Language in Pakistan
28th December 2007
Read it. A perennial problem in these “countries” that are soldered together by some megalomaniac’s ambitious fantasy.
The official point of view is that there is one Pakistani nation united by the bonds of Islam and the national language, Urdu.
Urdu being a variant of Hindi that is chiefly distinguished by being written in Arabic letters, and has about as many native speakers in Pakistan as there are native speakers of Spanish in the U.S.
In this case the culprit was Jinnah, but India suffered from Mohandas Gandhi’s fantasies even more; by rights, it ought to be about 12 different states, and I suspect would be a happier (and less troublesome) place.