By: Manahil Waqas

For anyone living in Pakistan, the emphasis that society exerts on English fluency is not surprising. As a country, still deeply rooted in the aftermath of colonization, the colonizer’s language precedes the local’s – it determines class, worth and financial status.  Pakistan’s national language Urdu – a fusion of vocabulary and stylistic inspiration taken from Persian, Turkish and Arabic.

It is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan (between 70-80 are spoken overall). Yet, English continues holding relevance in class structure and indicates individuals’ social status.  In the colonial era, the British did not just plunder riches, they also looted culture. Lord Maculay’s 1835 Minute on Education  redirected funds away from Sanskrit learning to the prioritization of English.

Macaulay, in fact, stated that Western culture was superior and argued for the creation of “a class of persons, Indian in blood, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, in intellect.” Pakistan, then, in essence, directly inherited this prejudice. 

This form of prejudice spares no one. Take Babar Azam, for example, one of the nation’s most popular and successful sportsmen, has consistently been subject to ridicule, mocking and even memes because of his apparent ‘inefficiency’ at expressing himself articulately in the colonizer’s language.

In Pakistan, the correlation between accent and income is not accidental. A 2022 study showed that job applicants with a “non-urban accent” received 34% fewer callbacks for jobs in Karachi and Lahore – even when their qualifications matched exactly on paper.  And in other, more shrouded parts of the country, training centers exist, where on any given weekday, rows of young men – from Multan, Peshawar, and the likes, sit in windowless rooms with their lips moving in unison.

They are made to practice coherence, accent and performance; all to pretend to be Westerners to get ahead financially.  What does this mean, then? It means that we have outsourced our sense of worth to phonetics, accents and colonial interpretations of what is considered “good.” And this outsourcing signifies a deeper problem: the transfer of colonial logic to market logic, leaving millions out of jobs, despite the right qualifications.

The economic cost, thus, of such discriminatory practices leads to misallocated talent. Any candidate who is screened out because of their accent is one whose talent remains unchecked. Any young professional spending hours perfecting their accent for a job at the call center, is years of wasted potential on the wrong skill.  The lessons in history are clear. The British empire fell, but the infamous “colonial hangover” stands tall over the people of Pakistan. Over time, worthiness became a sound because it’s easier to judge than real talent.  The question that remains is: how do we come over the colonial legacy of language?  Whilst addressing this question it is imperative to understand that this deep-rooted insecurity that many in the country possess regarding their accent cannot be eradicated instantly.

Though, steps can be taken towards mitigating the consequences that this insecurity creates.  Through government intervention it can be achieved through the streamlining of the recruitment process – prioritizing the soft and hard skills that workers display. Research reports that this goal can be attained by setting the practice of assessing all workers through a ‘standardized test , that evaluates all applicants via the same metric – which is not accent. Research by the ‘Labour Institute for Economics’ suggests that during the initial hiring phase, the applicant’s profile should be assessed anonymously without taking their personal details into consideration.

The Organization of Economic Development suggests that hiring subsidies can also be used to ensure that a certain demographic of the working labor represents those with accents that differ from what is considered the ‘norm’.

Ultimately, state imperatives should be sharpened in order to curb this long-standing ailment to Pakistan’s financial incapacity.  79 years of independence, 34% fewer callbacks, and a country that cannot hear itself because it is still listening to the echo of the fallen empire – that is what needs to be corrected.