The April edition of Muqtadara Qaumi Zaban, (National Language Authority) 's house journal, 'Akhbar Urdu' has been dedicated to the memory of national poet Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877 -1938), whose 60th death anniversary will be observed on April 21.
Dr Baseera Ambreen has argued in an article, included in this issue, that Allama Iqbal opened the doors of perception of the dangers facing individual citizen and the Muslim community during the nineteenth century. Although he appealed to God Almighty for help for the human race. He speaks of their difficulties in waves of symbolism.
Ambreen says Iqbal's theme in his poem is to ask Muslims go through more education. He also wished to see the Muslim people in the most radiant form and that they should adopt scientific attitude to overcome the crisis that was keeping the masses (Millat) down. However, she wrote, Iqbal was also concerned with democracy though he differed with its western form.
He whole heatedly agreed with the definition of democracy as a form of government of the people, by the people and for the people. However, Iqbal was not in favour of a kind of democracy which is submerged in emotional sweep.
The Authority's mouth piece also carried the Quaid Azam's pronouncement that 'Urdu would be the national language of this country,.' which means that the organisation's effort is devoted to advance he cause of Urdu at all levels.
From that point of view the three articles, Position of Urdu among the world languages, problems of Urdu in North America, and the problems of teaching in Great Britain anticipates difficulties of this language in getting international acceptability.
Dr Satya Pal Annand is sad to write that parents with a background of Urdu education who have settled in America feel shy of advising their offspring to keep up the practice in speaking this language at work or play. The writer feels that Urdu would get wider coverage if younger generations practice speaking the language with children of different nationalities.
The argument is repeated in the article written by Kanwar Sagheer Ahmad who says that Britain is a country where 200 languages are spoken in addition to English. The journal also contains two interesting articles comparing Faiz and Iqbal and an provocative article whether Manto was a committed Pakistani. All these articles makes the journal Akhbar Urdu a good read and offers many things to ponder over.