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Multiculturism tolerance in Pakistan:
"Multiculturalism" is the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes
racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behavior’s,
cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles.”
Multicultural society is a society where people of different races, cultures and
traditions live side by side with a mutual respect. Multiculturalism is beneficial to
a society, because it consists of people from different ethnic backgrounds,
cultures and religions living and working together– we talk about a cultural
diversity and tolerance means “Tolerance is the ability to accept diversity and to
live and let other people live.”
Pakistan has never resolved the issue of pluralism and diversity. In essence,
Pakistan suffers as much from a failure of multiculturalism’ as it does from a
failure of religious tolerance. In modern nation states, nowhere is one ‘national
community.
Pakistan is home to one of the most diverse populations in the world. This is
the country where exists a wide diversity of culture, traditions and languages.
Although nation of Pakistan has been, and still is, facing mighty internal
challenges which threaten even its existence and it is often accused of being a
fundamentalist and intolerant society, yet it is not true because this is the
nation of tolerant, loving and resilient people. The fact was further reinforced
by a recent “World Values Survey,” that ranks Pakistanis among the most
racially tolerant people in the world.
Conflict arises not because people hold different opinions but because people
are unable to tolerate different opinions. Difference itself is never the cause of
conflict. The inability to reconcile the difference, to respect it and to cherish it
leads to instability. In Pakistan ‘difference’, be it religious or ethnic is being
portrayed in such a way as it is the only cause of conflict.
Instead, in most of the nation states, we have many communities that are defined
by the ties of faith, tradition, ethnicity or language. These differences can never
be dismantled. But they can be resolved. It should be remembered that Pakistan’s
crisis has always been the inability to resolve provincial and ethnic tensions and
that religious extremism is merely a response to these failures. There is a dire
need to hear the voices of sanity from the different ethnic and linguistic
communities caught up amongst ruthless political violence.
It is worth noting that the Bengalis as a distinct linguistic community were not the
only ones who refuted the idea of Pakistan. Indeed, the Pakhtun and Baloch
nationalists had also opposed the accession of their regions to Pakistan.
Likewise, the Sindhis had supported the idea of Pakistan, but only in the hope that
it would be a decent ralised confederation of the Muslim majority provinces.
The question of identity and representation has been an issue of contention in
Pakistan since independence. Smaller provinces, concerned about their under-
representation and a lack of cultural recognition, are always disappointed with
the state. Because of the state’s ignorance of diversities and absence of any
multicultural or pluralistic policy, several groups within the population have been
witnessing a history of intolerance and violence towards each other because of
ethnic, linguistic and sectarian differences.
Advantages of multiculturism:
it helps to break down barriers between ethnic groups which are caused by
ignorance. Human beings have a tendency to be suspicious of cultures they do not
understand. Living with different cultures brings a better understanding of other
cultures, enrich our lives and helps to encourage tolerance.
Disadvantage of multiculturism:
• One of the negatives is that cultural differences can divide a society. This
can lead to prejudice and discrimination towards minorities
• There will always be people who think that their religion and culture is
superior and right and that other beliefs and cultures are inferior and wrong
• These people try to blame ethnic minorities for social and economic
problems even when it is not true.
• Because of different opinions there sometimes occur lots of riots, e.g. in
London last year
• Racism is sometimes a problem of multicultural society
Multiculturism education:
• Multicultural education aims to prepare children for living in a multicultural
society.
• Its major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from
different racial, ethnic and cultural groups and to help all students to acquire the
knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic
democratic society and to interact and communicate with peoples from diverse
groups.
Conclusion:
Therefore, in my research, I would delve into the deep for studying the
differences which exist in Pakistan. By doing so I would make efforts to find out
the reasons why still government has not turned towards the multicultural
agenda despite witnessing so many conflict and violence.
Along with that my research will also tilt to know whether the approach of
multiculturalism, if the state adopts, will yield benefits in Pakistan. I would like to
see whether there is any scope for Pakistan for grappling with the idea of
multiculturalism. IN short, I will see the whole story from multicultural lenses and
would prefer to catch up a solution in the same approach.
Multilingualism in Pakistan:
“Multilingualism is the natural potential available to every normal human being
rather than an unusual exception: “given the appropriate environment, two
languages are as normal as two lungs”.
to have another language is to possess a second soul.
— Charlemagne (742/7 – 814), king of the franks
Pakistan is a multilingual country. Its national language, Urdu, is the mother tongue
of only 7.57 per cent people though it is very widely spread out in the urban areas of
the country otherwise. Its official language is still English as it was when the British
ruled the country as part of British India.
Language policy in Pakistan is meant to strengthen the state. This is taken to
mean that there should be a national language which should symbolize the
nation-state. This language is Urdu. The policy also claims to modernize the state.
The language for this is English which is a depository of scientific and
technological knowledge which can modernize and, thus, empower the state.
Both policies, in practice, empower the ruling elite or, as in the case of English,
the Westernized and urban part of it. Let us examine the two policies in some
detail before looking at their role in weakening the indigenous languages of the
country.
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. It was a symbol of Muslim separatism in
British India and, next only to Islam, the Muslim League used it to mobilize.
Muslims against perceived Hindu domination and the struggle for Pakistan. The
ruling elite of the country, which was dominated by the West Pakistanis (mostly
the Punjabi military and Mohajir bureaucracy in the early years of Pakistan),
continued to privilege Urdu over the indigenous languages of the country so as to
counteract fissiparous (ethnic nationalist) tendencies. The major consequence of
the privileging of Urdu has been ethnic resistance to it. As mentioned before,
Urdu is not the mother tongue of most Pakistanis as census figures given earlier
illustrate. However, Urdu is indeed the most widely understood language and
perhaps the major medium of interaction in the urban areas of the country. Even
ethnic activists agree that it could be a useful link language between different
ethnic groups. However, it has been resisted because it has been patronized,
often in insensitive ways, by the ruling elite of the centre.
English was supposed to continue as the official language of Pakistan till such time
that the national language (s) did not replace it. However, this date came and
went by as many other dates before it and English is as firmly entrenched in the
domains of power in Pakistan as it was in 1947. The major reason for this is that
this is the stated but not the real policy of the ruling elite in Pakistan. The real
policy can be understood with reference to the elite’s patronage of English in the
name of efficiency, modernization and so on.
This has created new generations, and ever increasing pools, of young people
who have a direct stake in preserving English. All the arguments which applied to
a small Anglicized elite of the early generation of Pakistan now applies to young
aspirants who stand ready to enter the ranks of this elite. And their parents,
themselves not at ease in English, have invested far too much in their children’s
education to seriously consider decreasing the cultural capital and importance of
English.
The advantages that multilinguals exhibit over monolinguals are not restricted to
linguistic knowledge only, but extend outside the area of language. The
substantial long-lived cognitive, social, personal, academic, and professional
benefits of enrichment bilingual contexts have been well documented.
there are tolerance-related and promotion-oriented rights. In Pakistan we have
the former but not the latter. This means that, while we keep paying lip service to
our indigenous languages, we create such market conditions that it becomes
impossible to gain power, wealth or prestige in any language except English and,
to a lesser extent, Urdu. It is this which must be changed and the change must
come by changing the market conditions.
Globalization will increase the power of English because it will open up more jobs
for those who know it. These jobs will be controlled by multinationals which are
dominated by the U.S.A. This will increase the demand for English schooling which
will make parents invest in English at the cost of their own languages.
Conclusion:
In short, by supporting English through a parallel system of elitist schooling,
Pakistan’s ruling elite acts as an ally of the forces of globalization at least as far as
the hegemony of English, which globalization promotes, is concerned. The major
effect of this policy is to weaken the local languages and lower their status even in
their home country. This, in turns, militates against linguistic and cultural
diversity; weakens the ‘have-nots’ even further and increases poverty by
concentrating the best paid jobs in the hands of the international elite and the
English-using elite of the peripheries. English, after all, is the language of the
greatest power in the world. English spread because of American economic
power, American control of world media and international commerce.
We have seen that the language policies of Pakistan, declared and undeclared,
have increased both ethnic and class conflict in the country. Moreover, our
Westernized elites, in their own interests, are helping the forces of globalization
and threatening cultural and linguistic diversity. In this process they are
impoverishing the already poor and creating much resentment against the
oppression and injustice of the system.