By Hafizur Rahman

The Nation Lahore Edition, Islamabad Edition.

Long ago, I was asked by a friend to write an article for his Punjabi monthly journal and I still remember the opening sentences of what I wrote. I said, "I am one of those whose one foot is in the Urdu boat and the other in the English boat while their heads are in the Punjabi clouds" or words to that effect, in which the predicament of the Punjabi-speaking people was conveyed to some extent.

The predicament arises out of the fact that the Punjabi refuses to treat his mother tongue as a vehicle for written expression. He will shout from the housetops about giving Punjabi its rightful place in the affairs of the nation as the most widely spoken provincial language. He will stress day in and day out on the cultural necessity of speaking Punjabi with one's children. He will laud the efforts to bring out a Punjabi newspaper. He will quote Warns Shah and other classical Punjabi writers on every occasion. But...
But, (and herein lies the rub) when he wants to send a two-line chit to someone he'll write it in Urdu or English, he'll talk with his children in Urdu, he never reads a Punjabi book, nor did he ever look at the Punjabi daily when it was being published from Lahore by an Urdu-speaking journalist. (Yes, an Urdu-speaking journalist, Hussain Naqi). Verily his head is in the Punjabi clouds. The ideals are there but the practice is absent.

Whatever the causes for this state of affairs, as traced out by scholars and linguistics experts like Dr Tariq Rahman and others, the Punjabi is involved in a paradox. He is in a state of uncertainty, a trauma caused by his allegiance to the national language, the necessity of English for material advancement and a sentimental attachment to his mother tongue.

When he is among Pathans, Sindhis or Balochis and hears them talking in their respective mother tongues, he is assailed by complexes. These, he counters by consoling himself that he is in that peculiar situation because of his loyalty to the country and us national language. He thinks that he is making a sacrifice for their sake by not making Punjabi a part and parcel of his daily life, and unconsciously assumes the role of defender of ideology, or the 'sole contractor", as ridiculed by the other three provinces.

Why is not Punjabi used for written communication among its adherents? There are probably historical, sociological and perhaps even political reasons. Living in the same region, and under similar political influences, how did the Sikhs in East Punjab manage to retain Punjabi as a means of mutual exchange, as a vehicle for poetry and literature, as a medium of instruction up to the post-graduate level and as the avenue for mass communication through newspapers? Maybe because Punjabi gave them a distinct identity in the multilingual and multi-racial Indian nation. The trouble with writing about Punjabi as the language of the Punjabi people is that one can only ask questions. Even if there are adequate and satisfactory answers (which I doubt), they do not help to solve the problem and only make it more difficult to understand and explain. I am not a scholar or a historian to try to find out the causes that go back to one or more centuries, particularly in view of the success of the Sikhs and in the context of the role of the early British educationists who replaced Persian with Urdu. My treatment of the issue can only skim the surface.

You may well ask: then why do I have to write about the matter at all? What is the big idea? Why not leave the issue to scholars and historians that is if it really bothers them? My reply would be that I am only voicing the sentiments of the educated Punjabi who is frequently bothered by the dilemma - a dilemma of his own making that has left him in a love-hate relationship with his mother tongue.

Even this reality of the mother tongue is fast changing among the urban educated Punjabis. Girls nurtured on Urdu by their complex-ridden parents have children whose mother tongue is no longer Punjabi. The other day I came across a rare phenomenon at a party. I actually caught a young DMG officer speaking Punjabi with his four-year old son, while his mother was unable to communicate with the child in his "father tongue." Struck with curiosity, I couldn't help asking the young man about this unique situation. His explanation was: "The kid is bound to learn Urdu in school (just as we and our elders did, or children in the villages do even now) but he must learn to speak Punjabi with his parents, or at least with his father." At the same time, the Punjabi enthusiast in him was not unduly worried by the fact that his young wife could not contribute to his idea.

I am not chauvinistic about Punjabi. What happened was that when we were in our teens, Urdu and Pakistan began to be taken to indicate the same ideal. We, in Punjab, were just not conscious of the fact that the people of the other areas which were to form Pakistan, Bengalis especially, would want to retain the use of their mother tongue (a language much more developed than Urdu) in the new country. We did not realise that the demand for Pakistan was based on Muslim nationhood and not on Urdu. It was only when Pakistan came into being and we were confronted by the numerically superior Bengalis who read, spoke and wrote the rich Bengali language that we began to see the problem in its true perspective. Our consciousness of Punjabi also dates from that time. For most people in this Province, Punjabi vis-à-vis Urdu is not an issue and they don't lose their sleep over it. But, as time passes, awareness of the anomaly that we are the only people in Pakistan who keep disowning their mother tongue is spreading and becoming more and more acute. There is one sphere in particular in which it is most acute. And that is communication between the educated urbanite and the unsophisticated rural Punjabi.

An enlightened person from Lahore is just unable to share the thoughts and worries, and the idiom of men and women in the villages. He will speak with them in a Punjabi that is laced with learned Urdu and English expressions that come naturally to educated urbanites. To a villager, they are foreign words. Moreover, the village Punjabi is virile and rich in similes and metaphors, while the Urdu that we speak, is lifeless and hardly bears resemblance to the language in India of the people whose mother tongue it was. The result is lack of rapport.

I don't have any answers to the many questions that I have posed, and I do feel frustrated about it. We must decide what we want to do with our mother tongue, and the decision is to be taken by the enlightened urban Punjabi. Meantime, the dilemma persists.