Mushtaq Soofi 

Apart from declaring the Punjabi a ‘rustic’ language, the colonialists after the introduction of Urdu as official language at lower and middle level, initiated a politically motivated scholarly endeavour, subtly urging the different religious communities in Punjab, particularly Hindus and Muslims to search their identities based on the languages which were not theirs.

It was a classic tactic to divide the people speaking the same language. The Hindi-Urdu controversy is a good example to study. Both the Hindu and the Muslim Punjabis spoke Punjabi but the underlying historical conflict, a product of long Muslim rule, was exploited to make the Hindi the legacy of Hindu Punjabis and the Urdu that of Muslim Punjabis negating the historical fact that neither of the language belonged to the Punjabis not withstanding their religious differences.

So under the banner of half-baked divisive nationalism a communal sense of identity born of a false historical consciousness induced the elites of the communities to own what was not theirs and to disown what was legitimately theirs. As a consequence of such a huge distortion, the Punjabi was made out to be exclusively a Sikh language. No doubt the Sikhs proudly owned the language but it was not their exclusive preserve to say the least.

Dr G.W Leitner who along with some other officials supported the cause of Punjabi, revealed in his report that the Punjab had a high literacy rate, both male and female, before and immediately after the advent of colonialism due to a vast network of Maktabs, Madrassas, Patshalas, Gurmukhi and Mahajani schools.

Leitner wrote: “Among Muhammadans nearly all girls were taught the Koran; nor could a Sikh woman claim the title and privileges of a ‘learner’ unless she was able to read the Granth (1882: 98)”.

Another officer, J. Wilson, Deputy Commissioner of Shahpur (now a part of Sargodha), in his note on Primary Education in Punjab and the teaching of Punjabi in the Roman character, dated 21st April 1894 wrote: ‘Is it to be imagined that we can in the course of several generations teach any large proportion of this vast number to read and write a language so foreign to them as Urdu?

It may be objected that there is no one Punjabi language, but several distinct dialects. This is true, but it was also true of all written languages before a particular dialect was ultimately adopted because it was specially favoured by the literate.

Modern English was originally only one of many dialects; so were modern French and modern German. Similarly, there can be little difficulty in adopting one dialect of Punjabi and developing it into a language which will be readily understood by all Punjabi speakers, and at the same time capable of expressing their ideas with as little admixture of foreign words as possible’.

Yet another officer, W.S Talbot, Deputy Commissioner of Jhelum, commenting on the note of J.Wilson, wrote: ‘It cannot be doubted that if it were possible to make Punjabi the medium of education, our system would be more attractive to the agricultural classes and would in all probability bring to the schools a considerably large proportion of boys of those classes---.’

Such a rational and lucid thinking went unheeded because the imperative was to school the children in a colonial mode with the express intention of creating ‘educated’ men and women in a large number among the indigenous people who, as Franz Fanon said in his famous book ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, were little more than the shadows of their masters, supportive of the imposed exploitative colonial structure.

Though oppressed they aped their oppressor with the eye on the left-over of colonial harvest.

In twentieth century the colonial edifice started showing cracks due to a host of historical factors, specially the emerging nationalist consciousness of the colonised and crises in Europe over the ‘territories’ i.e. the grab of lands and resources of less powerful nations which lagged behind in the spheres of science and technology.

The rise of independence movement in the Indian-subcontinent was marked and marred by conflicting revivalist streaks. The diversity and plurality of the subcontinent which reflected its immense richness emerged as a big stumbling block in the way of forming a united national front against the foreign rule.

Dead weight of history weighed heavily on the minds of those supposed to liberate their people who professed different faiths.

Their inability to overcome their communal prejudices and go beyond the narrow parameters of caste, creed and class created a comfortable space for the revivalists of all colours and hues who with their obscurantist agendas, instead of confronting the complex historical situation, sought to transform the present into dead but ‘glorious past’; the imagined and imaginary that was thought to be ‘pure’ though it was nothing more than a chimerical product of their warped mind.

Consequently in their bid to carve out exclusive faith-based identity ‘Hindu Punjabis’ though unable to speak Hindi declared it their mother tongue in the census while ‘Muslim Punjabis’ the majority of whom did not know Urdu declared it their mother tongue.

The Sikhs had no option other than owning Punjabi as their religion had its origins in Punjab and its founder Baba Guru Nanak wrote in the Punjabi language.

The Pakistan Movement ideologically spearheaded by the upper crust of the Muslims of UP in central India presented Urdu as their mother tongue that they shared with the Hindus as a mark of separate Muslim identity.

Such a move was possible in the wake of introduction of Urdu in Punjab, an important Muslim majority province. The notion of Urdu as a common heritage of the Muslims was forged to serve the interests of Muslim separatist movement, which it did.

But if we look at the flipside, two facts stand out; Urdu was never the language of any of the territories that ultimately became part of Pakistan. The people of present Pakistan, somehow, were persuaded to accept Urdu as one of the instruments to gain a new state but the Muslims of East Bengal, the biggest Muslim majority province, who actively advocated the case for Pakistan, never accepted Urdu as a mark of Muslim identity.

They showed intellectual maturity by not confusing language with religion. They were rightly proud of their language that had already produced a poet and writer, Rabindra Nath Tagore, who was the first in this part of the world to win the Noble Prize for literature.

Colonial enterprise in Punjab and the consequent soft political struggle waged against it with the help of communally conceived ideological tools devastatingly changed the linguistic and spiritual landscape of Punjab beyond recognition in less than a century.

Gain and loss for the Punjabi Muslims were equally big; they got rid of colonial rule and ‘majoritarian’ threat but lost their literary and intellectual heritage which their predecessors had fashioned over the last thousand years. Muslim Punjabis became a part of Pakistan but at the unbearable cost of losing their language.

Losing your language means losing your soul. And a state of soullessness is what we see all around in our part of Punjab. — soofi01@hotmail.com