PANDEMIC, LAW, AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Pakistan is a multilingual state with 74 languages (Siddiqui, 2019), with Urdu being its national language while English is its official language (Article 251 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan). However, the linguistic diversity, as per the law, has not been given proper status in Pakistan (Rahman, 2002). In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the role of medical health professionals, local police officers, media persons and educationists to create an awareness about the precautionary measures to fight Covid-19 among the indigenous communities in different regions of Pakistan is important. However, there is no practice prescribed in the law, to disseminate awareness in the local languages. Moreover, as most of the lexical items regarding the pandemic have been borrowed, the shift to local languages is more than challenging. In urban areas, indigenous communities are aware of the precautions to be taken during this pandemic as they use the mainstream languages (Ali, 2017 & Abbasi, 2019.) However, in the rural and northern areas of Pakistan this is not so prevalent. Some language activists and concerned members of the community in different parts of the state took this opportunity to educate the masses and started an awareness campaign about coronavirus pandemic in local languages (posters in local languages and short video messages on social media and YouTube). Yet, linguists and community members have not been able to work with many indigenous languages, which Rahman (2004) lists in his study, and these speech communities urgently need the required information in their respective heritage languages. Such small steps by community members and NGOs in providing necessary information in local languages suggest that proper education in the mother tongue can protect communities in times like this. The government has to protect endangered and indigenous languages by an effective law-making process that actively encourages the use of local languages and helps provide information in their respective languages in such situations as this pandemic.