Punjabis: Living down a ‘vulgar, abhorrent’ language

Dr Abbas Zaidi

Millions of Punjabis in Pakistan and the diaspora have been engaged in linguistic witch-hunting of their own language. It happened a long time before terms like “identity politics”, “linguistic identity”, “language and religion” and “bloodthirsty mullahs” were in vogue. It happened in the 1960s when news in Pakistan either travelled in slow motion or did not travel at all because there were only half a dozen newspapers, four of them owned by the government. However, the announcement of one man, a respected public figure and high-profile bureaucrat, became a cause celebre in the Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province and the country’s power base. The announcement fused mullahs, liberals and leftists into a unified front. From pesh imams to pimps down to professors were outraged too (see Endnote 1).

Masud Khaddarposh (1916-1985) had announced that he would offer the namaz in Punjabi in the Lawrence Gardens Mosque (see Endnote 2). Mian Mehmud Ahmed, aka ‘Mooda Kanjar’, the leader-cum-godfather of Lahore’s red-light district, represented his millions of fellow Punjabi speakers thus: “Punjabi is not a serious [sic] language and therefore its use in offering the namaz is an insult to Islam” (see Endnote 3). The mob did not allow Khaddarposh to pray in Punjabi.

Millions across the world are native speakers of Punjabi. In Pakistan alone, Punjabis constitute the largest linguistic-ethnic group with around 190 million speakers. Some of the richest poetical traditions – romantic and the so-called Sufi – of the Subcontinent are found in Punjabi. The immortal Punjabi love epic Heer-Ranjha is the acme of what Matthew Arnold called “high seriousness”. Punjabi is also one of the most jokes-inclusive languages of the Subcontinent. Even non-native speakers of Punjabi accept that it is an exceptionally rich language: just one expression couched in the right tonal emphasis can convey a variety of meanings in the same and different contexts. Punjabi is a language of nuances and double entendres. Sometimes the two meanings are contradictory (e.g., “X is a healthy man” or “X’s figure is athletic” can mean just the opposite.). Sometimes one meaning is wit-packed and the second is serious (e.g., “The mullahs efficiently carry out their sacred duties in the mosque” can also mean they do wicked things there). Most of the time one meaning is an ordinary, intended statement, while the other is playfully sexual (e.g., “Shall I pour [milk/water]?” secondarily refers to penetration, and more). I can say without hedging that if someone wants to experience linguistic-pragmatic synaesthesia, let them learn Punjabi.

One might ask: shouldn’t Punjabis be proud of their language? On the contrary. Punjabis in Pakistan and the diaspora typically have a derogatory view of their language. I have lived in or visited several countries. I have talked to and observed a very high number of Punjabis. They have been dumping their language in favour of Urdu. The most aggressive anti-Punjabi-ists come from educated and semi-educated Punjabis. As soon as they acquire elementary academic advancement, they jettison their mother tongue. I have never seen or heard of an educated, or even semi-educated, Punjabi parent who is willing to communicate with their children in Punjabi. Rather, they aggressively dissuade them from speaking it because speaking Punjabi is considered a mark of bad manners, crudeness, and lack of culture. A young child speaking Punjabi is at best an amusing curiosity for adult Punjabis. In a posh social or academic gathering anyone speaking that language is either trying to be funny or soon becomes the butt of jokes. A poet who writes in Punjabi finds an audience predisposed only to ribald entertainment.

Punjabis’ negative attitude towards their language can be demonstrated by the fact that there is not a single newspaper or magazine published in Punjabi for the 190 million-plus Punjabi speakers. Historically, every Punjabi journalistic venture has died soon after its launch. The last such venture was a daily newspaper, Sajjan (Friend), edited and published by Hussain Naqi, an Urdu-speaking immigrant. It only lasted a few months. Yet, all the regional and provincial languages like Sindhi and Pashto have a proud history of publication. Sindhi, a minor language compared with Punjabi, can boast scores of daily newspapers and periodicals. While Pakistani Punjabis can certainly speak their language, they can neither read nor write it. I estimate that not more than two percent of Punjabis can read or write Punjabi. Add to this the fact that, after Urdu speakers, Punjabis on average are the most literate group in Pakistan and you see what irony there is.

Consider the following breakdown of the speakers of the various Pakistani languages:

Punjabi 48.2 percent

Pashto 13.1 percent

Sindhi 11.8 percent

Seraiki 9.8 percent

Urdu 7.6 percent

Other 9.5 percent.

Punjabi has multiple semiotic indictments against it given by Punjabis themselves: (i) its accent is rude, (ii) it is the language of the illiterate and the uncouth, (iii) its lexicon has countless swear words and double entendres, and (iv) it is plain déclassé. Punjabis disregard the fact that a language’s capacity for double entendre is at the heart of its expressiveness and power. I can recall General Franco’s charge that Basque was a “language of dogs”.

The only places in Pakistan where Punjabi is uninhibitedly spoken are the rural areas or city slums. These misfortunate people look up to prosperous educated Punjabis – the landed aristocrats, industrialists, the yuppies, and the bourgeoisie – as role models. As they become educated, they discard their mother tongue along with their ‘uncouth’ dress and manners. Hence, the formula seems simple enough: the more educated a Punjabi is, the more anti-Punjabi and Punjabi-less they become.

The responsibility for such a situation lies with the Punjabis themselves, especially the “Wake Up Punjabi” (Jaag Punjabi Jaag) slogan-mongers. Is it not significant that in Pakistan’s history, no Punjabi leader of stature has addressed a mass rally in Punjabi? The Punjabi Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s thrice-elected prime minister, raised the “Wake Up Punjabi” slogan in the 1990s to grab power from then-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, making fun of her for being a woman and Sindhi. Yet his record in Punjabi is as bad as any other Punjabi leader’s. Benazir Bhutto always talked to the Sindhis in Sindhi. Similarly, Urdu-, Pashto-, Seraiki- and Balochi-speaking leaders and intellectuals always use their languages when talking to their people either in private or in public. Nawaz Sharif has never.

Sindhi, Pashto and Urdu are compulsory languages for Sindhi, Pathan and Mohajir students, and the Baloch are working hard to evolve a script for their language. Many official activities are transacted in these languages. The Punjabis are the largest linguistic group in Pakistan. They are also the most powerful political and economic group. Pakistan is an agrarian society, and the Punjab feeds the whole of Pakistan (“Punjab” means “the land of five rivers”). But there is not a single school where Punjabi is taught. Nor has Punjabi ever been part of the school syllabi. Pre-university as well as college courses in the Punjab are taught in Urdu (or English). In most cases, the characters, their names, and the situations projected in narratives, poems and social descriptions are based on the culture of Urdu or English speakers and have nothing to do with the Punjab. There are several universities in the Punjab, but it is only in the University of Lahore that a small MA Punjabi department exists, and even then, the students admitted are more interested in finding a cheap residence in Lahore than in studying Punjabi.

The books published in Punjabi in any given year can be counted on one hand. Compared with scores of Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto and other minority languages (e.g., Seraiki and Kashmiri), there is not a single full-fledged Punjabi research institution in Pakistan except for a misshapen Punjabi Adabi Board, which is notable principally for its inactivity. The few research works in Punjabi owe their existence to individual efforts. One may argue that this situation can be explained by economics, but why does economics affect only Punjabi in this way?

The average Pakistani Punjabi would answer my questions thusly: (i) The reason the Sikhs have never discarded their language is that their holy book, the Granth, is in Punjabi; (ii) we must use Urdu because it is our national language. To which one may reply: (i) The Quran is in Arabic, but its non-Punjabi readers have not dumped their native languages simply because of that fact. Moreover, the Punjabis, along with other Pakistanis, never learned Arabic; they read the Quran without understanding a word of Arabic, and (ii) All the different ethnic groups in Pakistan know Urdu, but they have not jettisoned their languages for the sake of a national language whose native speakers make up less than eight percent of the general population.

Language has played a significant role in Pakistan’s history, a fact which makes the Punjabi question even more ironic and tragic. When Pakistan was created in 1947 as East and West Pakistan, it was claimed by its then rulers – many of whom were Urdu-speaking emigrants from India – that Pakistan would last till Judgement Day: two wings, one religion, one nation, one country, and one national language: Urdu. But this blessing was not realised, and before it could celebrate its first anniversary, the whole of East Pakistan was rocked to its foundations with bloody language riots. The Bengalis refused to accept Urdu because it was an imposed, not their own, language. They said they would lose their identity without their mother tongue. In turn, they were dubbed “anti-Pakistan” for their opposition to Urdu. The pro-Urdu lobby in West Pakistan then played the Islamic card: Urdu amounted to Islamic identity. Anti-Urdu was anti-Islamic. Calling the Bengalis anti-Islam, the religious scholars of West Pakistan argued that Islamic identity should transcend Bengali identity if the Bengalis were to consider themselves true Muslims. But the language of theology could not overcome the theology of language, and in 1971, before Pakistan could celebrate its silver jubilee, East Pakistan had become Bangladesh, ‘Land of the Bengali-speaking People’. As the Bengalis were about to start preparations to celebrate their first independence anniversary, the province of Sindh became a scene of language riots between the speakers of Sindhi and Urdu, shaking the very foundations of the newly elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the most popular and powerful leader (he was both the country’s president and chief martial law administrator) in Pakistan’s history. Bhutto appeared on TV and spoke in English, Sindhi and Urdu. He joined his hands together and, pointing them towards the people said, “For God’s sake, let it (i.e., language rioting) go!” Again, the religious scholars played the Islamic card. Maulana Maududi: “The end of Urdu will mean the end of Pakistan and Islam.”

Amrita Pritam, a Punjabi poet and fiction writer, once invoked Waris Shah (the Heer-Ranjha poet) when hundreds of thousands of Punjabi women had been raped by their countrymen during India’s Partition. One is tempted to again invoke the name of this great Punjabi bard whose language is being consigned to a historical black hole by Punjabis themselves. What are the inheritors of the language of Waris Shah and numerous other Punjabi literary titans, both inside and outside Pakistan, doing about this shameful neglect of the Punjabi language? Will Punjabi become like Latin, a dead language with no one left who can speak it?

Love for one’s native tongue is a universal phenomenon. At a minimum, a language is a mark of personal and national identity. It is a glue that holds its speakers together as a people. This is why language has been so pivotal in the history of nations, a stronger bond than religion, land and even race. At present, written and spoken Punjabi is heavily punctuated with Urdu words and phrases that are foreign both semantically and phonetically. Mohajirs (i.e., the Urdu-speaking people) and Punjabis are poles apart in cultural, temperamental and attitudinal terms. Many would argue that Islam is the common bond among all Pakistani people, which over time will transcend all differences. All evidence, however, points to the opposite side (Religion is not part of this piece; therefore, I will not say anything about its role in Pakistan society). I have been asking Punjabis if their language can survive the 21^st century given the rate at which they have been abandoning it. Their typical answer is that despite educated Punjabis’ reluctance to use Punjabi, there is no threat to its existence now or in the future because of the high growth in the population of Punjabis. I do not dispute Punjabis’ verdict about the future of Punjabi. All I can say is that there has to be just one definition of a genuine Punjabi: An illiterate Punjabi is the real Punjabi; the rest are in transition.

Endnotes:

1. This piece is about Pakistani Punjabis only. For those interested in Punjabi, here are a few details: Punjabi is spoken by Hindus and Sikhs of East Punjab in India (using the Sanskritised script) and Muslims in West Punjab in Pakistan (using the Persianised script). To East Punjabis, the Persianised script is alien and, therefore, of no use for reading or writing; the same goes for West Punjabis regarding the Sanskritised script. However, there are no issues in orally communicating with one another. In other words, the role of Punjabi across the border is entirely oral.
2. The Lawrence Gardens was later Islamised as “Jinnah Gardens”.
3. As a young journalist, I happened to interview the ageing and ailing Mian Mehmud Ahmed twice. He would openly claim to be a son of Allama Iqbal, the national poet-philosopher of Pakistan. His claim has never been allowed to be reported in the media. I hope to do a write-up on him in the future.

The author is based in Sydney where he has taught media, literature, and linguistics in several universities. His email address is: abbas.zaidi@unsw.edu.au