There remains no extant copy of the Sept 21, 1949, edition of Dawn. The excerpt below is taken from the previous day’s paper.

KARACHI: “I want to make it perfectly clear that Urdu and Urdu alone is our national language and this is the only language which in the present conditions and circumstances, deserves to be made the lingua franca of Pakistan,” declared Mr Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan, in Karachi on Monday [Sept 19]. The Prime Minister was replying to two addresses ... by Dr Maulvi Abdul Haq, and Mr Shoaib Qureshi, on behalf of the Anjuman Taraqqui-i-Urdu and the Managing Committee of the Urdu College of the Anjuman, respectively.

The Prime Minister said it was the duty of every Government institution, as also of non-Governmental bodies and of every Pakistani, to do everything possible for the advancement of Urdu, [“]for it is very important that we should enable our national language in the shortest possible time, to fulfil easily and creditably all our official, educational and other needs”. … Maulvi Saheb said that helping the Urdu language grow will not only mean service to the language but to the country as such.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2024