Pakistan has recently issued a directive to grant its national language and lingua franca, the literary vehicle of South Asian Islam, Urdu, official status. Perhaps inspired by Indian Prime Minister ...

Arthur Dudney receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. Views expressed are his own. For a country seven decades old, Pakistan is dealing with a surprisingly fundamental political and cultural ...

When Hamid Henry wrote a play about Easter for a Pakistani television channel, he struggled to present the words "Paschal" and "Eucharist" in Urdu, the national language, for his Muslim viewers.

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet. Pakistan today would seem primed for rapid growth in internet use. The country has had explosive growth of FM radio, satellite and ...

That the two founding figures of Indian and Pakistani independence were united by a shared love of Urdu speaks eloquently of the language’s rich history. From left, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru, Vice ...