Word: urdu
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Outnumbered 7 to 1 by Hindus, India's 60 million Moslems live largely outside the country's mainstream. They tend to mix little with Hindus, cluster in separate urban ghettos, have a different written language (Urdu), and enjoy immunities from federal laws so that they, for example, may practice polygamy while other Indians must limit themselves to one wife at a time. Worst of all in Hindu eyes, Moslems are beef eaters, and they outrage their Hindu neighbors by slaughtering cows, which Hindus consider sacred. President Husain, whose own wife still wears a veil and lives in seclusion...
...basic qualifications are brief: you must be an American citizen, at least 18 years old, without dependents under 18, and available for a two-year term of service. You need not know a language. Most people, for instance, don't know Urdu, which we teach you if you're headed for West Pakistan. The standards are quite high. More than 150,000 people have applied for the Peace Corps and only about 18,000 have been sent abroad...
Pakistan, which means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu, is a country without a history and with very little identity. In the west, 86% of the people are illiterate, and most are under the thumb of zamindars, or landlords. In the east, the literacy rate is somewhat better, but the population density among the highest in the world. Two men have built the nation: Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the father of his country, and Mohammed Ayub Khan, who has ruled one way or another since 1958. Under Ayub, there has been an industrial surge that looks more spectacular than...
...million tall, hardy, light-complexioned Pathans, Sindhis, and Punjabis, who dominate the government and the army. East Pakistan is small, waterlogged, and congested with a population of 55 million short, dark-complexioned Bengalis, who are usually protesting that they are ignored by the national government. In the west, Urdu is the dominant language; in the east, Bengali. They have different scripts and are completely different languages. English is commonly used in government and business...
...Sheffield and Bradford, where they sometimes make up 20% or 30% of the population. In London districts marked by proper English names such as Blenheim Crescent or Henry Dickens Court, the air reeks with curry and saris crowd the pavements, while other alleys are lined with Moslem butcher shops, Urdu movie houses, West Indian fish stands and Sikh temples. Behind the seamy house-fronts, brightened, Caribbean-style, with mauve, yellow and blue paint, crowded weekend beer parties set the nights alive with calypso melodies, steel drums, and some nasty fights...