Recently Mr. Amjad Ali Javed, a member from district Toba Tek Singh, moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly that the Punjabi language be taught as a compulsory subject at all levels.

The speaker of the Assembly helped adopt the resolution. Showing a sign of winds of change it was unanimously passed in a house where one needed the permission of the speaker to talk in one’s own language. It augurs well for the future of our language in this part of the Punjab but one cannot afford to be euphoric as the resolution is neither binding nor a law. It can be called inspirational as it shows the intent of the House. Anyhow though belated it’s a concrete step in the right direction because it can pave the way for the compulsory teaching of mother language in our schools and colleges. But the vestiges of colonial language politics and the ideology of the state still weigh heavily on our mind.

For those who are not familiar with history it may be pointed out that the two languages that rule supreme today in Pakistan, particularly in Punjab, were foreign languages imposed on us in the wake of occupation of our homeland in the mid 19th century by the infamous East India Company. The record shows that reasons were political and laced with convenience. Suppression of Punjabi identity was the first priority as is shown by the debate among the concerned officials as it could become a rallying point for the subjugated.

The Company’s officials who triumphantly landed in Punjab had their staff generally known as ‘munshi class’ from UP, Bihar and Bengal where they during their stint had become familiar with Hindi/Urdu. Hindi and Urdu, let’s not forget, were developed and honed at Fort William College, Calcutta. So convenience, in the words of great scholar and linguist G. W. Lietner, was what contributed to making it easier for the colonial officials to impose Urdu as a language of administration as well as the medium of instruction in Punjab. The result has been a cultural disaster; the majority of people of Punjab, Muslims by faith, felt increasingly alienated from their language, culture and shared history. Non-Muslim Punjabis especially Sikhs were luckier; they continued to hold on to their mother language because a part of their religious literature was in Punjabi.

It was constantly drummed into their head that learning the imposed foreign languages was the only way for upward social mobility. The situation worsened to a point where Muslim Punjabis came to believe that their language had nothing to offer them despite the fact that for the last 1,000 years poets, saints and writers, mostly Muslim, had immensely enriched their language with classical literary expression.

The Pakistan Movement dominated by UP upper class Muslims reinforced this kind of thinking. That Punjabi had no potential to be the national language of Punjab became an article of faith. This vicious notion popularised by colonial administration got so much traction among so well-fed Punjabis that they started to believe their language was fit to be used only by the peasants and urban working class.

There is an anecdote in the historical lore that reveals the kind of mindset our elite has. A friend of Czar in the 18th century dared to say to him; “you are the Czar of all Russias but you don’t speak Russian.” “Who says I don’t speak Russian? I do speak Russian when I talk to my horses in the stables,” retorted the Czar. Soon after Pushkin, Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy appeared on Russia’s literary landscape stunning the world and all the Czars with their profound creative expression in Russian language that was found fit to be spoken to the horses.

Historical background of the Punjabi language differed widely from the Russian one; its literary tradition flourished from the 11th century onward. But under colonial influence it was abandoned as jetsam and flotsam. False consciousness bred by slavery distorted the historical perspective. The Pakistani establishment, desperate for faith based exclusive national identity, further confounded the issue. It’s funnily paradoxical that while stressing separateness from Indian culture and history it declared Urdu, an Indian language, our national language as a mark of our Muslim identity. Our forefathers were perhaps lesser Muslims because they used their own language as a means of communication and expression.

Now when the sense seems to have prevailed in some measure the process of owning our language must be pushed ahead. Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the ball is now in your court. Being the chief minister of Punjab it’s your responsibility to make the resolution that demonstrates the intent and will of the Punjab Assembly into a law. You have already committed publicly that you and your team would restore the legitimate rights of our mother language that have been unfairly denied to it. The Constitution of Pakistan allows a provincial assembly to adopt its language as one of its official languages. Sindh did it decades back without harming the federation in any way. The resistance against making the teaching of Punjabi may come from certain segments who assert that Punjabi has multiple dialects or Punjab has multiple languages. Rights of all dialects/languages people speak should be protected. And it’s not as difficult as it seems. All the primers and textbooks should have the same contents supervised by the education department. We have different region-based textbook boards in the province. Any region that insists that it has a different dialect or language be allowed to get the stuff prepared by its board in its dialect(s) or language(s) while retaining the same content.

The fundamental question is that the rights of peoples’ languages be safeguarded. All the languages must be protected and promoted to enable the masses to use the languages which are natural to them. It would liberate them from the cumbersome load of foreign/alien languages under which they have been groaning.

One hopes that the Punjab government led by Maryam Nawaz wouldn’t hesitate to take the historical step that helps save our language from extinction. One hopes she would be wiser than the Russian Czar who talked in Russian only to his horses. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2024