Mother Language Day

The Mother Language Day is being celebrated throughout the world on February 21, 2010. In Pakistan generally and Punjab particularly, this day demands special attention of those who love their own language, traditions and culture.

In the mad pursuit of emulating the developed nations of the world, we are ignoring our own language and culture. The native cultural and traditional mores, art and crafts and particularly our native languages are gradually receding, some having gained the status of ‘endangered species’.

At the time of partition of India in 1947, we inherited a trilingual society. English enjoyed the supreme position of official language, whereas Urdu along with English was made language of learning and medium of instruction and Punjabi, the language of the soil and mother tongue of Punjabis, was allowed to survive only as a spoken language. People accepted this as a circumstantial oppression but situation altogether changed after partition when Punjabi was discarded outright for allegedly being the language of Sikhs and Kafirs. Thus within a span of two decades (after independence) trilingual character of our society changed into bilingual, leaving Punjabi at the mercy of highly anti-Punjabi mindset ruling elite and instinctively hostile bureaucracy.

We have almost discarded the use of our mother language Punjabi at all levels and have actually made a deliberate, almost conscious change from the native idiom to alien ones. Languages are a sacred heritage of people as they provide them with a composite set of values encapsulated in their vocabulary, traditions, culture and popular lore for preserving their identity in the world.

Professor lshtiaq Ahmad, a senior Research Fellow at Institute of South Asian Studies, University of Singapore in his essay “Punjabis Without Punjabi” has analysed our predicament in detail terming it a “self-inflicted cultural suicide”. He writes, “In Pakistani Punjab, the Punjabi language continues to be degraded as an inferior language and the sui generis mistreatment of it by the ruling elite of Pakistan is akin to self-inflicted cultural suicide.”

I request the government of Pakistan and Punjab to take positive steps for the promotion of our cultural heritage and language of our forefathers. A 160-year ban (since the Britishers annexed Punjab) on Punjabi as a compulsory subject and medium of instruction must be lifted. Punjabi along with Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi should be declared national languages of Pakistan. It is time to learn history and never forget that it was language issue which sowed the seeds of cessation in the minds of Bengalis in 1962.

For how long we will deny the right of primary education in their mother tongue to the Punjabi children like the children of rest of the world? How can an individual, even a nation as a whole, can be called ‘literate’ when they cannot read or write in their mother tongue?

TARIQ MAHMUD JATALA

Lahore