By Murtaza Rizvi

Date:01-05-05

Source: Dawn

Dawn Magazine took the debate of adopting the Roman script for Punjabi to Dr Saeed Bhutta, associate professor of Punjabi at the Punjab University. Besides being a teacher committed to the teaching of his native language, Dr Saeed Bhutta is also a research scholar and has six books on Punjabi criticism to his credit. Here is what he had to say on the subject:

This is not a new suggestion at all. In fact, this was first tried in the colonial period following the annexation of Punjab in 1849 by the British. Gazetteers from the period as well as original documents with the archives department tell us that British bureaucrats and missionaries tried to pursue the cause. Even a Punjabi dictionary using the Roman alphabet was put together. But the suggestion could not take off.

A similar attempt was made with Urdu during the Raj, citing similar reasons, and documents to the effect also exist. An entire manuscript of Urdu written in Roman is a precious treasure of the Lahore Museum. The British argument at the time was that the Urdu-Hindi controversy could die down if Roman alphabet was adopted for both.

It not a matter of building bridges among Punjabis living in east and west Punjab and in the diaspora, in Canada, the UK and elsewhere, for instance. There are cultural reasons and historical affiliations for the use of both Persian-Urdu script here and the Gurmukhi script in east Punjab, said Dr Bhutta.

The classical Punjabi poetry of Muslim sufis was written in the Perso-Arabic script, as it was known back then. Baba Guru Nanak himself was not Gurmukhi-literate, and he also used the same script to pen down his works because that was the script for Punjabi in West Punjab. In parts of East Punjab, the script used by traders, which later came to be known as Gurmukhi, held sway, Dr Bhutta explained.

It is not going to be easy for either Muslims or Sikhs to part ways with their traditional and religious heritage conserved in their respective scripts which they have used for centuries, Dr Bhutta contended, adding there was no pressing need to do so.

If there is a problem with the younger generation growing up in the diaspora, then they are welcome to evolve a Roman script for Punjabi, but that will have to be a natural process over a period of time, one that cannot be imposed superficially, he said.

It may be interesting to note here that such a development is already in the offing. One need only log on to the regional Google search engine, as displayed in India and Pakistan, to get a taste of Punjabi written in Roman. The Google commands in Punjabi are unmistakably in the dialect spoken in East Punjab, and thus more Sanskritized as opposed to the Punjabi spoken in Pakistan, which is Persianized.

On a different note, Dr Bhutta believes that the Gurmukhi script is phonetically better equipped to handle Punjabi and its nuances as against its Urdu/Persian-inspired alphabet used, albeit sparingly, in Pakistan.

Having the ability to read both scripts with equal facility, he said,The 46 Gurmukhi letters of the alphabet can enunciate most, if not all, sounds spoken in the Punjabi language. By comparison, the 46 to 52 or so letters that we have evolved in our written version of the language in Pakistan, still leave quite a bit of room for confusion.

It seems that it is only in Pakistan and among the Pakistani Punjabi diaspora that the debate of writing Punjabi and pushing for its introduction as a medium of instruction at the primary level have acquired some currency in recent years. The Indians have been teaching Punjabi in schools ever since independence and the written language on their side is as alive and growing as its spoken counterpart.

Part of the reason is that the state in India has not promoted Hindi at the expense of native regional languages, which are all granted the co-status of being national languages on a par with Hindi in respective states. In Pakistan, as far as Punjabi is concerned, no academy exists with the ostensible aim of promoting the written word in Punjabi. By comparison, Indian state institutions publish thousands of books in Punjabi on an annual basis.

The Punjab University is the only institution in the province that has a fully functional Punjabi department. The number of students enrolled at the Masters level is around 50, while those at the doctorate level is currently 15, confides Dr Bhutta.

He said the total number of teachers assigned to teaching Punjabi as an elective subject in colleges throughout the province is around 140. But unless there are jobs waiting for those graduating with Punjabi as their major, there is little point in increasing the number of seats just for the sake of promoting Punjabi, he concluded.