Issue 6 Vol I, December 31, 2005

Culture

Origin of Punjabi Language, Literature and Culture
Professor J.S. Grewal

Language is not always a vehicle of communication and thought in the sub continent. It has been at the center of parochial and communal politics for long time. Region and religion have often clouded our vision about language and culture and our approach has neither been rational nor open. Eminent historian Professor J.S. Grewal who has been Vice Chancellor of the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and Director of Indian Institute of Advanced Study Shimla, discusses origin of Punjabi language, literature and culture in this four-part series.  This is the second part.

The Turko-Afghan or the Mughal state had little directly to do with the development of the regional language. Persian remained the language of government and administration, diplomacy, and elite culture till the early nineteenth century. It contributed a good deal of vocabulary to the language of the people. Indirectly, even the state policies were not altogether irrelevant. The most remarkable and lasting effect of Akbar's administrative measures was the name `Punjabi' for the language of the people of the north-west. Akbar enlarged the province of Lahore and gave it the name `Panjab'. This word does not occur in the Tuzki-i Baburi but occurs frequently in the Akbarnama as a synonym for the province of Lahore. The language called Lahauri by Amir Khusrau in the fourteenth century now became 'Panjabi'. The epithet came to be applied to the people of the Punjab as well as their language. However, the language was not confined to the province of Lahore. It was territorially much larger, just as it was historically much older, than Akbar's Punjab.

In the seventeenth century we see the scope of Punjabi literature expanding in several ways. The Vars of Bhai Gurdas, each a masterpiece of Punjabi poetry, have been seen by Sikh scholars as the key to the Granth Sahib. It is true that Bhai Gurdas sings of = Sikh beliefs and practices but he sings also of the Sikh Panth. In fact the social and cultural life of the region finds ample space in his Vars. A new form of Punjabi literature took shape in the seventeenth century: the Janamsakhi. Among many other things, the Janamsakhis represent the earliest examples of Punjabi prose which is remarkable for its simplicity and economy of expression. The Sufi poets carried forward the literary tradition of Shaikh Farid and Shah Husain. Damodar Gulali, a writer of the Multan region, composed the qissa of Hir as a piece of secular literature to be sung by minstrels for all Punjabis - Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh.

These trends were strengthened in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Apart from some new Janamsakhis we come upon Gurbilas literature, starting with Sainapat's Gursobha in the early eighteenth century and culminating in the classic works of Bhai Santokh Singh and Ratan Singh Bhangu, both completed in the 1840s. In between we have the works of Koer Singh Kalal, Kesar Singh Chhibber, Sarup Das Bhalla, and Sukha Singh, besides the almost anonymous Var attributed to the second Bhai Gurdas and Gurbilas Patshahi Chhevin attributed to Sohan Kavi. To these works should be added the whole range of rahitnama literature in prose and verse. There is hardly any doubt that Sikh writers took to Punjabi, or the popular bhakha, in a big way to produce quasi-religious, quasi-biographical, and quasi-historical works.

The Muslim writers of the period used Punjabi for propagating orthodox Muslim ideas and practices apart from producing mystical poetry. Muqbal, Ahmad and Waris Shah produced their own versions of the secular story of Hir and Ranjha, introducing some Sufi elements on the model of romances (masnavis) written in Persian. Whereas the Hir of Damodar could be sung by ministrels, the Hir of Waris in its famous bait was meant to be recited, like the Qur'an. The stories of Sohni-Mahiwal and Sassi-Punnun were assimilated in treatment to the stories of Yusuf-Zulekha, Shirin-Farhad, and Laila-Majnun. If indigenous tales were sought in a sense to be Persianized, the Perso-Arabic tales were sought to be indigenized. All the major Punjabi poets of the period tried to make a mark in the genre of qissa which essentially was a secular form of literature.

The secular character of Pilu's Mirza, written in a familiar metre of the Punjab (so popular indeed that it was used in Gurbani), serves as a reminder that the other love stories too were initially entirely secular. In this context, we can appreciate Qadir Yar's Puran Bhagat. In its basic outline the story had entered Buddhist lore. Yuan Chwang refers to it, like the story of Sarwan, in connection with a bodhisattva of the earlier times. A present day Muslim scholar suggests that Qadir Yar wrote his Puran Bhagat not as a Muslim but as a Punjabi. Indeed, his work was meant to be read or heard by all Punjabis. This is even more true of his iiai*- on Hari Singh Nalwa in which the Punjabis are pitted against Afghans to demonstrate the invincible courage and valour of the Punjabis. The consciousness of Punjabi identity is very striking in Shah Muhammad who looks upon the Anglo-Sikh war of 1845-46 as a war between Hind and the Punjab. Waris Shah did not appreciate Jat rule in the Punjab but he thought of the Punjab as a distinct and beautiful part of Hind. Ahmad Yar praises the region and its language. The period of Sikh rule, it seems, had something to do with this enhanced sense of Punjabi identity. The Sikh rulers belonged to the region and they associated other Punjabis, both Hindu and Muslim, with their government and administration.

WHO is an exile? What constitutes diaspora and their writing or painting? It is different any way?  Is exile related to mere physical deportation to some alien lands or is exile an inner state of mind and has nothing to do with overseas migration. Can one be an exile in one's own home, among one's own people and culture? How do we describe the situation which is not peculiar to Punjabis alone, but is a world wide phenomenon? So  many universities across the world have special  departments devoted to diaspora literature and arts.  There is one at Amritsar, active and creative, both. Our Associate Editor, Dr. Jaspal Singh travelled to Amritsar, spent two  hectic days discussing and understanding this dilemma.

Centre for Immigrant Studies, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar organised a two-day seminar on Diasporic Studies in December 2005. The participants in this seminar are supposed to be well-known members of the university academia in North India that included Prof. H.S.Gill of the JNU fame, Prof. Bhim Singh Dahiya, former Vice-Chancellor, Kurukshetra University, Harish Narang, Professor of English, JNU, Manjitinder Singh Professor of English, Punjabi University, Patiala, T.S.Gill, former Professor of English, Guru Nanak Dev University, Jaspal Singh, Editor Desh Sewak, Chandigarh, Saugata Bhaduri of JNU, Anuradha Ghose of Jamia Milia, Parminder Singh, GNDU, Jaspreet Maudher, Punjabi University, Patiala, Charu Sharma from Dharamshala, Som P.Ranchan from Shimla, Narinder Neb from Jalandhar, Tejinder Kaur, Punjabi University, Patiala, Sudha Rai, Rajasthan University, Jaipur, Verne Dusenbery from Hamline University, St. Paul, MN, USA, Jaiwanti Dimri, H.P. University, Shimla and a galaxy of other scholars both known and not so known in the academic circles. Themes of the papers presented had a vast range including Diasporic Aesthetics, Cultural Identity, Pangs of the Lost Homeland, Poetics of Punjabi Diaspora, Margins within Margins of the Diaspora Communities, Disintegration of the Diasporic Family Structure, Problems of Ethnicity and Nationality, Alternative Perspectives to Diasporic Studies across the Channel and also across the Atlantic, Problems of Migration and Exile, the Imagined World and the Diasporic Theories, the Immigrant Predicament, Multiculturalism and the Ethnic Problems associated with the Alien World, the Sikh Diaspora and the Collective Representation in Multicultural States and so on.

The scholars had diverse intellectual background, though most of them were drawn from the English literary studies. There were scholars from Anthropology, Linguistics, Semiotics, Anthropological Linguistics, Punjabi Literature, and Political Theory and even from Media Studies. Most of the presentations were focussed on Punjabi diasporic literature which is better known as 'Parvasi Sahit'. The writings of Punjabi writers from Canada, the U.S.A. and Britain were the subject matter of most of the presentations. H.S.Gill raised a dissenting voice in his own combative style and stated that the diasporic studies ought to deal with existential problems of human beings rather than presenting drab descriptions of the visually perceptible phenomena. Harish Narang was mainly concerned with the changed world-view after the events of 9/11. He maintained that the entire Western world now after 9/11 and 7/7 are possessed by paranoia of the worst kind. South Asians are forced to live in an atmosphere of fear, distrust and cultural isolation. He was particularly piqued at the insensitive killings of a Sikh, a Brazilian, a few North Africans and a Latino by the security organisations of some of the Western countries. Since these atrocities were perpetrated with impunity, it smacks of a paradigm shift in the mindset of the establishments in these countries. Jaspal Singh dilated on the problems of ethnicity and nationalities and the recent turmoil in France which may spill over to other countries of Western Europe, particularly Germany and Spain with a huge Turkish and Muslim populations. The words of French Home Minister Nicolas Sarkozi that these people are the 'scum of society' are indicative of a systematic design that may in course of time give an impetus to ethnic cleansing leading to wide spread social turmoil. Some of these situations were further analysed by Saugata Bhaduri, concentrating on the plight of Bengali diaspora in London.

Dr. Devinder Kaur took up some Punjabi short stories by Jarnail Singh, Swaraj Sandhu and Iqbal Ramuwalia's recent novel "The Death of a Passport" to highlight the problems of immigration, family discords and disintegration and the socio-cultural turbulence expressed through psychic disturbances, including depression and schizophrenia which sometimes are manifested through violent physical outburst leading to self annihilation or to internecine gang-warfare. Apart from these complications, there are issues associated with the state of women, the aged and children, living in a situation of voluntary exile. Wherever, the immigrant population is heavily concentrated and has economically settled down, it has started dabbling in politics, thus coming in contest with the mainstream politics of the countries of their adoption. The Sikh immigrants have another problem related with their religious symbols and Gurdwaras. These phenomena have given birth to socio-religious conflicts which at times tarnish the image of the community.

Surprisingly no participant in the seminar talked about some of the most significant writings on the diasporic situation, particularly those by Swarn Chandan, Harjit Atwal, Darshan Dheer, Raghbir Dhand and others. Perhaps they are now treated as old fashioned by the upcoming literary critics.

As a parting comment, Som P.Ranchan said that exile is an inner state of mind and it has nothing to do with overseas migration. He added another dimension to diasporic predicament by declaring with a prophetic solemnity that one can be an exile in one's own home, among one's own people and culture. So the entire diasporic itinerary ended at a point from where it had taken off, with all its tangled phrases, twisted jargon and convoluted concepts leading the audience into nebulous lexical labyrinths of sorts.