Harking Back: The ancient roots of our split literary traditions

The ‘on-off’ then ‘on with cuts’ then ‘off’ ban on the film Joyland in politically mysterious circumstances, my mind rushed to Chandragupta Maurya who said that “all priests, no matter of which faith, are in it for the money”.

Luckily, Islam banned earning money by retailing the name of The Almighty. The finest Islamic scholars make their money by researching and selling excellent books. Maudoodi and Ghamidi are good examples of the recommended path. But this is dangerous territory for a meek columnist lest one is dubbed under some bizarre human law.

If we study the history of our land we realise that under Kanishka (127-150 AD), the Kashan ruler, whose Empire stretched from Bengal to the Tigris with Peshawar as his capital, the numerous religions like various strands of Hinduism, Zoroastrian, Christian, Gnostic and Hellenic forms thrived. The conquest by Alexander had made this possible. For 700 years the sole religion of Lahore was a peaceful Buddhism. The rise of priestly power was its undoing, like it has been for others. But then this fact is not taught in our classrooms.

But come the Muslim invaders and we notice a subtle change in the people who are placed in positions to influence the harsh foreign rulers.

Mahmud, the Turk-Afghan of Ghazni, had two famous poet-historians, they being Firdausi and Al-Biruni. We know that the Shahnama of Firdausi was commissioned by Mahmud on the promise of a gold piece for every couplet. When the 60,000 coins arrived they were of silver. The poet refused to accept them and escaped back to his birth town Tus in Iranian Khorasan.

Al-Biruni was born in Uzbekistan and came with the invading force. He wrote the famous ‘Kitab-ul-Hind’. Besides Lahore, scholars from Central Asia were placed in Dipalpur and Multan. But then they all concentrated on teaching their children Islamic subjects, including Mathematics and Astronomy. The local Hindu priests and scholars started separate schools for their children. Since then the educational divide set in.

I will return to this flow of history, but let me jump to the coming of the British and the amazing research on education by the great G.W. Leitner, the British orientalist, who discovered that the highest literacy rate in the whole of British India was the Punjab and specifically Lahore. He set up some of the leading colleges and universities in Lahore making it the centre of learning.

I need not tell the readers just what we have done to our learning process. Naturally, Kanishka is not taught, nor is Buddhism, or the fact that the Vedas themselves were all written in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Instead we extend the extreme by having the Single Curriculum people where the mother tongue is looked down upon.

Back to the foreign Muslim invaders. The Ghoris’ followed the Ghazni rulers after attacking the sub-continent seven times. Their finest ruler Qutbuddin Aibak invited the finest scholars, be them poets, writers or jurists. He acquired the name ‘lakhbakh’, the ‘distributor of lakhs’, and people like Hasan Nizami produced books of the stature of Tajul Mathir. We have other rulers like Allauddin Khilji who cultivated persons like Amir Khusrau.

With the Mongols chasing away anyone who questioned their rule, scholars headed for India. When Prince Mahmud, the son of Sultan Ibrahim, was made Governor of Lahore in 1075, the first thing he did was to bring in the finest scholars. Besides Amir Khusrau, men of the stature of Saidullah Lahori and Abdur Rehman Jami. The list just grows with time.

But brilliant that all these fine persons surely were, their approach was deeply communal and a secular approach to education that had developed in the University of Taxila, then the world’s finest and largest, was done away with. This was to have a virtual ‘lethal effect’ as Leitner was to put it. It had taken almost 1,000 years for a highly-educated society to be divided, virtually made illiterate, as they remain today.

Muslim schools were connected to mosques, where Arabic and the ‘Quran’ was the sole instruction possible. A few also taught mathematics, which was an ancient subject. The better schools also instructed in Persian. I remember my late father telling us that before joining Central Model School, children in the walled city of Lahore learnt the Quran, Arabic and Persian before joining secular schools.

We see that with time Persian was done away with and even Arabic was dropped, and rote learning of the Quran is seen as the peak of learning for young children. This holds true at the village level today.

On the other hand, Leitner’s research tells us that the Hindu community of Lahore concentrated on their own religious books like the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Epics and ‘Shastra’s’, besides, logic, grammar, literature and accounting. The Sikhs of Lahore learnt Gurmukhi, with mathematics, law and agriculture and its economics. But though with the coming of the Muslims, formerly knowledge and education was the domain of the Brahmin class, now it branched into two very separate directions.

Come the British and we see the Hindu community setting up their own schools, and then colleges. Very soon they outstripped Muslims who stuck to Arabic, and initially Persian only, to drop that too. The British deliberate shunning of Punjabi led to further isolation, in which amazingly today few feel pride.

We also see that in the Punjab the major works were on religious subjects, on mysticism and some grammar. Also the books on the ‘hadith’ grew very rapidly. It goes without saying that Arabic as a language soon fell from favour. This situation gave rise to separate schools for learning of Sanskrit and Persian, and soon many Muslim scholars also learnt Hindu medicine and astrology.

But the mother tongue Punjabi was kept alive by Sheikh Farid (1175-1266 AD), and Guru Nanak (1469-1539 AD). Even here we see that the Punjabi ‘Lehanda’ dialect took two different script forms - the Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi. They represented two different religious traditions. The split further increased.

With the Partition of 1947 all these different educational and linguistic traditions acquired a geographical bearing. In the Punjab and Lahore, where Sanskrit that had emerged from Prakrit, an ancient form of Old Punjabi dialect, died out. But the Hindu priests held on to this ‘exclusive’ language, becoming almost a pious and holy acquisition. In a way knowing Arabic, or reciting Quranic verses is seen as a pious pastime today irrespective of whether the priest understands it or not. These are now priestly weapons.

But we have to understand that as the modern age starts to break out from its ancient nomadic patriarchal way of thinking, there is a need to close ranks with science, logic and reason. Belief, no matter of which bend, is purely a private pastime. The banning of Joyland is clearly a reflection of the brick wall our system has hit. Surely we need to take a few steps back, learn from our own history and mistakes, as well as that of others, and make sure our future direction is full of learning, and constant debate. Toleration is the path we surely should travel on.