Punjabi language not oppressed from outside, says Dr Ishtiaq

LAHORE: Why has Punjabi been relegated to a secondary language in Punjab, Pakistan? Who is responsible for it? What to do so that people start speaking their language and take pride in it? Questions raised at a conference — ‘JagatMaaBoliDeharr’ — held on Monday at Alhamra.

The speakers were DrIshtiaq Ahmad, Khalid Mahmood and AbidSaqi. Waqas Ahmed Shahbaz was the moderator. DrIshtiaq Ahmed, a political scientist, said there are many conspiracy theories but there is no evidence. He said Punjabi language is not being oppressed from outside as civil-military bureaucracy and the elite are all predominantly Punjabi.

He said the Mughals had two centres — Delhi-Agra and Kabul and kept Persian as the official language. Urdu was found efficient by the English. Even Ranjit Sigh did not make Punjabi the state language.

“Sir Syed put forth that Urdu is exclusively the language of Muslims. The Urdu-Hindi conflict was only of script. In 1908 one professor Mukherjee said Punjabi should be the official language,” DrIshtiaq put the facts before people.

“In my book ‘Jinnah, Successes, Failures and Role in History’, I have quoted Muslim League as saying, ‘Urdu is the mother tongue’. Fifty-five percent of the population didn’t know Urdu in Pakistan then. This is tragedy of the languages,” he said.

“Now, there are all Punjabis in the Punjab Assembly. Change has to come at the level of the state. It’s the elite who should be questioned,” he concluded.

The conference was dedicated to Lakht Pasha who wrote more than 200 plays in Punjabi and staged them too in LokRehas. He passed away last year. Khalid Mahmood who worked along Lakht Pasha and is also his brother, talked about Lakht Pasha who viewed all cultural activities as political. Born in December 1947, Pasha studied literature and started writing stories early in a magazine AdaabArz.

“He joined Bhashani group in 1966-67 but this did not last long. Awami National Party belonged to Bangladesh. After 1970 C.R Aslam and Maj Ishaq who were in AWP, formed their own groups. Meanwhile, many people were attracted to the emerging Pakistan People’s Party but in 1973-74 workers were disillusioned by the PPP. Among them was Lakht Pasha who was in trade union and in close contact with the workers. Pasha said you must know the language of the workers in order to know them. Lakht Pasha made an organization Sophia from which came the poet Bali. Bali is also no more,” he went on to tell Pasha’s journey through life.

“The leftists did not understand the Punjabi language as important. Lakht Pasha would point this out. This is why he did not join any left political group. He was a multi-dimensional person. Apart from great literary talent that he had, he was a singer, played table and was a painter. He came up with the idea of a theatre group Lok Rehas. We have published three of his books on Jung, Freud and Adler in Punjabi,” he said.

“He believed that even if we succeed in establishing Punjabi as the official language, it won’t be able to engage the people. But we want Punjabi to be recognised as official language. Nanak, Bulleh Shah were not religious people as portrayed, they were people’s representatives,” he concluded.

Abid Saqi was among the first few people to work on Maa Boli, as Amjad Saleem Minhas, a publisher and organiser of the conference put it. Saqi said Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi are spoken by the people whose language they are. “Why have we forgotten Punjabi? I have secured order from the Supreme Court to make Punjabi our medium of instruction in the region but there is no implementation,” he said.

At the beginning of the conference the moderator Waqas Ahmed who is a college teacher, said not many students take interest in debates in Punjabi and it is difficult to find a student to do compering in Punjabi at an event. “We need to reflect why people start talking in Urdu when they reach Lahore from other areas in Punjab,” he said.