, culture, art, language and food vary from state to state and are unique to each region, yet the unifying force is the Hindi language in its Devanagari script.
Language plays a very important part in our lives. It can be used to define a common identity but it can also be used as a political tool to divide them. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had witnessed the struggles of the Muslims in the Indian Subcontinent and the visionary leader’s first instinct was to unite the Pakistanis, thus he chose to break the shackles of bondage and instead of imposing English, he chose Urdu. In my opinion, if the Quaid had lived longer, in the next stage of our evolution as a nation, he would have encouraged the learning of provincial languages: Balochi, Bengali, Pushto and Sindhi, further unifying us, as he had mentioned in his 21st March 1948 speech at Dhaka.
—The writer, Retired Group Captain of PAF, is author of several books on China.
