KARACHI: “Urdu poets and writers speak on literature, they don’t talk politics, they don’t yell and scream at each other while on air and are not entertainers. So don’t put them in front of the camera. They will bring down your ratings. Please let them be,” said Dr Asif Farrukhi while delivering his lecture ‘Zaban ka zakhm’ as part of the Urdu strand of the 30th Society of English Language Teachers (Spelt) International Conference-2014 at the Bahria College on Saturday.

“People don’t usually like to listen any more, they want to be heard. We thought Urdu deserved being introduced in the United Nations but the ground reality is that we don’t even care how we treat our language at its own place of origin,” Dr Farrukhi added.

“In news, we hear the words ‘jo ke’ after every phrase or sentence. Is it ‘jo ke’ or a joker making mockery of our language?” he questioned. “The truth here is that the language here is surviving like a patient on a ventilator,” he said.

“Lord Macaulay back in 1860 had spoken on turning the mindset of Indian people to think in English. That’s how many organisations are making ‘babus’ out of men today. Ludwig Wittgenstein also said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” But here we are suffering from some kind of an inferiority complex. There is blood dripping from our wounded tongue and no one cares,” he regretted.

In response to a question about good treatises on Urdu and what the Muqtadra Qaumi Zaban or National Language Authority were doing, Dr Farrukhi said that even they didn’t know what they were doing. “All the people working with them, and who really cared about Urdu, like Iftikhar Arif, have left. As was also a part of their governing body but not any more. They seem to be living in a kind of bubble created by themselves and aren’t doing very well with no grants either. I know that some good work on Urdu is going on at Punjab University but frankly all this work isn’t reaching the masses due to lack of funds,” he said.

Another question was about too much Urdu being written in Roman these days, especially on billboard advertisements. “Earlier, we wouldn’t accept or tolerate such things and raise our voice against them but as time goes by we are also getting used to the practice,” he explained. “But if it is any consolation, we have bad usage for English, too, like we do or Urdu,” he added.

One teacher said she came to teach Urdu to junior classes after teaching seniors for several years and realised that the children find studying Urdu very boring. “That’s also why schools are now teaching Islamiat in English, making Urdu just a subject instead of a medium of instruction,” she said.

“Maybe, one day Urdu, too, will be taught in English and then we can all heave a sigh of relief and say goodbye to Urdu once and for all,” Dr Farrukhi responded to her.

But founder member and executive director of Spelt Prof Zakia Sarwar, sitting in the audience, reminded the teacher that it was expected in English-medium schools to teach most subjects save Urdu in English. “You should also understand that it falls on the teacher’s shoulders to make the lessons in any subject interesting for the children,” she said.

“The teaching methods of English or Urdu are the same. You just need to make the children active participants in the classrooms,” she added.

Someone also suggested to Dr Farrukhi to start something like Spelt to save the Urdu language besides promoting Urdu teaching methods for classrooms. To this he quipped, “I wish I could but you need someone like Zakia Sarwar to do that and I can’t clone her.”

Day two of the conference also includes Executive Director of TESOL International Organisation, US, Prof Dr Rosa Aronson’s plenary on ‘The age of non-native English pearls’ among several other presentations, workshops, lectures and webinars.

Published in Dawn, September 7th, 2014