Why not make "Urdu" cool again?

“If any child is caught speaking in Urdu, he will be punished”.
When I saw this sign in the middle of the play ground of a boys-branch of a leading private school system, I asked myself “Where Am I? Am I already too late?” Ironically, I had gone back after 6 years in the silicon valley to pitch my idea of improving Urdu language skills by using interactive technology.
When I raised the issue with the school’s administrator, who also happened to be my sister’s friend, she looked puzzled and asked with a gentle smirk - “Hassan, where have you been living? In Pakistan, parents spend huge amount of money to send their kids to private schools. Do you think they want their kids to build Urdu language skills? Don’t you know, it’s Not-Cool”.

She went on to give me a brief lecture on the education system in Pakistan and how the private school system industry had mushroomed in the last 25 years. Apparently, the industry owed its dramatic rise to the increasing lack of trust in the public education system.
I came to know that even the private school system industry is Multi-Tiered. The top tier or the “so called” International School Systems charge fees in excess of thousands of dollars. The middle tier includes big school systems such as City Schools, Grammar schools and Beacon House School systems. Each one of these has hundreds of branches all over Pakistan. The third tier schools are the mom and pop i.e. one or two branches schools which cater to the “Private School Education” obsession of the rest of the population.
"But why is there a sudden lack of interest in learning Urdu?" - I inquired again stubbornly, not really listening to her and thinking about all the nice time I spent growing up in 80’s reading my favorite Urdu novels.She did not have an answer, but apparently, with the sudden growth of private schools and the one dimensional emphasis on learning English, improving Urdu language skills became less of a priority among parents and schools. Schools started introducing watered down versions of Urdu text books just to teach the bare minimum.
After the initial shock of seeing my plans evaporate into thin air, I started looking at the silver lining amongst the gloom. When spoken in its true form, Urdu is one of the most beautiful languages in the world in my opinion. It is not a faith based language and is worth saving for future generations.
It’s been more than three years since I had that conversation with my sister’s friend. A month after that conversation, I left my job as a Business Analyst with a leading payroll firm in the US and embarked upon building a small and a very dedicated team, that shared my vision of making Urdu “Cool” again.


Syed Abbas,
Founder, Urdu At Home.com

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