Mind your language ‘ bharhay bhai’ : we intend to be a Pakistani nation.

                 
               Nation: a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history, inhabiting a particular state or territory. We, Pakistanis, may have a common history and state: the other notions of nationhood are missing and need to be cultivated to qualify the definition. The electronic media, which has to be the torchbearer in the nation building, seems to be dislocating the epicenter, Urdu, of the nation building process.
              Pakistan , a federation of four provinces and FATA: all having their own language; distinct rich cultures and different ethnicity and descent. This diversity was bridged by the forefathers of the  state through the binding force of ‘ la ilaha illah’. Urdu, having Persian and Arabic as its bedrock, was declared as the national language for reasons: it has the colours  of almost all the languages of the Subcontinent and none of the constituent units has a sole claim over  it.
      ‘ La ilaha illah’: the first pillar of our nationhood has been tarnished by the ugly jinnee  of sectarianism .The menace is not only dividing the nation; it is corrupting the very face of the peace preacher and love giver religion: Islam.  Ullema, political leaders , intellectuals and the media cannot absolve themselves of their negligence and has to do something very special to put the jinnee back in its bottle.
     Dawn, Geo, Aaj, ARY, etc are national television channels because the state has given them license to air themselves as Urdu channels. They represent all the units of the state. One has noticed that a huge majority of the anchors are of Punjabi origin: which is a good thing and one is a big fan of most of them. What is alarming for one is the recent  tendency of increasing  use of Punjabi in their talk shows.
         Punjab was  criticized for one unit as a move of Punjabi dominance. Its say in the Parliament;  its share in the bureaucracy  and state revenue has been perceived by the other three provinces as Punjabi dominance. One feel – and feel  good- that it is their right, but slowly and gradually transforming state representative media into a Punjabi media is neither good nor acceptable.
    The current   federal government, for its choice of its cabinet,  is dubbed as the Lahore/Punjab government. This tendency is not good for the federation. If we want to be a nation, which is ultimate for the progress  of the  state and its people, then we have to  have a representative government  not Punjab government; a state media not a Punjabi media. One must emphasize that a perfect bouquet must have  all the colour those exists: some may have thorns with them. Big brother, behave like one.