Linguistic
and Ethnic Groups
Language is an important marker of ethnic identity.
Among the more than twenty spoken languages in Pakistan,
the most common ones--Punjabi,saraiki,Sindhi,
and Urdu
as well as Pakhtu
or Pashto,
Balochi, and others, belong to the Indo-Aryan
branch of the IndoEuropean language family. Additional
languages, such as Shina and other northern-area languages,
are related to the Dardic branch of Indo-European
and the early Dravidian
language family. Brahui is one such language;
it is spoken by a group in Balochistan.
The Indo-Aryan vernaculars stretch across the northern
half of the Indian subcontinent in a vast range of
related local dialects that change slightly from one
village to the next. Residents of fairly distant communities
typically cannot understand one another. Superimposed
on this continuum are several types of more standardized
literary or commercial languages. Although based on
the vernaculars of their representative regions, these
standardized languages are nonetheless distinct. Nearly
half of all Pakistanis (48 percent) speak Punjabi.
The next most commonly spoken language is Sindhi
(12 percent), followed by the Punjabi variant
Siraiki (10 percent), Pakhtu
or Pashto (8 percent), Balochi (3 percent), Hindko
(2 percent), and Brahui (1 percent). Native speakers
of other languages, including English,
Burushaski, and various other tongues account for
8 percent. Although Urdu
is the official national language, it is spoken as
a native tongue by only 8 percent of the population.
People who speak Urdu as their native language generally
identify themselves as muhajirs.
A large number of people from educated backgrounds
(and those who aspire to upward mobility) speak Urdu,
as opposed to their natal languages, in their homes,
usually to help their children master it.
The Urdu language originated during the Mughal
period (1526- 1858). It literally means "a camp
language," for it was spoken by the imperial
Mughal troops from Central Asia as they mixed with
speakers of local dialects of northern India. Increasingly,
elements of Persian, the official language of the
Mughal administration, were incorporated until Urdu
attained its stylized, literary form in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The Devanagari script (used
for Sanskrit and contemporary Hindi) was never adopted;
instead, Urdu has always been written using the Persian
script.
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These two literary languages, Urdu
and Hindi,
arose from colloquial Hindustani,
the lingua franca of modern India before partition.
South
Asian Muslims have long felt that Urdu symbolizes
their shared identity. It has served as a link among
educated Muslims and was stressed in the Pakistan
independence movement. Christopher Schackle writes
that "Urdu was the main literary vehicle of the
Muslim elite of India." At independence, the
Muslim League (as the All-India Muslim League was
usually referred to) promoted Urdu as the national
language to help the new Pakistani state develop an
identity, even though few people actually spoke it.
Mastery of English was highly desirable because it
facilitated admission to good universities in Britain,
the United
States, and Australia.
Then, in a move to promote nationalism, the government
of Zia
ul-Haq declared Urdu
to be the medium of instruction in government schools.
Urdu was aggressively promoted via television, radio,
and the education system. Private schools in urban
centers (attended by children of the elite) were allowed
to retain English, while smaller rural schools could
continue to teach in the provincial languages.Punjabi,
spoken by nearly half of the population, is an old,
literary language whose early writings consist chiefly
of folk tales and romances, the most famous being
the eighteenth-century Punjabi poet Waris
Shah's version of Heer Ranjha (the love story
of Heer and Ranjha). Although Punjabi was originally
written in the Gurmulki script, in the twentieth century
it has been written in the Urdu script. Punjabi has
a long history of being mixed with Urdu among Muslims,
especially in urban areas. Numerous dialects exist,
some associated with the Sikhs
in India
and others associated with regions in Pakistan. An
example of the latter is the variant of Punjabi spoken
in Sargodha
in central Punjab. The ethnic composition of Pakistan
in the mid-1990s roughly corresponds to the linguistic
distribution of the population, at least among the
largest groups: 59.1 percent of Pakistanis identify
themselves as Punjabis,
13.8 percent as Pakhtuns,
12.1 percent as Sindhis. 7.7 percent as muhajirs,
4.3 percent as Baloch, and 3 percent as members of
other ethnic groups. Each group is primarily concentrated
in its home province, with most muhajirs
residing in urban Sindh