Re: Sons of Soil and Sindhi Language
It was a bad joke from Waleed and he is not what you are referring to him. His mother tongue is Punajbi.
It was unnatural for them, though in past history we see even Afghans, Tarkhan and Arghun getting assimilated in Sindhi society. There is a basic difference between those early settlers and people who settled after 1947 partition. Earlier settlement didn’t convert locals into minority and therefore those settlers (be it invaders or people who got refuge in Sindh due to circumstances in their native areas) had to learn local languages and adapt local culture. In 1947, the case is different. There was a feeling of losing homeland, roots and identity in migrants and they manly settled in Karachi and other urban areas of Sindh and they formed majority in those areas. Like in Karachi, which was a Sindhi majority area in early 1940s, Sindhis became minority by end of 1948 due to migration of Sindhi Hindus. So, majority never accepted local culture and language.
Sindhis never had problem with Urdu, even when they run moments for Sindhi, many Sindhi writers like Shaikh Ayaz were writing in Urdu. Sindh’s concern is acknowledgment of their language. They never wanted it to be imposed on others. They never said that Urdu should not be official language or medium of instruction in Sindh. All they wanted acknowledgment of Sindhi as official language alongwith other languages, so that they can use their mother tongue as medium of instruction in schools and for voter lists, NIC, etc. This, however, never created good vibes among Urdu speaking bureaucracy and hence the incidents like 1972 language riots.
As far as Punjab’s position is concerned on Urdu and other languages including their own mother tongue, I think Mushtaque Sufi nailed it in his recent article.