DACCA: President Mohammad Ayub Khan today [Aug 28] called upon the thinkers and intellectuals of the country to evolve a common vehicle of communication between the people of the two Wings. Speaking at the inauguration of the Dacca Centre of the Pakistan Council for Integration here, he said that it was not a matter of satisfaction that for inter-communication “we have still to depend on English, which is a foreign language”. He described the absence of a common language as a “challenge to our national integration”, and said: “Let all of us admit this and face it squarely and devise ways and means to get over this difficulty.”

The President then referred to the efforts being made in East Pakistan to teach Urdu, and in West Pakistan, Bengali, and said if these efforts were enlarged, in the course of time some synthesis for inter-communication might be found. “We ought to know each other in all respects, so as to think and act alike and to achieve complete unity.” He noted with satisfaction that there was a desire and feeling of common destiny amongst the people of the two Wings. One of the ways to achieve this goal, he said, was to make available the literature of one area to the other on a large scale all over the country.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2014