Replace Urdu with Arabic – 2

‘Replace Urdu with Arabic’ is a great idea of immense national significance. The Editor CN has highlighted its irrefutable religious, civilizational and social importance. The benefits of the idea are of similar high magnitude in terms of its economic and financial implications. There is a huge market for the Pakistani human capital in the GCC region. However, a very large size of this market is lost due to the linguistic barriers confronting us in accessing the most competitive fields such as health, education and the financial services industry. With Arabic as national language Pakistan could also have been entitled to the membership of the economic and monetary groupings in the region.

Due to the great religious and economic significance of Arabic for our nation, despite opting for Urdu as a national language, Pakistan could still have invested in improving our national literacy in the Arabic language. Unfortunately, it was not done and immense opportunities of national importance have been lost by not giving Arabic its due importance in our public policies.

However, for nations, 62 years are just the beginning of a history. Looking ahead, the ideal would be to amendment the constitution and adopt Arabic as the second national language. Indeed, our GCC and Arab well-wishers are expected to offer financial and technical support to achieve certain level of targeted national literacy in the Arabic language over the medium term. In the long-term, along with promoting its socio-religious and civilizational objectives, the policy of adopting Arabic as a second national language will be highly instrumental in accessing the GCC markets by the Pakistani manpower.

I understand that the National Assembly has established a constitutional reforms committee. I would therefore, suggest that, as a follow-up on his excellent idea, the Editor CN shall submit the proposal to the constitutional committee for their considerations.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *