DENIZENS OF ALIEN WORLDS

16
quarters with the sole object of discrediting it in the eyes of the world‘, was not
acceptable to him (GOP 1947: 6). He then went on to equate Islam with democracy,
freedom, civil rights and rights of property. Ever since then Pakistan‘s ruling elite have
used the name of Islam to combat ethnicity; to foster an ideologically based identity
opposed to the Indian conception of area based, secular, identity; and to legitimize their
rule. Simultaneously they have also interpreted Islam widely to mean democracy, the
welfare state, socialism and authoritarian rule from time to time. Both the ethnic leaders
and the religious leaders have opposed these uses and interpretation of Islam which, in
their view, only they can interpret correctly.
Whatever the interpretation of the rulers, the member of the committee had to lay
down exact instructions. Among the things they decided was to teach Islamic studies;
declare that syllabi would be in conformity with Islam; and make Urdu compulsory for
everybody. Urdu was a symbol of unity for the ruling elite. After all, they had used it
during the Hindi-Urdu controversy, to mobilize the Indian Muslims into a unified
community to oppose the Hindus (Rahman 1996: 65-78). And now Urdu, like Islam,
could also be useful to create a unified Pakistani nation out of Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans,
Mahajirs, Baloch and, above all, Bengalis. Moreover, that was the time when the
European nation-state was the model. In those days out of the model European states that
influenced South Asia all, except Switzerland, had one national language. Indeed, as
Benedict Anderson had pointed out, the great European print languages, along with the
national flag, the museum, the census etc, had created the ‗imagined communities‘ called
nations (Anderson 1983). What the leaders did not realize was that theirs were multiethnic,
multi-lingual and multi-cultural states---states which had been carved out by
colonial masters.
Moreover, it would cost less if everybody operated in one language. The costs of
operations would increase astronomically if many languages were used. For all these
reasons, political, ideological, pragmatic and economic, they emphasized the use of Urdu
as a lingua franca---something which sowed the seeds of the eventual separation of East
Pakistan; exactly the thing the rulers had hoped to avoid.
But the rulers only created policies which, according to their lights, aimed at
countering ethnic and religious divisions. They did not create educational policies to