Mian Muhammad Baksh in the 19th century was perhaps the first poet in our literary tradition who spoke of the gulf that had surfaced between poets and their audiences.

The phenomenon of poet’s alienation from his people was not only something weirdly unfamiliar but also had nightmarish implications in Punjab’s literary history.

Punjabi literature with its long tradition has always been people’s literature in the sense that it had organical links with our collective life and everyday experience. “Murr murr ik banawan sheesha, maar vatta ik bhandey/ Dunya uttey thorey rehndey qadar shanaas shukhandey / awwal ta koi shauq na kisey, kaun sukhan ajj sunda / jey sun si ta qissautla, ramzan koi napunda [Some drop dead making glassware and some smash it with a stone / Few are there in the world who know the value of the verse / No one has the passion, to begin with, who cares to listen to a verse? / Even if he does, he would be happy with the superficial and would not delve into the subtle secrets]”, cribs Mian Muhammad in a tone laced with sadness.

What went wrong with the cultural and literary conditions in the 19th century needs serious probing. In the 18th century what we find is quite the opposite. Waris Shah, the immortal bard of our land, who employs the most complex and unusual linguistic constructs and uses allusion as a literary device with unrestrained freedom, is absolutely happy with his audience. He in fact becomes one of them while savouring the recital of his own tale. “Yaar ana saannu aan sawalkeeta, ishq Heer da nawan banaaiyeji … yaara nnaal majaalsan vich beh ke, maza Heer de ishq da paaiyyeji [The friends came to me with the request that Heer’s love story be composed afresh…. In the assemblies of friends we should share the joy of Heer’s love]”, he says in the very beginning of his composition. Here Waris Shah not only joins the audience whom he terms ‘assemblies of friends’ but also becomes a listener detached from his own creation which had assumed an objective existence. Intermingling of the poet with audience promotes the release of oxytocin creating conditions of undying bonhomie. Almost all of our poets till the 19th century have been ‘organic poets’; deeply connected with people and community voicing their deprivations and aspirations in a class and caste driven patriarchal structures.

But what happened in the 19th century that pulled the seamlessly united family of poets and audiences apart? In order to find some plausible explanation, one would have to look at the unusual historical conditions created by strong extraneous factors subsumed under the broad category of colonialism.

In the aftermath of Ranjit Singh’s death, incessant internecine wars, unending palace intrigues, no hold barred attitude of army generals and ingress of East India Company which had occupied rest of India, destroyed the semblance of power of Lahore Darbar and it became a sitting duck. After two major wars with help of quislings and collaborators the Company occupied the vast empire in 1849 bequeathed by Ranjit Singh to his heirs. The occupation within a short span of time transformed Punjab in a massive way. Transformations at cultural and educational levels proved to be of lasting consequences. A new education system was introduced the crucial component of which was the imposition of two foreign languages; English and Urdu were imposed as medium of instruction. English was meant for upper classes and Urdu for the lower orders. This proved to be turning point in the literary and cultural history of the Punjab as it started the process of alienating people especially younger generations from their mother language and cultural roots. Literary and cultural deterioration has to be understood in a historical perspective. Subsequently we have Sir Muhammad Iqbal from Sialkot instead of Hashim Shah and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan from Gujrat area instead of Nausha Ganj Baksh. Ironically Mian Muhammad himself was an epitome of this literary and cultural crisis that paralysed the Punjab’s natural creative potential. Going against the tradition he said good bye to his land and its legends and chose to compose an imported story from central Asia and Middle East.

His magnum opus, Saiful Maluk, exposes us to nothing but phantasms and phantasmagoria of shadowy creatures which have nothing to do with our people and land. It was a kind of romantic escapism as he along with other poets such as Khawaja Ghulam Farid and Maulvi Ghulam Rasool failed to recognise and analyse the far-reaching impact of what the colonial occupation had done to the language, culture and literature of the people.

Mian Muhammad blamed audience for not appreciating his poetry forgetting that he himself lost touch with social, political and cultural reality that followed the Occupation. A new cultural malaise had set in that caused ever-increasing chasm between the poet and audience.

Generations schooled in the colonial mode of education helped increase the gulf between literati and the people at an accelerated pace. Emergence of Pakistan further exacerbated the cultural crisis by not only continuing the colonial educational policies but also put English and Urdu even at a higher pedestal at the expense of people’s language leading to the debacle in East Pakistan [now Bangladesh].

Urdu speakers who migrated from India and Punjabi elite were squarely responsible for deculturation of historically rich people of Punjab in the name of acculturation.

Now in the culture’s barren wilderness created by inertial forces when rupture with the indigenous tradition is complete, modern poet writing in people’s language faces a real dilemma. He is not understood by people in the cities because they are totally cut off from their mother language. They are the ones who can appreciate the modern poetic structures but they fail to do so because they don’t know the language and its literary conventions. And those who know the language, mostly in country side and towns are unable to make sense of complex expression which is in their language but beyond their comprehension due to lack of exposure to modern life.That’s the reason that the traditional poets and versifiers churning out saccharine kitsch are all over the place. Now the question is how to enculturate people at large, how to bridge the cultural divide? But still we can take the first step. We can make effort to retrieve the situation by owning what legitimately belongs to us; our language. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2021