ISLAMABAD, Nov 28: During the British rule in India, members of the public found reading a letter in the open were sent to jail since the alien rulers of the time believed that letters were used to foment resistance, writes Baloch scholar Ghaus Baksh Sabir in the November issue of the Islamabad-based National Language Authority (NLA) quarterly house journal, Akhbar Urdu.

The current issue of the journal discusses the place of Urdu in Balochistan. Editors of the journal have come up with the idea that Urdu might have achieved synthesis in Balochistan, and to confirm this, they have posted a question on the cover: ‘Whether Balochistan was really the place where Urdu evolved?’

Urdu was a valuable aid in the struggle the Balochis offered against the British rule, writes Dr Sabir in the article, Balochistan main Urdu ka Safar (the journey of Urdu in Balochistan).

He adds that newspapers were not allowed to enter his province to curb mass resentment against the British rule. When Mohammad Hussain Anqa brought out the first weekly Urdu newspaper ‘Bolan’ from Balochistan, the British government considered its comments irreverent, and after three months the newspaper was forced to fold up and its editor was exiled.

Quoting an instance of the perversity of the British rule at that time, Dr Sabir writes: In 1902, the agent to the Governor General published an edict that his carriage should be pulled not by horses but by Baloch Sardars. Resisting the move, Nawab Khair Buksh Murree replied: “We are not camels or horses but human being, endowed with dignity, and we will be glad to provide as many camels and horses as you need for this purpose.”

Another scholar, Dr Inamul Haq Kausar, renders an account of the growth of Urdu in Balochistan and writes that it was easy for Urdu to be assimilated because the linguistic milieu in the province was multilingual, and Brahvi, Balochi, Pushtu and Seraiki were spoken and understood in different areas and thus Urdu became accepted as the link language.

In another article, titled ‘Balochistan ki parlamani tarikh aur Urdu, well-known politician and intellectual Tahir Khan informs us that judgments and records of local courts were maintained in Urdu although Acts were published in English. Earlier, orders and decrees were written in Persian before the advent of the British, but in the later year local associates of the British began to dictate their instructions in Urdu.

Mr Khan says that the first representative Balochistan assembly met on January 3 and 4, 1948, and the proceedings were conducted in Urdu. He says that Balochistan assembly adopted Urdu as the official language of the province soon after it met after the new constitution was passed in 1973. However, for Mr Khan the fact is that English has continued to remain the language in which legislative documents are circulated in the house.

How well does Urdu mirror the frustration or everyday thoughts of the life of a prisoner? Eminent Balochi poet and intellectual Gul Khan Nasser has translated Faiz’s book of poetry ‘Sar Vadiye Sina’, while serving a prison term. Speaking at the launching ceremony of his Balochi translation, which he has named ‘Sinai Gheechag’, he commented “I was lodged at the Hyderabad Jail for five years. Only those who go to jail can understand the pain and tragedy of a person who is compelled to break off all connections from the outside world.

“Faiz also spent many years of solitude in prison, and the bitterness, which pervades the heart of the sensitive poet, compelled him to write lustrous poems of incomparable beauty. For me, Faiz’s poetry is like the beauty of a long turbulent ocean from which causes vibrant verses to rise up and fall down on our minds like life reviving rain”.— Jonaid Iqbal