The language issue in the subcontinent is neither new nor simple. It’s not new because it indisputably has a very long history. Nor it’s simple because complexity of the conundrum has refused to fade out despite efforts.

The fact is revealed by our recorded history which stretches back to Harappa era and the epoch-making conflict between Harappa people and Arya. We leave aside for the moment the motivated Hindutva assertion that Arya have been the original inhabitants of this land which is utterly belied by the scriptures and literature they themselves hold sacred. Sanskrit word Mleccha was used by Arya authors in their description of Harappa people which originally meant a foreign or unintelligible speech. The speech of Harappa people was neither foreign nor unintelligible but it looked so to incoming Arya because they were foreigners and hence could not understand it properly.

Professor Malti J Shendge quotes in her celebrated book “The Civilized Demons” the mythical story from ‘atatapathabrahmana’on how devas deprived Asuras of their speech. Asura, the most prominent Harappa tribe, symbolically stands for the indigenous people and devas for the newly-arrived Arya. “… devas and the Asuras both of them sprang from Parjapati entered upon their father Parjapati’s inheritance; the devas inherited the mind and Asura, the speech. Thereby the devas inherited the sacrifice and the Asuras, the speech.

The gods for yonder (heaven) and the Asuras for this (earth).15. The devas said to sacrifice: ‘That Vc (f. speech) is a woman, beckon her and she will certainly call thee to her’. Or maybe he himself thought that Vc is a woman: ‘I will beckon her and she will certainly call me to her’. He accordingly beckoned her. She, however, at first disdained him from the distance…He said, ‘she has disdained me from the distance’.20. They said. ‘Do but beckon her reverend sir, and she will certainly call thee to her’. He beckoned her; but she only replied to him, as it were by shaking her head… 22. The devas reflected, ‘That Vc being a woman we must take care least she should allure him’.—say to her ‘come hither to me where I stand and report to us her having come’. She then went up to where he was standing. 23. The gods then cut her off from the Asuras and having gained possession of her and enveloped her completely in fire, they offered her up as a holocaust, it being an offering of the gods. And in that they offered her with an anuubh verse, thereby they made her their own and Asuras being deprived were undone crying, he lavah! helavah! 24. Such was the speech which they then uttered – and he who speaks thus is a Mleccha (barbarian). Hence let no Brahman speak barbarous languages, since such is the speech of theAsuras-”, she quotes. (Interestingly the word Vc is still used in Punjabi language meaning speech, utterance. ‘Bolan rehanavk /bereft of utterance and speech’, says poet Hafiz Barkhurdar in his tale of Sahiban).

Three elements, Prof Malti explains, stand out in the story: a fierce conflict between devas and Asuras, devas’ trick to deprive Asuras and the destruction of Vc through the use of fire. This is exactly what the British colonialists did to the Punjabi, the indigenous language, in mid nineteenth century by virtually expelling it from its homeland and imposing two foreign languages on the people, English and Urdu.

But first a very brief look at the history of this phenomenon. Indigenous language of Harappa/Indus valley was first suppressed by early Aryans or Vedic Aryans who when became ascendant tried to wipe out the indigenous people’s language in the Punjab and Indus valley. No domination by any group is complete without its language being imposed on the dominated.

Language has hitherto been the most effective tool of intellectual and cultural hegemony, history tells us. In other words the advanced and sophisticated Harappa people living in ‘shalas (houses)’ could not be completely subjugated by preliterate pastoralists namely devas moving in carts (cakramacara) without the destruction or suppression of the language of the former. But languages especially spoken by people don’t die easily as they continue to be used by people in the non-official fashion in the spaces not intruded upon by the dominant aliens.

After the Vedic period we see the emergence of another language of the dominant, Sanskrit, fashioned through a process of sanitization by priestly class, ruling cliques and their cohorts. The purpose obviously was on the one hand to proclaim a standard language which reflected the culture of the dominant and on the other to deprive people of their natural language, their intellectual tool, by forcing them to come to term with the language of the dominant which would militate against their effort to realize their actual creative potential.

Sanskrit was used for liturgical purposes by the priestly class and ruling elites employed it for secular uses which reflected their detachment from the people and their so-called high culture that fundamentally negated the concept of human equality.

It’s interesting to note that every intellectual and religious rebellion against the Brahmanism based on caste system – permanently fixed hierarchical order – invariably entailed the rejection of linguistic hegemony underpinned by a metaphysical notion which was in fact a perpetual reminder of the Harappa people’s subjugation by the ascendant Arya way back in time.

Lord Buddha (6th and 5th centuries BCE) not only challenged the so-called eternal validity of caste-based Brahmanism but also rejected the superiority of prevalent linguistic and literary culture by discarding Sanskrit and using people’s language(s) called Prakrit.

Prakrit means natural speech, an organic language spoken by the people. Prakrit stood in contrast to Sanskrit which was by definition a cultivated and perfected speech, a manufactured language. Lord Buddha popularized the use of Prakrit especially Pali which connected him to the masses. What Lord Buddha’s trail blazing cultural praxis signified was that in our context no revolutionary rejection of established order would be meaningful unless it owned and promoted the people’s linguistic and cultural assets. And sadly this is what our ‘revolutionaries’ in the Punjab have spectacularly failed to grasp. Despite their modern accumulated knowledge they are unable to understand what the sage practiced in 5th century BCE that intellectually and spiritually emancipated the people. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2019