February 12, 2002

Language plays an important role in the realm of power. Dr Tariq Rahman analyzes the phenomenon of language acquisition in Pakistan and why people learn and why policies are made to teach certain languages

Language-learning is empowering for individuals and groups. The group which is exclusively dependent upon the manipulation of the written word, the salariat, therefore pays greater attention to the learning of the language(s) of the domains of power than other groups. As power passes more and more into the hands of the salariat along with modernization, language-learning becomes far more important than it was in pre-modern, agrarian set-ups. Because the acquisition of power, rather than a particular language, is the objective, people pay the greatest attention to the language(s) of the domains of power. These languages are standardized, elaborated codes which serve many purposes in highly technical, bureaucratized, modern societies.

In Pakistan power is divided between the modernizing world of the urban areas and the pre-modern (although in transition towards modernism), feudal world of the rural areas.

The feudal world, was and still is, in a state of transition from morality to literacy. As Walter J. Ong has so brilliantly demonstrated, the world of morality is not analytic, it is conservative; it is close to the human life world; it is subjective; it is situational rather than abstract and it leads to group-oriented thinking. the illiterate are even now immersed in this world, of course, but it is also part of the world view of the literate.

Even the literate South Asian Muslims memorized the Persian classics and some liturgical formulas from Arabic. The overall effect of this education was to preserve the prevalent pattern of distribution of power not to change it. Though feudal society among the Muslims of north India was in a state of rapid change during most of the period of our study, some generalizations about the knowledge of languages in it, though at some risk of simplification, may be useful.

In the feudal society of Pakistan and North India, apart from military service which was part of feudal obligation, the feudal lord constituted a state within his own right. Thus, while the knowledge of the language of power, Persian, might have been necessary at court, he could do without it through the help of clerks.

Thus, it was possible to possess power, and despotic power at that, without knowing Persian. One could also get by without knowing the religious language Arabic. Arabic was necessary, of course, for religious functions. Thus those whose power depended upon religion — whether as maulvis, the ulema or sajjada nashins (the representatives of venerated saints) — were required to know Arabic. This power was not supported by law or by the institutions of the state. It existed only because people believed in it.

A part of that total belief system, the overall world view, which gave this power to the religious elite was its association with Arabic. This knowledge of Arabic was not necessarily linguistic; it was incantational. One did not have to know the vocabulary, sound system or the literature of Arabic, nor was it necessary to be proficient in speaking, writing or understanding it. All that was required was reading without understanding and the memorization of a number of words which were to be recited at appropriate occasions. The whole exercise was one in the manipulation of the sacred language rather than of knowledge of that language. But not to know Arabic at all disqualified one from a world of power which was as real as the world of feudal power.

As we have seen, Arabic is memorized; it is not learned. The oral tradition, which is contingent upon memorization rather than analysis, is still very strong though it is in transition because of the onslaught of modernity since the British advent. Madressa students still memorize most texts. The vernacular medium students also memorize language teaching and other texts.

However, some of the brighter students do exercise their analytical faculty while solving problems in scientific subjects. The students who are taking British examinations (ordinary and advanced level from London or Cambridge) in the elitist English medium schools are given questions which appear to require analysis rather than memorization but, as guidebooks and solved examination papers are available, only the best students actually come up with original thinking.

Thus the educational enterprise is largely orthodox and conventional in Pakistan. It does not lead to serious questioning of the way power is distributed in the country. This means, on the one hand, that the repressive bases of traditional power — of the feudal lords over the peasantry; the clergy over gullible believers; men over women; bureaucracy and military over the civil society; grownups over children — remain more or less intact despite some questioning by modernists.

But it also means, on the other hand, that the kind of crisis in all legitimate authority and the ensuing moral vacuum one witnesses in the West is still not part of the Pakistani scene. While rote learning results in acceptance of the powers that be; questioning and analysis may lead to the repudiation of the very basis of moral authority. This is because all moral authority, in the final analysis, boils down to some basic premises which are a matter of faith rather than scientific logic.

It is, after all, an article of faith for the human race that its own life is more important than either animal or plant life. If we believed that animal and plant life is more important we could never administer antibiotics (which kill life) or even eat anything. While such beliefs are not seen to be what they are — matters of faith — analysis can destroy other areas of ideological consensus leading to moral anarchy, deracination, disorientation, and anomie.

In short, in the long run there are no absolutely correct solutions to the human dilemma. However, it does appear to anyone who values human rights, liberal democracy, and knows that modernity cannot be reversed, that the feudal world, supported by memory-oriented language teaching as it is, is less conducive or the birth and nourishment of democratic cultural values than modernity.

These two worlds — that of feudal and religious power — exist even now in Pakistan where the mediaeval exists cheek by jowl with the modern. Even now the feudal lord enjoys power not dependent upon the acquisition of English and Urdu without which one cannot enter the more powerful sections of the salariat in Pakistan. Sometimes when the feudal lords become members of the legislature or the executive we have the anomalous situation of persons with less, and possibly even no, proficiency in English possessing more political power than members of the salariat whose proficiency in that language is far greater.

As for the world of faith, it remains powerful through the networks of shrines, madressas, mosques, orphanages and political parties. New militant political parties or organizations have come up recently and they believe in radical philosophies of imposing an Islamic order upon the country. While these are modern, urban phenomena, the countryside in Pakistan is dotted with shrines. The mystic saints buried there must have been really saintly to have won the peoples’ reverence, but some of their sajjada nashins (spiritual representatives) exercise despotic control over their followers.

The extent of this power, and the possibility of its corruption, has been the theme of several works of fiction including Tehmina Durrani’s novel Blasphemy. The world view which supports this power, whether that of the shrine or other religious institutions, is different from the modern. It is contingent upon believing rather than questioning; being anti-Western rather than Western; and being power, rather than right, oriented. While Arabic, even at a rudimentary and incantatory level, is necessary for it, other languages are not. Indeed, languages which can enable one to get acquainted with other world views may weaken it. This is probably why the religious elite in Pakistan has always been dubious about the acquisition of English — the language most associated with an alien, liberal-humanist, world view. This may also be the reason why feudal lords, whether ordinary waderas or pirs, are not keen to let universal literacy prevail in their area.

The urban world is dominated by the salariat. In all state or private employments — bureaucracy, judiciary, military, academia, education, media, business, commerce, and public services — one needs a standardized printed language to function. This language is English at the highest level, and Urdu (with some Sindhi in parts of Sindh) at the lower. In Pakistan, as we have seen, English is not so much imposed as rational. It confers much prestige and has high utilitarian value, giving privileged access to the international and the most powerful national salariat groups, and is greatly in demand.

This means that it is priced as an expensive commodity to which access is limited. Among those with the easiest access to it are the elite of wealth and the elite of power (as in the chiefs’ colleges, expensive private schools and military institutions, etc.). In short, the elite finds it easier to replicate itself. For others the elite tends to close its ranks. English is one of the devices which helps the elite to do this.

Urdu comes second in power, in prestige and lack of accessibility. It confers more prestige than the knowledge of one’s mother tongue alone. It has more utilitarian value than all the other languages used in Pakistan other than English. It gives one access to moderately powerful but subordinate positions in the salariat all over Pakistan, except in rural parts of Sindh, and is, therefore, in demand only next to English. It is not an expensive commodity being available to children at much lower prices than English. However, it is not available to all children. There are people who are so far away from schools, so poor, or so enslaved by tradition that they cannot send their children to school at all.