English as a legal language

There is a column by Jawed Naqvi in Dawn newspaper of Pakistan that focuses on what the writer believes is the latest piece of obstructionism in the investigation of the terrorist attack on Mumbai:

If Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has read any of these [Marathi] writers, it must be in Urdu or English, the two languages we know he knows.

It is highly unlikely that Home Minister P. Chidambaram, whose mother tongue is Tamil, would be able to read the Marathi or even the Hindi version of any of the fabled writers. His English is good though.

Given the inherent difficulties of dealing with diverse languages, it is baffling that authorities in Pakistan have been asked to decode Hindi and Marathi, the two languages in which India has given them Ajmal Kasab’s confession about his involvement, and that of his other Pakistani accomplices, in the November terror attack on Mumbai.

Pakistan requires the statement in Urdu or English if its judges are to proceed against the few suspects rounded up for the heinous act.

That's right. He angry that the Indian authorities didn't have the decency to use ... English. Apparently that would be much better than having to wade through Marathi or worse, admitting that a speaker of Urdu might be able to stumble through something written in Hindi.

He then calls for a solution:

Which means the confusion created by a surfeit of languages the subcontinent is gifted with must be overcome. This is a bold measure that could only be predicated on political will. A new lingua franca of peace is required, one that can be readily understood and accepted across the region – from Kathmandu to Colombo from the Chittagong Hill Tracts to the Panjshir Valley via Jaffna, Kashmir, Nagaland and Swat through Kandahar and Quetta.

Notice that he doesn't say what this language ought to be. There's always Esperanto though.

The Anglophone world becomes stronger every day.