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Faculty Talk Session
IBA faculty sheds light on the social life of the Urdu Ghazal

October 19, 2022: Ms. Zahra Sabri, Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences, School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS), gave a talk (via Zoom) titled 'Taẓmīn: Persianate Competition and Commentary' in a session called 'Social Life of the Urdu Ghazal' at the Urdu Poetic Keywords Symposium, at the 51st edition of the Annual Conference on South Asia in Wisconsin, Madison, USA.

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Recognition
IBA faculty explores the journey of the Urdu language

Ms. Zahra Sabri, Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences, School of Economics and Social Sciences, delivered a talk on 'Influence of Urdu under the British Raj, and its role in the movement for Pakistan during the period 1850 to 1947' at a session held by The Pakistan Society.

The first part of the talk focused on the reasons behind Urdu's administrative elevation and the expansion of its influence under the British Raj, when it was the language commonly taught to colonial administrators arriving from Britain.

In the second part of the talk, shedding light on events after Pakistan's independence, Ms. Sabri explained the events leading to repeated constitutional commitments that moved all state business from English to Urdu (a widely understood 'national' language), albeit spoken 'natively' by hardly one-tenths of Pakistan's population.

The conversations explored the circumstances which led Urdu to be declared the national language of Pakistan and how the language has navigated linguistic tensions in a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic society like Pakistan over the decades. And Urdu's competition with English in Pakistan's civil bureaucracy, private sector, and multi-layered education system.

For More Details: https://www.thepakistansociety.org.uk/events/recent-events/