THE DILEMMA OF ENGLISH IN PAKISTAN

I have been conducting Communication Skills workshops since the last 25 years or more, back when I was a Lecturer (1983) and later Assistant Professor of English (1987) at the University of Karachi. It was a different world then: but some things are still the same. Sadly they are not things one can be happy about.

I would like to point out some of them. First of all there is the uneasy relationship with English. We just can’t leave it alone…even with the recent note from the Supreme Court with regard to Urdu. I have noted with some amusement that it was strenuously resisted by the bureaucracy most of all. It was almost as if they were saying:

“After all these years we have spent in learning English, you want us to allow Urdu or Punjabi or Sindhi in our offices!”

Our relationship with English must be more rational. Jay Walker in a TED Talk given in February 2009 makes some good points, as we shall see.

My second point is more cutting edge. Dr. Chris Kennedy, a leading scholar of language and linguistics was in Islamabad some years ago and was asked to give the concluding observations at a day-long Conference on the Future of English in Pakistan. Predictably a whole range of opinions were voiced about the local languages, the medium of instruction, the role of English and the paucity of quality teachers in our rural schools. His astute observation about the educated elite gathered there was painful and true:

“I am surprised at the lack of regret that many people in the room feel about the death of the vernacular languages.”

There it is in one sharp sentence. We who have been privileged so profoundly and are so blind to this privilege, we who have access to the best thinking in the world and have so little care for our indigenous wisdom, we use our English as a badge of knowledge and shamelessly regard our own people without it as a degree lower than ourselves. Something to think about, really!

Yet I am saying clearly: knowing English has been a huge asset in my intellectual and professional life. It will be so in yours. But friends, please do not confuse knowing English with having knowledge and wisdom. Those are available to all. Being able to speak English when you need to, should not make you look down on the vernacular languages, nor those folks who speak them. They are sons and daughters of the soil, and they are far more loyal and grounded than we middle class people who have dreams of “elsewhere” always at the corner of our minds, a small escape hatch, a window that may abroad at some future date.

We should know what a privilege it is to participate in a dialogue between civilizations. We should know that there are 1492 books published in English EVERY DAY… and that unless we increase our speed and flexibility, we will never be able to navigate this immense mass of data, information, knowledge. And then we must be gatekeepers of knowledge to our elders and peers who have missed these opportunities. We must read and benefit from the best in the world and pass it on: by speech or sermon or conversation or letters or blogs or messages … in any way suitable, to our communities. It is the price of knowing so much. A small price.

Abbas Husain