Re: Urdu as our national langauge
My point is simple. Those who wanted to adapt their mother tongue for medium of instruction / way of communication for their children, they got the right to do so and every civilized society have acknowledged that right. Urdu is no doubt a wonderful language and every community of Pakistan contributed for it improvement to the possible extent. If other languages had been respected and got its due share and recognition, perhaps we did not have to see the disintegration, riots, hatred among the communities. Though, many people from Punjab try to own Urdu as their mother tongue (all power to them), but there is a faction there (may be not a big chunk), which calls Urdu as ‘men-eating language’.
Smokers’ Corner: The other Punjab - Pakistan - DAWN.COM
Though literature in this context had begun to trickle out in the 1970s, it was the publication of three books between 1985 and 1996 that finally gave Punjabi nationalism its most cohesive literary shape.
The first was Hanif Ramey’s Punjab Ka Muqadma (The Case of Punjab). Ramay was a founding member of the PPP; and a leading ideologue behind the party’s populist concoction called ‘Islamic Socialism’ (late 1960s).
In his 1985 book, Ramay suggests that the Punjabis turned against the Bengalis to safeguard the interests of those who had imposed Urdu (‘a foreign language’) upon them (the Punjabis). Ramay continues by claiming that had the Punjabis continued to respect and love their own language, they would have understood the sentiments of East Pakistan’s Bengalis, and would not have turned against them.
The book was promptly banned by the intransigent Zia regime.
The ban did not deter Syed Ahmed Ferani from authoring Punjabi Zaban Marre Gi Nahi (The Punjabi Language Will Not Die) in 1988. This is an even more radical expression of Punjabi nationalism. Here Ferani describes Urdu as ‘a man-eating language’ that made Punjabis kill fellow Punjabis and then people of other non-Urdu ethnic groups. This book too was banned.
The third major work in this context is a novel authored by Fakhar Zaman called Bewatna (Stateless) in 1995. Zaman, another former PPP man in Punjab, wrote an allegorical lament about how (he thought) the Punjabis (by adopting alien languages and cultures) have become aliens on their own soil. The novel, too, was banned.
The book was banned people didnt even bother. but a guy writes a book and it becomes expression of radical punjabi nationalism. Height of generalization.