THE language issue in the province had not just affected the life of the average person but contrasting views with a divisive impact had also emerged within the ranks of political groups. For example, on Sept 5, 1972 it was revealed that the differences in the Sindh National Awami Party (NAP) on the language question came to a head when its newly elected council led by its President Azizullah Shaikh ‘quietly elbowed out’ the Pakistan NAP Secretary General Mahmudul Haq Usmani and his colleagues from the 80-strong contingent of councillors . It was believed to be a foregone conclusion judging by the action earlier taken by the Karachi NAP Committee when five local dissidents — Abdul Waheed Siddiqui, Alauddin Ahmed Abbasi, Kavish Rizvi, Altaf Asad and Mohammad Ahmad Siddiqui — were suspended. The show-cause notice served on them had charged them with violating the party’s constitution by propagating the concept of five nationalities, while the constitution recognised only four nationalities in the country. Such a notice was also now to be served to Mr Usmani.

Staying on the subject of language strife, on Sept 8, an opposition member of parliament in the Sindh Assembly and a former commissioner of the city, G A Madani at a press conference challenged on the floor of the house the reported statement of the Central Home Minister, Abdul Qayyum Khan, that the percentage of Urdu speaking population in Sindh was 20.47. Giving statistics on the basis of the previous census, he claimed that the ratio of the Sindhi and Urdu-speaking populations in the province was around 50:50 percent.

The other issue that made the headlines in those days was the nationalisation of educational institutions. On Sept 6, this newspaper ran a story according to which a stormy session of the teachers of local colleges held at Sir Syed Girls College decided to boycott all examination work including assessment of scripts from Sept 7 as a protest against the government’s amendment to martial law regulation (MLR) 118 seeking to remove clauses of vital interest to them.

The meeting was called by the Teachers Joint Action Committee (TJAC) presided over by Rashid Patel, chairman of the committee. They expressed alarm at the manner in which the government had removed the protective cover granted under MLR-118 to the teachers of nationalised institutions. The committee warned the provincial administration of serious consequences if it continued to take provocative measures against the teachers who were determined to fight for the rights and befits promised to them earlier by the central government.

In response, Education Minister Dur Mohammad Usto assured the teaching community that his government was sympathetically considering their case with a view to accommodating their demands. But on Sept 10, the talks between the government and the teachers’ representatives held on the Sindh Assembly premises, which lasted for five hours, remained inconclusive.

The same day, on Sept 10, it was announced that a number of privately managed and community secondary schools, lower secondary and primary schools in the Karachi region were to be exempted from nationalisation scheduled to take place from Oct 1.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2022