LAHORE: On the second day of the International Punjabi Conference at Punjab Institute of Language, Art and Culture on Thursday, some sessions were prominent, including media, language and economy; role of cinema in promoting Punjabi language and status of national languages in Pakistan.

In the session on media, language and economy, TV and theatre actor Suhail Warraich said languages were connected with history and politics and Punjabis ruled this region for a long time though Persian was their official language. Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s time was a golden period of Punjab but even then Punjabi was not there as the Lahore Darbar’s official language was Persian.

Replying to a question of Ajmal Jami who was moderating the session, he said, “Wherever the British went they tried to malign the earlier rulers and damage his culture and language. The books written by them about Maharaja Ranjit Singh were full of scandal and lies.” The picture got clear with time when people came to know that Ranjit Singh was not biased and he had conquered Lahore with the help of the Muslims who held important posts in his court, Warraich said.

About the language, he said if pushed back, the nations resisted as in Ireland, the Irish language called Gaelic was completely dead. “After the Ireland got its freedom, they revived the language.” Warraich rubbished the impression that Punjabi did not resist the attackers from the north and that Punjabis had no love for their language.

He said the Punjabi newspapers and TV channels were launched but they were not successful, adding that they would be successful if the same amount of investment would be made in them was done in the case of the launch of the most renowned Urdu channel in Pakistan.

Suhail Warraich said the Punjabis across the border could not read each other’s scripts and Roman should be used to deal with this problem and Roman on channels should be promoted along both Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi. The issue of different scripts had also been resolved somehow by the smartphones.

Punjabi writer and journalist Jameel Paul said Sindhi was taught in schools and colleges in Sindh that’s why Sindhi newspapers were read there. “The Muslim Punjabis have been lagging behind others in education because their medium of instruction was never their own language. At first, it was Persian which was replaced by Hindustani or Urdu.”

The Sikhs had launched the first Punjabi newspaper in 1850 while the Muslims did that in 1950. Before the partition, there were only two monthly newspapers in Punjabi and the owners of both of them were non-Muslims, Paul said.

He traced the history of Punjabi newspapers and monthlies, lamenting that only two dailies were still being printed.

To Surinder Paul, the means of communications had changed and Punjabis were losing their heritage. However, he hoped that somebody would come out to promote the Punjabi language. He called for more resources for the new generation of Punjabis that could speak Punjabi but could read or write it.

FILMS: A session on Punjabi films and Punjabi language had actor Sohail Ahmed, Iqbal Qaiser, TV drama producer Kashif Nisar and showbiz journalist Tahir Sarwar Mir.

Iqbal Qaiser said Punjabi films supported the Punjabi language a lot. “The first Punjabi film was released in 1935, Ishq-i-Punjab aka Mirza Sahiba, which ran just for a week. It was followed by Pindi Di Kurri, which was the first film of Noor Jahan. Besides films, the Punjabi music also promoted Punjabi language.” After the partition, the first film that had a golden jubilee was Pheray.

Qaiser, who had written a book on Punjabi film history, said Lahore’s cinema had most of Punjabi films and about 90pc film studios were set up with earnings from Punjabi films. “However, Punjabi films were not made for language but for market forces. When Hindi film “Heer Ranjha” was made, the questions were raised as to how Heer had taken and Urdu avatar.”

Amir Raza said producers never made films to promote culture but they did it as a business. Tahir Sarwar Mir endorsed his view, saying film was a business activity across the world but it’s also seen as a social responsibility. He said Punjabi films were not always loud, giving the example of actor Akmal who was called Dilip Kumar of the Punjabi cinema. “Sultan Rahi’s style turned the cinema loud. But loudness also is a genre of films,” he said, calling Terminator and Bahubali as loud films. Punjabi films like Pakistan drama ruled the subcontinent.

Mir said that cinema like other forms of art and sports could not flourish.

However, this session has left much to be desired as two of the panelists were not related to films and they did not talk much about them. Sohail Ahmed has had a great contribution to Punjabi theatre and one is sure that he had a lot to share about Punjabi theatre and drama.

NATIONAL LANGUAGES: Professor Saeed Bhutta, in the session on status of national languages, said after 1857, the British offered all the nationalities in India to adopt their own languages as medium of instruction but did not give the same right to Punjabis and enforced Urdu here in schools.

“After the fall of Sirajud Daulah, the Punjabis kept the British at bay for the next 90 years. The British punished them by removing their identity. The colonisers adopted the policy of divide and rule and the Sikhs worked for promotion of their script, the Hindus went to Arya Samaj. The Muslims made Anjuman Himayat-i-Islam. The Sikhs owned Punjabi, the Hindus got Hindi and the Muslims declared Urdu as their own language.”

Bhutta lauded the Sikhs for owning their language and working for it during colonialism. After 1947, the issue of Pakistanis going for one language in the name of unity did away with diversity of culture. Ashok Kumar, a professor of Sindhi at Punjab University and Lums, said Sindhi was made compulsory at the start of British colonial period and its script was decided from among the four scripts. All our writers like Shaikh Ayaz and GM Syed opted for their own language instead of writing in any other language. However, this was not the case in Punjab.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2023