Punjabi Language and the District Governments

Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

{The Nation - Lahore August 25, 2001}

The other day I met a newly elected lady district councillor who had undergone no schooling but was highly intelligent. She could communicate in Urdu with considerable difficulty but could express herself with ease in Punjabi. The councillor had been elected from a working class locality where Punjabi is the sole language used in daily transactions. Here Urdu is
widely understood by school going children, but is not spoken by them unless they are required to communicate with someone hailing from another province. The empowerment of this woman like many other councillors will remain incomplete if they are not facilitated to use their mother tongue while conducting their official business at all levels of the district government. Unless this is done, they as well as their voters, particularly those of the rural areas, will remain dependent and handicapped.

No community can make the best use of its potential unless its members are properly facilitated to use their mother tongue. The use of the language spoken at home as a medium of instruction at the primary school level makes education more meaningful and interesting, discourages the practice of learning by rote without understanding and reduces the number of school drop-outs. Its use in daily life removes dependence as most of the community members, particularly those who are uneducated, can express themselves freely only in their mother tongue. Punjabi, therefore, needs to be declared the official language of the district government in Punjab proper. The councillors at all levels should be encouraged to speak in Punjabi and the minutes of the meetings should be recorded in the language. Similarly, official orders, advertisements, public notices and bulletins have to be issued in the language. Despite the official neglect it has been subjected to, Punjabi remains the heartbeat of the common man. When individuals belonging to the community converse among themselves, mother tongue is the natural choice of the vast majority. The fact that it remains the most efficient means of communication inside the province is recognized by those who look for a large audience for whatever motive, political, economic or spiritual. Over the last half century and more, among the most popular radio programmes aired from Lahore has been the one meant for the rural community broadcast in the language of the province. Again, Punjabi continues to be the most popular language both of the pulpit and of a robust local film industry. It is the natural choice of the khateeb in the rural areas and small towns as he knows that it alone strikes a chord with his audience. The film producer is also aware of the fact that Punjabi films are capable of doing roaring business, thus bringing him wide recognition and large profits simultaneously. The songs which warmed the heart of the Punjabi soldier most during the 1965 war were those composed in his mother tongue.

Punjabi was deprived of state patronage after the British occupied Punjab in 1849. The choice to patronise Urdu in the province was dictated by administrative compulsions. The large empire which comprised Ranjit Singh's Punjab was not linguistically homogeneous. The languages spoken in it included Kashmiri, Dogri, Pushto, Seraiki and, after the inclusion of cis-Sutlej districts, a variety of Urdu. After Kashmir was sold to the Dogras and later when NWFP was made a separate province in 1901, Punjab developed a modicum of homogeneity but the Urdu-speaking Haryana remained a part of it till the Partition of India.

With official patronage given to Urdu, getting government jobs became dependent on proficiency in the language which also was made the medium of instruction in schools and colleges. Numerous Punjabi middle class families depending on government service as the only means of livelihood adopted Urdu as the language spoken at home in order to develop proficiency in the language among their children. Unlike UP where Urdu-Hindi dispute was the expression of the religious divide, in Punjab Urdu was adopted by the middle class, irrespective of communal particularities. Urdu was also adopted as a medium of expression by all those who wanted an audience beyond the province, including writers and politicians. Thus Punjab produced some of the best Urdu writers, quite a few of them non-Muslims.

As a result of prolonged official neglect, Punjabi has been deprived of a major source of support required for the development of any language. There is a greater keenness to learn a language and be able to write it if the activity provides economic benefits also. In case it is the language of courts and offices and is employed as a medium of instruction in schools, more jobs are created for those who have studied it as a subject in school. This provides a powerful impetus for learning the language and gaining mastery over its vocabulary, nuances and idioms. Deprived of the material incentive, it remains mostly a spoken language and as less care is exerted to record it, its highly expressive words and idioms containing wisdom gained over centuries gradually go out of use and are replaced by trite expressions borrowed from other languages. After the creation of the district governments, a beginning can be made to rescue one of the major languages of the world containing a rich body of literature from neglect. Making Punjabi the official language of the district will entail increased demand for those knowing the language and an economic incentive will be added to its learning.

Giving Punjabi its proper place in the district government will in no way diminish the importance of Urdu. For the outward looking and highly practical Punjabis, there is no rivalry between Urdu and their mother tongue. For them Urdu is the language to be used by the whole country while Punjabi is to be the language employed by the community within its ethnic boundaries. Both can live and develop side by side.