Pak Tea House » Uncategorized » Do you speak what your great grandfather did?
Do you speak what your great grandfather did?
By Amrita Yasin
The General Administration of Press and Publication in China recently banned the use of English words and phrases in publications, for it was “abusing the language’ and putting its “purity” in jeopardy. The names of people and places and commonly used English abbreviations, all have to be translated to Chinese. Anyone can argue for or against this action on technical grounds, but I do salute the display of self-esteem and self-respect this nation has shown.
I feel a tinge of guilt writing in support of preservation of mother tongue in a language that isn’t my first language. Or is it? Considering that as far as I can remember, I have been speaking English as much as Urdu and that I can’t carry a casual conversation in Urdu without using English words/phrases/references, while I am fully capable of communicating in English through any medium, makes me wonder if I can even proclaim Urdu as my mother tongue. The fact that I was born in a Punjabi house and so technically my first language should have been Punjabi is a far cry. But am I the only one to be blamed? What about my parents who didn’t even bother speaking Punjabi to me because it wasn’t the norm anymore? Or the teachers who would fine us if we spoke Urdu? Or the society which holds people in awe who speak ‘fur-fur angrezi’?
In English-medium schools, all subjects except Urdu and Islamic studies are taught in English; the purpose obviously being to make the generation more fluent than would be possible by having only one ‘English’ course. I do remember distinctly that even in my Urdu class we frequently used English words; one for there was no Urdu translation, secondly the Urdu translation was not a part of our commonly used vocabulary and we were definitely not adamant on making it so because … who cares? Well to be fair there was a chapter in my Urdu textbook which talked at length about the differences in Urdu and Hindi and how it was the language of the Muslims and a key motif behind the attainment of a separate country for the Indian Muslims. Ironic how only 60 years later we gladly abandon that very language in favour of the language of the then rulers of India we sought freedom from.
This is another perfect topic for highlighting the shortcomings of our leaderships but since our government is notorious for everything imaginable, I am going to spare them this bashing.Low or rather lack of self-esteem and respect for culture is evident by individual attitudes, such as parents not conversing with their children in their ethnic languages, or even if they do so limiting it to homely conversations and not coaching them on the history and literature of the language (because we already contended that the government fails at anything intelligent), and by harboring a sense of pride, I would even say arrogance, for being fluent in English. Disregard of cultural identity cannot be emphasized more than by disowning your own language – an element that distinguishes human beings from rest of the creatures. Instead of changing our attitudes and focusing on scientific, technological and economic faculties to prosper, which would lead to a global recognition and awareness of our language, we think that adopting foreign cultures would make us more progressive. We have the entire logic upside down!
This negligent attitude towards our national and ethnic languages is a big contributor towards our poor understanding of our own history. We all have heard of names of Baba Bulleh Shah, Sachal Sarmast, but how many of us have actually had first-hand experience with their writings?
Let’s not even go that far. My grandmother once watched a talk show where both the host and the guest spoke English interspersed with some Urdu, and she questioned the use of a language which the majority of people couldn’t understand. Isn’t a broken connection with history just an amplified effect of generations coexisting at the same time yet not being able to understand each other?
Such attitudes will also broaden the communication gap between cities and rural areas of Pakistan. Language is not just a way of telling someone you need rice and not roti. It in turn affects the way human beings think. How do you think an English-speaking afsar will treat a farmer speaking a language he is proud to have gotten rid of? Which language are you thinking in?
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: English, people, Punjabi, Urdu
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Amrita Ji, As per my understanding Urdu language is made up of persian and arabic a lot, do you think these two languages can be called our own by the people living east of river indus…. should we reject it now.
For that matter even islam and christainity are foriegn to this soil and do you think they enriched our culture or asked their followers to disown their centuries old traditions and habits.
Infact , when cultures and people from differnt background mingle they produce a fusion and the best example of such fusion is Sufism, so lets not try insulate ourselves like the commies in china instead lets assimilate more and enrich ourselves
Language is the very first, singularly critical technical invention, upon which rests every other human development known to mankind.
What would humans be without language? It is the single most important tool that enables ideas and dreams to be articulated, and only then can they be realized. All the scholarly discussion that takes place on this and other English forums looses effectiveness and value because the people who need to be be engaged in the discussion are left out because of the language barrier.
The foremost identity of a culture is its language. While evolution of language is an unstoppable phenomenon, it is critical to reinforce the pride in one’s language. All citizens from top to bottom must be able to communicate in the language of the masses. While some foreign words will continued to be borrowed back and forth among languages, a concerted effort must be made to preserve and grow the vocabulary of Urdu. It is the glue that should the unite the masses as a people.
Urdu must be a compulsory language, along with a provincial language as well as English. The influx of foreign words into Urdu should be consciously managed. The unbecoming, random switch back and forth between English and Urdu is distracting and disruptive to the thought process both for the speaker and the audience. It reflects poorly on the indigenous Pakistanis who converse more easily in English than in Urdu. The skills and knowledge that the language mixers bring to the table loose value as the masses are excluded from benefiting from the message. The ‘mixed’ language only shows the confusion and insecurity of the speaker. It subconsciously further alienates the audience, who already suffer from inferiority complex. Loosing one’s language works like slow poison that erodes the fabric of society and eventually the identity becomes extinct.
And lastly, it is unfortunate that the young generations are being deprived from the treasure trove of Urdu literature and poetry that so richly engraves the legacy of this nation. Learning Urdu well enough to understand the sublime poetry in itself adds a priceless dimension to who one is. Thta is how great the power of language is!
@ Amrita Yasin
How do you intend to preserve a language? Language changes and it will change with the experience of the times and while, we can maintain the vocabulary of a language and even instruct our young generations in it, we cannot insulate them from the outside world.
Why did you learn English and not just Urdu? Urdu may have a rich tradition, but learning Urdu and appreciating Ghalib will not get you a job. The languages we learn are the mirror to the reality we live in and in our reality, learning English is a stepping stone towards a better job and a better life.
Learning a language is an investment of time and money and like with any other investment, one expects a return on the time and money invested in a particular skill. The idea that one goes to school, and then to college, to learn is a silly idea. Schools, colleges and the other institutions of higher learning are not concerned with educating the people who attend them and neither are the people who attend them interested in being educated as much as getting a job, which pays well.
There is a difference between going to college to get a degree and going to college to get an education. To get an education one does not need to go school or a college, but in this present society; one needs a degree – a mark of qualification – to become a part of the work force.
The very purpose of the modern school system, set up amidst the chimmeys of the Industrial Revolution, was to create an educated work force, which could follow instructions and be trained in the use of technology and which would replace the existing work force. The schools were created by the owners of the factories not to educate but train and discipline future workers.
Why did the factory owners in Sialkot make schools to educate the children of their workers? Were they truly interested in the educational well being of the children of their workers or did they stand to lose the contracts from Nike and Addias et al if they did not?
In the modern world, education is an economic necessity and the language which allows us the possibility for the most economic benefit will be chosen over a language that has no or little economic benefit.
China is not alone in this regressive political statement of isolating its language from the outside world; France is also culturally atuned to the idea of preserving the purity of the French language from outside influences. The question is how do you achieve this aim? Do you make the outside world disappear?
There is a simple way to achieve this goal. Let us ban the internet in Pakistan and let us make a law that only Urdu will be taught as the language of instruction in Pakistan and all works in all the languages not in Urdu, will be translated in Urdu.
This means, that the Holy Quran will also be taught in Urdu and will be translated in Urdu and we will learn the Holy Quran not only in Urdu but also in Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi, Pushto and even in Hindko, and other various regional and sub-regional dialects spoken in Pakistan.
Why Urdu? Why not Arabic?
Since the Holy Quran is written in Arabic, and we need to understand our religion, we should make a law that only Arabic will be the language of Pakistan and since in Pakistan, we believe that Islam and our religion come before everything else, regional languages and Urdu should not have a place of primacy before the original language of our religion. To even think that we can be Muslims and still speak Urdu is a blasphemy against our religion and a violation of the most basic and cardinal Islamic virtues, because Urdu and the other regional languages of Pakistan prevent us from becoming better Muslims and therefore must be banned lest they become a hinderance in our efforts to become better , more religously educated and aware Muslims.
If such was the case, then our history provides a valid reason why the Muslims of India did not learn English when the British Raj came to India, but what happened to them? They lost their status of the dominant social group losing their economic and political influence and in the end, the demand for separate homeland for the Muslims of India was made by a barrister educated in the law schools of of England speaking English.
Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru and all the Indian nationalists who convinced the British to leave India did it in the language the British understood and not in Hindi or Urdu or Punjabi. May be, we should blame Jinnah and remove him the from lofty pedestal upon which we have placed him in Pakistan because he did not speak Urdu and besides, was it not this same non-Urdu speaking native that told the people of Pakistan, the Bengalis, that Urdu would be the national language of Pakistan? All our problems with the people of East Pakistan started over the issue of language and can Jinnah not be blamed for this?
Writing an article praising Urdu and other regional languages of Pakistan on a blog where the dicussions are held in English, is like preaching to the converts to come back to the orginal faith. If this is the case,then what was the reason for the converts to leave the true faith in the the first place and do you think, they will come back? How many times must we cross the Rubicon?
When one divorces a spouse, one does not do so with the intentions to remarry that spouse.
Amrita ji, thousands of years ago even before the idea of a civilization was a gleam in the eyes of humanity, the early humans left the continent of their birth, Africa, in search for a better life and today, when immigrants leave their motherland for distant shores, they do it for the same reason; a better life and languages and learning a language is alike to this idea; we will always graviate towards that language that offers us a better life.
I have nothing against Urdu or any other language, but to politically, religiously or even culturally and socially to favor one language over another is to intervene in the process of a linguistic Darwinism and to that I object.
ciao
Ahhhh, Feroz, mon ami’. As per usual, leave it to you the professor, to put all things into perspective!
While it is critical to learn English in the globalized world, it is equally important to learn a language that is familiar and already established as a national language. The communication gap between those with degrees and those without must be bridged. Shunning and/or ignoring Urdu will keep these drawing room discussions going on endlessly with out much good coming out of them.
Feroz
Great views once again – right on money. btw your migration from Africa comment reminded me – people do watch the documentary on the human genome project – that tries to explain using genetics, how humans migrated out from Africa over thousands of years.
Moreover, Urdu is a foreign language for Pakistan anyways.
Is it just a cultural curiousity or an historical development of greater meaning that we fought against our overlords and their language and culture, and within two generations of achieving victory, we have embraced that same language and culture?
Obviously there was a point of time when there had to be a demonstrative rejection of the British and their culture; if it was not rejected, if we had nothing to put in its place, what exactly was it that we were seeking in its place? But was that a shallow demonstration, intended to make a political point alone? Neither Gandhi nor Jinnah thought so; both thought that ‘native’ languages, vernaculars, would see tremendous growth. Both consciously worked on that basis. As has been pointed out earlier, Jinnah in fact emphasised Urdu to the point where it grated on the nerves of his single largest bloc of citizenry. Gandhi was clear that the future lay with Hindustani. The early generations of Indian politicians were strong for Hindi, or Hindustani. Even as late as the 60s and 70s, populist governments were actively seeking to minimise the role of English in education and to maximise the role of vernaculars. Then the software boom happened, and everything changed.
What was the intrinsic value of the vision of the great ones? If our present, and possibly our future, lies in the closer linking of our nations with the rest of the world, of what use was their obsession, born of their struggles and of their times, with vernacular?
The disturbing question which lurks behind the issue of languages is, did they get other things wrong as well? Was it just about language that their vision was faulty?
Is it time, then, to re-examine not only the foundation of our methods of teaching and learning, but our foundations of all other things as well? Are there other huge mistakes lying undiscussed and undiscovered? In India, in economics, the socialist legacy, rather, the Bloomsbury legacy has already been addressed and assimilated, not totally rejected but retained partially in the command and control system and abandoned in terms of operational freedom available to entrepreneurs and promoters.
There have been equivalent sociological re-discoveries and re-visits as well. Quotas for the less privileged, smaller states designed around the special needs of the hillman and the people of the jungles, others based on the aspirations of the specially differentiated people of the north-east – more than enough examples abound of the effort of a centrist state to bend and re-make itself to match the pressures of the present. But are these enough? Why do we still have Maoists killing civilians and state servants, and travesties of justice like Dr. Binayak Sen’s trial and conviction for sedition?
We recognise language as a differentiator, also as a flag around which to rally around, very quickly; language is a sensitive matter, as countless statesmen and rulers from Darius onwards have found to their cost. The intended point of the article was to highlight the dilemmas relating to languages that a new emerging society faces when it wishes to balance the legacy of the past with the demands of the future. It very fortunately succeeds in raising the deeper question of how to balance society itself against the pulls and pushes of the future.
[...] at The Pak Tea House on December 25, [...]
@Vajra
“Is it just a cultural curiousity or an historical development of greater meaning that we fought against our overlords and their language and culture, and within two generations of achieving victory, we have embraced that same language and culture?”
Vajra
We did not fight against anybody’s language and culture. We fought for our freedom. We are not embracing the same language and culture. We are embracing realities of life. If French suited us better, we would’ve had no qualms embracing French.
What we fought for can be seen in the price of onions. The humble onion can be easily avoided with a little practice. And yet the Govt. is trying to pull out all stops to lower its price. The 1998 election cycle is appropriately called the onion elections. Compare this with the famine of ’43, death of 30 lakh British subjects, and the total unconcern of our overall dictator to the point of asking if starving was so bad how come Gandhi was still alive! We still had a government in Bengal. But when it mattered the most, the ultimate fate of the millions depended on the whims and quirks of the overlords.
That’s what we fought against.
Our leaders, especially Gandhi, at some point rejected English. But as a matter of policy he stood corrected. I am sure you are aware of the famous Tagore-Gandhi debate on this. Below I am attaching an account of this by Rama Guha.
“In the issue of his journal Young India dated April 27, 1921, Mahatma Gandhi published an article titled “Evil Wrought by the English Medium”. This argued that “Rammohun Roy would have been a greater reformer, and Lokmanya Tilak would have been a greater scholar, if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English”. Gandhi claimed that “of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty, and developing accuracy of thought”.
When this article appeared, Rabindranath Tagore was travelling in the West….. On May 10, 1921, he wrote to C.F. Andrews from Zurich saying, “I strongly protest against Mahatma Gandhi’s trying to cut down such great personalities of Modern India as Rammohan Roy in his blind zeal for crying down our modern education”. These criticisms, added Tagore tellingly, showed that Gandhi “is growing enamoured of his own doctrines — a dangerous form of egotism, that even great people suffer from at times”.
The Mahatma believed Rammohan Roy was limited by his excessive familiarity with English. To the contrary, Tagore argued that through his engagement with other languages, the reformer “had the comprehensiveness of mind to be able to realise the fundamental unity of spirit in the Hindu, Muhammadan and Christian cultures….”
C.F. Andrews shared the letter with the press. The criticisms stung Gandhi, who immediately published a clarification in Young India. He pointed to his own friendship with white men (Andrews among them), and the hospitality granted to Englishmen by many non-co-operators. Neither he nor his flock were guilty of chauvinism or xenophobia. His defence was then summed up in these words: “I hope I am as great a believer in free air as the great Poet. I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”.
Shortly afterwards, Tagore chose to write about these differences in the influential Calcutta journal, Modern Review. In his recent travels in the West, said the poet, he had met many people who sought “to achieve the unity of man, by destroying the bondage of nationalism”. He had “watched the faces of European students all aglow with the hope of a united mankind…” Then he returned home, to be confronted with a political movement suffused with negativity. Are “we alone to be content with telling the beads of negation”, asked Tagore, “harping on other’s faults and proceeding with the erection of Swaraj on a foundation of quarrelsomeness?”
Gandhi responded immediately, defending the non-co-operation movement as “a refusal to co-operate with the English administrators on their own terms. We say to them, ‘Come and co-operate with us on our terms, and it will be well for us, for you and the world’. … A drowning man cannot save others. In order to be fit to save others, we must try to save ourselves. ”
I believe Gandhi was right.
The last line, “I believe Gandhi was right”, is my inclusion, not Guha’s.
@no-communal
This is getting better and better. Now we have proceeded to being able to take a genuine phrase or a word out of somebody’s comment and build on that and ignore the rest. There is obviously much of great moment ahead of us.
If we may now proceed to the mundane, my first paragraph did say that I was referring to the freedom struggle against our overlords; the language and culture came in as a coordinate clause: ……”we fought against our overlords and their language and culture“…… So, yes, we did fight against our overlords, the Government and the people of Britain. And, yes, we did fight against the trappings of their dictatorship that they had introduced as instruments of their rule. That includes the language and the culture. If that had not been the case, the protracted correspondence between Gandhi and Tagore would have been irrelevant.
When we fought for independence, it was emphatically not for a smooth, successor state, operating and behaving in the identical manner as the one existing, except that the administration at the top would have been brown-skinned instead of pink. Whatever may have been the roots of the movement, by the time that Gandhi came firmly to grips with the situation, and converted the Congress to a tool for his purpose, he was clearly fighting for a vision which included independence as a foundation but stood for far more besides. It was the inexorable and relentless vision that others objected to, whether Tagore on the cultural side, or Bose on the political and organisational side, or Ambedkar on the social side. All three of them opposed him, at different levels, different times and to different degrees of opposition. All opposed him because his oppressive blueprint, which allowed no room for dissent, even for honest or issue-based dissent, had no room for anyone’s vision other than his. And his was so peculiar and idiosyncratic that it was difficult to observe it beyond a point.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that his anointed heir, Nehru, had a different vision. While Nehru, from the available records, lost no opportunity to reinforce his solidarity with the leader, it was evident from the events of the aftermath of independence that his own vision varied quite some from Gandhi’s, and he had no mental difficulty in pushing his own ‘Bloomesbury’ agenda onto the nation. What we experienced in the 50s and right up until recently was in no way the Gandhian vision; it was the Nehruvian vision manipulated and tweaked by Gandhian leaders working independently and without much understanding of Nehru’s thinking and intentions.
As far as language was concerned, we all know that introducing Hindi as a national language was a major priority. It was pushed ahead even at the cost of violence and bloodshed elsewhere in the country. The riots in Tamizh Nadu were perhaps the most overt expression of outrage at having a language shoved down an alien people’s oesophagus, and it is rather different from what was superimposed on my arguments.
Now the next question we should ask, do we worship the same gods as our ancestors used to?
@Vajra
The passage I quoted from your post was not quoted out of context. That was the crux, the fulcrum of what came next.
“So, yes, we did fight against our overlords, the Government and the people of Britain.”
Not against the people of Britain.
“And, yes, we did fight against the trappings of their dictatorship that they had introduced as instruments of their rule. That includes the language and the culture.”
Again, not against the language and culture. All our leaders except Gandhi were quite enamored of the English language and culture. The trend started with Ram Mohan Roy.
“If that had not been the case, the protracted correspondence between Gandhi and Tagore would have been irrelevant.”
As said above, Gandhi quickly stood corrected.
“I hope I am as great a believer in free air as the great Poet. I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”.
“Whatever may have been the roots of the movement, by the time that Gandhi came firmly to grips with the situation, and converted the Congress to a tool for his purpose, he was clearly fighting for a vision which included independence as a foundation but stood for far more besides. It was the inexorable and relentless vision that others objected to, whether Tagore on the cultural side, or Bose on the political and organisational side, or Ambedkar on the social side. All three of them opposed him, at different levels, different times and to different degrees of opposition.”
Hardly anyone objected to the vision (except the economic one, but that came much later). Especially, after Gandhi corrected himself. The objections were to his methods. Tagore (et al.) and Bose (et al.) objected from two opposite sides of the spectrum with Gandhi in the middle. It’s not right to club them together. Ambedkar and separate electorate have been discussed earlier. I am not aware of Ambedkar’s opposition to Gandhi’s approach to the freedom movement.
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that his anointed heir, Nehru, had a different vision. ”
Quite true. That only shows the flexibility. Bose had the same socialist industrialist vision as Nehru.
“As far as language was concerned, we all know that introducing Hindi as a national language was a major priority. It was pushed ahead even at the cost of violence and bloodshed elsewhere in the country.”
True. Both Nehru and Jinnah believed in unification by language, but found out it was not practical. Perhaps they were influenced by the soviet model. But so what. People adjust.
@no-communal
So what was the point, in the final analysis? What did you set out to prove, and what did you prove? I am only too happy to consider a matter in depth, once useful and relevant issues related to it are raised. Regrettably, I found nothing to engage with, no substantial difference. Perhaps it requires an elevated level of understanding; I lack it, and must leave the matter with my previous two comments. Thank you for the great pains you appear to have taken.
@Milestogo
I thought that was a foregone conclusion, with the answers known to all.
[...] Yasin at Pak Tea House criticizes the negligent attitude of many Pakistanis towards their national and ethnic [...]
Vajra,
I am not the one looking for inner meaning and substance in our rejection of British rule and then embracing English to connect with the globalized world. Unless you clarify your thesis hidden in the following statements, none of us can proceed any further.
“Is it just a cultural curiousity or an historical development of greater meaning that we fought against our overlords and their language and culture, and within two generations of achieving victory, we have embraced that same language and culture?”
“What was the intrinsic value of the vision of the great ones? If our present, and possibly our future, lies in the closer linking of our nations with the rest of the world, of what use was their obsession, born of their struggles and of their times, with vernacular?
The disturbing question which lurks behind the issue of languages is, did they get other things wrong as well? Was it just about language that their vision was faulty?
Is it time, then, to re-examine not only the foundation of our methods of teaching and learning, but our foundations of all other things as well? Are there other huge mistakes lying undiscussed and undiscovered?”
So far I have only pointed out some factual inconsistencies, that’s all.
no-communal:
We are missing Amrita’s Yasin’s point I think. She said a few things that encompass Gandhi’s inconsistencies as far as language is concerned, or Jinnah’s.
Hayyer Sb.,
I admit I didn’t read the actual post earlier. But what exactly are you referring to?
Amrita talks of mother tongues abandoned for larger causes. It happens more easily in some sub-continental cultures than in others. Bengalis for example cannot imagine their children not speaking Bengali. In Punjab, Indian and Pakistani, and even in Kashmir, some parents can’t imagine their offspring speaking Punjabi and Kashmiri.
An interesting discussion. I think it’s all about expression and communication. During conversation at home, one would naturally like to communicate in the language one feels most at home with, within the premises of Home. We may have another choice at our workplace, depending upon what goes more naturally. We feel at home with English when we’re at PTH, and for obvious reasons. I think, when it comes to languages, what matters is the language of your addressee and of course the general medium prevailing in that particular surrounding. It should come naturally without artificiality or pretense.
When I offer my prayers, the obligatory portions would naturally be in Arabic. When I recite the Quran, Arabic would be the natural choice. But when I call out to my Lord and supplicate, my mother-tongue would automatically take over. Not to mention that God knows my mother-tongue better than do I or my mother. When I read Ghalib or Faiz, it has to be Urdu. When I read the sonnets of Shakespeare, it’s English. In an earlier post, Caroline used the French expression “mon ami”, which blended perfectly with the rest of her comment, which of course was in English.
In my opinion, God made languages to bring people together. When we politicize languages, we do so at the cost of bringing people together. I say, promote all languages and speak whatever helps you in getting your meaning across.
I am by no means suggesting the insulation of Pakistani society from the rest of the world. Although I started out by giving China’s example, I did not even advocate for a ban on the use of English in Pakistan. What I really wanted to highlight was the lack of self esteem and respect among the people for our national and ethnic languages, which is hindering the development of these languages. If we only associate Urdu with Ghalib’s poetry and Ashfaq Ahmed’s prose and don’t use it in its functional form to communicate at homes, schools, offices etc, how is it being enriched?
It is a reality that English gives you an advantage at many levels in Pakistan. Let’s analyze this: as Feroz Khan pointed out the Muslims of India lagged behind in the fight for independence and remained socially underdeveloped because they did not learn English. Fast forward to 2010: the Pakistani society in its current form is also such that people who know English get the better jobs. Then what on Earth did we achieve by ousting the English if the development of people is still dependant on the system designed by the British Raj a century ago to establish themselves as the rulers of India?
As I see it, English is preferred in Pakistan not only because we were a British colony, but because we are grossly impressed by them and want to imitate them as much as we can. Akin to those TV ads on use of face creams which will make you white and hence are the solution to all your life problems, our attitude towards the use of language(s) is another example of how the British left the country but still rule the minds of the people.
Small Eastern European countries with total population about the same as Karachi keep their languages alive with an assiduous program of translation of world literature into their own languages. Translation can achieve an artistry of its own.
If Urdu remains Ghalib only, Urdu will die. Urdu should have Plato and Shakespeare and Valmiki and the Buddha and Confucius; and even Harry Potter and Superman comics.