JALANDHAR: The Punjab government has now mandated that shops and commercial establishments in the state must have Punjabi script Gurmukhi on their signboards. Punjabi music has already taken the language to faroff places among non-Punjabis, but for around a century, there have been strong efforts to discourage the Punjabi language within the state. Efforts and arguments to belittle Punjabi came in different shapes at different times, projecting it as an inferior language or with a lot of limitations.
If, for close to half a century, propaganda against the language was on communal lines, clear evidence of which is available even in census reports of 1931 and then census of 1951 and 1961, in the last few decades, the language was discouraged without open communal or hate propaganda. Several private schools have been discouraging students from conversing in Punjabi, without offering any scientific reasons.
A few state government communiques have already warned against such practices. It is against this backdrop that the question of language remains a touchy issue in the state. “Our language has immense potentialities and is pregnant with a rare linguistic genius if only we care to nurture and develop it. Let it not be said that race of Panini — the Punjabi savant, who gave the word the most concise treatise on grammar — is extinct in the land of its origin,” wrote Prof O P Kahol, while concluding his book, ‘Hindus And The Punjabi State’, published in 1955 by the Hindu Prachara Sabha, Ambala Cantonment.
He also wrote: “We want a Punjabi State for the unfoldment of Punjabi genius – nothing more, nothing less.” Amid the bitter communal and dominating narrative of those times, Kahol made these remarks after an elaborate discussion on the antiquity of the Punjabi language and examined almost all arguments put forth against the language and its script — Gurmukhi. This was in addition to examining the politics of the language and the damage it was causing. He remained a member of the working committee and central parliamentary board of All-India Hindu Mahasabha. “The vocabulary of Punjabi is much the same as that of Pali and Prakritas (Prakrit). In other words, the vocabulary and phonic system of Punjabi have remained much the same during the last two-millenniaand-a-half … If the contention of some of the Western scholars that Sanskrit and Prakrit once co-existed, be accepted as correct – and it is not yet proved otherwise – then the majority of the words prevailing in Punjabi today, appear to be as old as Sanskrit,” he wrote.
Discussing ‘Antiquity of Punjabi Vocabulary’, as he discussed arguments put forth by protagonists of Hindi to show the latter’s superiority over Punjabi, Kahol concluded, after quoting several examples of words from Sanskrit and Hindi: “Punjabi vocabulary (is) much older than Hindi.” “Very few Hindi words are more than one thousand years old and the majority of them are not older than 500 years. The forms of Punjabi words are two and in some cases three thousand years old,” he held. Kahol also argued that Punjabi was much closer to Sanskrit, while the nearness of Hindi to Sanskrit was “superficial”. Discussing antiquity, he provided a list of Punjabi words from Buddhist, Gupta, and Jain(a) literature.
He wrote: “Such is the close parallelism between modern Punjabi and the language spoken by Lord Mahavira, over 2,000 years ago.” In his book, Kahol discussed the anti-Punjabi language politics and the ideological and political groups behind it. He held Punjab as “the real victim of communal bias” and argued that “Hindi imperialism must go”. He wrote strongly against the “false propaganda against Punjabi”. Kahol criticised Arya Samajists and Jan Sangh in his book for their stance on Punjabi and Gurmukhi, and Congress for its politics on the issue in Punjabi language and Gurmukhi script, which had its impact in the 1961 Census also. Five years after Kahol’s book, RSS chief Guru MS Golwalkar took a similar line.
At a meeting in Jalandhar in 1960, he remarked: “Punjabi is the mother tongue of every Punjabi.” Golwalkar’s advice has also been documented in his book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’. Things changed after the reorganisation of Punjab in 1966.
“Though several private schools continue discouraging Punjabi and several parents too, it is now becoming more of a class issue. Now nobody can afford to do any propaganda against Punjabi, but the trend to discourage the language needs to be checked. People have learnt their lessons also, though at a huge cost. Punjabi music has helped popularise the language and Punjabis across communities take pride in that. Punjabi Hindus have also gotten quite conscious about their identity and language,” says journalist and commentator Rakesh Shantidoot.
‘A scholarly work’Professor Amritjit Singh, emeritus professor of English at Ohio University, knew Prof O P Kahol quite well as a student, when the latter taught Physics at SD College and then at GMN College in Ambala Cantonment.
“Professor Kahol’s work was of solid scholarship and he expressed it with great courage to reject the prevailing view. He gave strong citations and examples to whatever he wrote on the issue of language and script, especially when he established the antiquity of Punjabi language and argued about its closeness to Sanskrit,” said Prof Amritjit. “His work with academic vigour and his views on the politics around it surprised many as he was a dhoti wearing Brahmin, taking pride in his Punjabi identity and going against dominating view among Hindu groups on the issue.” Prof Amritjit was not professor Kahol’s class, but studied in the same college.
1931 story root of the language debate➤ Though it is widely known that vigorous campaigns were carried out urging people on communal lines to register Hindi as their mother tongue in place of Punjabi before the 1951 and 1961 census, this propaganda had its roots in pre-Partition times. In the Census of India, 1931, Volume XVII, Punjab Part I Report, superintendent of census operations (Punjab and Delhi) Khan Ahmad Hasan Khan mentioned: “The district officers of several districts have mentioned in their reports on the census enumeration that numerous persons in some admittedly Punjabi-speaking urban areas, both Hindus and Muslims, insisted upon returning Hindi or Urdu as their mother tongue.”
➤ The report informed that in that census, Hindi and Urdu were recorded as Hindustani.
➤ The report reproduced a handbill printed by The Census Committee, Arya Samaj, Wachhowali, Lahore, and “distributed far and wide on the eve of the preliminary enumeration”. Titled “Remember! Census operations have begun” the handbill appealed people to their mention religion as Vedic Dharm, sect as Arya Samajist, caste as nil, race as Aryan, and language as Arya Bhasha (Hindi).
➤ “In a town in the Gujranwala district, I myself had to remonstrate with certain persons, who were in possession of the handbill and want to return Hindi in place of Punjabi as their mother tongue. In Lyallpur Town, a Muslim barrister … enquired whether he could return Urdu as his mother tongue….,” Khan wrote, adding that as many persons returned Urdu or Hindi as their mother tongue, the figures of Hindustani had been unduly swollen at the expense of Punjabi. “This was the origin of the language controversy in Punjab,” noted late Hukam Singh, who remained a member of the Constituency Assembly and later speaker of Lok Sabha, in an elucidation he wrote as an MP of Shiromani Akali Dal and published by the party in 1950s.
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