Language policies of India and Pakistan
This is the linguistic map of India.
Hindi is widely spoken language in India, it is the mother tongue of many and spoken as first, second or third language by around 50% population of the country.
Hindi and English are the official languages of the Government of India. There is no national language.
There are 22 officially recognized languages in India.
States within India have the liberty and powers to specify their own official language(s) through legislation.
So this is the language policy of India. Now let’s talk about Pakistan.
This is the linguistic map of Pakistan.
Can you guess the official or national language of Pakistan from this map? It should be Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and/or Balochi, right?
These four languages are recognised as provincial languages in Pakistan, but none of these is their official or national language.
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. Urdu and English are their official languages.
In 2015, the government of Pakistan announced plans to make Urdu the sole official language and abolish English as the second official language.
So why is Urdu their national as well as official language when it is nobody’s mother tongue in the country.
Why has this language been imposed on them?
Urdu used to be spoken in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, etc. or in the Hindi Belt of India.
Urdu, Hindi, Hindustani all are very similar Indian languages. My maternal grandfather knew how to write Urdu, and if this generation of Uttar Pradesh could ask their great-grandparents if they knew the language, I’m sure most of them would say that they knew how to read and write Urdu.
This whole idea that Urdu is the language of Muslims and Hindi is the language of Hindus is totally absurd.
This was only the result of 'divide and rule' policy of the British.
Javed Akhtar once said in his speech that languages are regional not religional.
People in Tamil Nadu speak Tamil, people in Gujarat speak Gujarati, people in Bihar speak Hindi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Maghi, people in France speak French, etc. Since when religions started having a particular language? Do Tamil Muslims speak Urdu? Do Bengali Muslims speak Urdu? In fact East Pakistanis did not like it when West Pakistanis tried to impose Urdu on them because their mother tongue was Bengali and they didn’t know Urdu at all.
