Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed is a reputable historian and scholar who has done some serious research on the history of the Punjab, especially on the Partition. In his keynote address on the Punjabi language in one of the functions held to celebrate International Mother Language Day a fortnight ago, he made certain assertions which invite a debate as the issue is quite complex but not much discussed. If such assertions were made by a run-of-the-mill scholar, one wouldn’t bother. Since Dr Ishtiaq is a serious scholar, the record has to be put straight in order to dispel misreading of certain historical facts regarding the Punjabi language.

It was reported in this paper that he said in his address: “Punjabi language has never been the language of the state. When Jaipal (Hindu Shahi dynasty) was ruling here, Sanskrit and Prakrits were the two languages which were managing the state as well as dealing with the religion...”

The question arises as to what was this Prakrit in Hindu Shah era. Parkrit, as is well-known, was unlike Sanskrit, people’s language, the natural speech of the people. Prakrit is a blanket term for the peoples’ languages spoken in different regions of the sub-continent. Each region had its own particular variety of Prakrit. Punjab’s Prakrit in the period in question was called Aparbhramsha, which was an offshoot of Pishachi spoken earlier in our region. Contemporary Punjabi has its roots in Aparbhramsha and Pishachi. Then we have a literary language called Nath Bhasha that makes its appearance from the 7th to 10th century in the poetry of Natha Jogis generally referred to as Natha poetry.

The relationship between Punjab’s Prakrit and contemporary Punjabi is organic. Prakrit spoken in Punjab was the predecessor of what we now call Punjabi, the language of the people. To say that Prakrit (spoken in Punjab) was something other than people’s language, an alien or imported language, would be wrong. If “Sanskrit and Prakrit were the two languages which were managing the state as well as dealing with religion” it simply means an earlier form of people’s language –Aparbhramsha /Pishachi, the fountainhead of present day Punjabi—was being used to manage the official affairs of that period. It must be kept in mind that in the evolutionary process the name of the people’s language may change but it still remains the people’s language. It would be contradictory to say that Punjabi was never an official language while Prakrit in Punjab was being used for official purposes.

Here is the second assertion Dr Ishtiaq makes: “Guru Angad invented Gurmukhi alphabets and the Punjabi language became the religious identity of the people, leading to a new problem of scripts—Devanagari, Gurmukhi and Persian–three scripts for the same language.” It would be patently wrong to say that Guru Angad ‘invented’ Gurmukhi alphabets. G.S. Sidhu, in his book, Punjab and Punjabi, says: ‘…Landay was the forerunner of Gurmukhi script. It was a form of Gurmukhi script without vowel symbols and was mostly used by traders and moneylenders for keeping accounts.” He further writes: “Sardar G. B. Singh conducted a survey of the scripts used in the Punjab. According to him, all letters of Gurmukhi script had acquired their complete form before Guru Nanak (1469 AD).” One feels constrained not to go into details for the lack of space. Otherwise, a score of scholars could be quoted to dispel the misconception that Guru Angad ‘invented Gurmukhi letters’. Secondly, the Persian script is in reality Arabic script.

On the colonial treatment of the Punjabi language, Dr Ishtiaq says: “There are many conspiracies regarding the British Raj, including the one that the Punjabi language was suppressed through a conspiracy but there is no conspiracy in the records. In fact there had been debates among British rulers here. Some of them were in favour of the Punjabi language and some opposed it calling it a rustic dialect of Hindustani, the language of north India.”

May one suggest at the risk of offending him that he should spare time to have a look at Dr Tariq Rahman’s books “Language and Education/Selected Documents (1780 -2003)” and “Language and Politics in Pakistan” for the ‘records’.

Regarding the Punjabi language, there was more than a conspiracy; it was a deadly mix of arrogance and ignorance as is evident from correspondence of colonial officers. A letter from the director of Public Instruction Punjab to the secretary to the Government of Punjab says in one of its paras: “Punjabee is merely a dialect of Urdoo and varies considerably in different parts of Province. As a written language it makes its appearance only in the Goormookhee Character, a bastard form of the Nagree…It has no literature of its own.” The absurdity of the claim is self-evident. Contemporary Punjabi surfaced in the 10th and 11th centuries when Urdu did not exist even in embryo. Punjabi used multiple scripts Devanagari, Landay, Mahajani, Arabic letters and Gurmukhi. As to written literature, we have it from 10the century onward even before English had its written texts. Here is another officer, the assistant commissioner of Gujranwala to the deputy commissioner, Gujranwala: “In Punjabi the case is different. Here we have nothing but dialects, derived mainly from Hindi which is little spoken in the Province—.” The statement is simply outlandish. Punjabi is derived from a language which was born much later than Punjabi and was little spoken in Punjab? All the Gora bosses of Munshi class (clerical) from India were put on defensive by J. Wilson, Deputy Commissioner of Shahpur: “It (instruction) is conducted for the most part in a language foreign to the people. To the ordinary Punjabi 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 rather a language many words in which he does not understand until they are translated for him into his own Punjabi.” As to the colonial political consideration, a letter of the commissioner of Delhi to the Punjab government says it all: “Any measure which would revive Goormookhee, which is the written Punjabi tongue, would be a political error.”

What the records show is a venomous conspiracy. It was a deliberate colonial attempt to murder a language older than theirs. The spectre of the Punjabi identity haunted the colonialists. So the issue of Punjabi language needs to be understood and analysed in the context of colonialism, modern and pre-modern, with the solid evidence found in the annals of our history. And Dr Ishtiaq is highly competent to do such a job if he cares to do so. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2023