December 5, 2004

Hussain Ahmad Khan traces the evolution of a separate identity of the Siraiki language from Punjabi and Sindhi

The struggle for regional autonomy in the Siraiki speaking areas of south Punjab was initially an administrative demand for greater autonomy and economic rights for the region. Only later did it assume the status of a political movement around separatist identity. The prime objective was to contest the economic hegemony of northern Punjab. The movement is, therefore, different from the Pakhtoon, Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir ethno-nationalist struggles.

It was in the 1960s that Siraiki political activists and intelligentsia initiated the construction of a different identity on the basis of the Siraiki language. Like the Celtic revival in Ireland, social, cultural, linguistic, and literary assertions came first, which were then used by political activists to congeal a separatist identity. To develop Siraiki, conscious steps were taken to standardize the language and efforts were made to enrich the existing literature. Here an attempt is made to study the steps taken by Siraiki linguists, individual writers, and literary organizations, all of whom gave a diction to the Siraiki identity.

Before the Muslim conquest of Multan, the local language which is now called Siraiki was probably written in a variant of the Brahmi script. Later, Arabic naskh was adopted for it, which was then replaced by the Persian nastaleeq, after the 18th century.

The literature was mostly in verse and was initially mystical and religious, with secular and political prose-writing beginning in the 20th century. A distinguished feature of the Siraiki literature is the tradition of the marsia, commonly written in the form of Doha, which consists of four metric lines of similar rhythm. Hassan H. Gardezi thinks that this tradition of marsia nigari began in the 13th century when immigrants from Arabia and Central Asia inhabited this region. “Particularly the Syed among them started the practice of holding assemblies commemorating the martyrdom of Hussain. The marsia in these assemblies was recited in the sad notes of a Siraiki composition known as maaru.” Perhaps for this reason, Tahir Taunsvi, a famous Siraiki literati, claims that the first marsia in the subcontinent was written in the Siraiki language. The style of the marsia changed over the centuries, especially from the 19th century onwards. Now verse is made in prose, which makes it sound like a continuous account of the event. These Shi’ite elegies were very different from those of upper Punjab.

Apart from the marsia, a large part of Siraiki literature consists of mystical poetry. Rubina Tareen in her work, Multan ki Adabi va Tehzibi Zindagi mein Sufia Karam ka Hissa, gives some details about Sufi poetry in the Siraiki language. She quotes some verses from the poetry of Bahauddin Zakariya and Shah Rukn-i-Alam that are close to the Siraiki language. These verses were probably written in the Multani language, which was later standardized as Siraiki.

The weakening of the Mughal Empire in the 17th century led to the burgeoning of literature in the vernacular in many parts of the subcontinent. Siraiki (then Multani or Riyasti), which had according to Gardezi, survived through the oral tradition, began to appear in script form. Ali Haider (Multan) and Lutf Ali (Bahawalpur) were among the first few literary figures of this language. Ali Haider Multani’s (b.1690) poetry in Multani (or Siraiki) language consisted of she herfi, which is mainly influenced by philosophy and mysticism. Many poets like Sachal Sarmast of Khairpur (d.1826), wrote mystical poetry in the same period in a language that is similar to Siraiki, although Siraiki and Punjabi intelligentsia dispute the origins of the language used by Sufis like Shah Hussain (d.1593), Sultan Bahu (d.1691) or Bulleh Shah (d.1758). Christopher Shackle, professor of modern languages of South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, points out that the “exact definition of the original language of these works is anyway impossible, given the unreliability of their transmission in the earlier period”.

The controversy owns its existence to the works by British colonial scholars posted in this region who considered Siraiki to be a dialect of Punjabi. William Carey (1761-1834), working at Serampore, termed this language “Wuch” in 1813. He also compiled a book of grammar which was probably the first of its kind in the kirakki script. Richard Burton (1849), another British scholar, compiled a grammar by the name of Siraiki. He was probably the first man to have used the word “Siraiki” for the language spoken in the southern parts of Punjab, which he considered to be a dialect of Punjabi.

Andrew Jukes (1847-1931) and Trevor Bomford, both missionaries, used the word “Western Punjabi” for it. George Grierson also used this word “Lahnda” (Western Punjabi) in his linguistic survey. According to Christopher Shackle, ‘Lahnda’ is a term unacceptable to many Pakistani Punjabis as it is denoting an artificial division of what they regard as common language of all of the Punjab, but is equally repugnant to enthusiasts of Siraiki as implying a subordinate status for it as a ‘mere dialect’ of Punjabi.

Exactly when this sense of a distinct language evolved among the literary circles in southern Punjab is hard to determine. Some records suggest that in 1893, Qazi Fakhruddin Razi attempted for the first time to invent a new and distinguished symbol system to express the distinctive sounds of the Siraiki language. Others have tried to invent and modify orthographic symbols for the language but these efforts remained either unnoticed or unrealized.

Khwaja Farid (1845-1901), the spiritual leader of the rulers of Bahawalpur State and head of the dynasty of Chishti pir, enriched the Riyasti language which was later recognized as the standard form of the Siraiki language. Christopher Shackle, while commenting on the unique feature of marsia-writing in Siraiki language, writes:

Residing at Chachran on the banks of the Indus, he was well known to his contemporaries for his profound theological and legal knowledge, but he is chiefly remembered for his divan of mystical hymns (kafi), which marks the virtual conclusion, and also the culmination, of the long tradition of mystical writing in the local language of the Indus valley by Sufl poets. Written for the most part in a pure and quite distinctive Siraiki, and often imbued with specifically local elements, particularly in references to and description of, the scenery and activities of the people of his beloved rohi, the Cholistan desert, these poems and their author have attracted a popularity and a veneration in the Siraiki-speaking area which is closely paralleled only by the position of Shah Abdul Latif in Sindh and that of Waris Shah, author of the famous Hir (1766), in the Central Punjab. In spite of his comparatively recent date, the classic status of Khwaja Farid is undisputed, and is indeed thrown into sharper relief by the lack of successors of remotely comparable stature. Here, then, is an artistic and spiritual focus whose symbolic potential has naturally been gratefully recognized by the Siraiki movement.

It was as late as the 1930s when the local writers began to quarry the past for submerged identities in Multan and Bahawalpur, an attempt which was quite similar to the movement in the North-West Frontier Province, where the local intelligentsia attempted to enrich Pakhtoon identity. This new trend may have been inspired by documents compiled and published by the British administration in this period. The British had translated a major portion of oriental literature like poetry, prose, ancient sources of history, and so on. The Imperial Gazetteers published by them provided comprehensive information about the history, population, language, races and tribes, economy, culture, pattern of migration, etc.

In this period, Aulad Ali Khan wrote Muraq’e Mooltani, which profiles distinguished local personalities alongwith a short history of the city of Multan. The book included minor details derived from the gazetteers and other official publications about noted local figures, culture, and industry. In Bahawalpur, Azizur Rahman, librarian to the Amir of Bahawalpur, and his brother Hafizur Rahman, did some work on the history of the Abbasi Nawabs of Bahawalpur. Hafiz also translated the Quran in Riyasti, which was later considered a dialect of Siraiki. Although the Bible had already been translated into Siraiki by a Christian missionary in 1819, it was written in Devnagiri script and its language was possibly that of Sirro (upper Sindh).

Azizur Rahman, alongwith some of his literary-minded friends, tried to standardize the language by convening ‘a committee, which recommended the adoption of a rationally planned set of additional letters to mark the implosives and other consonants, to enable the reasonably phonetic writing of Siraiki into the Urdu script’. He adopted this style in Diwan-i-Farid, which was published in 1944. Patronized by the Nawabs, it was an Urdu translation of Khwaja Farid’s poetry accompanied by a commentary to which Allama Talut wrote a detailed biographical introduction. This small literary group of Bahawalpur also published a journal, Al-Aziz, which was the first of its kind in the local language.

Al-Aziz provided useful information about literary activities and publications, but these writings lack any critical evaluation and literary value and were possibly undertaken to gain the Nawab’s favour rather than to insist on a separatist identity. Hafizur Rahman’s Tamaden-e-Bahawalpur ki Duo Mukhtaser Tesverain can be quoted as an example in which the local language was termed a dialect of the Punjabi.

Since Urdu was the official language of the state, all these works published in Urdu. The local language was neither the medium of instruction in schools nor used by those in power. Mumtaz Dar, General Secretary (Punjab) Pakistan Siraiki Party, argues that had the Nawab patronized the language, there would have been greater awareness of a separate identity. Although some followers of Ubaidullah Sindhi did try to devise grammatical rules for the local language by publishing Riayasti Maadri Zuban ka Qa’ida in 1943 from Bahawalpur, such efforts did not go very far due to lack of official patronage.

In 1950, Punjnad, a Siraiki journal, was published from Karachi but it could survive only for a short while. In 1953, Akhter Vahid, the General Secretary of the Multani Research Academy, attempted to standardize the language and published a booklet of Multani grammar, Multani Zuban da Qa’ida. Till the end of the 1950s, the word “Siraiki” remained alien to this region. Multani and Riyasti were the terms used for the languages spoken in Multan and Bahawalpur respectively. The literature produced in Multan mainly revolved around mystical poetry or language and culture.

In the 1960s, some writers and intellectuals from southern Punjab convened a meeting and decided to discard home-sprung names like Multani, Muzaffargarhi, Uchi, Riyasti, Derewali, Hindko, Jaghadali, Thalchari, Lahnda, Jatki, and Balochki often used for the local languages and replace them with a single word “Siraiki”. Multani and Riyasti were recognized as the standard forms of Siraiki. As discussed earlier, Siraiki was used for a dialect of Sindhi language, spoken in upper Sindh.

Different people claim the credit for proposing this name, most important among them being Dr Mehr Abdul Haq, a well known Siraiki literary figure, and Mushtaq Hussain Gadi, a retired school headmaster. It was Dr Mehr who researched the Multani language in the 1960s, calling it “Siraiki” because he thought it could apply to a much wider region. Dr Mehr wrote many books in Siraiki and also translated the Quran and Qasida Burda Sharif in the local language.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)