Pakistan should govern in Urdu and still learn English

A topic everyone lives with and nobody discusses

Muzamil opens by saying this episode is more personal opinion than data. The subject is one most Pakistanis take part in quietly and rarely talk about openly: English. “We have a big love-hate relationship with English,” he says.

He sets out the questions. Is speaking English a bad thing? Should Pakistanis learn it, or should the country drop it and do everything in Urdu? And why is language such a charged part of Pakistani debate when the rest of the world treats a second language as normal? In the US, people learn French and Spanish. In Europe, people speak their mother tongue and often English or Russian too. On a trip to Russia, he found Russians in the east who spoke Chinese and Chinese near the border who spoke Russian.

Urdu itself, he notes, came from this kind of mixing. The land that is now Pakistan was rarely ruled by its own people. Rulers from Central Asia brought Turkic, Persians brought Farsi and Arabs brought Arabic. Urdu grew out of all of them, and the great poets of the past were often multilingual. Nobody thinks that is strange. Yet a modern Pakistani who speaks English gets called a “burger” and put in a box.

Why language divides Pakistan more than other countries

Many nation states, he says, are fairly uniform, with one main language for schools, government and daily life. Pakistan is not. Travel from the north toward Karachi and the language changes every couple of hours: Pahari, Hindko, Urdu, Punjabi, other dialects in southern Punjab, then Sindhi. Islamabad adds its own mix of English and Urdu.

That makes communication itself a source of conflict. When 250 million people call themselves Pakistani but cannot always express their thoughts clearly to each other, misunderstanding is easy. In his view, much of the anger around English, on both sides, comes from this gap and from history.

How the British made English a class marker

Muzamil traces the roots to colonial rule. The British were few. They ruled through a local class of facilitators. As the Mughals weakened, this class switched sides, studied in the British system, some in England, and was rewarded with estates and titles. English became their way of talking to the rulers. The working class stayed in local languages.

English also became aspirational. In his account, the British told colonized people they were barbarians and that Britain was the civilized world. Repeated over two or three centuries, that message made people feel inferior, which made them less likely to resist.

When the British left in the 1940s, he argues, power passed from one ruling class to another. “Pakistan took independence,” he says, “but Pakistanis never really took independence in its true form in 1947.” He uses the example of a farmer in a village near Layyah. Before and after partition, the same local landlord ran his life. Only the people at the very top changed. The new state kept British-era laws designed for an extractive colonial project, kept the divide between an officer class and a working class, and kept English to protect that divide.

Two Pakistans

The result, in Muzamil’s view, is an English-speaking Pakistan and a non-English-speaking one. The civil service exam requires strong English and many candidates fail on it. Court judgments, laws and official notices are in English. This happens in a country where most people do not understand the language.

He describes how this feels from below. A bright child who is good at math and science sees that every important person speaks English. He tries, and gets mocked for his accent. Later he wants to become an officer and finds his intelligence judged on his English. “I totally understand, I get the emotion,” Muzamil says. “I get why people hate English now and why they hate the people who speak English now.”

He notes something particular to Pakistan. Italians or Spaniards speak broken English abroad without shame because it is their second language. In Pakistan, from village level to Instagram and YouTube comments, people who try English get ridiculed for grammar and accent.

What he would change

Muzamil sets emotion aside and lays out his position.

Run the state in Urdu. Notices, government business and most civil service roles should be in Urdu. English exams could remain for the foreign service, where they make sense. “That notification, half your nation cannot read,” he says of the English notices put up by local officials. People are left asking others what the officer has said.

Unify the school system. He calls the current mix of English medium, Urdu medium, Cambridge and local boards confused. A child in a small town whose parents, friends and even teacher do not speak English is taught science and math in English from around sixth grade. “Then you will just memorize,” he says. “Your critical thinking will be zero.” He wants one system taught mainly in Urdu, with English as an additional language, and local languages promoted at the cultural level. He points to Europe, Turkey, Thailand and Malaysia, which teach in local languages and keep English schools for a small international group.

He ties this to AI. In his view, rote learning will be worth nothing when an AI can recall facts for you. Critical thinking and original thought will matter, and those depend on understanding the language you learn in.

Why English still matters

He rejects both extremes: everyone becoming English, or banning English entirely. The practical answer is in the middle.

English, he says, is spoken by about 1.5 billion people. It is the default for business and travel. If Pakistan wants to export, play a role in the region and explain itself to the world, it needs English. The last two superpowers, the UK and the US, both spoke it and invested heavily in knowledge, so most of the world’s science, history and culture is written in it. Learning English as a second language opens all of that.

India is his example. Many Indian TV channels run in English, host foreign guests and are watched abroad. Its English-speaking workforce brings in about $150 billion from IT services. India still promotes its own languages and nationalism. It simply kept English as a gateway. Pakistan, by contrast, complains that the world misunderstands it. Dawn and Express tried English channels, he notes, but they got no ratings. Pakistani YouTubers who make English content get attacked for it.

He shares his own case. People around the world have messaged him wanting to follow Pakistani startups, but his podcast is in Urdu. If he switched to English, he expects his core audience would object.

Growth mindset over old wounds

Muzamil admits his own English was weak until about ninth grade at a public school. He improved by reading, watching English content and looking up words on Google. It did not make him “a king,” he says. It let him talk to people around the world and reach a wider base of knowledge.

He contrasts a fixed mindset with a growth mindset. When people tell him he should be ashamed of making English content, he sees a fixed mindset. A growth mindset would see an opportunity: take that content, rebuild it in Urdu, and earn views and money from it. He adds that an average person can learn three languages without strain.

He also talks about being judged on looks. People online assume he is a snob from Islamabad. When he meets them in person, about 90% say he is far more down to earth than they expected. “I am not a king for being down to earth,” he says. “I am normal.” In his view they are carrying an old hurt from someone who looked like him and applying it to everyone who does.

A request to stop mocking

He closes with a direct ask. If you laugh when a friend gets an English word wrong, pause and think about how it felt for him. You moved on, but he may carry that insecurity into every presentation and client call. Muzamil believes this is why so many Pakistanis force a fake accent. Elsewhere, Arab, Russian and Indian English each sound like themselves.

The same goes for the “pendu” and “burger” labels traded between people in shalwar kameez and people in pant shirts. In his words, both sides lose when their humor depends on mocking how others look or talk. He says he has done both himself and was foolish at the time. Looking inward instead of at others, he says, has brought him more peace. He hopes viewers try the same.