LAHORE: Prof Naveed Alam, a poet, translator and teacher at the National College of Arts (NCA), shared his experience, disclosing how and why an experience of teaching Punjabi to the students of a new-established degree-awarding art institute in Lahore failed. His experience, shared on the second day of the conference on the International Mother Language Day on Tuesday, shows the attitude of the Punjabis, including the youth, academics and writers, to their mother tongue.

Alam said he and others behind the move at the Institute for Art and Culture thought that education in art, architecture and graphic designing would more grounded if the students could learn their mother tongue also; otherwise they would just copy others.

“We faced two issues. One was of the students as even if they knew how to speak Punjabi, the language spoken at their homes, they would feel ashamed to speak it in the classrooms.”

Speaking their mother tongue meant exposing where they came from while they had coined their own fake identities and the areas they came from, Naveed Alam said and added that whenever they spoke, they would distort the language deliberately, making it a mere laughing stock. “Our biggest challenge was to remove the sense of inferiority from the Punjabi students.”

Roots of state’s cold attitude towards Punjabi traced in mother language day moot

On the other side, Alam went on to say, there were teachers, getting very handsome salaries but they did not even make a proper syllabus for Punjabi and had collected just about a dozen short stories to teach Punjabi to the students as if they were holding creative writing classes.

The teachers (of Punjabi) would get offended whenever they were asked to do some work, arguing that they had been serving Punjabi language for decades and now he (Alam) was teaching them how to teach the language. They started their own politics (at the institute). As a result, Alam said, there was no syllabus for Punjabi and no texts. After the university was sold, the new owners removed Punjabi first of all. He suggested that the fault lay with the Punjabis themselves who were not sincere to their language. “I have many Punjabi writer friends who have won awards too but Punjabi language is not spoken at their homes.”

Dr Ali Usman Qasmi of Lums said the British did not implement Punjabi as the official language due to various factors. One factor was that they had snatched the rule from the Sikhs and Punjabi (Gurmukh) had a connection with Sikhism. The British basically uprooted Persian from Punjab as it connected people with Persia and Central Asia and it was used in this region for the last 1,000 years, he said and added that the people were reluctant to adopt Urdu as the official language initially as they thought learning Persian would be more beneficial for them.

“In 1909, a discussion started in Punjab when Prof Chatterjee of the Punjab University delivered a speech, questioning why the people were not communicating in and writing their mother tongue (Punjabi). The Urdu press objected to it and in the Paisa Akhbar, there were writings, discussing how Urdu was the language of the Muslim Punjab.

Quoting from a report of the Archives Department of the Punjab government, titled the Development of Urdu as the Official Language in the Punjab (1854-1974), Qasmi said, the Directorate of Public Instruction wrote a letter to the secretary Punjab in 1862, saying that “Punjabi is merely a dialect of Urdu and varies considerably in various parts of the province. As the written language, it makes its appearance only in Gurmukhi character, a bastard form of the Nagree”. They argued that Punjabi was not a language with a proper script. A commissioner wrote, “Punjabi, Derajati, Multani are not languages any more than Yorkshire, Somersetshire is a language. They are barbarian mixtures of Hindu and Persian, of which Urdu is the pure type”.

One could guess from the statements how the British considered the language of the locals as a barbarian language in which no literature and knowledge could be produced, he said.

The DC of Gogera said it would be almost impossible to fix one standard Punjabi as no such things existed. And this argument was used even today because Punjabi dialect would change after about every 10km, that’s why it’s impossible for all to agree on one Punjabi language. Only one officer, J. Wilson, the DC of Shahpur (now near Bhera) supported Punjabi language to be implemented in schools but only Roman characters but he was mainly opposed because he said there was a big difference in Urdu and Punjabi while majority of the British rulers thought otherwise.

Once Urdu was imposed, the Muslim elite of Punjab adopted this language and used it as a means of expression, Qasmi said and stressed that it was now necessary for all Punjabis to learn and understand their language.

Khalid Mehmood of the Awami Workers Party said Pakistan had a part in the International Mother Language Day as its background goes to the Bengali language movement in Bengal (now Bangladesh) when the Pakistan government opened fire on the people who were demonstrating for their right to their mother language. Some people got martyred and many others were injured and the day is observed in their memory.

He said the British had a separate policy for Punjab compared to other provinces. In 1843, when Sindh was captured by them, the question of Sindhi as official language was raised. Sindhi used to be written in about three or four scripts, including Arabic (Muslims), Devanagari (Hindus) and Gurmukhi (Sikhs) besides there were Gujaratis and Memons too. A referendum was held to determine the script of the language and decision came in favour of Arabic and the Muslims were in majority. The British declared Sindhi language as the official language written in Arabic script but it was not done in Punjab.

Makhdoom Salman Tipu also spoke. The session was moderated by Punjabi novelist Zahid Hussain.

Another session was held on ‘political economy of Punjab’ in which Dr Taimur Rahman of the Pakistan Mazdoor Kisan Party discussed how and why agriculture produce was different in Indian and Pakistani Punjabs since the Partition. The session was moderated by Prof Rahimul Haq. Another session on the environmental crisis was also held at the conference organised by Lok Sangat at the Alhamra Art Centre.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2023