English in post-independent Pakistan-01737

English is ideologically useful to the post-independence government of Pakistan trying to unify a newly established political entity, while at the same time carrying on the day-to-day tasks of education and administration. These factors favored keeping English as an official language. However, its retention was strongly opposed by religious parties 'who felt that maintaining the status of English symbolized a new form of colonization' (Mahboob and Ahmar, 2008, p. 245). They wanted an Islamic state with a local language. In response, successive governments in the first thirty years of the postcolonial period passed recommendations to develop and elevate the status of other languages, Urdu in particular, but did little to implement them before 1977.