IN the article: “Urdu and Hindi are one language ...” (March 2), Dr Fahmida Memon’s contention that ‘after partition the people of Sindh started speaking Urdu just to welcome migrants, but the ‘favour’ was never returned by the Urdu-speaking migrants,’ is a little harsh.

To expect the newly arrived migrants, some still huddled up in roadside huts, to start speaking Sindhi, is a tall order. The ‘Karachi’ version of Urdu worked beautifully. No other language was needed. The ‘work-ethic’ and ‘merit’ glued the people together. The greatest Sindhi of all time, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, did not speak Sindhi.

The ‘two-nation’ theory hung by the fragile thread of ‘religion’ only. A binding, national language was a dire need. Urdu is derived from Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, etc. and could be easily adapted. And so the Quaid-i-Azam announced Urdu as Pakistan’s national language.

Urdu was the accepted language of Muslims in the subcontinent, long before partition. All educated Muslims read and spoke it.

The mother-tongue of the founders of the Muslim League in 1906 was Bengali, but they spoke Urdu. All leaders to be, of future Pakiatan, spoke Urdu. G. M. Syed addressed a session of his party at Karachi in 1943 in Urdu. The Sindh Madrassatul Islam was a protagonist of Urdu, just like the Aligarh Muslim University was.

Great nations have one national language, owned and spoken by all. China, Japan, Britain, the US, etc., are living examples. Calling the same object in several different regional languages cannot be very productive.

Had the Quaid-i-Azam lived, we would have had one national language, and Karachi would have remained the capital of a united, powerful and prosperous Pakistan.

Capt S. Afaq Rizvi

Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2017