Like every­body else, Pun­jabis across the world will cel­e­brate with gusto In­ter­na­tional Mother Lan­guage Day on Feb­ru­ary 21.  For the au­thor, a re­minder of the same struck much ear­lier when he read the news item about the Cana­dian Gov­ern­ment agree­ing to set­tle a class ac­tion claim “seek­ing repa­ra­tions for the loss of lan­guage and cul­ture brought on by In­dian (First Na­tions in­dige­nous peo­ples) res­i­den­tial schools, for $2.8 bil­lion.” The au­thor deeply pon­dered about the role of schools and col­leges in his home­land Pun­jab and parts of In­dia not car­ing about the use, role and sta­tus of his mother tongue Pun­jabi.  This ar­ti­cle flows out of his love and con­cern for his mother tongue even while liv­ing in the United States as he ar­tic­u­lates steps for the re­ju­ve­na­tion of Pun­jabi.

The lan­guage which is the mother tongue of over 130 mil­lion peo­ple is at risk as it is not be­ing taught, spo­ken, or prop­a­gated the way it should be. The of­fi­cial ap­a­thy ex­tends on ei­ther side of the bor­der that di­vides Pun­jab. It is a pretty grim and alarm­ing re­al­ity which should be a wake-up call for all of us who are in deep slum­ber.

We may claim pride in our her­itage, but we shy from speak­ing Pun­jabi. We claim we are Pun­jabi by na­ture and food, but our spo­ken words do not re­flect it. It will be no ex­ag­ger­a­tion to say that when it comes to our mother tongue, we have been car­ry­ing a self-per­ceived in­fe­ri­or­ity com­plex. In fact, Guru Nanak Dev Ji (1469-1539) ob­served this trait in Pun­jabis over 500 years back, as re­flected in this rev­e­la­tion,

ਘਰਿ ਘਰਿ ਮੀਆ ਸਭਨਾਂ ਜੀਆਂ ਬੋਲੀ ਅਵਰ ਤੁਮਾਰੀ ॥੬॥
Trans­la­tion: In each and every home, every­one ad­dresses us­ing the term “Mian” for greet­ings; your lan­guage has changed, O peo­ple. ||6||
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 1191

The pic­ture of the con­se­quences of ne­glect as painted By Guru Nanak Ji is:

ਖਤ੍ਰੀਆ ਤ ਧਰਮੁ ਛੋਡਿਆ ਮਲੇਛ ਭਾਖਿਆ ਗਹੀ ॥
Trans­la­tion: The pro­tec­tors (Kha­tris) have aban­doned their re­li­gion and have adopted a for­eign lan­guage.
Guru Granth Sahib, page 662

That was the lan­guage of rulers then, but now it has been re­placed by Hindi/​Urdu and Eng­lish in­stead. This in­fe­ri­or­ity com­plex is not found among Ger­mans, French, Japan­ese or Chi­nese. In In­dia, the Ben­galis, Tamil­ians, Tel­ugu, As­samese, Na­gas, Ma­nipuris, Marathas, Gu­jaratis, and Sind­his are very firmly rooted in their mother tongue, and it is their pre­ferred medium of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This list is not ex­haus­tive and is based on my men­tal im­prints through my in­ter­ac­tions with speak­ers of these lan­guages.

Brief His­tor­i­cal Per­spec­tive

Pun­jabi is the com­mon mother tongue of the peo­ple of the In­dus val­ley. This was the spo­ken lan­guage and was em­ployed as a method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for ages.  Guru Nanak Sahib chose the lan­guage of the masses -Pun­jabi to con­vey his ideas so that every­one could un­der­stand and in­cor­po­rate them into their lives.  The Gur­mukhi Pun­jabi script adopted by Guru Sahib was based on Landa scripts. Suc­ces­sor Gu­rus com­piled the hymns of saints and bards in var­i­ous lan­guages but in­cor­po­rated them in Guru Granth Sahib in the Gur­mukhi script. Guru Ji gave the masses spir­i­tual in­sights in the lan­guage of the com­mon man, in­stead of San­skrit which was an ex­clu­sive do­main of Brah­mins.  This was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary step in the process of dis­man­tling the caste struc­ture which had made oth­ers de­pen­dent on Brah­mins for their spir­i­tual, re­li­gious, and so­cial needs.

Al­though Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh him­self re­ceived lit­tle for­mal ed­u­ca­tion, still he was a great vi­sion­ary. Dur­ing the 40 years of the Khalsa Raj of Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh (1789–1839), lit­er­acy was al­most 100%. All places of wor­ship -Gu­rud­waras, Mandirs, and Masjids could only op­er­ate if they had a school at­tached to their precincts for im­part­ing ed­u­ca­tion. All women were lit­er­ate in his king­dom. De­spite the fact that the of­fi­cial court lan­guage was Per­sian, the Pun­jabi lan­guage was the mother tongue of the masses.

The Lion of Pun­jab’s strat­egy for ed­u­cat­ing the masses was through the Qaida-E-Noor -a ba­sic primer for learn­ing a lan­guage and re­lated cul­ture.

The Lion of Pun­jab’s strat­egy for ed­u­cat­ing the masses was through the Qaida-E-Noor –a ba­sic primer for learn­ing a lan­guage and re­lated cul­ture. Af­ter the an­nex­a­tion of Pun­jab in 1849, the British In­dian gov­ern­ment started plan­ning the in­tro­duc­tion of the mod­ern Eu­ro­pean sys­tem of ed­u­ca­tion with Eng­lish as the medium of in­struc­tion as it was con­sid­ered su­pe­rior to in­dige­nous lan­guages. They re­al­ized that in or­der to suc­ceed they will have to root out the Qaida sys­tem. To curb re­sis­tance, the British rulers made sure that no­body in Pun­jab could read their lan­guage.  Any­body hand­ing over a gun or sword to the Raj rulers was paid two an­nas while the one re­turn­ing Pun­jabi Qaida was paid six an­nas. The colo­nial rulers col­lected Pun­jabi Qaidas from vil­lage to vil­lage and burnt them. Shahzad (2010) is of the view that the Eng­lish rulers did not use Pun­jabi as a medium of in­struc­tion as they knew that by do­ing so lit­er­acy rate in Pun­jab will in­crease. It was strongly be­lieved that ed­u­cated peo­ple will come to know their rights and would chal­lenge the rule of the in­vaders.

To­day, un­for­tu­nately, we can­not even find a sin­gle copy of this his­tor­i­cal Qaida. Though at­tempts are afoot to de­sign and pub­lish a mod­ern-day Qaida-e-Noor, it has yet to be­come com­mon­place.

The British rulers made sure that no­body in Pun­jab could read their lan­guage as a means to curb re­sis­tance. Any­body hand­ing over a gun or sword to the Raj rulers was paid two an­nas while the one re­turn­ing Pun­jabi Qaida was paid six an­nas. The colo­nial rulers col­lected Pun­jabi Qaidas from vil­lage to vil­lage and burnt them.

In 1947, the Pun­jab was di­vided be­tween In­dia and Pak­istan. Now a new na­tional pride was awak­en­ing in these two na­tions di­vided on the ba­sis of faith. To show their pride, Urdu was adopted as a state lan­guage in Pak­istan and Hindi in In­dia. The thrust to pro­mote a lan­guage deemed as the na­tional lan­guage over the en­tire coun­try be­came a new re­al­ity in the name of in­te­gra­tion. This new­found thrust was at the cost of the re­gional lan­guages. Urdu in Pak­istan and Hindi in In­dia, along with Eng­lish started to be­come the first lan­guage in homes, while the re­gional lan­guages were con­sid­ered the lan­guage of rural, rus­tic, un­e­d­u­cated masses.

The Pun­jabi lan­guage on the In­dian side of the Rad­cliffe line re­ceived an­other jolt when Pun­jab was di­vided into Pun­jab and Haryana in 1966 when some ter­ri­to­ries of erst­while Pun­jab were merged with Hi­machal Pradesh and the Union ter­ri­tory of Chandi­garh was carved out. Hindi was adopted as the state lan­guage in Haryana, Chandi­garh, and Hi­machal Pradesh, and the voice of Pun­jabi-speak­ing peo­ple in these ter­ri­to­ries was to­tally ig­nored.  To re­buff Pun­jab, the state of Haryana, un­der Chief Min­is­ter Bansi Lal, who was vi­ciously against any­thing Pun­jabi, adopted Tel­ugu as the sec­ond lan­guage, de­spite the fact there were hardly any speak­ers of that lan­guage in the state. Sig­nif­i­cantly, even the Union gov­ern­ment also did not in­ter­vene.  Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments of all po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Pun­jab have not im­ple­mented Pun­jabi even un­der the three-lan­guage pol­icy -Re­gional Lan­guage, Eng­lish, and Hindi.

To re­buff Pun­jab, the state of Haryana, un­der Chief Min­is­ter Bansi Lal, who was vi­ciously against any­thing Pun­jabi, adopted Tel­ugu as the sec­ond lan­guage, de­spite the fact there were hardly any speak­ers of that lan­guage in the state. Sig­nif­i­cantly, even the Union gov­ern­ment also did not in­ter­vene. 

Glob­al­iza­tion and the grow­ing trend to im­mi­grate out of In­dia are fur­ther ac­cel­er­at­ing the lack of in­ter­est in Pun­jabi. As the im­mi­grants are dri­ven by the de­sire of bet­ter­ing their lives, they quickly start as­sim­i­lat­ing into their adopted coun­tries. As the par­ents want their kids to fit in, the mother lan­guage be­comes low on the totem pole of life’s pri­or­i­ties. Eng­lish has be­come the first lan­guage in many homes in the Di­as­pora.

Need to Pre­serve

A UN­ESCO re­port has clearly ad­vo­cated the ben­e­fits of early learn­ing in the mother lan­guage. The re­port says, “Re­search shows that ed­u­ca­tion in the mother tongue is a key fac­tor for in­clu­sion and qual­ity learn­ing, and it also im­proves learn­ing out­comes and aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance. This is cru­cial, es­pe­cially in pri­mary school to avoid knowl­edge gaps and in­crease the speed of learn­ing and com­pre­hen­sion. And most im­por­tantly, mul­ti­lin­gual ed­u­ca­tion based on the mother tongue em­pow­ers all learn­ers to fully take part in so­ci­ety.”

The Gur­mukhi al­pha­bet which was de­rived from the Landa scripts has roots in the in­cred­i­bly old Brahmi al­pha­bet. The sec­ond Sikh Mas­ter -Guru An­gad Dev Ji (1539-1552) en­hanced the Gur­mukhi al­pha­bet to its cur­rent form for the ex­press pur­pose of writ­ing the rev­e­la­tions in Guru Granth Sahib, giv­ing birth to the say­ing that it flows from the “Gu­ru’s mouth.”

For the Sikhs, the sur­vival of their lan­guage is not just a ques­tion of sur­vival of their mother lan­guage alone, but pre­serv­ing the key that opens the door to Gu­ru’s spir­i­tual wis­dom and sal­va­tion. Thus, the stakes are much higher.

Now that dooms­day alarms have been sounded, let us look at how to avoid this pre­car­i­ous sce­nario. Ef­forts will have to be made on mul­ti­ple fronts. The first place to start the change has to be home. Af­ter all, if Sikhi has to sur­vive to­day then the Sikhs need to get the Guru Ji’s mes­sage as writ­ten by them from its source in “Gur­mukhi.”  The trans­la­tions, tran­scre­ations, and in­ter­pre­ta­tions will al­ways carry a per­sonal un­der­stand­ing in­clud­ing bi­ases or some taint. For the Sikhs, the sur­vival of their lan­guage is not just a ques­tion of sur­vival of their mother lan­guage alone, but pre­serv­ing the key that opens the door to Gu­ru’s spir­i­tual wis­dom and sal­va­tion. Thus, the stakes are much higher.

Let us ex­plore some ar­eas of how this can be pur­sued.

Us­ing Mu­sic

The power of mu­sic is phe­nom­e­nal. The new­born is sung rhymes and songs, to lull them to sleep as well as to teach them. No won­der Guru Nanak Sahib Ji em­ployed the power of mu­sic to spread his mes­sage by singing his hymns to mu­si­cal scales. In Gur­d­waras the de­vo­tional singing called Keer­tan is the pri­mary mode of spir­i­tual dis­course. Sci­en­tists have found that mu­sic stim­u­lates more parts of the brain than any other hu­man func­tion. That’s why they see so much po­ten­tial in mu­sic’s power to change the brain and af­fect the way it works. Pun­jabi mu­sic is very ro­bust, catchy, and rhyth­mic. It has gained a strong fol­low­ing out­side the Pun­jabi-speak­ing world. No so­cial func­tions and wed­dings are com­plete with­out Pun­jabi songs. We need to ride on that in­ter­est wave and cre­ate a fresh in­ter­est in the Pun­jabi lan­guage.  Tra­di­tional rhymes and folk songs can be­come ef­fec­tive tools for teach­ing the lan­guage and mak­ing it a pre­ferred lan­guage of choice.

Sto­ry­telling

Lan­guage is the cul­tural glue that binds com­mu­ni­ties to­gether and sto­ries be­come its build­ing blocks. The art of sto­ry­telling in fam­ily set­tings is de­clin­ing, as the fam­ily units have meta­mor­phosed from joint fam­i­lies to nu­clear fam­i­lies with both work­ing par­ents. How­ever, the power of oral sto­ry­telling has not di­min­ished.  The power of sto­ry­telling can be used to pro­mote and ini­ti­ate kids into the lan­guage. We need to cre­ate more qual­ity il­lus­trated chil­dren’s books along with dig­i­tal sto­ries. We have a reper­toire of tra­di­tional catchy folk­tales that have not been ex­ploited as tools for teach­ing the lan­guage.  We re­ally need to get such re­sources de­vel­oped and prop­erly im­ple­mented to gain ben­e­fits from them.

In­di­vid­u­als and or­ga­ni­za­tions have made some maiden ef­forts in this di­rec­tion, but we need to raise the pre­sen­ta­tion and qual­ity stan­dards of these ini­tia­tives. More ef­forts are needed on how to dis­sem­i­nate these re­sources avail­able to the learn­ers for prop­a­gat­ing Pun­jabi along with set­ting up their dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters. Even on the dig­i­tal plat­form, there is a need to de­velop teach­ing tools.

Mak­ing Movies

Be­sides en­ter­tain­ment, movies pro­vide av­enues for cul­tural and lit­er­ary im­mer­sion. They are an ef­fec­tive tool to im­part to stu­dents a deeper un­der­stand­ing of the sub­ject through au­dio-vi­su­als. Movies can be used to sup­ple­ment book read­ing for knowl­edge and cre­ative think­ing.   We need a Satya­jit Ray of Pun­jabi films who can take them to a higher level and gain global recog­ni­tion, which will gen­er­ate in­ter­est in learn­ing the lan­guage.

On­line Pun­jabi Teach­ing 

There is an ur­gent need for im­part­ing Pun­jabi lan­guage courses on­line. The Sikh Di­as­pora can take lead in set­ting up an on­line Uni­ver­sity im­part­ing ba­sic, cer­tifi­cate, and ad­vanced courses in Pun­jabi.

Pun­jabi Learn­ing Cen­ters

We need to plan Pun­jabi Learn­ing Cen­ters in line with lan­guage teach­ing in­sti­tu­tions like the Goethe In­sti­tute for Ger­man, Al­liance Française for French and Con­fu­cius In­sti­tute for Chi­nese. No gov­ern­ment is go­ing to lead such an ef­fort for Pun­jabi, so we will have to make our own ef­forts. These in­sti­tutes run­ning such pro­grams pro­vide us with a tem­plate and model on how it can be done. The syl­labus, course du­ra­tion, text­books, and other re­sources need to be de­vel­oped and stan­dard­ized. We need to get or­ga­nized and start, then plant the phys­i­cal seed in some lo­ca­tion. Then the model can be repli­cated in other cities, and it can be scaled up world­wide if we can get a proper or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture and setup. Be­sides teach­ing Gur­mukhi read­ing and writ­ing other courses such as Gur­bani-San­thiya, Keer­tan, etc. can be added.

We need to plan Pun­jabi Learn­ing Cen­ters in line with lan­guage teach­ing in­sti­tu­tions like the Goethe In­sti­tute for Ger­man, Al­liance Française for French and Con­fu­cius In­sti­tute for Chi­nese.

Con­clu­sion

We have to re­al­ize that rais­ing chil­dren in an en­vi­ron­ment where Pun­jabi is the or­di­nary lan­guage of daily in­ter­ac­tion is cen­tral to the sur­vival of our beloved mother lan­guage. The on­slaught of glob­al­iza­tion on the fate of the lan­guages with­out sig­nif­i­cant speak­ers is go­ing to be their death knell. The irony of the times is that the pitch for the Pun­jabi lan­guage has to be made in Eng­lish. Thus, the sit­u­a­tion is grim, but not hope­less. It re­quires recog­ni­tion of the sit­u­a­tion we are fac­ing and work­ing on it in a con­certed man­ner at the grass­roots level.

There will be skep­tics who may not be­lieve in it, but I can vouch from my life ex­pe­ri­ences. My fa­ther and I were born in Burma (now Myan­mar) and we spoke Pun­jabi and learned to read and write Gur­mukhi at home. My kids were raised in the USA, and we had to put an ef­fort to do it for their sake. Now my grand­kids are on this path of learn­ing. So, there is hope. We need to make a com­mit­ment and de­velop the req­ui­site re­sources. The need of the hour is an au­thor of the cal­i­bre of Bhai Vir Singh to in­spire us with the love of our mother lan­guage and Gu­ru’s teach­ings.

We are world cit­i­zens and no lan­guage is de­spised by us, but we only ex­ist when our mother tongue is revered by us as re­flected in its us­age by us.

We are world cit­i­zens and no lan­guage is de­spised by us, but we only ex­ist when our mother tongue is revered by us as re­flected in its us­age by us.

En­cour­aged by sane voices amongst the com­mu­nity up­hold­ing the flag of Pun­jabi, ir­re­spec­tive of our faith and re­gional pref­er­ences, let’s rise for Pun­jabi. Let us not go down in his­tory as the gen­er­a­tion that was com­plicit in push­ing Pun­jabi to ex­tinc­tion, but as the peo­ple that re­versed the trend and made it flour­ish again.

Ref­er­ences:

1. https://​www.cbc.ca/​news/​canada/​british-co­lum­bia/​res­i­den­tial-school-band-class-ac­tion-set­tle­ment-1.6722014
2. https://​patch.com/​con­necti­cut/​trum­bull/​his­tory-of-pun­jabi-lan­guage–gur­mukhi-al­pha­bet
3. Shafi Aamir. Pun­jabi Par­ents’ Per­cep­tion of Pun­jabi as Their Chil­dren’s Mother Tongue. https://​www.numl.edu.pk/​jour­nals/​sub­jects/​1566368197Pun­jabi%20­Par­ents%2011.2.pdf
4. UN­ESCO Re­port: Mother Tongue Mat­ters: Lo­cal lan­guage key to ef­fec­tive learn­ing, 2008. https://​www.un­esco.org/​en/​ar­ti­cles/​why-mother-lan­guage-based-ed­u­ca­tion-es­sen­tial
   Note: Ti­tle im­age and other il­lus­tra­tions by the au­thor.

An en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, hail­ing from Myan­mar, ed­u­cated in In­dia, Bhupin­der Singh is a Hous­ton-based busi­ness­man, with a keen in­ter­est in writ­ing books and ar­ti­cles on Sikh his­tory, mo­ti­va­tion and spir­i­tu­al­ity.