Why Urdu never became the language of Pakistan

A National Language on Paper, Not in Practice

Muzamil opens the conversation by asking why Pakistan, a nation unified by Urdu as its constitutional language, has failed to implement it even in its courts and universities seven decades after independence. Dr Iftikhar explains that the policy was actually written multiple times. In 1973, the government officially adopted Urdu as the language of government business. In 1977, another directive went out. Yet each time a new ruling class took power, the commitment evaporated.

“The government prepared documents in Urdu,” Dr Iftikhar says. “But then the new culture came, and everything that was prepared was lost.”

English as a Class Marker

The real barrier, he argues, is not policy but class. Pakistan’s elite made a deliberate choice to keep English as the language of power. Muzamil relates his own experience: he studied at a private school where the implicit lesson was that speaking English signaled sophistication, while Urdu marked you as working class.

“Our ruling class has made a class structure,” Muzamil explains. “One of your ruling class, he will speak English, he will differentiate us. The working class will speak Urdu.”

This divide persists even when the government passes mandates. The Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that Urdu should be the language of all government proceedings. But when cases reach court, lawyers argue that the technical language of law cannot be expressed clearly in Urdu, so they request permission to continue in English. The same logic blocks Urdu from universities: professors say science requires English, so students study physics and chemistry in a foreign language.

Building the Urdu Mind from Childhood

Dr Iftikhar has spent 25 years trying to solve this at the root: children’s literature. His work in the Dawah Academy’s Children’s Literature department created books for children aged 1 to 16, with properly designed illustrations and high-quality paper. The goal was simple: give children a way to learn Urdu at the same level as English.

But when Muzamil visited a bookshop with his newborn daughter, he found that quality Urdu children’s books barely exist. “There is literally nothing available,” he says. What exists uses outdated fonts, boring design, and no illustrations. In English, children have thousands of options. In Urdu, the shelf is empty.

Why Markets Fail Urdu

The economics explain much of the gap. Pakistan’s book market is dominated by publishers focused on either academic texts or novels for adults. Children’s books in English exist because English-medium schools and affluent families buy them. But there is no market for Urdu children’s books because most families who read Urdu to their children lack purchasing power, and wealthy families buy in English.

“The market for Urdu children’s books is nearly nonexistent,” Dr Iftikhar explains. “Publishers tell me, ‘If I print in four colors on art paper, the cost rises 300 to 400 percent. We cannot sustain that.’”

Yet when quality Urdu children’s books do exist, they sell. A magazine launched in Karachi several years ago proved the demand was there. The problem is not that Urdu cannot support quality literature. It is that no institution has committed resources to build that market.

What Bangladesh Shows

Muzamil raises the counterexample: Bangladesh. With 200 million people and significant linguistic diversity, Bangladesh unified around Bengali as the national medium. Its government implemented the choice across schools, media, and government. As a result, even technical literature and higher education are available in Bengali.

Dr Iftikhar agrees the comparison is instructive. “China has 40 crore people. The language changes every 150 kilometers. But the government took the decision and applied it everywhere.”

Pakistan never made that choice. Every ruling class said yes to Urdu in policy and no in practice. The result is a nation where the national language is used on television but absent from the institutions that confer power.

A Future for Urdu

By the end, both recognize that reversing this requires a generation shift. Dr Iftikhar’s hope lies in young people beginning to demand Urdu literature and education. Muzamil sees his role as a parent differently now. “When we listen to Urdu language,” he says, “it is a very sweet language. It is very soft. Integrity comes in that language. A respect comes in that language.”

The conversation ends without resolution, but with clarity: Urdu did not fail because it lacked capacity or speakers. It failed because the people in power chose English, and every institution followed. Whether that choice can be reversed depends on whether the next generation demands something different.