At least two private language bills are pending before the National Assembly and Senate for declaring Punjabi, Pashto, Balochi, Sindhi and others as national languages of Pakistan in addition to Urdu.
There is a long list of countries where more than one language has been declared as national/official languages. For example, India has more than 20 national languages, Singapore has four, Switzerland five etc. The concept of only one national language does not exist more particularly in any country where numerous languages are spoken on wide level. We have lost more than half the country in 1971 because we initially refused to accept the language of the majority ie, Bengali (56 percent of population) as one of the national languages of Pakistan.
On Feb 21, 1952 a movement to declare Bengali as national languages was launched in Dhaka that took a bloody turn. Consequently, country was broken on the basis of language as Shaikh Mujibur Rahman later declared he was trying to get independence since 1952. In 1948, there was suggestion before the Constituent Assembly that Urdu, English and Bengali should be declared as national/official languages of Pakistan but a lobby of Karachi that had the support of media started declaring Bengalis as “Anti-Pakistan”, “Anti-Islam”, “Foreign Agents” etc.
The claim of Maulvi Abdul Haq (Baba-i-Urdu) that the languages that were written from write to left, were languages of God, could not convince Bengalis as the said lobby in West Pakistan had already refused to accept Arabic as national language despite Pakistan was created on the basis of Islam.
In 1954, when then Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Bogra called Bengali as second language of Pakistan, the Urdu and English newspaper of Karachi observed strike for one day in protest. The Sindhi newspapers refused to join. Consequently, A B A Haleem, ex-Vice Chancellor, Karachi University banned Sindhi language in the university. The decision was challenged by Barrister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1957 in West Pakistan High Court and finally the ban became ineffective.
I request Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), PML(N), MQM, ANP, PML(Q) and others to come forward and resolve the sensitive language issue in Pakistan by declaring at least five languages of Pakistan ie, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Seraiki and Balochi as national languages in addition to the prevailing Urdu to ensure better future of the country.
MOHAMMAD KHAN SIAL
Karachi