A Historical Survey of Language-Teaching Among South Asian
Muslims A number of languages were taught to South Asian Muslims. Some were
learned by them without being taught formally by anyone. This article traces
out very briefly the history of both these phenomena---voluntary learning of
languages as well as the teaching of languages---among South Asian Muslims.
This article is not about education in general but attempts to go beyond that,
and is also narrower, than G.M.D Sufi (1942) and N.N. Law’s (1915) excellent
studies of the education of Muslims in India. The attempt to go beyond involves
a comprehensive study of what language-teaching policies were adopted and how
the people responded to them. This, to my knowledge, has not been done before
though reports on the teaching of languages have been published from time to
time. For instance, such reports have been published by the Society of Pakistan
English Language Teachers (SPELT) for English and by the Ministry of Education
on language policies in general and some languages, such as Arabic (Misri 1984),
in particular. Mostly, however, the focus of previous histories was on education
as a whole and not specifically on the teaching of languages (see Jaffar 1936;
Ahmad 1985; Saleem 1980. But this is what makes it narrower---with other subjects
being left out. The only thing I can say, by way of defence, is that languages
are important enough to be the focus of historical enquiry by themselves and,
therefore, this article may be considered an attempt to fill an existing need---a
history of language-teaching and learning among South Asian and Muslims.
The paper also attempts to suggest that language learning is connected with
power. People learn languages in order to empower themselves by getting better
jobs. The ruling elite, on the other hand, wants to teach certain languages
to extend its power base, obtain trained personnel and to socialize people to
accept its dominant ideas and policies.
Arabic
Arabic entered South Asia with the coming of the Muslims to this part of the
world. The areas of present-day Sindh and the Punjab were conquered later---the
first in A.D 711-712 and the second in 1026---but the Arabs came to India as
merchants ever since historical records exist. By the time of Sultan Balban,
the outline of the course in Arabic studies – part of which is still in
place in South Asian madrassas – is discernible. Among the books of grammar
were: Misbah, Kafiya, Lubbul Albab and Irshad while the chief text in literture,
or rather belles leters, was the Muqamat al Hariri (Sufi 1941: 17). The Muqamat
was written by Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariri of Basra (1054-1122). He composed
these prose pieces, embellished by verses as was the fashion of the day, as
a model of elegant prose. The writings revolve around the adventures of a character
called Abu Zaid of Seroug. This character deceives people into giving him charity,
indeed makes deception a fine art.
Pre-Islamic poetry too is part of the syllabi. Out of this pre-Islamic poetry
the Saba Mu’allaqat (seven odes suspended in the Kaaba) is still well
known and available in English translation (Clouston 1986). Later, because the
Quran was written in classical Arabic, its language took on a unique religious
significance (Preston 1850:x). One of the reasons for retaining pre-Islamic
poetry, such as the famous Saba Mu’allaqat in the curricula of the madrassas
today is because the language of this verse is close to the language of the
Quran. Indeed, as the Arabs came in contact with foreigners and Arabic began
to change, the changes were seen as a catastrophe and even a heresy (Shalaby
1954: 44-47; Ibn Khaldun 1379: 322).
Arabic studies focus around grammar---sarf and nahw---in the madrassas of India
and Pakistan even now. Nahw is sometimes called grammar. However, the Encyclopaedia
of Islam (Vol. 7) says that it studies ‘the ending of words in articulation
(kalam). It comprises nine sections in which the endings (awakhir) of the three
types of Arabic words (nouns, verbs and particles) are examined successively,
according to their inflexion (i’rab) or their basic form (bina)’
(pp.914-15). Since al-Azhari, an Arab lexicographer, observes that the Greeks
described nahw as ‘the science of words and the study of this science’,
it is sometimes confused with morphology. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, however,
translates sarf as morphology (Vol. 9: 53) which makes nahw the equivalent of
syntax. But these terms are not to be understood as the kind of syntax and morphology
taught by modern linguists trained in the West. Both sarf and nahw are prescriptive
and their underlying aim is not the investigation of language to see how it
functions but to preserve it against change. Apart from that, rhetoric and literature
are also taught.
Arabic occupies the centre stage in all Pakistani madrassas and is sometimes
claimed to be the medium of instruction in them which it is not. However, it
is an optional medium of examination, the other being Urdu. The real medium
of instruction is Urdu in most of them but in the Pashto-speaking areas it is
Pashto, in the interior of Sindh it is Sindhi and in some parts of Balochistan
it is Brahvi and Balochi along with Urdu. Arabic books are explained in these
languages but the formal, written explication in the books themselves is often
in Arabic itself or sometimes in Persian.
Arabic is used more in Pakistan than Persian which was once so crucial a part
of Muslim elitist culture. This is both because it is a religious symbol and
because it is useful for employment in the Arab world. In a survey carried out
for a dissertation by a student, all respondents felt that Pakistanis were supposed
to know Arabic as a religious language; 88 per cent felt that the downfall of
the Muslims was because of their neglect of it and yet, paradoxically enough,
48 per cent also felt that teaching Arabic was reactionary (Bano 1995).
It is, however, often chosen by students as an easy option. For instance, it
is an easy option for students in the Civil Service (CSS) examinations, the
university and Board examinations as well as the oriental examinations. Indeed,
according to a statistician, students get more marks in it than Pashto, Urdu
and English because of which those who take it fare better in competitive examinations
(Bacha: forthcoming). For the state, which teaches it compulsorily, it is part
of indoctrination---a symbolic reinforcement of the Muslim identity of Pakistanis
with a view to mobilizing their religious sentiment in order to prevent their
falling prey to ethnic nationalism or losing.
Persian
Persian was the language of power---the state bureaucracy, the judiciary, education
and the higher military---in Mughal India. The Mughal language policy was not
very different from that of the British. Both used non-Indian languages as languages
of command---to use Bernard Cohn’s (1985) words---restricting them to
a narrow elite. These elites were highly skilled in the languages of power,
Persian and English respectively, and assimilated the cultural norms and world
view of the rulers. Thus, people like Harkaran Das Kambuh of Multan (Mohiuddin
1971: 215-20), Chandrabhan Brahmin, Madho Ram, Sujan Rai and Anand Ram wrote
Persian works which became established models of excellence. What is more significant
is that these Hindu writers used Islamic norms of writing. They began their
works with bismillah (in the name of Allah), and very often followed this with
a hamd (poem in praise of God) and a na’at (poem in praise of the Prophet
of Islam). A number of histories, collected by Elliot and Dowson in volume VIII
of their famous The History of India as Told By Its Own Historians (1867), written
by Hindus, have a Muslim tone. Umrao Singh’s Zubdetu-l Akhbar (Vol. 8:
374-375); Harnam Singh’s Sa’adat-i-Jawed (Vol. 8: 336-54), Subhan
Rai’s Khalasala-t Tawarikh (Vol.8: 5-12), to name only a few of them,
look like works written by Muslims as Dowson notes. Even during British rule
the Hindu elite, or at least the Muslimized part of it, followed Islamic rituals
in education. Rajindra Prashad, later the president of India, tells us in his
autobiography that a maulvi sahib taught him the bismillah and after that the
Karima of Sa’adi (Prashad 1956: 27). In short, certain aspects of Muslim
verbal behaviour did become part of the cultural norms of Persianized Hindus
as a result of the dominance of Persian.
Persian was a symbol of upper class breeding and cultural elitism rather than
Islam as such---Arabic being that symbol par excellence. However, since Muslims
were the major part of this elite, it was also seen as a symbol of Muslim identity.
Mir Jamal uddin Inju, who compiled his Persian lexicon Farhang-e-Jahangiri,
at Akbar’s behest, makes the point that Persian, along with Arabic, is
also a language of Islam (Alam 1998: 329). However, notwithstanding anything
Inju or others might have said, Persian literature was not theological. It was
mostly poetic and the world view of this poetry was not Islamic as interpreted
by the ulema. Its best works were in the sufi tradition where love stood for
divine love; the beloved, often symbolized as a beautiful boy, stood for an
immanent deity and wine was a metaphor of mystic distraction. At another level,
this literature celebrated romantic love, dwelt upon boyish and female beauty,
mentioned drinking as a matter of course and with a certain iconoclastic, heterodox
pride and had several erotic passages.
During Mughal rule there were many chapbooks in Persian which show that many
people, and not just scholars and officials, could read Persian. Upto the beginning
of the twentieth century Muslim children from the well-to-do classes (ashraf)
started with the karima and the Khaliq Bari. They went on to study the Gulistan,
Bostan and Sikandar Nama. Those who ventured further read the several inshas
and the Bahar-i-Danish. They also read Persian poetry and it was a mark of a
gentleman to be able to quote from it. The decline started when Persian no longer
remained the language of power (Rahman 1999). When the British came to India
there were Persian as well as Arabic schools among others for South Asian Muslims.
In the educational reports of the North Western provinces we are told that the
Persian schools taught the Gulistan, Bostan, Bahar-e-Danish, Sikandar Nama and
a few models of letter writing and Persian prose. In general schools are categorised
as Persian-Arabic schools and Hindu-Sanskrit schools. In 1848, we learn that
the number of the former was 4255 while the latter were only 3711 in the North
Western provinces---the heartland of North Indian Muslim elitist culture. In
some cities, such as Delhi, Muslim cultural dominance was such that the British
remarked upon it as follows:
The proportion of Persian to Hindee schools was 5:1, which, considering that
the Hindu population of the city is greater than the Mussulman, was remarkable
(Edn. NWP 1850: 25).
The decline in the fortunes of Persian which had started with the coming of
the British has now made it all but an unknown and uncared for language in Pakistan
and North India. It lingers on as a link with the past or as a convenience for
students or, in the case of modern Persian, because of the efforts of Iran and
the requirement of interpreters for official and other purposes.
On the whole, however, Persian is all but dead in Pakistan. According to Dr.
Tahira Siddiqui, Professor of Persian at the University of Karachi, Persian
is being finished off in Pakistan. In Sindh, it is bracketed with drawing among
the optional subjects. As most schools have teachers of drawing but not those
of Persian, students tend not to take it (Siddiqui Int. 1999). Dr. Ghulam Nasir,
Chairman of the Department of Persian at the University of Peshawar, also agreed
with this. Indeed, he claimed that Persian was no longer an option at the school
level in the NWFP which is not correct though it is true that very few students
study it in schools (Nasir Int. 1999). In Balochistan, however, there is a sizable
Persian-speaking community (between 20 to 23 per cent in Quetta) and Persian
is a popular option. Besides the department of Persian at the university, there
are private bodies like the Anjuman-e-Farsi, Hazara Cultural Association and
Bazm-e-Maddahan-e-Khusrau which keep up literary activity in Persian. They publish
magazines like Ogal (Bazam-e-Khusrau) and Tuluh (Hazara Students Federation)
and even run a language centre to teach Persian. The presence of the Hazara
community, who speak a dialect of Persian, ensures much greater understanding
of the language than elsewhere in Pakistan. A number of Hazaras write poetry
in Persian even now as Sharafat Abbas’s history (1999) tells us. Thus,
Quetta is probably the only city of Pakistan where Persian is actually read
more than anywhere else.
English
It appears that the Muslims of India were not as antagonistic to English to
begin with as they became later in the nineteenth century. However, this conjecture
is based upon the evidence of elitist scholars and travellers secure in their
world view or poor people who are indifferent to middle class concerns of identity
(Khan 1998). What middle class people thought about English, if they noticed
it at all, cannot be determined. It seems, however, that the increased Muslim
antagonism to English during the nineteenth century was a reaction to the now
clearly established dominance of the British and their language. Such a reaction,
however, could not but disempower the Muslim elite even more than it already
had been because English was slowly replacing Persian as the language of elitist
discourse and employment. Thus, when the Muslims felt that their attitude had
deprived them of their share in the distribution of power under British rule,
they reconciled themselves to the new political reality and started learning
English. In a sense both attitudes reflected the desire of Muslims to survive
as a community. The initial antagonism and mistrust was part of a deeply emotional
(extra-rational) response to the domination, and especially the intellectual
domination, of the alien British. The Muslims felt that such domination had
deprived them of power and would continue to deprive them of their identity
which, in many important ways, revolved around their religion and culture. This
reaction, then, was a kind of defensive measure to preserve an endangered and
besieged identity, an identity, moreover, which had been powerful and ascendant
and therefore resented and resisted all changes because they were seen as concessions,
defeats and encroachments. This view eventually changed to one of acceptance.
The change was, in a sense, a pragmatic or rational strategy for consolidating
the Muslim identity by conceding victory to the British while trying to become
their junior partners in wielding power. Since English could empower the Muslim
elite, it started to learn it and so tried to obtain a share in the goods and
services which the British colonial state distributed through elitist employment.
Both strategies ultimately aimed at preserving the Muslim identity but the nature
of that identity would not be the same. While those who did not learn English
looked back to Muslim culture for core values and world view; those who did
were influenced in varying degrees by Western ideas.
Another aspect of the learning of English was that it was a class-marker. It
differentiated the Anglicized upper and upper-middle classes, both Muslim and
Hindu, from the vernacular-educated lower middle and working classes. Thus,
ironically, the spread of nationalism increased vernacularization in the schools
making it correspondingly more difficult for non-elitist children to enter the
domains of power (where English still rules) than before. In short, the learning
of English by the Muslims of India is part of the different strategies they
used to empower themselves in British India.
English is taught as a subject and is the medium of instruction in elitist schools
in Pakistan. Under the rubric of English a number of courses are offered: literary
courses, pedagogical grammar taught through traditional methods of memorising
rules and newer methods popularised by the new emphasis on English language
teaching (ELT). English is in demand by students, their parents and aspiring
members of the salariat because it is the language of the elitist domains of
power not only in Pakistan but also internationally. David Crystal brings evidence
that English is used in most of the domains of power and high culture all over
the world (Crystal 1997).
English is still a very popular subject at all levels. It is popular as a medium
of instruction and as a skill which an enterprising, upwardly mobile young adult
should possess. It is the most empowering language in Pakistan both because
it gives privileged access to the most lucrative and powerful jobs both in Pakistan
and abroad and because it gives social prestige to one who can speak it fluently
and write it correctly. In this role, it empowers the elite and keeps this power
within it. It is also the biggest hurdle in the way of the vernacular-educated
student, especially one from rural areas, to positions of power. The examiners
of the candidates who appeared for the civil service examinations of 1997, said:
[the] majority of the candidates lack command over the English language and
the medium of expression is the main cause of their failure. English language
as a medium of expression in the CSS examination is depriving students of Urdu-medium
institutions to compete on an even field with those from English medium institutions
(FPSC 1998: 36).
English is also a hurdle in the very process of getting higher education at
all. The rate of failure in the matriculation, intermediate and BA examinations
is highest in English. Indeed, most candidates who take English as a subject
in MA, do not manage to pass in the examination. A number of dissertations on
the causes of the abysmal failure of students in English point out that the
subject is taught inefficiently and students carry out no conversation in it
(Sarwat and Khursheed 1994: 130-132). This, it appears, is related to class
and power once again. The teacher of the ordinary vernacular-medium school is
neither a fluent speaker of English nor are the pupils exposed to an environment
where English occurs naturally. Thus English remains a device to close the ranks
of the elite in Pakistan. It gives power which is why people are so desperate
to acquire it and also why they resent it so much. The resent is because they
know that they are not placed in an advantageous position while their elitist
counterparts are (see my survey of students opinions, Rahman 2001a).
Urdu
Urdu was taught informally by poets to their apprentices. Mirza Asadullah Khan
Ghalib, the greatest poet of Urdu, had many such apprentice student-poets. The
formal teaching of Urdu, however, had begun long before the age of Ghalib. And,
ironically enough, the British had started it. The British, and other Europeans,
who started by calling the language ‘Moors’---see Hadley’s
grammar of it published in1772---eventually came to call it Hindustani. One
of the reasons for establishing the Fort William College with professorships
of Indian classical and vernacular languages was that the students destined
to exercise high and important functions in India, should be able to speak the
oriental languages with fluency and propriety (Fort William 1801:Regulation
IX, 18). Teaching Urdu was considered politically significant because it was
considered the literary language of all Musulmans’ (Treasury 1909: Appendix
XII, 111).
The Muslims themselves, however, were not keen to learn English at this stage.
Adam, for instance, reports that in Dinajpur ‘although Mahomedans form
the majority of the population and the Hindoostanee is generally understood,
yet it is not taught in any school nor spoken by the common people who have
either adopted or never relinquished the dialect of Bengal’ (Adam 1835:
74). The British, however, started teaching it formally to Indians. According
to ‘Fisher’s Memoir’ some schools in the Bombay presidency
taught the Marhatta language and Hindoostanee (in the Persian character)’
in 1826. The Bible in Urdu was also taught here (Fisher in Basu 1952: 101-102).
In the Madras presidency the Muslims were supposed to be taught Hindustani in
addition to the usual Persian and Arabic (Letter of H. Harkness, 24 June 1826
in Fisher 112-13).
Gradually, however, Urdu became an identity symbol of the Muslims of India.
It also took on the character of a religious language as the ulema started using
it in the madrassas. When Urdu became symbolic of Muslim identity, its teaching
started supporting a world view in which the ‘other’ was either
Hindu or British. It was the language of the mobilization of Muslims for the
demand for Pakistan and hence it constructed a ‘Muslim’ identity
focussing on the similarities between Muslims and their differences from Hindus.
Such a point of view, based as it was on Islam as the major identity marker,
had the potential of becoming overwhelmingly religious. It also had the potential
of being anti-ethnic. Thus, in Pakistan, Urdu was to become the symbol of an
Islamic Pakistani identity. A corollary of insistence upon this identity entailed
the negation, or at least the downplaying, of Pakistan’s other ethnic
and linguistic identities. The politics of Urdu in Pakistan, then, is closely
connected with the power of the ruling elite of the centre, which is mostly
Punjabi, over the other ethnic groups of the country. In North India, however,
Urdu is a symbol for preserving the identity of a dominated group, the Muslims,
in the Hindu-dominated Hindi-Urdu heartland.
As Urdu was a symbol of Muslim identity during the Urdu-Hindi controversy period
in pre-partition India, it had an established political significance in the
eyes of the Muslim League which started ruling Pakistan in 1947. Moreover, since
the Bengalis constituted more than half (55.6 percent) of the population of
Pakistan, the ruling elite---Muslim League politicians, the bureaucracy and
the military---which was dominated by a Punjabi-Mohajir coalition felt threatened
by the mere fact of Bengali majority. To neutralize this threat of possible
domination by East Bengal, it might have made sense to the ruling elite to fall
back on Urdu as a unifying symbol of the state. This, however, backfired as
the Bengalis resisted the domination Urdu and gradually their resistance became
stronger and stronger.
Over the years the poor and powerless masses of Pakistan, disillusioned with
the ruling centrist establishment and the splintered left, have joined the forces
of both ethnic nationalism and religious revivalism. Indeed, in the most populous
province of Punjab as well as the NWFP, a large number of young militant madrassa
students are people who are taking to the politics of the militant religious
right because they feel they have been cheated of their rights. The upper echelons
of liberals and the leftists, who should have favoured Urdu and the indigenous
languages of the people, have generally favoured English. While this keeps the
religious lobby at bay for the present, it creates grounds for a future struggle
for power. The masses, deprived of elitist jobs for which English is required,
deprived of respect which comes from being educated, deprived of their rights,
deprived of power may rise in revolt to wrest power out of the hands of the
English-using elite! It is a nightmare the ruling elite of Pakistan prefers
not to contemplate though much of the indignation against the Westernized lifestyles
of the elite, though couched in the idiom of religion, is really an expression
of the anger of the dispossessed. As Urdu (vis a vis English) is one of the
symbols of the dispossessed in most of the urban centres of the country, it
is intimately connected with class politics as well as ethnic politics in Pakistan.
Urdu, then, is very much at the centre of three highly explosive issues in Pakistani
politics: ethnicity, militant Islam and class conflict. The state teaches Urdu
to counter ethnicity but this has two contradictory effects: first, it strengthens
ethnic resistance because it keeps the grievance of suppressing ethnic languages
alive; second, it strengthens the religious right because Urdu is associated
with, and is used by, the religious right in Pakistan. But the religious right
does not represent religion alone. It also represents the class-wise distribution
of power.
Sindhi
Sindhi is one of the most ancient languages of India. Indeed, the first language
Muslims (Arabs) came in contact with when they entered India in large numbers
was Sindhi. There are many small books on religious and romantic themes in Sindhi
as well as other languages. These are call chapbooks (see Rahman 2001b). Among
them are versions of the Nur Nama, Meraj Nama, Munajat Nama, Hashar Nama, Qiamat
Nama and so on. Some of them have been mentioned by Blumhardt (1893). A number
of such works of this kind have also been collected together recently in Sindhi
Boli Jo Agatho Manzoom Zakheero by Nabi Bakhsh Baloch (1993). These books are
all religious and didactic. All the versions of the Nur Nama, not only in Sindhi
but also in other languages, are about spiritual radiance and enlightenment
which follow from faith. Other books refer to prevalent beliefs about the day
of judgement, salvation and other such doctrines. The important point, in our
context, is the fact that these works were in Sindhi and that they were taught
systematically. Richard Burton (1821-90), the famous English orientalist, translator
and explorer who wrote a report on education in Sindh (for his biography see
Mc Lynn 1990), says:
He [a boy pupil] probably is nine years old before he proceeds to the next step---the
systematic study of his mother tongue, the Sindhi. (Burton 1851 in Baloch 1971:
47).
At that period, no other indigenous language of Pakistan seems to have been
taught as well as Sindhi. Even now, Sindhi is taught at all levels and there
are more publications in it than in any other indigenous language of Pakistan.
It is also the medium of instruction in schools, mostly in the rural areas,
in Sindhi. At least three universities offer post-graduate degrees in it and
easy Sindhi is also taught to Urdu-speaking Mohajirs in the cities though they
do not find it necessary to learn the language with any degree of competence
(for the Sindhi-Mohajir antagonism see Rahman 1996: 100-132). For the teaching
of Sindhi see Rahman 1999).
Pashto
Books of Pashto probably became available from the sixteenth century onwards
in the Pashto-speaking areas. The author has had access to a number of manuscripts
of Pashto in the British Library (see catalogues Blumhardt 1893; Blumhardt and
Mackenzie 1965), the Pashto Academy and other libraries in Pakistan. Unfortunately,
the manuscripts in India (see Hewadmal 1994: 19-20) and other parts of the world
remained inaccessible to me. There are 170 manuscripts in the libraries of the
British Isles out of which sixty-nine are in the British Museum and sixty in
the Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library. This is the
largest collection seen by the present author---far exceeding the one held by
the Pashto Academy and the National Institute of Folk Heritage libraries in
Pakistan.
As in Sindhi, there are a large a number of booklets called Nur Nama, Jang Nama
and Lahad Nama. The latter are about the well known stories of Imam Hussain’s
martyrdom at Karbala, common beliefs about the questioning in the grave and
so on. As mentioned at several places in this book, such booklets were common
in all the languages of South Asian Muslims and common people’s beliefs
about religion must have been greatly influenced by them. Other books are romances
which too have been mentioned earlier. There are the stories of Musa Jan and
Gulmakai; Sher Alam and Memonai; Momin Khan and Sher Bano; Talat Khan and Shumaila;
Qutab Khan and Nazi; Adam Khan and Durkhani and Dali and Shabo etc. They are
in simple Pashto verse and are quite short---between twenty to sixty pages.
The romances celebrate heroism and male values of bravery, violence, chivalry
and chastity. The lovers almost never achieve union in this world. they die
after many adventures involving war, abduction and deception. Other stories
which are rewritten time and again are in the fairy tale tradition of the Alf
Laila though they are written by contemporaries. Thus a contemporary, born in
1972, as he tells us in the preface, wrote the story of the Caliph Harun ul
Rashid’s son---a story about the magic world of princes, princesses and
the supernatural (Hian n.d). Similarly, the stories about prince Saif ul Malook
and other such mythical persons abound in the small bookshops in the narrow
streets of markets like Qissa Khawani in Peshawar and in Quetta and Kohat where
chapbooks are sold.
The British as well as the non-Pashto speaking people of the NWFP opposed Pashto
(see Rahman 1996: 135-143), but Pashto was introduced as the medium of instruction
in some schools in the Pashto-speaking areas of the NWFP and only at the primary
level. The Primary Text-Book Pashto Translation Project, which was not meant
only for translating textbooks in Pashto as its name would suggest, also supervised
the process of the introduction of Pashto in schools. The project ran for four
years and an Evaluation committee was appointed in 1988 to report on its performance.
In pedagogical terms Pashto was not a failure because achievement tests showed
an improvement in Pashto medium schools as compared to Urdu medium ones (Edn
Dept. F 1991: 114). However, even the USAID reports about the tribal areas,
which are totally Pashto-speaking, show that Urdu tended to be taught rather
more than Pashto. In the Kurram and South Waziristan agencies, for instance,
the medium of instruction remained Urdu (USAID 1991: 82 and 1990: 69). Reasons
given for this reluctance to use Pashto are many: there are two major dialects
of the language and official textbooks are in the northern dialect which the
speakers of the southern dialect find alienating; many teachers are not Pashto-speakers;
teachers themselves were educated in Urdu and so on. The real reason, however,
is that Pashto is not used in the domains of power. Thus, no jobs are available
in it. Parents know that after a few years their children will have to learn
Urdu and will lag behind those who have been taught that language from the beginning.
Thus they are reluctant to overburden their children in the matter of language-learning.
Simply put, the tension is between investing on the language of utilitarian
value and the language of identity. Not surprisingly, most people opt for the
former while hankering for the latter.
The teaching of Pashto, therefore, remains a part of the political imperative
of Pashtun ethnic political parties and identity-conscious Pashtuns. Students,
however, either do not learn it in great numbers because of its non-use in the
domains of power or take it as an easy option for seeking jobs or in the civil
service examination.
Punjabi
Punjabi has never been used in the official domains of power or taught at a
high level, or in its own right, before the coming of the British. However,
there is evidence that at the primary level children were taught some books
in Punjabi. Moreover, it was informally learned by a number of people, Sikhs,
Hindus and Muslims. One book, called Anwa Baran is mentioned in Heer Ranjha,
the famous tale of two lovers in verse narrated by Waris Shah. The manuscript
of this book was read by the present author. There are other such manuscripts
which have been described in an article (Rahman 2001b). A number of printed
books, some of them based on the above mentioned manuscripts, are also in circulation.
Shahbaz Malik, a research scholar on Punjabi, has mentioned them in his bibliography
called Punjabi Kitabiat (1991). They are also listed in several bibliographies
of printed books in the British Library.
These books appear to fall into two major categories: those which are meant
to make Muslims conscious of or knowledgeable about the rudiments of their faith
and those which are about romantic love. Those in the first category have probably
been written by maulvis because they present a very strict and highly puritanical
view of the sharia’s. Some, such as one version of the Pakki Roti, prohibits
music calling it a great sin. Those in the second category are tales in which
romantic love and sometimes making love and drinking are shown without disapproval.
These represent a more tolerant, more worldly or realistic, world view which
existed side by side with the stricter one and is much in evidence in both Persian
and Arabic tales. None of these books are meant to teach Punjabi as such. Punjabi
serves as the means to an end---the end being the socialization of Muslim children
in this case or, simply, the pleasure of listening to a good story.
Since the 1950s the Punjabi activists such as Faqir Ahmed Faqir and later Masood
Khaddarposh have been trying to make Punjabi compulsory for elementary schooling.
Every conference, including the three international conferences organized by
Fakhar Zaman, has raised this demand. These efforts succeeded in making Punjabi
an optional language in schools and colleges where students take it because
it is easy. It also succeeded in enabling the Punjabi activists to get the M.A.
in Punjabi started at the University of Punjab in the early 1970s. However,
Punjabi is not used as a medium of instruction at any level. It is still not
part of elitist education anywhere. If anything, it is in demand as an easy
option.
This account of the failure of the activists of Punjabi appears to suggest that
literacy in Punjabi must be so less as to be non-existent. However, there is
a considerable body of the public, ordinary people and not only activists, who
read chapbooks in Punjabi. Among other people, the Punjabi scholar and activist
Asif Khan told me that his mother knew a number of Punjabi poems which she would
read out to him (Khan 1998: 51 and Int. 1999). Punjabi is also the informal
medium of instruction in the rural schools of the Punjab. According to Ahmed
Saleem, for instance, he was taught in Punjabi at the primary level in the fifties
and even now the teaching at that level is actually in Punjabi though the textbooks
are in Urdu. Some madrassas also reported that they used Punjabi to explain
difficult concepts to students.
Thus, while Punjabi is not taught, it is still learned both at the elitist level
by language activists and at the popular one by ordinary people who still remain
comfortable in the pre-modern worldview of popular texts which they read for
pleasure.
Brahvi and Balochi
The earliest book of Brahvi which exists today is Khidmat-e-Deen. It is a book
on advice and instructions of a religious nature of a hundred pages probably
written in 1693. After this there are magical spells and cures in Brahvi (Brahvi
1982: 90-91) till we come to a major work known as Malik Dad Kalati’s
Tuhfat ul Ajaib. The book is said to have been completed in July 1760 but the
manuscript is missing. The printed edition dates from 1882. It appears that,
while Balochi and Brahvi might have been used as informal media of instruction
and explanation for pupils, they were not the formal languages of scholarship
or religious propagation till the British arrival. The British unwittingly promoted
the acquisition of these languages in Balochistan in two ways. First, they made
formal arrangements to examine their officers in them. And second, they allowed
the missionaries to preach and translate the Bible in them. This made the ulema
apprehensive of losing the Baloch to Christianity and they too started writing
in Balochi and Brahvi.
The Darkhani movement, therefore, is aimed both at countering the missionaries
as well as the Zikris. This movement is the ulemas’ reaction to heterodoxy
as well as modernity which appears to them as a continuation of the crusades
when Islam and Christianity battled with each other for supremacy. The Darkhani
maktaba (school) published a fairly large number of books on Islamic subjects
in Brahvi and Balochi.
While there is no proof that these books, or any other books in Balochi and
Brahvi, were part of the formal curricula of the madrassas, it is very likely
that they were used informally. The existing translations of the Quran in both
the languages might have been read by interested students or their teachers.
Some books of the Dars-i-Nizami were also translated into the languages of the
Baloch. For instance the Risala of Qutab Uddin Mohammad Ibn-i-Ghias Uddin (abreviated
to Qazi Qutab) was translated as Namaz Faraiz in Balochi by Huzoor Baksh Jatoi
(Brahvi 1987: 286). Similarly the famous Meezan us Sarf, one of the best known
books of Arabic grammar in the Dars-i-Nizami, was translated by Qazi Abdus Samad
Sarbazi into Balochi (Brahvi 1987: 1036). Similar books---such as the Sharaitus
Salat and Kanz ul Musli---also exist in Brahvi translations. The latter book,
translated by Maulana Abdullah Darkhani, is a well known Arabic work on ritual
cleanliness and the basics of Islam and is well known to madrassa students (Brahvi
1987: 292). Books of this kind, already read by madrassa students in Arabic,
must have been the models for later works of this kind for the general public.
In any case the presence of madrassa texts in translation suggests that the
ulema used the mother tongues as informal media of instruction and provided
these translations for their students and colleagues.
Balochi and Brahvi are not medium of instruction but they are optional. There
are masters degrees in both at Balochistan University. The power of the languages,
though much lesser than Urdu and English, has increased potentially since the
MA started. Thus the Baloch nationalists I talked to in Quetta were optimistic
about the future of their languages. They feel that by teaching them, under
whatever constraints, they have made their ethnic identity at least potentially
stronger. However, since this teaching is controlled by the state, it cannot
be widespread. In short, although the Baloch nationalists wanted the teaching
of Balochi and Brahvi to be an expression of resistance, it is in fact no more
than a token or symbolic phenomenon which serves to dilute the stridency and
fervour of the nationalist’s complaint of being ignored by the centre.
For the students it serves a utilitarian purpose---that of being an easy option
chosen to get high marks with less effort in their quest for empowerment through
state employment. If at all this experiment has benefited Baloch nationalism,
it is by creating more people literate in the language.
Conclusion
The foregoing history of language-acquisition among the Muslims of South Asia
has made it clear that power is a useful referent for understanding why people
learn and why policies are made to teach certain languages. Basically, as we
have seen, people learn languages to acquire goods, services and prestige---all
those desiderata which power enables one to acquire. In short, language-learning
is empowering for individuals and groups. The group which is exclusively dependent
upon the manipulation of the written word, the salariat, therefore pays greater
attention to the learning of the language(s) of the domains of power than other
groups. As power passes more and more into the hands of the salariat along with
modernization, language-learning becomes far more important than it was in pre-modern,
agrarian setups. Because the acquisition of power, rather than a particular
language, is the objective, people pay the greatest attention to the language(s)
of the domains of power. These languages are standardized, elaborated codes
which serve many purposes in highly technical, bureaucratized, modern societies.
In Pakistan power is divided between the modernising world of the urban areas
and the pre-modern (although in transition towards modernism), feudal world
of the rural areas.
This means, as Tollefson argues in the conclusion of his book, that ‘to
understand the impact of language policy upon the organization and function
of society, language policy must be interpreted within a framework which emphasizes
power and competing interests’ (1991: 201). In short, one should begin
at the power-end rather than the language-end of language learning. This is
a tall order considering that all ruling elites want to preserve their own interest
and, at the moment, the Pakistani ruling elite seems to be satisfied with the
present policy. However, if public opinion, or at least the opinion of the articulate
section of the intelligentsia, can persuade the ruling elite to understand that
its own long-term interests lie in the satisfaction of the ethnic and subaltern
groups which constitute the ‘people’, it might agree to allow a
dilution of its power to take place. It is exactly this process which has brought
about successful welfare state models like the Scandinavian countries and multilingual
entities like Switzerland and Canada. The day such changes take place in Pakistan
may be far in the distance but if it is realized how-language acquisition is
linked with power, the purpose of this paper will be served.
BIBLIOGRAPHY