With Regular Teaching Sessions For All Age Groups, 150 Volunteers of Gujarati Bachav Tehreek Strive To Preserve Their Ancestral Language, Secure Its Place In Pakistan’s Multicultural Tapestry And Keep Alive A Legacy That Transcends Borders. Read on
Beneath the urban clamour of modern Karachi, where conversations unfold primarily in Urdu, English and Sindhi, the Gujarati language — once inseparable from the city’s mercantile heritage — is struggling to reclaim its space in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape. And determined to ensure that the language does not fade into history is the Gujarati Bachav Tehreek (GBT) (Save Gujarati Movement), whose members view language preservation as their inherited responsibility.
Founded by Syed Abdul Rehman in Oct 2019, the collective only had a handful of language enthusiasts initially.
Today, it has evolved into a structured body with 15 committee members, six office-bearers and approximately 150 active volunteers.
Their most visible initiative is a network of informal Gujarati classes conducted in community centres, local schools, temples and private homes across neighbourhoods such as Sadar, Kharadar and Mithadar — areas with significant Gujarati-speaking populations. These classes attract both senior citizens who want to reconnect with their roots and young students keen on exploring their heritage.
For Rehman, the collective’s driving force, this mission strikes a deeply personal chord. His father was from Bhavnagar and his mother from Palanpur. The decline of the language he grew up speaking is no longer just a linguistic issue for him, but a gradual fading of cultural traditions, family histories and community connections tied to the language.
“In Karachi, communities like Memon, Kutchi, Bohra, Aga Khani and Sipahi, all originally from the Kathiawad and North Gujarat regions, speak different forms of Gujarati. But over the decades, these communities have increasingly focused on their distinctive dialects such as Kutchi or Memoni and the mainstream Gujarati language has begun to disappear,” says Rehman.
The consequences of this shift are evident in everyday life. Rehman recounts how a Memon shopkeeper initially installed a Gujarati signboard outside his establishment, only to replace it with Urdu text days later. When questioned, the shopkeeper explained that customers were avoiding his store because they could not read Gujarati — a telling example of the language’s diminishing practical value in contemporary Karachi.
This gradual abandonment of Gujarati is not just about signboards. Schools that once taught Gujarati have shut down, and younger generations increasingly speak Urdu, Sindhi or English at home.
According to Rehman, this generational gap is the biggest threat to the language’s survival.
Historical significance
Given Gujarati’s historical significance to the subcontinent, its decline is particularly poignant. Both Mahatma Gandhi, who led India’s independence movement, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, were Gujarati speakers.
The language once held a special position in Karachi’s social fabric, owing to the strong presence of Gujarati-speaking trading communities.
Karachi still sustains at least two Gujarati news publications, Millat and Vatan, Rehman mentions.
No official census has counted Gujarati speakers in Pakistan since 1960, when the language was excluded from official language surveys, says Khoja, information secretary of the collective. “Karachi alone has a big population of people who speak Gujarati, with many more in Hyderabad, Thatta and Badin.” Political upheavals and social tensions have further complicated preservation efforts.
Between 2012 and 2014, Karachi experienced linguistically motivated violence that targeted Gujarati-speaking people among others. The resulting fear drove many families to retreat from public expressions of their linguistic identity, furthering the language’s decline.
“There was a time when Gujarati was the dominant language in Karachi’s markets, schools and homes,” says Khoja.
“Today, it is disappearing. The younger generation cannot read or write in Gujarati, and many cannot even speak it fluently. With the closure of schools that taught Gujarati, there was no institutional support left,” Khoja says. The challenge is compounded by community fragmentation. Within Pakistan’s Gujarati-speaking population, different sects and subgroups often prioritise their specific dialects over the common language, making unified preservation efforts difficult.
This became the rallying point for the GBT. Formed initially through social media conversations, the collective is invested in a campaign aimed at not only reviving Gujarati but also uniting a divided community in Pakistan.
bridging generations
The classes organised by GBT for the young and the old have become their primary method of language preservation. This intergenerational approach aims to help bridge the very gap that threatens the language’s survival.
“The response has been encouraging,” Rehman says. “People are beginning to realise that language is part of identity, and once a language dies, a whole way of life disappears with it,” he adds.
The movement has also received support from veteran Gujarati journalists and cultural leaders. One such supporter is Bashir Mohammed Munshi, an 89-year-old journalist and general secretary of the Pakistan Gujarati Journalist Association, who worked for over five decades with a Gujarati newspaper in Karachi.
Born in Junagadh, Munshi came to Karachi after Partition and switched from banking to journalism out of pure love for the language. “Though I began my career in banking, the allure of Gujarati drew me to writing a regular column, eventually leading to 50 years as a sub-editor,” Munshi says. His dedication represents the deep connection many older Pakistanis share with Gujarati.
Despite acknowledging how the fragmentation into regional variants — Memoni Gujarati, Kutchi Gujarati and others — has weakened the language’s position, Munshi remains optimistic about its future. “Gujarati will not vanish from Pakistan,” Munshi asserts confidently. “It may have weakened, but it is far from dead. The work being done by the Tehreek gives me hope that Gujarati will survive and thrive.”