If we take a glimpse around us and maybe I and you are included, the usual trend is to mix at least three to four English words in a Urdu sentence … and then on top of it, I’ve seen many people in my university that if someone would be using a word or two in more strict Urdu rather in English … It surely brought some oooh aaah voices as “Oh please, what have you just said”, “God! You speak such difficult Urdu”, “what does it actually mean” … and very sorry to say they are all (99.9%) brown skinned rather wheatish skinned people like us all     I regard it as one of the major “superiority complex” prevailing faster and faster in our society, in each class.

When Mr. Naveed Riaz tried to start two days a week classes named as ‘Urdu shanasee’ in some of Lahore’s elitist schools, oh sorry not just schools English medium schools, school administration were not too excited. Given the colossal fee structures in these institutions as well as their “moral” commitment to make native English speakers of their charges, the exercise in Urdu seemed anti-ideological if not a bad joke. They declined his offers as quickly as possible.

I myself experienced this negligence by so-called elitist schhols, as nowadays I’m teaching a girl who’s studying in Beacon House, and guess what school has strictly instructed all the pupils to not to use Urdu at all just speak English in all classes and that’s what they do. They don’t know how to write it, they don’t know what words mean, the correct structures but they have to speak (Good) but what about Urdu, in Urdu class oh, we become a bit lenient you can speak whatever you want to so it be a mixed language. For god sake, what are you doing to your own language in the country … it’s a big moral and social responsibility fallen on us to save our own language. This reminds me of an incident happened at a kids school in Sydney, Australia, my cousin and her husband went to their 3-4 year kid’s teacher. They were bit worried that he’s maybe not picking up English properly and we are trying to speak to him in English at home as well. And I really loved what the kid’s teacher said, that “He’s an Australian kid, he will soon learn English as his whole day will be passed conversing in this language but don’t speak to him in English at home, teach him your own language or else he will forget his own roots”.

That’s what we are trying to do, slowly pacing our next generation away from their roots … Are we doing right? Will the purity of such a beautiful and melodious language would be lost entirely in just a decade or so, as it seems to be the case today? With her rare species, would our language, Urdu, will become one as well.

It’s the time to think, and if you catch this worthy article, do try to give it a read!

(I can send you the article if you want to give it a read, dawn weekly updates their The Review section, see if you can find it there, otherwise i would have to type it all … it will remain there only for this week, gimme’ a comment )

Wassalam

Keep Thinking!