The Tale of Five Rivers

sameer #32

That was a fantastic post. You really are at your very best when writing about Punjab! (T)

romair #38 ``The most extremist and ignorant of religious information, currently, is spread in local languages``

Your post deserves a more thorough response, but let me just say for now that this is patent nonsense. Even the most rabid mullah in the most isolated village pours out his bile in Urdu. NEVER in Punjabi.

Sameer`s main point is a very cogent and valid one. In West Punjab there is a direct and strong correlation between the strength of Urdu (and hence the weakness of Punjabi) and Islamic radicalism. The revival of Punjabiat and death of Urdu is the most potent antidote to Islamic fanaticism in West Punjab.

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Romair,

I write as an Urdu-speaking Pakistani-Lahori of Punjabi ethnicity...

Punjabi is making a comeback... and Sameerjb is right... I don`t agree with his assertion that the peak of the suffering period was in 1950s or 1960s... that is not true. It seems that the peak of the suffering period might have been in the British times around 1920s and 1930s... and late 1970s upto Mid 1990s ...


Urdu no doubt has achieved a status whereby it is understood by and spoken by everyone in Pakistan... that is actually amazing and a great success... but now more people are dedicating themselves in Punjab to Punjabi and there is a broad consensus over it.... if you want to see how alive Punjabi is , next time you are in Pakistan visit any Ajoka play.... and you will see how punjabi is making a comeback...

Ustad Daman is widely read and admired in Lahore... and the literature for Punjabi is proliferating all over... Similarly you find wonderful new poets in Punjabi rising again... and I`ll let you in on another secret... my Islamist colleague who is gungho about TNT also believes in Punjabi being a superior language to Urdu... quite clearly this Punjabi/Urdu divide is less ideological than it is made out to be....

I think the issue is not as much of what language one speaks but more about the social strata... Urban Middle class, regardless of the language they speak, seem to be more conservative than the rural folk... and the language of the Urban middle class is overwhelmingly Punjabi in Lahore ...


Punjab`s agrarian ethos, and not Punjabi language, is the real cure for fundamentalism...

-YLH

#21 satyamvada

Take a look at this beautiful site on Kabir:


http://www.boloji.com/kabir/


People like Kabir were deeply devout and deeply involved in indian spiritual traditions. Left-wing nuts have tried to hijack people like these and make them out to be violent revolutionaries. It is the most nonsensical back-projection of history, as bad as the VHP/Bajrang dal view of the past. I was so pleased to hear Manmohan denounce ``left and right fundamentalism``. Way to go...

SameerJB #30: ``revival is starting to take place. The suffering phenomenon peaked somewhere during 1950s or 1960s and started declinging. Right now Punjabi language is perhaps the largest cultural trend in Pakistan against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and that bodes well for Punjabi langauge in coming years.``

After providing excellent historical information, you have a tendency to always ruin it by unnecessarily bringing in religion and a bias towards Punjabi, with no factual comments to back up your claims.

There is a revival of Punjabi in Pakistan and it will control religious extremism. You keep saying this without any proof or even descriptions of trends. What have you based this on? How exactly is Punjabi being revived in Pakistan? Unless, of course, you consider Abrar and Sultan Rahi enough to revive a whole language. One needs to analyse these issues outside personal emotions. And what exactly does Punjabi’s revival have to do with controlling religious extremism? I think it would have the opposite effect.

How many degrees are being offered in Punjabi, as a language, in Punjab’s universities? How many Punjabis are dying to get those degrees? How many scientific discoveries are being made in Punjabi? How many books are being sold in Punjabi? When given a choice of medium education, do Punjabi speakers, themselves, prefer Punjabi over Urdu and English? Obviously not. How many nation-states or provinces are adapting Punjabi as a national language? How many poor folk speaking Punjabi would want their kids to continue speaking it, if they could move to Urdu or English?

Of all the languages in the world, Punjabi probably has one of the lowest ratios of book published in comparison to speakers of the language. That is not a sign of a revival.

For a language to survive and grow, it has to be directly attached to economic progress of the people. Otherwise it loses out in the contest of survival of the fittest. Other than rich English-speaking Punjabi expatriates, who have now become nostalgiacally involved with the language, who else is promoting it? Can a person make a decent living with a Masters degree in Punjabi, in Pakistan. He will be even more unemployable than a person with a degree from a madrassah. Since the later can, at least, get a job as a maulvi in a mosque.

Punjabi, in Pakistan, is now only a spoken language. I would not call that a revival. And, as the literacy rate goes up, it will cease to remain even a spoken language. Primarily because there is no way to move up the economic ladder through Punjabi, in Pakistan, nor in the rest of the world. This trend will further increase, as Urdu/Hindi related countries (India and Pakistan) become more attractive markets for the rest of the world.

As for religious extremism, how is Punjabi going to counter it? Most of the religious extremists come from the lower end of the economic spectrum. These are the groups that tend to speak Punjabi, over Urdu and Enlgish. And not Urdu and English, over Punjabi. If the medium of instruction switches to Punjabi, it will actually make it easier for them to understand, “religious extremism” and not more difficult. Moreover, Punjab is already the headquarters of religious extremism in Pakistan. Sapah-e-Sahaba is based in Jhang. Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is based in Muridke. Most of their followers are Punjabi speakers, from the Punjabi speaking lower circle of the economic class. All this nonsense about village maulvis being more in touch with their, “surroundings” is not based on facts. The most extremist and ignorant of religious information, currently, is spread in local languages. Because those are the easiest for the most disenfranchised communities to understand.

One needs to look at issues without emotion and personal biases. I may love Punjabi, but I should not let that cloud my judgement, about its future. The only thing keeping Punjabi alive will be the low literacy rate of Pakistan and its religious importance for Sikhs. Other than that it will die down further, or will eventually get morphed into something else. This happens to all languages which become detached from the economic progress of a society. I doubt it will revive just because we like Bulleh Shah.

Interesting reading....especially the part how West and East Punjab diverged in their approach to the development (or non-development as is the case in Pakistan) of the Punjabi language and literature.

Are there any Punjabi mass circulation newspapers in Pakistan ? What about the local broadcast media ? Is everything in the Lahore area broadcast exclusively in Urdu ?

Omar - Indeed this is one shameless display of plagiarism. I am incensed that my several posts on this board pointing just that out have been censored by Chowk staff.

Tahmed32 - you wrote ``I think it is an article on an interesting subject, but too patchy.``

What else did you expect from a cut and paste job?!!

tenaliramanna #29

Punjabi is not lost in Pakistan, it is very much alive, and the first tongue of the majority of Pakistanis. East Punjabis will never lose their language, as it is imbedded into the Sikh faith. There is more and more cultural interaction between East and West Punjabi ppl. There is a lot more promotion of Punjabi language now in Pakistan also. eg.

http://www.lokpunjab.com/

Sameero

Kiddah, balah chair hogaya koi gall baat nahi sunnee tere koloN... samjha innha na samjhya nuN, aaho!

#32 Ralph

Dear Ralph,
The author has nothing of the sort. He has instead tried to fudge his way out. Please don`t make excuses for a piece of shameless plagiarism.

Sapta Sindhu, this gentleman claims, was how the Persians called Punjab (thereby alluding that these are from Persian language).

Few other ustaads in another context claim HINDUstani classical music as being Pakistani.

If you guys continue this way, then you will probably lay claim to the entire Bharata desh

(or perhaps that was the intent). Folx, we have already seen how Indians manage and India and Pakistanis manage Pakistan.........no sensible 3rd party would say that Pakistan should be given more territory ;-))



Back to the topic.....the author`s lament at the gradual decline of Punjabi language is understandable. Perhaps, it`s a future that most sub continental languages face. However, the reason why it`s more pronounced in case of Punjabi(Pakistan) seems to be
due to the

a) promotion of Urdu as a national language (I`m guessing here)

b) Urdu/Arabic being Islamic languages (w.r.t. Punajbi)
(and people being more catholic than pope in proving their alleigance to Islam / or disowning their roots faster)


Regardless, it`s sad to see the demise of a sub continental language. Hope Indian Punjab doesn`t lose this treasure like those on other side of the border. What a loss !!!

Yaar Nazar, I hope you dont mind me saying that it is not impressive piece. ``A Tale....`` should read like a tale with personal poetic touch, little subjectivity and above all flow of a romantic story. Each sentence should connect to the previous and the next sentence. With such a romantic topic as motherland, it is almost an unforgiveable sin to not present it without beautifying. The impression from such domatic topic written as a tale should have been no less than a picturesque travelogue.

There are many things which should have been done to make it look better. Not over-emphasis on political history was one of them. Even within history, the defining period of Punjab is actually least available in the books because it does not connect in anyway with India, Pakistan, Islam, Hinduism or Sikhism. The biggest influence of Punjabi identity in the form of traditioins and culture (including language) is pre-Alexanderian and post-Gupta period until central Asian hordes and Afghans started invading (pre-200 BC and around 600-1100 AD). Pre-Alexanderian history is understandably difficult to ascertain except for vedic literature but the history of the period after the fall of Gupta until the attacks of Mahmud Ghaznavi is available through search, albeit with difficulty.

This is the period when distinct Punjabi identity and culture took shape. During this period a dialect of Prakrit called Abhramsa gave rise to Punjabi language under the rules of several small, fiercely independent states often refered to as rule of white huns or rule of scythian princes. Each kingdon lasted about 100-200 years with centers such as Salpura, Scala (Sialkot), Multan, Bhakkar, Lahore etc. This is the period when tribal identites provided the biggest force to sustain a prince kingdon, who could be now refered to Jats and Rajputs. This is the period which shaped the Punjabi mind as indifferent to larger political trends and later Islamic kingdoms of subcontinent. This period obliterated Brahmin as any meanngful power (religion or otherwise) in the region and also destroyed the myths or realities of caste system in the region because smaller kingdons needed most able bodies to participate in defence of the kingdom. They could not keep a large segment of population outside the affairs of the state. This period reduced Brahmins to the level of modern day village mullah. Punjabi self-centered identity is very much the product of this isolation period. Unlike previous traditions, these huns or Scythians started burying their deads, particularly the rulers. Actually the first written word Jat is on the tombstone of one prince of Salpura.

The larger empires priod which most history books describe and you mentioned were more interested in Gandhara region in the north and Sindh in the south of Punjab. Probably Punjabis living during this period always succeeded in keeping the non-Punjabi larger forces to their bordering areas with quietly paying tribute to whoever ruled or there was not much resistance to talk about from these areas worth mentioning in history.

Punjabi language in modern form is roughly 900 years old and Baba Farid poetry is the proof of it. Actually some of the words attributed to some 50-60 years ealier to Data Ganj Bakhsh also sound Punjabi or Urdu. The word Punjab could not have come into existence by Punjabi themselves becasue the only Punjabi kingdom ruling all areas came in 19th century - that of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. So word Punjab has to be coined from outside in the absence of any political unity in the area. Probably you are right that in 16th century this area was called Punjab. The tale of Heer Ranjha belongs to this era and I believe word Punjab appears in Damodar Das poetic presentation of this tale, who also claiimed to be the contemporary of Heer and Ranjha. Sindh, of course, as name is much older. Al-Beruni also mentioned Saraka almost always when mentioning Sindh, which is more likely Saraiki belt of modern day. Al-Beruni wrote this in earlier 12th century.

There are other mistakes too. Old Persian and Sanskrit were sister languages. The vedic word is sapta sandhu whereas Persian is hapta sandhu as one interactor rightly pointed out. Baba Farid predated Taimur by about 150 years and not came 100 years afetr Taimur. Taimur invasions came during Tughlaq period whereas Baba Farid married ealier King, Balban`s daughter. Taimur actually visited his grave to show respect and offer prayers after massacring some 30,000 people who had taken refuge in a nearby fort, hoping that Taimur would by-pass this fort on his way. I think more likely Baba Farid came 100 years after Ghaznavi.

The physical changes of appearnce, heigh and skin color due to environment take at least an order of magnitude more than cultural changes. They should not be put parallel to each other. The timeframe since neolithic period is too little to changes appearnce through biological survival of the fittest and adaptations whereas cultural changes can take place as little as 100 years. The Punjabis appearance (whatever that means) can as easily attrbuted to mixing with immigrants gebe pool as to survival of the fittest whereby some people have to migrate out. There is no point bringing this up without modern DNA testing to come up some scientific proof. Simple logic would have it to do with out migration. The immigrants from central Asia have to outnumber the natives, in addition to have built in dominant character into the genes, responsible for appearance. You are proposing hybrid theory whereas genes do not always prefer hybrid formation. A marriage between a 5 ft and 6 feet individuals would not lead to 5.5 ft offsprings always. It is highly unilely that the in-migrants outnumbered natives at any stage during the last 3000 years of migration. Such was only possible if invaders or migrants moved some 40-50 thousands years ago to sub-continent. There are many other concerns on this topic which are beyonf the scope of this article.

It is better to describe Punjab as luch vegetation than forest during the old times. The physical geography of the region does not support thick forests with rivers flowing within 100 miles of each other and heavy annual monsoon rainfall. The winter is seldom below freezing and therefore natural flora do not need to be evolved tough and perennial to maximize reproduction. Forest is more likely on Indus pleateau than the semi arid south or rivers fed central Punjab.

Punjabi language has suffered in west Punjab or among Punjabi Muslims but the suffering is not irreversible. Already there are signs, contrary to Romair`s bombshell prediction about the demise of Punjabi on Bulley Shah thread, that a revival is starting to take place. The suffering phenomenon peaked somewhere during 1950s or 1960s and started declinging. Right now Punjabi language is perhaps the largest cultural trend in Pakistan against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and that bodes well for Punjabi langauge in coming years.

Nazar Khan: I think it is an article on an interesting subject, but too patchy. Also. I think Gandiv is right in pointing out the silliness when you write ``Persian, Greek, Afghan, Turk, Arab and Mongol blood in the local blood line. The did improve the local genetic quality..``

This kind of rubbish would be acceptable from a lesser man than you. I thought you were beyond this. But never fear - I will help you overcome the rubbish that you were taught.

Repeat after me:

Goray rang dhoondtay ho kahaN
Ai Chowk kay Nazar KhaN?
Khuda ki nazar sab haiN yaksaN
Yeh chand din kay mehamaN

What`s wrong with these Islamic freaks? The author has accepted on another board that he collects his material from online sources.

Chowk can institute a new policy of the full disclosure of all sources, but that has hardly been a strictly enforced requirement here. I request NHK to please ignore these bleating camels.

#14 by nazarhayatkhan on September 13, 2004 7:52pm PT

Excellent reminder to those hypocrites who feign ignorance about their childhood friends after reading some books in english madarsas!!
I have always maintained that just as Hindi has eliminated Brajbhasa, Maithili, Awadhi and countless other dialects from the vernacular scene Urdu has eliminated and wiped out Punjabi and its dialects from Pakistan. Fortunately, we do have some resurgence of Brajbhasa and Awadhi but still much needs to be done. The best humanist literature has come from these dialects and not Urdu or hindi which has become the language of the politicians, mullahs and hindu fanatics. Infact, these dialects have been supressed by the politicking of these mullah jamat of deen-e-fasad.
I do not speak punjabi but can understand. The humanism of Punjabi sufi-liberal literature is overwhelming- and I agree that Amrita Pritam belongs to this long tradition of Punjabi humanism.
Great Stuff! Thanks!

Baba Guru Nanak was really a muslim? Some ineresting facts & observations for(academic interest only)

---

Baba Nanak elaborated on the true Muslim thus:

He who is firm in his faith,
Has the right to be called a Muslim.
His acts must be in accord with his faith in the Prophet,
He must clean his heart of his pride and greed,
Not being troubled by the two imposters life and death,
Resigned to the will of God;
Knowing Him as the Doer,
Free [ing] himself from the self,
Be [ing] compassionate towards all beings, O Nanak,
Such a one may call himself a Muslim.

These two touching, powerful sets of verses, contained in the Guru Granth Sahib, show Baba Nanak as deeply grounded in Islam and in the Sufi tradition. Far from displaying any hostility towards Muslims or Islam, they show him to be genuinely respectful of Islam, the Prophet and those following sincerely in the Prophet’s path.

Guru Nanak maintained close relations with numerous Muslims throughout his life. He had many Muslim disciples, who, while respecting him, remained Muslim, for Baba Nanak only exhorted them to become better Muslims rather than to change their faith or communal allegiances. The Janamsakhis or biographical accounts and Udasis or travel accounts of Baba Nanak also show him as visiting numerous places in India and beyond in order to meet withaccomplished Sufi saints, such as Shaikh Brahm (Ibrahim?) in Pak Pattan, Sayyed Shah Husain in Nanded, Shaikh Sharf in Panipat, Pir Hamza Ghaus in Sialkot and Shaikh Bahlol in Baghdad.Sikh sources tell us that Baba Nanak went as far as Mecca to perform the Haj. Since only Muslims are allowed to enter Mecca, many Muslims believe that Baba Nanak had, by this time, himself become a Muslim, although many contemporary Sikhs would contest that suggestion.

Several Muslim writers, including noted Sufi saints, considered Baba Nanak to have been a Muslim wali or ‘friend of God’. Ample evidence exists to suggest a strong Islamic influence on the Guru. One of the most intriguing relics of Baba Nanak is the Chola Sahib, which is preserved at a gurudwara at Dera Baba Nanak. It is a long cloak with short sleeves made of brown cotton cloth. It was first used by Baba Nanak, and then passed on to his successor Guru Angad, who is said to have wound it around his head when being ordained as guru. The ceremony of wearing the chola about the head while being ordained as guru continued till the fifth guru, Arjan Das, after which the chola was preserved to prevent further decay.

The chola is no ordinary cloak. It is said to be written over entirely with verses from the Qur’an, testifying to the oneness of God, the truth of Islam and the prophethood of Muhammad. Given this, some Muslim writers assert that this shows that Baba Nanak wore the cloak in order to stress that he was actually a Muslim. On the other hand, Sikh writers, while admitting the authenticity of the chola, claim that it was bestowed upon Baba Nanak by the Caliph when he visited Baghdad as a sign of respect and honour. Muslim writers, and especially the Ahmadis, retort by suggesting that this incident is not mentioned in reliable historical accounts. Further, the question of why a Muslim Caliph should bestow a cloak with Qur’anic verses written all over it to Baba Nanak if he was not a Muslim, in the sense that the Caliph understood the term, remains unanswered.

Baba Nanak’s close relations with Muslims is most readily evidence by the fact that his dearest disciple, who remained with him wherever he went, Bhai Mardana, was himself a Muslim. Like Baba Nanak’s other Muslim disciples, Mardana remained a Muslim throughout his life. Today his descendants live in Pakistan and describe themselves as Sikh-Muslims. Mardana is said to have been some nine years older than Baba Nanak. He was born in Talwandi in 1459, which was also Baba Nanak’s ancestral village, in a family of Muslim Mirasis, hereditary singers. Mardana’s father Badra was the family bard of Mehta Kalu, Baba Nanak’s father. Every morning Badra and Mardana would go from house to house in the village seeking alms, while singing songs to the accompaniment of the rabab. As a child, Baba Nanak was deeply touched by Mardana’s music, and is said to have felt a strong love for him. When Baba Nanak was employed to look after the stores of the Lodhi Nawab of Sultanpur, he managed to convince the Nawab to give Mardana a job. From then onwards, the two lived together as inseparable companions for the next 54 years, till Mardana’s death in 1520. Baba Nanak would sing his mystical verses and Mardana would play the rabab. Mardana also composed his own verses, three of which are included in the Adi Granth.

According to some accounts, Mardana passed away somewhere in Afghanistan when he and Nanak were returning from the Haj. In his last wish to Baba Nanak he asked, ‘[F]erry me across this ocean of the world for the sake of the word of God, which I have been singing to you and your people’. Baba Nanak then headed for the Punjab, and, back in his village, he persuaded Mardana’s eldest son, Shahzada, to take his father’s place. Shahzada accompanied Baba Nanak to Kartarpur and served as the chief minstrel to him and his other followers.

More could be said on the close links between the early Sikhs and Islam to argue that the notion that Sikhs and Muslims have always been inveterate foes or that Sikhism was Hinduism’s ‘sword-arm’ against Islamic ‘aggression’ is completely misplaced. If that were indeed the case, one may well ask how and why did Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Sikh Guru, invite Hazrat Miyan Mir, a renowned Qadri Muslim mystic, to lay the foundation stone of the Golden Temple? Clearly, contemporary understandings of Sikh-Muslim relations have little to do with the original teachings of the early gurus. The image of the Muslim as the religious ‘other’ in contemporary Sikh consciousness thus owes entirely to political, rather than religious, factors, in particular to the conflicts between the later gurus and the Mughals. It was this troubled political relationship that laid the ground for the transformation of Sikh-Muslim relations, from warm and intimate, at the time of the early gurus, to oppositional and violently conflictual, in later years, leading to the crystallization of a Sikh identity premised on a fierce hostility towards Muslims.

History, of course, cannot be undone. All we can learn from it is to abstain from the errors of the past, and to seek inspiration from its achievements. Re-reading the history of the early Sikh movement, particularly Baba Nanak’s relations with the Muslims of his times, provides us with an alternate way of imagining Sikh-Muslim relations. This, needless to add, would both be an authentic representation of the Baba Nanak’s own mission as well as a urgently needed corrective to the deeply ingrained notion of Sikhs and Muslims as sworn enemies of each other.