Issue 64 Vol III, May 31, 2008

F E A T U R E S

Punjabis without Punjabi!
Ishtiaq Ahmed

FOR quite some time now reference is being made on both Pakistani and Indian Punjabi Internet networks to a UNESCO report that allegedly predicts that in the next 50 years the Punjabi language will become extinct. I have tried in vain to get hold of the report to make sure it is not a hoax. My dear friend, Sardar Gobind Thukral, has assured me that some such a report did appear, which warned that many languages were fast disappearing. Languages threatened with extinction are spoken by miniscule tribes whose members are dying out or being assimilated into the mainstream. However, this explanation cannot apply to Punjabi.

Demography and power -- political, economic and military -- do not suggest that the Punjabis are by any means a weak nationality or ethnicity. Consider the fact that some 100-120 million human beings can be classified as ethnic Punjabis. Punjabi is an Indo-Iranian language within the larger family of Indo-European languages. The Punjabi people are a mixture of perhaps one of the most varied ethnic pool in the world, as Punjab has been receiving waves and waves of people entering the subcontinent from the north-western mountain passes, as well as smaller movements from the south and east of the subcontinent towards this region.

The current breakdown of the Punjabi people is roughly like this: Eighty million Punjabis live mainly in Pakistan's western Punjab and constitute 55 percent of its total population; 30 million in India, mainly in Indian eastern Punjab but with a strong presence in Haryana and the greater Delhi region. Roughly, that translates to three percent of the total Indian population. Some 10 million are dispersed outside the Indian subcontinent, with strong presence in Britain, North America, Southeast Asia (nearly 130,000 Sikhs in Malaysia alone) and the Middle East. In terms of religious affiliation, some 54 percent are Muslims, 29 percent Hindus and 14 percent Sikhs. A three-percent minority is Christian.

With regard to power, the situation is even more dramatic. Pakistan is virtually a Punjabi state in terms of political, military and, now, even economic power. On the other hand, while in India Punjabis are a small minority they are one of the most prosperous nationalities, East Punjab being one of the top three big states enjoying the highest per capita income. The Indian military has a disproportionately larger number of Punjabis, especially among officers.

Three Indian prime ministers -- Gulzari Lal Nanda, Inder Kumar Gujral and Dr Manmohan Singh -- can be classified as bona fide Punjabis, while the mother of Jawaharlal Nehru was not only a Punjabi but from Lahore. Two Nobel Prize winners have been Punjabis: Professor Hargobind Khorana from India and Professor Abdus Salam from Pakistan. When it comes to Bollywood and Lollywood as well as cricket and other sports, Punjabis are conspicuous in all these branches of public life. Given such favourable data, how do we explain the rapid decline of the Punjabi language?

We need to understand this in terms of both historical and contemporary contexts. With regard to the historical explanation, it is to be noted that Punjabi never attained the status of state language of a sovereign state at any point in time and remained the language of the common people. However, between the 16th and first half of the 19th century Punjabi culture flourished as the Sikh Gurus, Muslim sufis and the Hindu bhagtis ventilated their anti-establishment messages in a strong Punjabi idiom. However, when the only son of the soil, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799-1839), founded a kingdom in this region, official communications continued to be conducted in Persian.

After the annexation of Punjab by the British in 1849, they decided to introduce Urdu as the state language as it was already in use in other territories under British control. It was also felt that urban Punjabi was a close kin of Urdu and Hindi. This is, of course, true and there is no reason not to acknowledge this affinity. In any case, Punjabi never received the patronage of the state. The first modern Punjabi dictionary was produced in the mid-19th century by Christian missionaries based in Ludhiana.

The first half of the 20th century found the communal virus infecting Punjabi identity. Ironically, the first provocation came from the Sikhs, when Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957) began to insist that the Punjabi language was the exclusive preserve of the Sikhs. Not surprisingly, both Hindus and Muslims who had strong cultural links with the rest of India began to assert that their "mother tongue" was Hindi and Urdu, respectively. Such communalisation culminated in the partition of India in 1947, which in reality was the partition of Punjab and Bengal. The partition of Punjab took place over the bodies of 800,000 to 1,000,000 Punjabis. The veteran Indian journalist Rajinder Puri captured the agony of the Punjabis in the following words:

"After partition the Punjabis disappeared. In West Punjab they became Pakistanis. In East Punjab they became Hindus and Sikhs. They also became Akalis and Congressmen, Arya Samajists and Jan Sanghis. Never Punjabis."

This was written in 1985. One can expand on this process of fission and say that the Pakistani Muslim Punjabis became Sunnis, Shias and Ahmadis, and from time to time one hears also about them becoming Saraiki-speakers and Potohari-speakers in opposition to the Lahori-speaking Punjabis, while in India, besides the Hindu-Sikh distinction, the Sikhs went on to distinguish themselves as Khalsas and other sects.

In Pakistani Punjab, Punjabi continued to be degraded as an inferior language, and if ever a case of self-inflicted cultural suicide, or rather genocide is to be taken up by the Security Council (under the UN Convention on Genocide cultural genocide is considered a major crime against humanity), it will be the sui generis mistreatment by the Punjabi ruling elites of Pakistan of their own mother tongue. The situation is better in Indian Punjab because Sikh identity is inseparable from the Punjabi language and Punjabi is the official language of that province, but Hindi and English are encroaching upon Punjabi as Sikh peasants become urban dwellers and develop unorthodox lifestyles.

In the next article we will review what can be done to restore Punjabi to its proper status among the living languages of the world. To fight the uphill battle for Punjabi we would need the help of all Punjabis.

[The writer is a professor of political science and a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore. Email: isasia@nus.edu.sg]

BACK

Casting aside the Caste
Randeep Wadehra / Amar Nath Wadehra

OURS is a stratified society. This stratification is so complex that we need a different terminology for it. Stratification conjures up layers upon layers of social distribution. In fact, the divisions in our society are horizontal as well as vertical. Every caste is essentially a community in itself, albeit subdivided into sub-castes, with well defined pecking order along with attendant do’s and don’ts. The plethora of sects, sub-sects, castes and sub-castes in our society indicates the extravagance of our pluralism... No wonder it has evolved into a bundle of curious contradictions, viz., assimilation and exclusivity.

Recently there has been an upsurge of interest in genesis of the caste system. If Dipankar Gupta has written an entire book on the whys and wherefores of caste system, then Madhuri Santanam Sondhi and John Keay have shown more than passing interest in the phenomenon in their respective works. And this list of authors is by no means complete. While a section of the intelligentsia looks askance at the process of 'going back to the roots', another school of thought feels that a lot of good can come out of it provided one tries to understand the original basis for the social stratification, which has its genesis as much in economic disparity as in the esoteric processes of history.

For some the system is an obnoxious reality, while for others it is a time-tested mechanism that helps the society cope with the dynamics of ever changing social and economic scenarios. Caste system was never an 'ism', but a scientific tool for division of labour, others claim. Moreover, it’s pointed out, the very fact that it is the most enduring anachronism testifies to its utility even in the contemporary India. It provides one with an identity that is distinct and indelible. If its study helps us to broaden our outlook rather than narrow it down, it can serve a useful social purpose. For example, we learn that not all Brahmins were ethnic Aryans and not all Shudras were non-Aryans. In the latter category one can include those Brahmins who were ethnic Aryans but for some reason were condemned and ‘downgraded’ to the caste of Chandalas. Let’s not forget that ‘low’ and ‘high’ castes reflected societal mores in a specific time frame. There was a time when along with savarna caste rulers, Shudra kings too existed.

One would do well to remember that in the ancient texts the term 'Arya' was not used to denote ethnicity but a certain lifestyle. Erroneously or otherwise, it came to be associated with civilized people in the subcontinent. Thus any ethnic group or sub-group could be called Aryan if its lifestyle was identical to the one described in the Vedas and other relevant texts. Caste is thus the outcome of the Aryanization process of India. Observes John Keay, "An Aryanized society may be defined as one in which primacy is accorded to a particular language (Sanskrit), to an authoritative priesthood (Brahmans) and to a hierarchical social structure (caste)..."

Later on, with the advent of alien religious groups that came and settled in the subcontinent, the system tried to come to terms with the new situation. Sondhi observes, "Not for centuries but for millennia, Indian society has cohered and survived as a group society, where important decisions are taken by consensus or conformity. This social organization was able to accommodate the influx of waves of outsiders, not always into the religious system of the Hindus, though that also occurred, but into the group structure of the society. When the Muslims finally settled down, relatively speaking, after a period of invasion and conquest, they were able to adjust to the implicit rules of the caste system. Whole castes which converted to Islam retained many of their customs and position in society with perhaps marginal improvements, newcomers settled into castes of their own, and the basis of Hindu-Muslim coexistence was the received tradition of mutual recognition and differentiation arising out of separate ritual, dietary and marriage customs".

Christians and Sikhs, who claim their respective societies as monolithic and egalitarian, too are stratified on caste basis. Of course, this division is unofficial but as real as the one existing in the Hindu society.

Caste-consciousness envelops our psyche like an ancient shroud, which we are unable to shed owing to centuries of mental conditioning. Presently, the crystallization of caste groups has intensified inter-caste rivalry for a share in the national pie – the current Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan bears this out. Consequently, the phrase 'Caste Wars' might gain increasing national currency. And that's not good news for the common man.

But there’s hope.

Karl Marx had once remarked, "Society… expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which… individuals stand". However imperceptibly, these interrelations are undergoing metamorphosis in the Indian society. One says this when one looks at trends in the upper and upper-middle classes. Commonality of interests and not caste affinity dictates social and economic relationships among these classes. This trend is bound to percolate down the line when we notice that caste is no more as influential in the choice of one's profession or specialization in any field of activity.

This post-modernist trend, despite being ill defined at present, might yet break the traditional caste superstructure. Some might term such an eventuality as "Paradise Regained".

BACK