¹ By this is meant the time when the author was living in Lahore (1967–1968), i.e. the ‘sociological present’.Google Scholar

² It seems that some of the leaders of this movement were refugees from East Punjab: however, it is not easy to say how significant the proportion of such men was, or to what extent their physical uprootedness impelled them to expression in their mother tongue.Google Scholar

³ Cf. ‘Zeno’, ‘The Drums and the Flame’, Pakistan Times, 03 (?) 1965. One is also told of governmental dismissal of lecturers advocating the use of Punjabi, etc., although for obvious reasons it is not easy to go very deeply into such matters, connected with what is still a sensitive political issue in Pakistan.Google Scholar

⁴ This is in contrast to the ahl-e zabān, who usually do not speak, although they may understand, Punjabi. In what is still a far from mobile society, this role of Urdu as a lingua franca is fairly limited.Google Scholar

⁵ E.g. (i) phonetic borrowings, such as the disaspiration of the voiced aspirates /gh/, /jh/ etc: (ii) verbal loans (/faāfa/ for /jaldī/ or /fauran/): (iii) Punjabi sentence patterns (maiη ne jānā hai/ for /mwjhe jānā hai/, cf. Punj. /maiη jānā e/).Google Scholar

⁶ This corresponds to that between the cosmopolitan world-culture and Islamic– Pak culture, which are often considered as being in an oppositional, rather than a hierarchical relationship.Google Scholar

⁷ The author should perhaps make it clear that his personal contacts in Lahore were largely with middle-class people—lecturers, school-teachers, journalists, bank employees, middle-grade civil servants, etc. It should thus be borne in mind that he describes an almost entirely middle- and lower-middle-class world. (He thinks that these broad class labels are meaningful in discussing Pakistani urban society, at least for the purposes of this article.)Google Scholar

⁸ This was the main point at which the ordered formality of these artificial gatherings tended to break down, in the heat of a good argument.Google Scholar

⁹ A joint secretary wrote and read out the minutes and did the actual donkey-work (of unlocking the room, etc.), whereas the secretaryship of the Sangat was a one-man affair.Google Scholar

¹⁰ It is relevant to mention that in Lahore the cinemas change their programmes in mid-week. In a society where families stay at home and men do not, these meetings were therefore an alternative entertainment.Google Scholar

¹¹ Occasional female attendance at the Sangat involved a large party going to a separate room upstairs, since women did not sit below.Google Scholar

¹² There was no rigid division between the fringes at least: as already mentioned, they could drift from one meeting to another.Google Scholar

¹³ Significantly, these often took the form of criticisms of usage from the ahl-e zabān element—as always the final arbiters of correct Urdu.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The meetings were begun with tilāvat, for instance, in contrast to the markedly secular atmosphere in both the Sunday-afternoon societies.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Since the meetings were either mid-week or (usually) on Saturday afternoons, it was impossible for many of the Sangat regulars to attend, although a few did.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Considerably more important than the secretary in this organization, which seemed to be partly his creation.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Members of the Sangat and Majlis Shah Husain (cf. the following paragraph) told me this society was largely supported by senior Punjabi CSP/PCS/PSP officers in order to safeguard the position of Punjabis in the public services—a kind of crude political aim which they disclaimed for their own activities.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The ambitious summit of these aims was a large cultural centre to be built for at least Rs.25 lakhs. (approx. £200,000).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Not, significantly, Urdu translations of Punjabi classics, which are already taken care of by several government-sponsored institutions commissioned to help build up national unity by such means.Google Scholar

²⁰ One of these is to try and encourage similar bodies in other towns in the Punjab. The author heard some simple advice given to a couple from Narowal, who wanted to start up a Majlis Ali Haidar there.Google Scholar

²¹ The initiatives of some enthusiasts on the staff of Government College seemed to bear this out. It is, after all, easier to cope in one's mother-tongue, especially when Urdu is no better equipped to deal with ‘Western’ subjects (e.g. psychology, mathematics, etc., where the main Punjabi efforts were being conducted).Google Scholar

²² A similar circular argument is brought to bear when the re-establishment of an independent Board of Studies in the University in Punjabi is brought up.Google Scholar

²³ The degree obviously appeals mostly to those who have missed out for one reason or another on a proper university education.Google Scholar

²⁴ Which had to close down its Fazil-e Punjabi classes owing to lack of demand.Google Scholar

²⁵ This again carries the same kind of features as the monthlies, usually a long prosepiece, and one or more poems. As a parting tribute, a long interview with the author was printed on this page just before he left Lahore, with a handsome photograph.Google Scholar

²⁶ E.g. the editor of the journal Panjābi Adab translates the news into Punjabi from Urdu, and another man has a small publications organization of his own, the Punjabi Adabi Board.Google Scholar

²⁷ There is some scope for writing in prize-competitions in Punjabi on themes put forward by the Government, such as family planning or the superiority of Mexi-Pak dwarf wheat-strains (designed to be used as propaganda material in the countryside), although most of the Punjabi writers are rather scornful about this: like most of the educated middle-class of Lahore, they are generally critical of the Government.Google Scholar

²⁸ It is not always possible to tell from the written advertisements whether a particular film is in Urdu or Punjabi.Google Scholar

²⁹ Gramophone records are not available in Lahore, and so provide no guide as to middle-class preferences between, say, Punjabi film- and folk-songs, and Uru ghazals.Google Scholar

³⁰ Another relevant experience occurred when the author attended an official function in honour of the greatest saint of Lahore (Dātā Ganj Bakhsh, alias al-Hujvīrī), who wrote in Persian and was a Sufi of the most orthodox type, a fact which had been stressed in the preceding speeches delivered in the appropriate formal Urdu: but the programme was concluded by a recital from specially hired qavvāls, who immediately (to the audience's great delight) broke into a kāfī by Bullhe Shāh, one of the most famous Punjabi Sufi poets, and a man of the most unorthodox views.Google Scholar

³¹ Cf.Uppal, S. S., Panjabi Short Story, its Origin and Development (1966), p. 244.Google Scholar

³² The author does not wish to suggest that all such people are opponents of the activists or hostile to the wider use of Punjabi. An excellent counter-example is that of Mr Ahmad Nadim Qasmi, the most distinguished literary figure of Lahore, who occasionally writes in Punjabi himself, as well as introductions to Punjabi books, although the bulk of his activity is in Urdu.Google Scholar

³³ This being Pakistan, there are some women in the first category, but not in the second.Google Scholar

³⁴ Cf. p. 245 above: one might also cite the expulsion of the Punjabi writers' group from the Writers' Guild in Lahore in 1963 as a (final) example of this phase.Google Scholar

³⁵ This is important, since every Pakistani Punjabi literate in Urdu can, if he tries, read and write Punjabi, the script being the same, and the language being the mothertongue: but intellectual barriers created by education in Urdu may prevent the realization of this (like M. Jourdain speaking prose).Google Scholar

³⁶ There is now a movement to establish regular University courses at Government College.Google Scholar

³⁷ Fazil-e Urdu is a less attractive alternative, since the Urdu world is already filled with MA and PhD holders, while Fazil-e Farsi and Fazil-e Arabi do not lead to membership of cultural organizations with wide support in Lahore.Google Scholar

³⁸ Nearly all the teachers the author met in Pakistan were worried about their general status in society, and full of questions as to how English conditions compared.Google Scholar

³⁹ In spite of the formation of West Pakistan as ‘One Unit’ in 1956, the former discrepancies in the scope given to local languages in the former provinces have continued.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Amongst the educated middle-class of the cities there being apparently very little support for the Basic Democracies.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Especially in psychology, where the professor's influence is strongly in favour of Punjabi, which is quite widely used in teaching in his department.Google Scholar

⁴² As in the fears of Gujarati domination which led to the formation of Maharashtra.Google Scholar

⁴³ The author cannot forbear here from mentioning a fascinating third Punjabi movement, which has come to my notice only after returning from India. This is the Jammu-centred movement in favour of Dogri, the local Punjabi dialect (which the followers of the movement however state to be a separate language). A literature has been created from nothing since 1947. To mark its separateness from Sikh Punjabi, Dogri is written in Devanagari, not Gurmukhi script. Being in the now unique position of Hindus in an Indian province with a Muslim makority, the Dogras appear to have reacted in the typical Indian way: the future developments of this will be most interesting. Cf. Sharma, Nilamber Dev, Introduction to Modern Dogri Literature (1965).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Even today members of that élite are still proud of their (often very remote) foreign ancestry—usually Persian or Central Asian.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ The discussion has been simplified by dealing throughout with West Pakistan: the author is not competent to deal with the more complex situation in the Eastern wing with its dominant Bengali culture and greater ‘Indian’ bias (at its most obvious in the much higher proportion of words of Sanskritic origin used in Pakistani Bengali, than, say, Pakistani Punjabi).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ E.g., the disapproval of music, widespread in Pakistan today, although it formed an integral part of the old UP Muslim culture; or the total replacement of the cultured salutation ‘ādāb arz’ by the Islamic ‘salām ‘alaikum’.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ In speaking of Islamic civilization it seems reasonable to consider the eighteenth and even some of the nineteenth century as falling within this period (or even later in isolated cases, such as the courts of Rampur and Hyderbad in India).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Even the orthodox ‘two-nation’ theory of the origin of Pakistan is disputed by some left-wing Punjabi enthusiasts, who see it as primarily due to the class-struggle of the Punjabi and Bengali Muslim peasantry against their Hindu landlords. (Irrespective of this theory's truth, its reliance on intra-Pakistan elements is interesting.)Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Cf. Smith, W. Cantwell, Islam in Modern History, 1959, p. 263, where he points out that almost all the ‘concrete assets’ of Indian Muslims stayed in India.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Siddiqi, M., The Image of the West in Iqbal, Lahore, 1965, pp. 13–14, points out the serious flaw in Iqbāl's thinking—his inability to think in terms of the individual in society. It is this deficiency which makes him an unsuitable model for those who want to work out ideal patterns for Pakistani society.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The author was also struck by a historical discussion at the Government College Punjabi Majlis, in which everyone agreed that the Muslims of the Punjab regarded the Afghans of Abdali as foreign invaders rather than fellow-Muslims. (This resembles the Sikh view of Punjabi history as expressed by Khushwant Singh and others.) This contrasts with the widely expressed desire in Pakistan—by those influenced by the dominant culture—to travel in Afghanistan and Persia rather than India, thus turning their backs on their ‘unislamic half’.Google Scholar

⁵² Cf. Ahmad, Aziz, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, 1964, p. 232 for the rejection of Indian life in Indian Muslim Persian poetry after Amir Khusrau. One might also compare the peculiar position of Urdu as a language which cannot be purified (and nationalized) on the pattern of Turkish and Persian without turning it into Hindi. The de-Urdufied (heh) Punjabi beloved of the Punjabi activists is in the strongest contrast to this.Google Scholar

⁵³ The virtually complete closure of the Indian border since the war may have contributed to this cut-off feeling.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Sikhs being symbols acceptable to Pakistani feeling of this culture, in a way in which Hindus are not.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ How far the aims are being realized is difficult to tell at this early stage. Also, one has to rely for information on such matters as how many schools and colleges have actually started Punjabi classes on the evidence of the enthusiasts.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ First in Western Europe, then in the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then in places like Turkey, later in India. The last example, and the movements in modern Europe (Basque, Flemish, Welsh, etc.) show a further development in which—except for extremists—total independence is not the goal, but autonomous development within a pre-existing political super-unit. It is this modern twist which is apparently applicable to West Pakistan. In a sense, this has already come about in the country at a national level, with the declaration of Bengali as an official language on a par with Urdu.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Even protagonists of Balochi are beginning to make their voices heard (as in the correspondence columns of the Pakistan Times).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ There is less interest in reading Indian Punjabi, except in transliterated versions, probably because the script is a barrier. (The author was more than once asked by Punjabi enthusiasts to teach them Gurmukhi!)Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For instance, part of the Majlis Shah Husain's cultural week was a general debate between Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, etc. writers. Also, since Punjabi is ‘behind’ the others, their support is desirable. If the movement continues to develop, it will be interesting to see the effects of the large Punjabi dominance (in numbers).Google Scholar