A social democratic alternative
The mainstream parliamentary parties are being eroded as the alignment of democratic forces breaks down and the Charter of Democracy evaporates at the altar of expediency. With this erosion, the…
Languages on death row
Pathanay Khan was already in his mid-forties when his melodious voice crossed the walls of the Sufi shrine of Suleman Shah at Taunsa Sharif. This is where he used to…
Saving local languages
The cabinet division recently issued a letter to other federal departments directing them to use Urdu in their public and official correspondence. The directive also states that the president, prime…
Whose language is it anyway?
Recently, a person from the village that one of the writers of this piece comes from approached him about applying to the Prime Minister’s Youth Skill Development Program (PMYSDP). This…
Honour in Ghairatabad
Get together a group of young girls and boys, sit with them, and shed your cloak of narcissism for a while. Establish a long association with them, trust them so…
Houses of horror
OF all the many genocides that history has witnessed, perhaps the most successful was the one perpetrated on Native Americans, entailing as it did not just the physical elimination of…
Talking language
Like many other unresolved perennial issues in Pakistan, the question of which language to use as medium of instruction during the formative years of school-going kids remains unpacked and hence…
Language puzzles: Part – II
The second half of the programme focused on the plight of native languages and asked if they were dying in Pakistan and what might be done to arrest that. There…
Language of instruction
Almost every account of colonialism describes how the colonists planned to use education as a means of stabilizing and strengthening their rule. There was one system of education for those…
Current education system, a prison to ideas of west
The prevailing education system in the country is borrowed from the west, which gives us knowledge but not wisdom. Rather, it is a prison of ideas of the west and…
