They have killed their language. Not just that. They celebrate it to show unabashedly to the world that it rightly deserved to be extinct as if it was an aberration. Who are they? They can’t be Pashtun, Baloch and Sindhi. All these people are normal human beings which simply means that each group has its language, the language that is natural to it and loves to use it. Pitted against them are Punjabis, Punjabi Muslims, to be exact, who as Punjabis are historically a distinct ethnic group but have come to insist that they are an ahistorical one.

If one challenges such a notion of their selfhood, they present another scenario; they are a product of unique historical conditions. They are a precious legacy bequeathed by Muslim invasions which they call Muslim conquests. Who came riding the crest of glory to their land? None other than Arabs from the south (Sindh) and Turks from the north (present day Afghanistan). And they were generals of kings and warlords who in their imperial thrust invaded Punjab not out of some pious motives but rather for their lust for wealth and assets.

Saints and scholars entered the vanquished land later in safe environment that protected them, but simultaneously strengthened the grip of foreign ruling clique.

From the process of conversion emerged the Punjab’s local elite, which was substantially less than elite. It developed the habit of aping the foreign Muslim masters in matters of cultural values and social mores. An outlandish display of self-negation was highly visible in the local clique’s changing relationship with their mother language in the process of self-alienation triggered by foreign cultural avalanche. It developed contempt for what came from the past with a view to cozying up to its new masters. Such a new outlook prompted loathing even for the things which posed no threat to its new faith. One such thing was their language which was not in contradiction to their religious belief. The irony of the situation was lost on them as they were unable to realise that invaders loved their languages; Arabs loved their Arabic and Turks had deep affection for Persian. Persian of Turks and Iranians did not make them lesser Muslims. But Muslim Punjabi clique treated its language as if it dissuaded them from holding fast to their new religion.

Language if looked at historically shows us that it’s bigger and stronger than faith; it can be a receptacle of multiple faiths and yet be what it is, a language not constricted by the confines of a particular faith. Arab Christians and Arab Jews and Arab Muslims speak the same language.

Luckily, there were poets, saints, Sufis and Gurus of local linage and foreign extraction who saved the Punjabi language to an extent by making it a vehicle of their literary expressions in order to get connected with the masses. That’s the golden period of Punjabi literature (1100 to 1900 CE).

The colonial occupation of the Punjab in 1849 accentuated the ongoing process of self-alienation which suited and still suits the invaders of every political or religious hue. That being rooted makes one strong, know all the invaders; Aryans Arabs, Turks, British and Americans. That’s why invaders’ first assault is on the language(s) of the vanquished aiming at blurring their historical memory.

First and foremost, it is the language which preserves and protects the collective memory and identity of a group. The commissioner of Delhi joining the debate on the issue of language in the Punjab wrote to the government of the Punjab in 1862; “Any measure which would revive Goormukhee, which is the written Punjabi tongue, would be a political error.” He further says that such an act would revive the memory of their historical identity. Despite the cogent arguments presented by an enlightened officer J. Wilson, Deputy Commissioner of Shahpur (it was district headquarters of the area including Sargodha) for adopting Punjabi, for example, it was rejected as the language of education for political reasons.

He writes: “I wish to draw attention to what I consider to be serious faults in our system of primary education in the Punjab, and suggest improvements. (1) It fails to attract more than a small proportion of the boys we wish to educate, and especially of those belonging to the agricultural classes, in which I include not only land-owners and tenants, but also artisans and village menials-- (2) It is conducted for the most part in a language foreign to the people. To an ordinary village boy, Urdu is almost as foreign as French would be to an English rustic. The Punjabi boy is not taught to read the language he speaks, but a language many of the words in which he does not understand until they are translated for him into his own Punjabi.”

Arrogance laced colonial ignorance coupled with ‘Hindustani prejudice’ blocked the way of development of Punjabi language.

Dr. Leitner, a great educationist and the Principal of Government College Lahore, exposed this colonial shenanigan when he wrote in 1882: “The British found it more convenient to carry on official business in English and Urdu with their existing skills. They shared the prejudice of Hindustanis.” The prejudice was against the Punjabi language. This ‘prejudice of Hindustanis’ has been internalised by Punjabi ruling clique. It has now morphed into a ‘Punjabi prejudice’ against the Punjabi language in the wake of the Pakistan Movement. The things have come to such a pass! And times, to borrow words from poet Bulleh Shah, are so topsy-turvy that unnatural has become natural in homes and bazaar i.e. the suppression of Punjabi, the natural language of the Punjab.

In classical Sanskrit plays, we see the male protagonists talking to their peers in Sanskrit. They switch from Sanskrit to Prakrit when they converse with their women and servants. “At the very least, the male Sanskritists had to be bilingual in order to talk to their wives and servants and children,” writes Wendy Doniger in her book The Hindus. Now it’s other the way round. English and Urdu speaking males at times can talk in Punjabi in their informal gatherings but speak to their staff and servants in Urdu. Women invariably speak Urdu which is alien somewhat like Sanskrit. Quite the opposite of what happens in Sanskrit plays.

The murder of language is murder of history and culture and all that constitutes historical identity of an ethnic group. But among the Punjabis there is neither a feeling of shame or sense of loss. They stalk the land that’s dead and gone. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2024