Pakistan News And Discussion-12

Naresh · (This post was last modified: 08-27-2007, 07:17 PM by Naresh.)

QUOTE(Mudy @ Aug 27 2007, 11:39 AM)Eight killed in militant attacks in Pakistan 

Pakistan test fires cruise missile<div class='quotetop'>QUOTELAHORE, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan, a South Asian nation with nuclear capability, says it has successfully test-fired a new missile that "can carry all types of warheads."

The army said in a statement that the country on Saturday fired an "air-launched cruise missile called Hatf-8, or Ra'ad -- which means thunder in Arabic.

They can't even name missile in their national language.
China thanks for gift and Pakistan good paint job.<!--emo& Big Grin

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Mudy Ji :

The Pakjabi is the dominant Ethnic Majority.

These Punjabi speaking Muslims suffer from a great sense of Inferiority Complex and as such they sacrifice their language for Urdu - A Turkic word meaning âCampâ. As such Urdu is the âPidginâ language created-evolved from the Turkic, Arabic and Persian Languages.

In this context I would refer you to the following Article from The Friday Times of 03-09 August 2007 which I read on another Forum :

[center]In anotherâs tongue

KK Aziz - in the sixth installment of eight, bemoans Pakistani Punjabisâ disregard for their language <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' />[/center]

If a stranger entered the Lahore Coffee House before or after 1947, he would be justified in thinking that Lahore was still under British rule or that he had walked into an English restaurant. That is, until he heard people talking.

On the one hand, this cultural spate overwhelmed the province without distinction of religion, education or class; on the other, it made the Punjabi look with favour on certain Western traditions and customs. There are identifiable historical reasons for the Punjab becoming the most deeply Westernised province of British India. Tracing this historical development will take me far from my subject, so I will content myself with one other aspect of the transformation of the Punjab, as it is relevant to what went on in the Coffee House.

Everyone in the House spoke Punjabi (overruling the communal divide) but for the Urdas who pretended that they did not understand or speak the language. Everyone spoke Punjabi but wrote in Urdu. To take this irrationality one step further, they spoke Urdu at the Halqa , though they continued the discussion on the same subject in Punjabi in the Coffee House or Tea House.

Whatever the reasons for this (and there are many, including the Punjabisâ severe inferiority complex), the Punjabi which the house spoke incessantly was a unique blend of the native tongue and the English language. The chatterbox could not express himself in pure Punjabi for more than two minutes without using English. This use of a foreign tongue ranged from a single word to a short phrase to a long sentence. I have lived for most of my life in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and nowhere have I heard a bilingual conversation or speech outside the Subcontinent. The Urdas, who are so proud of their language and have forced it on Pakistan as its national language, are as bad or helpless as the Punjabis.

So the Coffee House talked for 14 hours a day in what we may call Punjlish , a unique mixture of two tongues which gave everyone the ability to express his thoughts and feelings with perfect precision. Beyond that there were exasperating contradictions and fallacies. The Punjabi spoke Punjlish with his family and friends and teachers. But the arrival or presence of one single Urda made him and his circle switch immediately to Urdu. He also wrote his literature in Urdu, and discussed its finer points in Urdu, but only in the Halqa or other formal causeries. The post- Halqa meetings in the Coffee House and Tea House were conducted in Punjlish .

The more the Punjabis advanced into the murky depths of political independence, the more they abandoned Punjabi and Punjlish , and gradually, the vast majority in the urban areas became Urdu speakers. But that was not the end of the journey. In the early 1990s came a new age of speaking English (and simultaneously dressing up in European/American casual wear). Compared to today, the Coffee House was a native talk shop, even after a century of British rule.

One factor, which was both the cause and the consequence of this secularism was the impact of the West on local ideas. It is a paradox that the Punjabi intellectual was more Westernised after 1947 than in the old days of British rule. This showed up the most in his art and literature. Modern European art even infiltrated the imagination and technique of the teachers and students of the Mayo School. The founder and head of the Department of Fine Arts at the Punjab University was a European trained in England who had no knowledge of, or concern with, Islamic or Indian art.

This Western wave mounted the beach of literature the farthest. The literati who had so far talked and judged according to the terms of reference provided by Altaf Husain Hali and Muhammad Husain Azad and the foundations laid by the Aligarh movement, now brought in Thomas Arnold and TS Eliot. Few had read or now read the original works of these critics or even had the necessary competence to understand them. But once one or two essays by Eliot were translated into Urdu and people like Muzaffar Ali Syed began to swear by him, it became a fashionable thing to apply Western principles of literary criticism to Urdu letters. The major topic of discussion was the place of tradition in literature. Perhaps the new converts had only read one of Eliotâs essays. Nobody mentioned Eliotâs thoughts on Christianity and conservatism. It is easier to translate than to ponder, and the easiest of all is to flaunt the little knowledge we have. There was no Muhammad Hasan Askari in Lahore, and no Coffee House fan could read French and German.

The principal weakness of this borrowing was an ignorance of the place of tradition in a peopleâs literature, which led to the laughable attempts to apply Eliotâs criteria and theories to the origins and development of Urdu language and literature. In any case, none of the upholders of new criticism had read any Western literature first hand. They treated the newly discovered principles of literary criticism in the same way all Pakistanis have treated borrowed technologies, using them blindfolded, unable to repair the minutest fault.

This practice was alien to our culture (but not to our tradition â look at the 19th century dÃ¡stÃ¡ngos of Delhi), and no cafÃ© or public place recalled literature in this manner. I can account for this in reference to the Punjab and its people. Punjabi epic poetry is recited or sung in the rural areas where people understand and appreciate it. With some exceptions, the common Punjabi urbanite cannot read Punjabi, not to speak of understanding or enjoying it. He has no classics in the sense that he has no old literature which he can consider his own. Classics emerge from the soil of a region and become a part of the psyche of the people. With his decision to abandon Punjabi as his spoken tongue and to allow his schooling in Urdu, he has spurned his heritage and has disowned his past.

The modern Punjabi mind eludes analysis. It welcomes all foreign languages if they are in the use of the rulers and excels in them. It took to Persian in the 11th century and contributed to its literature with distinction. It adopted Urdu in the 19th century and ornamented its letters and poetry, sometimes surpassing the efforts of the Urdu-speaking writers. It turned to English in the 20th century, and the elite spoke and wrote it with confidence.

This changing scenario deprived the Punjabi of an opportunity to have his own classics. Even the Punjabi men of letters, whose working language is Urdu, will not accept Dastan-i-Amir-Hamza or Fasana-i-Azad or any old poetry as one of his own classics, because his ancestors had nothing to do with these writings. They are not rooted in his soil or history or tradition or mentality.

Let us go a step further. Granted the Punjabis have no classics, but do the Urdu-speaking men of letters have any? If they do, why are they not identified, read widely, reprinted and easily available at bookshops? The fact is that Urdu is a foreign tongue, born and bred abroad, imposed on the country by official edict, and now only embraced by the Urdas and those Punjabis who are deluded, and have appointed themselves guardians and spokesmen of a religious ideology which they have failed to define, and of a national patriotism which they confine to one province and deny to Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP. On this point the Coffee House population was completely confused.

KK Aziz is one of Pakistanâs most prominent historians

The saying âTehzeeb Seekhi Jaati Hai Bai Ji Kay Kothay Purâ exemplifies the contribution of the âBai Ji Ka Kothahâ to the Urdu Language and its Origin.

With the Pakistani Muslim Punjabisâ - especially the so called Educated Urban Class - severe inferiority complex in respect of having Neither a Language nor a Culture of their Own they have had a Language and Culture forced upon them by the Invaders they will indeed adopt names from the Language and Culture that has been forced upon them.

Cheers <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' />

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