Let’s call a spade a ‘bailcha’

“…even after the end of the colonial era, the ruling classes have institutionally encouraged the erasure and suppression of national languages in order to consolidate their own power. Except Urdu and Sindhi, none of the national languages are taught in any parts of Pakistan and higher and scientific are only taught in English.

This brings me to reflect on some self-defeating arguments, claiming that Urdu or other national languages are not capable of being used for administrative or scientific purposes and thus we are doomed to keep using English as borrowed clutches. This trickles down in the communal psyche in the form of attitudes of inferiority towards the ‘vernacular’ – that it is something only good enough for sentimental poetry (as often thought or stated about Urdu) or for talking to one’s grandparents, a generation on the move.

…

Do you not think that on the 75th anniversary of the end of colonialism and the independence of Pakistan, we can at least start by teaching our child the words for spade in our languages, that it is not just spade but also بیلچہ bailcha?  We owe them their language.”

Read the rest of Hammad Rind’s reflections on an ingrained inferiority complex and institutional strangling of native languages in contexts like Pakistan here.