Pakistan, July 15 -- Among the many faculties endowed to humanity, language is both a gift and a battleground. In Pakistan, the linguistic terms, such as "ethnic" and "nationalist", do not just describe speech communities, they shape how they are perceived, included, or excluded. These words have come to represent more than linguistic or cultural categories.

Terms like ethnic and ethnicity, which in most academic and international contexts refer neutrally to shared cultural and linguistic traits, rarely enjoy that neutrality in our discourse. The Pashtuns, Sindhis, Baloch, and Punjabis are not only real ethnic communities with distinct languages and histories, but also deeply politicized identities. Yet the term "ethnic" in our imaginati...